Sophie Neiman

1 week ago | csmonitor.com | Sophie Neiman

When I arrive in the Congolese city of Goma in March, I present myself to officials from M23. The Rwandan-backed rebel group has captured this city of 1 million two months earlier, leaving the streets littered with bodies. “You are just a young girl,” one of the higher-ups says, looking me over. “Aren’t you afraid to be in a war zone?” We are sitting on the veranda of a hotel overlooking Lake Kivu. Waves lap the concrete below, as if to punctate his words. I smile sweetly. Let them think I am naive.

1 week ago | csmonitor.com | Sophie Neiman

When Jeremie Lumoo fled his home in the eastern Congolese village of Kimoka last year, he wondered if he’d ever see it again. Sitting in his tent in a displacement camp in the nearby city of Goma, he envisioned himself home in his favorite chair, listening to rumba music on the radio. He was dreaming of returning in peacetime. Instead, in February, a rebel group called M23 occupied Goma and evicted the tens of thousands of displaced people living on its outskirts.

2 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Sophie Neiman

It had been a while since Corneille Nangaa had an office job. The former Congolese civil servant spent much of the last two years in fatigues, as the head of a coalition of rebel groups fighting for control of the country’s east. But in January, M23, the most prominent of the militias in Mr. Nangaa’s Congo River Alliance, seized the regional capital of Goma, and he got a new gig: overseeing a city government.

3 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Sophie Neiman

When a woman comes to Jeanne Nacatche Banyere after being raped, “Maman Jeanne” doesn’t start by asking about what happened. Instead, she draws the woman into a warm hug. If the woman wants to sit down, she sits down with her. If the woman wants to lie down, Ms. Banyere lies down, too. “I adapt to her,” says Ms. Banyere, who runs a women’s shelter here. “I wipe her tears. I show her love and affection.

2 months ago | telegraph.co.uk | Sophie Neiman |Simon Townsley

Maria Nakoru crouches at the bottom of a dirt hollow, one metre deep. She grips a metal pike as she strikes the walls, chasing glimmers of gold through the choking dust. In Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region, thousands of artisanal miners carve a fragile livelihood from the earth. Nearby, others labour in their own plots, surrounded by mounds of soil, like freshly dug graves. A breeze lifts the ochre hue of the parched dirt into the air.