BUNIA, Congo - Every weekday morning, the postmaster of Bunia unlocks the front door to the city's Post & Telecommunications building, its yellow-painted walls peeling like sunburned skin, its windows pockmarked with bullet holes. He walks inside, past the calendar on the wall dated December 1995, past the rows of empty post office boxes, and for the last two years the only pieces of mail still in his care: three letters destined for the city of Kisangani several hundred miles away. They are postmarked July 24, 2001.
Nkunda Leon then swings open the customer window, sits out on the front steps and rests his face in his hands, waiting. He has no work to do. No mail to deliver. No boxes or packages to sort. The last time he was truly busy was 1995, the year rebel forces entered this provincial capital in the former Zaire and cut all ties with the government. The postal service planes stopped landing at Bunia's airport. Leon's paycheck stopped arriving, too.
A war fought by a bewildering number of armies, battling not for anything sublime but for wealth and sheer supremacy, long ago brought government services to a halt. More than 3 million people have died as a result of the war - from fighting, disease and malnutrition.
Through it all, Leon did something extraordinary by continuing to go to work. Sometimes he types up a letter or document on the post office's manual typewriter or begs an aid worker leaving the country to drop a letter in the overseas mail. But mostly he sits and waits. For mail. For peace.
A few days ago, Leon finally saw something that gave him hope.
About two dozen French special forces armed with machines guns and missiles drove down Bunia's main boulevard. They are part of a 1,400-member international force charged with bringing order to this city where hundreds of people have been slaughtered during tribal fighting in recent months.
Leon rose to his feet with other townspeople and applauded. "We thought the new face of peace had come. We were relieved," said Leon, a father of nine who has lived in Bunia for 16 years. But he knows he may be foolish to believe conditions will improve.
Leon's country has broken his heart more than once. There was a cease-fire in 1999. But the fighting continued. Another in 2002. And again the blood continued to flow.
What made it worse is that much of the world did not seem to notice or care. The war was too confusing. There were no heroes. No way to cast the armies into categories of good or evil. It was just another war, and the West preferred not to get involved.
