In the early hours of the morning, Baraka, a young boy, wanders through the streets of Goma. He takes a wrong turn and runs into bandits. Back home, his father flicks through TV channels while his mother counts bags of flour. No one speaks. The silence is broken only by crackles on the radio.

By evening, Baraka is sitting on the shore of Lake Kivu, looking south to Bukavu and east towards Rwanda, finding no hope in either direction.

This is the opening to Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma, the first comic by a 31-year-old visual artist, Edizon Musavuli, published earlier this year in the Continent, a weekly pan-African newspaper. The story depicts everyday struggles in Goma through the eyes of a child.

Prominent Congolese artists such as Barly Baruti, Fifi Mukuna and Papa Mfumu’Eto, who captured the public’s imagination in comic strips in the past, mainly worked abroad or in Kinshasa, a city more than a thousand miles from Goma. But there are few contemporary comics set in or about the Democratic Republic of the Congo written by Congolese artists.

“I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil,” Musavuli says of his journey as an artist. He began to pursue the craft seriously only after finishing high school, enrolling at the Africa Digital Media Institute in Nairobi. His studies, however, were cut short by financial difficulties.

His first solo exhibition was in January 2020, organised with the French Institute of Goma. “It was a really big exhibition. [And] it was impressive how everyone responded to it,” says Musavuli.

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

“Artists in Goma are really reliant on French exhibitions like that,” he says. “If they’re not around, it will feel like we don’t exist. That’s what’s happening right now.”

When M23 captured Goma in January this year, the city’s creative spaces faltered alongside its economy. “Art gives hope. It’s something to start with, but our situation here doesn’t change. So people [in Goma] are not really interested any more,” says Musavuli.

Artists and creativity have long been consigned to the margins of the state agenda. “We are not really something the government prioritises,” he says.

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

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

It was against this backdrop that the Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma was created. The story is charged with political undertones, highlighting how ordinary routines have been stripped away and replaced with constant uncertainty.

Yet Musavuli insists the short comic was not meant as explicit political commentary: “I’m not really a political artist or activist [but] I say what people around me are thinking. That’s how I do my art.”

Asked whether he feels able to express himself freely under occupation, he says: “There is freedom of speech in Congo, but will you be free after you speak?”

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

“Politically, we are separated from the ‘actual’ Congo,” he says. Unlike other cities in the North and South Kivu provinces of the DRC, Goma remains under full occupation by the M23.

According to Musavali, some artists have come under pressure to create pro-M23 content out of fear for their lives. “If you are an artist with a voice in Goma, the M23 can use you, sometimes by force, or the artists make that decision [to work with M23],” he says. “It’s complicated to judge. But I cannot allow myself to do something like that.”

If insecurity is one challenge, making a living through the arts is another hurdle. “It’s a problem in Congo that people don’t buy art. Most of the artists here have to do other things to survive.” Musavuli works as a cartoonist for a blog site called Habari RDC.

But he adds: “I’m also not doing art to just sell it.”

Despite the risks and the financial uncertainties, Musavuli says he wants to continue creating work that gives voice to the disenfranchised people of Goma. “We are a resilient population – this is not the first time we have been through this.

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

At the end of the Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma, Baraka walks alone down an empty road, his head held high. “Tomorrow might look exactly the same,” he says, “but I’ll keep walking. Holding on to hope is already fighting back.”