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In the initial moments of the morning, the protagonist roams through the streets of Goma. He takes a wrong turn and runs into bandits. In his household, his father scrolls through TV channels while his mother counts bags of flour. Silence prevails. The silence is shattered only by noises on the radio.

As night falls, Baraka is positioned on the shore of Lake Kivu, gazing south to Bukavu and east towards Rwanda, discovering no hope in either direction.

Here begins the beginning to the comic strip depicting Goma's uncertainties, the first comic by a emerging visual artist, Edizon Musavuli, published earlier this year. The story illustrates common hardships in Goma through the perspective of a child.

Well-known Congolese artists such as Barly Baruti, Fifi Mukuna and Papa Mfumu’Eto, who grasped the public’s interest in comic strips in the past, primarily worked abroad or in Kinshasa, a city over 1,000 miles from Goma. But there are few contemporary comics set in or about the Democratic Republic of the Congo produced by Congolese artists.

Expression provides light. It's a beginning.

“I've been illustrating since I could hold a pencil,” Musavuli says of his journey as an artist. He began to engage in the craft professionally only after finishing high school, enrolling at a media institute in Nairobi. His studies, however, were halted by monetary constraints.

His first solo exhibition was in January 2020, organised with a cultural institute in Goma. “It stood as a major display. And it was impressive how everyone engaged to it,” says Musavuli.

But just a year later, the brutal M23 militia, backed by Rwanda, returned in eastern DRC and upended Goma’s delicate art scene.

“Artists in Goma are really relying on foreign exhibitions like that,” he says. “In their absence, it will seem like we don’t exist. That’s what’s happening right now.”

When M23 took over Goma in January this year, the city’s creative spaces weakened alongside its economy. “Art gives hope, it's a foundation, but our situation here doesn’t change. So people in Goma are not really engaged any more,” says Musavuli.

Talented individuals and art have long been consigned to the margins of the state agenda. “We are not something the government prioritises,” he says.

Using Instagram, he began disseminating personal and collective experiences of Congolese life in the form of cartoons. In one post, narrating his childhood, he captioned an interactive story: “I’m from where you learn to run before you walk.”

In one clip, which has since received more than 10,000 views, he is seen working on an incomplete painting, while gunshots are heard in the background.

Amid these conditions that Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma was created. The story is filled with underlying messages, emphasizing how normal activities have been eroded and replaced with perpetual insecurity.

Yet Musavuli insists the short comic was not meant as explicit political commentary: “I don't consider myself a political artist or activist however I say what people around me are thinking. In that manner I do my art.”

Even without authority but not doing anything is so much worse. When someone hears you, it’s something.

Inquired about he feels able to express himself freely under rule, he says: “Free expression exists in Congo, but are you truly safe after you speak?”

Producing art that appears too oppositional of M23 or the government can be dangerous, he says: “In Kinshasa it’s common to talk about everything that’s wrong with the rebels. But in Goma it’s typical to not do that because it’s not safe for you.

“From an administrative perspective, we are cut off from the ‘actual’ Congo,” he says. Unlike other cities in the North and South Kivu provinces of the DRC, Goma remains under full dominance by the M23.

Based on Musavuli, some artists have come under duress to create favorable content out of concern for their lives. “For those with talent with a voice in Goma, the M23 can leverage you, sometimes by force, or the artists make that decision to work with M23,” he says. “It's not straightforward to judge. But I cannot permit myself to do something like that.”

Although instability is one challenge, earning an income through the arts is another hurdle. “It’s a problem in Congo that people don’t buy art. The majority of the artists here have to do other things to get by.” Musavuli works as a cartoonist for a digital outlet.

But he adds: “It isn't just about doing art to make money.”

In spite of the risks and the financial uncertainties, Musavuli says he wants to continue producing work that gives expression to the disenfranchised people of Goma. “People here endure – this is not the first time we have been through this.

“We might not have power but staying passive is so much worse. Even if your voice is heard by just two people, it’s something.”

At the end of this visual narrative, Baraka walks alone down an deserted road, his head held high. “Tomorrow might look exactly the same,” he says, “but I’ll keep walking. Believing in better days is already resisting.”