A street preacher shouts through a loudspeaker in this eastern Congo town, the scene of so much devastation in recent years that some wonder whether the place is cursed.
"Be proud, you are alive!" the preacher says, a cheerful exhortation in a town with a seemingly endless succession of travails volcano eruptions, wars and rebellions, floods of refugees and, just this week, a deadly plane crash.
Goma, the capital of Congo's North Kivu province, is a beleaguered place in an impoverished and war-ravaged country. But this city of 500,000 always seems to carry on through the destruction, displaying the sheer grit that sustains so many people across the world's poorest continent.
"There are all these catastrophes, but maybe God wants to teach us how to live together when there's hardship," Dido Senga, 36, told The Associated Press on a bustling, unpaved main street where hawkers, money changers and motorbikes vied for space. "Life is very good here."
But in many ways, life is very bad here indeed.
The most recent example came Tuesday, when a jet careered off Goma's runway and slammed into a crowded market. More than 40 people died, most of them on the ground. The victims were in their homes or shops many sheltering from an earlier downpour when the plane came thundering through.
"Every time we hear these planes taking off and landing I can tell you we do pray," said John N. Kanyoni, a 42-year-old businessman who grinned and covered his ears as a cargo plane roared overhead.
Air safety has long been lax in Congo, where officials are easily bribed and maintenance schedules are rare. According to an AP count, the country has suffered at least 20 other fatal plane crashes since 1996.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of Tuesday's crash, but part of it appears to be the length of the runway, which was shortened by oozing lava after the Mount Nyirangongo volcano erupted in 2002.
Lava as deep as 10 feet bubbled through the town, killing some 100 people and destroying nearly half of Goma's residential area. Lava melted much of the runway, as well, truncating it from more than 2 miles (3 kilometers) to less than a mile (1.5 kilometers).
Zenah Nyirahabimana, who runs the "God Is Powerful" clothing shop, said she has a simple plan for survival.
"When there's a disaster like the volcano, we move for a bit," said Nyirahabimana, 24, who closed her shop this week in mourning for the crash victims. "When it calms down, we come back."
That is exactly what happened in 2002. Thousands walked across the border to Rwanda, camped for a few days while the lava cooled, then simply walked back and began rebuilding on top of the new layer of magma.
Evidence of that nightmarish eruption remains today, in the dark volcanic rock along the lake shore, the undulating roads that were built over hardened lava and the towering Mount Nyirangongo looming in the distance. The volcano was spewing steam this week, its top glowing red in the night sky.
"We have to live with a volcano, but we know it is also so beautiful," Nyirahabimana said.
But manmade disasters are Goma's biggest scourge.
In 1993, the city was pillaged by soldiers who were supposed to be guarding it; they rampaged through the town because they had not been paid. The next year, Goma captured the world's attention after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, when 1 million refugees streamed across the border, causing a massive humanitarian crisis.
In just one day in July 1994, about 12,000 refugees crossed the border every hour. Cholera soon eviscerated the refugee camps in and around the city, killing tens of thousands of people.
Violent conflict is nothing new in eastern Congo, where some of the most brutal massacres took place during back-to-back wars from 1996-2002. Goma was a focal point in both conflicts.
Even today, rebels, marauding foreign troops, U.N. peacekeepers and government soldiers continue to fight in the east, though the rest of the country has been at peace since an internationally backed agreement in 2002.
Still, in Goma, life goes on, even with a volcano glowing in the distance, a conflict simmering and the wreckage of a burnt-out plane lying outside the airport gate.
Kanyoni, the businessman, laments his hometown's troubles but has hope for the future.
"It's not normal for people just to come here to bury people," said Kanyoni, who was a local lawmaker from 2003-2006. "But here in Goma there is a force you cannot see anywhere else. We feel that even in the worst case, we have to survive."