IT seems like days ago that we were safely wandering the busy streets in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

We spent more than a week in the Bukavu area with Scottish International Aid Fund in August to investigate the crisis of sexual violence, where 45 women are raped every day, in a province bordering Rwanda with just half the population of Scotland.

Just 60 miles south of Goma, Bukavu is a quick speedboat ride down Lake Kivu, where the humanitarian crisis is now unfolding.

The people we met were friendly, generous and desperate for an end to the fighting, which has fizzled on despite the ceasefire agreed by the government and different militias in January.

They spoke readily about the terror of Bukavu being invaded as recently as 2004 by rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, the man advancing on Goma today.

Their universal plea was for an end to the violence which has made rape endemic, and the removal of the militias who originated in Rwanda and have been living in the bush for years.

Nkunda, head of a 7000-strong militia, claims to be protecting Tutsis against the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group dominated by Rwandan Hutu extremists and the Interahamwe who orchestrated the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Villagers and aid agencies were clear that Nkunda was backed by Rwanda and that the fragile peace was unlikely to outlast the different pressures of the 21 armed groups in the area - pressures similar to those that provided the catalyst for the recent African war which sucked in eight neighbouring countries and killed more than five million people.

North and South Kivu were the epicentre of that conflict and many fear the collapse of Goma will not just affect the Kivus, but the whole Great Lakes region.