Goma Town

Goma Town

Goma Town is found in Africa’s Biggest country: the DRC. Its located in the Eastern Part of the Country on the border with Rwanda.

The other side of the Border in Rwanda is Gisenyi. We can consider Goma to be the capital of the Northern Province of Kivu.

Goma is about 20Kms from the active Volcano Nyiragongo and during the 2002 eruption, the lava stream flew up to this town. Over 400,000 people were evacuated from this city and crossed over to the neighboring Rwanda.

The Goma airport runway was covered and the lava streamed up to Lake Kivu.

There are still remain of lava in big piles all around this town and most of the fences in this area are built with this material.

In the center of a traffic circle, just across the border with Rwanda, stands an enormous, golden-colored statue of a man with a chukudu.

It was quite a communistic-like statue, a pretty odd feature to see in the middle of Africa.

Since the key major airports into the DRC are actually very far from the tourist attractions, ost tourist fly into Kigali and then travel by land through Gisenyi and Goma to attractions like Virunga National Park which could be about 3 hours from Rwanda’s Capital Kigali.

You will see a lot of NGO offices in this town and as well as military. With the history DRC has, there are a lot of military patrols and this is for your good.

Some of the Military officers will belong to the UN and are in full combat most of the time.

You can stop for a day or two in Goma on your way to climb the volcano Nyiragongo or to see the mountain gorillas of the DRC.

But if you ever have a chance to go to Goma; go! It will be an experience to remember.