A Thousand Sisters (19 page)

“When in the field, they were beating us with sticks, chasing us, doing whatever they were doing, downgrading us through raping.”

“They obliged my husband to have sex with my daughter. He refused. They killed him immediately.”

“All of my clothes, including my underwear, were torn to shreds.”

“My womb was seriously destroyed.”

“They tried to make my older brother rape me. He refused and was killed. So they raped me. They took my husband and raped him. He died from that incident.”

“We were sleeping in water, in a marsh, with so many mosquitoes. It was so cold. The FDD came at night. They made so much trouble. They took all our clothes. I was eight months pregnant, standing naked in front of my daughters and my husband. They inserted money and did the same to my daughters who were twelve and fifteen. They raped me. My husband ran away. We were left naked. I fell ill. I didn't know where he was. People in the village found me naked in the forest. They took me to the hospital, but there was no one there. They took me to Lake Tanganyika, where they put me on the boat to Tanzania. I don't know where my husband was. I delivered a baby there. The girl is six years old today. I came back in April. I found my husband, now old and poor.”

I ask, “How many of you have been attacked since you returned from refugee camps?”

About half raise their hands. A woman in her thirties explains, “Peace has not really been recovered. They are still raping women. When we go to our farms, we are stopped on the way to the fields and raped. Especially in the bush. In the center of Baraka, no. But when we go to the fields . . . it's like me with my age, they ask me to stop.”

Another woman adds, “It was said the war ended, we were called back here. But since being back we had an attack from FDD.”

“Who has raped you since you returned?”

They all chime together: “FDD.”

This confuses me. The UN staff verified there are no longer foreign militias in the area, including FDD. I recall Maurice explaining, “A Congolese woman can never say she was attacked by another Congolese. It is not culturally acceptable. It is not safe.”

I think of the main drag running through Baraka, the armed young men
standing idly on every corner, the innumerable Mai Mai along roadsides. The Congolese Army is in large part comprised of former militias. In the disarmament process, brassage, militia members are integrated into the Congolese Army and promised US$20 monthly. But they are rarely paid. They are expected to take what they need—food, money, supplies—from the locals. In the process, they rape.

“Peace” and “stability” here seems to mean that people are no longer slaughtered by the hundreds (mass killing is at least one activity from which the Congolese Army refrains). But women, well, they have to feed their children. If that means the long daily walk to farm their fields and risking rape on the way, the alternative is watching their kids starve.

One woman asks, “Do they also rape women in America?”

I answer, “Women are raped all over the world. It is not as common in America as here. But a number of American women who have been raped have run to raise your sponsorship. Because they know that in some ways, you feel the same. They asked me to especially extend their love to you.”

They nod.

One woman raises her hand and asks, “What can we do to manage and improve so we can support other women?”

KELLY AND I
shoot each other looks as if we are kids on a remote corner of the playground, hoping to not get caught.

“HQ will not be happy we did this,” I say, as we step through leaky canoes onto the rusty, faded, red and teal motor-powered fishing boat. I decide to think of it as charming, well art-directed. A weather-beaten skipper and his first mate await us on board, disaffected guys who walk around barefoot and in swimming trunks. They barely say hello.

There is a Mai Mai general on the peninsula who is resisting disarmament and threatening a fight. Christine was clear:
Under no circumstances are we to go without the UN boat. We need it for security.
The UN speedboat is also fast, while local boats are notorious for capsizing. A few months ago, two Japanese visitors took a local boat and when a storm hit, it sank a short distance from the port. They had to be rescued by the UN.

When we arrived at the port a few minutes ago, Hortense announced, “The UN boat is booked on other business.” She smiled and gestured as though she was revealing a big birthday surprise. “So we'll take this one, a local boat.”

Cancelling is not an option. We sponsor women in two villages on the peninsula, which is a two-hour boat ride from Baraka—twelve new sisters in
one village, five in the other. Hortense has already notified them we are coming. One of them, Fitina, is on my short list to interview. Her enrollment form indicates that seven of her children have died.

It is a stunning day as we roar across Lake Tanganyika—clear, blue skies; calm water. I feel dorky for wearing a life jacket, especially next to our barefoot crew. We sit on wooden plank benches on the boat's deck, munching on rolls and peanuts, taking in the scenery. Hortense tries to brief me, yelling over the engine.

“When we did our assessment in this village . . .” She trails off, something about rape. I can't make it out.

“What?”

“Ninety percent.”

“Ninety percent what?”

“Yes. Ninety percent of the women in the first village have been raped!”

The sleepy fishing village is an odd paradise with a crystal-blue lagoon and a pebble beach, backed by cascading forested hills and terraced plots hosting mud huts. It's a last little slice of paradise not mapped and quartered by Lonely Planet, a place that would be high-end vacation property if it were anywhere but in Congo.

The village women gather to greet us, waving flowering tree branches and palm leaves in the air, dancing in time. As the crew shuts down the engine and we drift to shore, the women's ebullient singing takes over. They throw cloths on the ground to welcome us and initiate a procession through the village, one that gives me a piercing headache because I'm smiling so wide for so long.

The two celebrations today are nearly identical, as are the villages.

I don't bring up rape. Neither do they.

Kelly is quiet through the first meeting, as always. I encourage her to join in, but she keeps it to a couple of brief sentences. On the way to the second meeting, I ponder out loud. “I wonder if I say the right things to them.”

“What you say is too complex for them,” she says. “Keep it simple. Just say, ‘Your sisters love you. You're good dancers.' Stuff like that.”

I am wearing thin. I hang back during the second procession, focusing on the children who have joined in. I touch their clean-shaven heads or hold their hands, which elicits smiles. When we reach the center, I slip to the sidelines and let Kelly take center stage.

I scan the crowd for Fitina, or anyone in bright pink, on the off chance she would wear the same headscarf and top shown in the photo that is stapled to my paperwork. I can never pick out my sisters in these crowds.

Then a heavyset woman lumbers up the path, wearing a bright pink headscarf and top. It is Fitina! She looks exactly like she does in her photo.

Our twelve sisters give stiff before-and-after speeches that feel more like testimonies. I ask Fitina to stay behind.

She sits alone on a wooden bench. I join her and pull out my notebook. “Mama, this is the intake form I received about you. Is it true you have had seven children die?”

Fitina looks a bit lost, but she searches her memory, counting aloud. “Nine . . . Ten . . . Ten children have died.”

“How many children are living?”

“Five.”

“I would like to visit your home and talk with you more.”

Hortense is already anxious about time. “Make it quick. The port closes at dark.”

It is late afternoon, but I don't care. I want to talk with Fitina. Nothing else is on my radar.

Kelly and Hortense enjoy a traditional Congolese feast of fu-fu (a variation on cream of wheat), greens, and meat, while Maurice and I slip away to follow Fitina through the village. Villagers stare at a polite distance as we pass compounds of brick huts with thatched roofs and gardens lined with rickety homemade stick-fences. Cooking smoke is rising in the late afternoon sun.

Fitina leads us to her lakefront property on the far side of the village. Her family's mud hut is flanked with pecking chickens; sardines are laid out to dry on warped metal sheets. The hut sits next to an empty plot where their
former house stood before a militia burned it to nothing. Now the same land bears eggplant and vegetables with African names I can't follow. For a brief moment, I picture this plot in an alternate universe, as a perfect spot for a modern prefab home, straight from the pages of
Dwell
magazine.

A neighbor laughs and teases Fitina; she is trying to get in on the action. Children linger. I won't be able to talk with Fitina privately.

A few minutes later, we head back through the village with a troop of children escorting us like bodyguards. British radio emanates from one of the huts. I look up towards the forested hills. Mai Mai are out there somewhere, threatening to attack.

“Do you feel embarrassed?” I ask Fitina, hoping she is okay with being followed around by an American who is flashing an expensive camera.

We round a corner. Three men with guns stand in our path.

Uh. . . .

I go blank with shock.

The men meander past us, and one sizes me up. I glance at them, catching their backwards glances at me. They are young and have mismatched uniforms. One wears a bright yellow beret. Their weapons look second-rate. I ask Maurice under my breath, “Are they Congolese army?”

“Um . . . yes.”

Then we're fine, I reassure myself.

I turn around and see another soldier standing in front of a hut with an older couple. He stares at me and beckons.

“What did he say?” I ask Maurice.

“He wants you to film him.”

Under other circumstances, I would probably find this amusing, a scene straight out of the movie
Blood Diamond.
Everyone's a sucker for the camera! Instead, I move slowly, like someone approaching a strange, haggard dog that's been found roaming the streets. I don't know if he bites.

I'm tense, fumbling. “You want me to film you?”

He's intrigued, but not friendly. He knows he's in control. I flip around
the viewer so he can see himself, an attempt to break the tension. This always works with children.

“Nice,” he says, nodding. “Good.”

“Are you visiting your family?” I say.

Maurice translates, but the soldier looks at me vaguely.

“Okay!” Hortense approaches from behind. “We really must hurry! It's going to get dark soon.”

I am not willing to leave without interviewing Fitina, so Hortense ushers us back to the compound. “Try to make it short, eh? We will run into trouble at the port.”

I grab a chair and find a quiet spot where we sit on the edge of an open, unfenced field, with the forested hills just behind us. Fitina holds a young child on her lap and another little girl, about six years old, clings to her. They are her grandchildren.

“Can you talk with us for a minute about your experience of the war?” I ask Fitina.

“We didn't go to Tanzania,” she begins. “We went up to the hills and stayed in the bush, where we stayed in bad conditions until the end of the war.”

I ask about her children.

“Five of my children are alive. Two among them are in school in Baraka.”

“How many children have you given birth to?” I ask.

“Fifteen. I gave birth to fifteen. Five are alive and ten have died.”

“Can you tell me how they died?”

“From illness.”

“What were the names of your children?” I say. “How old were they when they died?”

Fitina's voice grows thin, “Maribola . . . Makambe . . . Maribola died from illness. She was a teenager. She only had a headache and she died. Makambe died when she was a few months old. . . . All died from illness.”

Fitina has a remote look in her eyes. But I am feeling the pressure. Military in the village. Port closing. Long boatride home.

I press Hortense to translate again. “Can she just list the names and how old they were when they died?”

“Liza also died,” she says. “Ruben also died. Na . . . Na . . . Nape also died.”

She struggles. “Some died when they were two, some others were a few months old, a few more than three years old. Maribola died just after the war. She already had breasts. She was a teenager.”