A Thousand Sisters (32 page)

ORCHID IS A WHOLE different scene this time around. The Last Belgian is away and the place is crawling with middle-management types, mostly mining subcontractors clearing the way for a massive goldmine that is only a short helicopter ride from town.

Over breakfast, some managers strike up a conversation with me and ask about the purpose of my visit. I see no reason to sugarcoat the matter. I mention the Kaniola massacre matter-of-factly, as I would tell any friend inquiring about my plans for the week. They fidget with their napkins for a moment and quietly rise. Someone murmurs, “Well.”

They walk away without further niceties, but one of them remains. So I start with the basic traveler's intro. “What brings you here?” “Environmental work.”

“I have a lot of friends who have environmental projects here. What kind?”

“Mining.”

In remarkably unfiltered fashion, he explains he's been hired by a mining company with offices in the hotel to do an environmental impact assessment. The company wants to claim that all the pollution and other damage to rivers near a new gold-mining project they're starting in Eastern Congo already existed—and was done by local artisanal miners—prior to mine and hydroelectric construction. “So no one can pin it on us,” he says.

In another lifetime, I might have found this intriguing, even scandalous. But foreign mining interests are no secret in Congo. Why pretend it's shocking? Why be shy? He's not. Like all good corporate spin-machines, he has resolved the ethical issues, hovering above the conflict like the helicopter that flies in and out every day, cruising across the Congolese landscape just high enough to avoid being bothered by the little things, like people.

“Americans did this in their own West,” he reminds me. “Is it fair to say in Congo, they shouldn't do what the West did?”

I can't help myself. “Who's ‘they?' The Congolese people? Last time I checked, they aren't responsible for most of the mining or timber harvesting here and they don't seem to benefit. And it's brought the war.”

“I suppose that's true,” he says. “But is it different than all of history? We used to all have colonies, only now, we label it
bad
.”

I can't disagree: War profiteering. Genocide. Global warming. All generally thought of as “bad.” “We do,” I agree.

The conversation makes me tired, too tired to feel hostile or even annoyed. Beneath the thick Afrikaans accent, here is a man clinging to a dying ideology. The grasping mindset, the moral compromise that won't even get him big bucks, just a stab at a life's work that involves travel to exotic corners of Africa. That may be enough for a neocolonialist. I look at him and feel sad.

I ask, “But isn't it a question about who we are? Choosing the role we will play in this world?”

He chews this over for a moment. “I suppose it is.”

As he gets up to leave, as though offering me some kind of truce, he hands me his card. I realize he thinks we've been flirting when he says, “If you ever need a place to stay when you're in South Africa. . . .”

 

I WANT TO GET the return visit to Kaniola out of the way immediately, if nothing else to combat my shaky nerves. At Major Vikram and Kaycee's former station in Walungu, I am greeted by Major Alejandro, a warm, slim South
American who is new to this post. I describe the attack and what I'm after: a return trip to Kaniola and any information about the massacre.

“I know nothing about this,” Major Alejandro says, “as I have only been here four days. But there is one man left from that time. He's in Bukavu today. Come back tomorrow, he will be here. It will be his last day.”

In the meantime, I am directed to the Pakistani Battalion in Walungu to secure permission for a Kaniola visit, which now requires clearance.

I end up on a sunny hilltop, on a patio lined with roses and yellow cosmos that overlooks the vast valleys beyond Walungu, with a handful of Pakistani military commanders. Shared cups of juice served in glass and gold goblets aren't enough to bridge the massive cultural divide, especially when it comes to their questions about my scant credentials. “You've written a book before?”

“No.”

“Who is publishing this book?”

“I don't know yet.” I cut to the chase. “I don't need guides. I can go on my own. . . .”

“I'm sorry Madame. You'll need written permission from HQ in Bukavu.”

 

BACK IN BUKAVU, I am poised for another “we couldn't have less in common” meeting as I am led into a grand office at UN headquarters. Instead, Colonel Khan is gracious, carrying himself with restraint and formality. He's genuinely trying to be helpful. I sip my requisite apple juice while he scans his desktop files for any information about the day of the massacre.

As he scrolls through his reports, I see file names and pictures in the lefthand margin of his screen. I zero in on the thumbnail photos scrawling by: severed heads and limbs, stacks of bodies. Part of me strains to see them, hoping to catch a clue about the massacre. The other half is relieved I can't make out the details from across the desk, grateful my mind has been spared the gory imprint.

He grants us permission to return to Kaniola and arranges for a security-escort
several days from now. Colonel Khan emphasizes, “If there is anything you see there that warrants our attention, anything our people can make improvements on, I hope you will do me the favor of reporting back to me.” He cannot, however, release the reports.

 

THE DELAY WHILE WAITING for the security-escort is perfect.

So, about singing “Kumbaya” with the people. Snarky swipes aside, there's something that has bothered me all year. In my pursuit of Congo horror stories, there were a lot of questions I didn't ask. Like who was lost. I didn't even ask their names.

 

THERESE STEPS OUT of a cement building that's covered in peeling paint, on a private compound in the village. It's a Sunday, so few others are around. There is no grand reception, just a long hug with my first Congolese sister. She's wearing the same yellow Sunday-best dress she did nearly a year and half ago. I present her with one of the only gifts that made it in my carry on bag: a green scarf in raw silk. Therese wraps it on her head. It happens to be the perfect complement to her favorite dress. Another translator is filling in, a staff lady who speaks fluent Mashi, Therese's regional dialect. “Therese would like to know about your tribe, your clan.”

We talk for hours. I tell her all about my Catholic clan in Arkansas, my Protestant clan from Oklahoma, my immediate family, and my tribe of friends.

I ask about her family.

“I was singer in the church choir, and a greeter at church. My husband was prayer-group treasurer. We would come to the parish here to give reports on the groups. It was a two-and-a-half-hour walk, so it was a chance to be together. We fell in love.”

I ask about the time her husband was taken to cook for the Interahamwe.

“Some people told me he died, but I was not convinced. I felt he was still alive. I waited and waited until he came back. I had served the evening meal to my mother- and father-in-law when I heard a voice like my husband's, greeting
his parents. His father was astonished. He said, ‘Your voice is like Pascal's voice. Who are you, man?'

“He said, ‘I am your son, Pascal.'

“I couldn't imagine he had come back. I thought he was dead.

“He walked in. I hugged him. The children, who were already sleeping, got up. The youngest asked me, ‘Is he really my father?'

“I said, ‘Yes, he is your father.'

“We expressed our joy in dancing and singing.

“Before my husband went to the bush, he was not kind. He was lazy; he didn't want to work. I was taking care of my husband and my children. But since he's come back, he helps me feed the children. His mind has changed. He's kind. When I go farming for other people, my husband goes as well. In the evening, I bring what I got, he brings what he earned, and we feed our children. I'm more happy now than before.”

“Can you tell me more about your little girl who died?” I ask.

“She was five years old. Children always bring happiness to parents. Each child has their own manner of acting. When I see what the two children are doing, helping me with housework, I always think about my first child. I imagine if she was still alive.

“She was kind; she loved her grandparents so much. She had the habit of bringing plates when I served food. She always served her grandparents first. She liked to serve others, to wash dishes after dinner.”

I interject, “We would call her a ‘little helper.'”

Therese says, “Nsemeru. Her name means ‘I love you.'”

 

WANDOLYN IS WAITING with her husband in a private room at the Women for Women Walungu center. Once we are settled, she blurts out, “I don't want to talk about the
event
anymore.”

I smile and reassure her, “I just wanted to see you.”

After I left, Wandolyn spent nine months in a psychiatric ward, while the nuns cared for Nshobole. When Wandolyn was finally well enough to return
home, the nuns had fallen in love with the little girl and wanted to keep her. “Of course I want the child with me, but she receives better care with the nuns. She eats better than my other children! And they will send her to school. We visit her once a month.”

I packed photos of the two of them together, but they were lost with my bag. Instead, I pull out my laptop and scroll through photos of their family, images of Wandolyn with Nshobole strapped to her back, panoramic views of Congo beyond them. Excited, Wandolyn and her husband point and smile, nostalgic for the time their daughter lived with their family.

 

GENEROSE BURSTS INTO TEARS when she sees me.
“Karibu
. Welcome.” She wears a beautiful sky-blue African dress. On her crutches, she leads me to her new, little wooden house, with its corrugated metal roof and bright blue trim. She stops at the front door, next to a tall tropical plant sprouting bold red flowers. She picks both blooms and presents them to me. “I grew the flowers for you, so someday, when you came back, I could give them to you.”

We tour the compound with her children in tow. Her youngest is over-the-moon enthusiastic, jumping and silly, exchanging funny faces with me. When we step inside, I'm tense. The house is not what we had agreed upon. It's smaller than we discussed and the floors are not cement. They are bumpy with stones. I ask Maurice and Hortense pointed questions about what happened. Generose interrupts, “It is not their fault, Lisa. Prices went up after you left. But I bought the stones and filled the walls myself for around two hundred and forty dollars. I used the money I've raised from my business.”

She leads us around to the backyard, bursting with pride at her cassava liquor distillery. “I sell only the best,” she boasts, explaining the distillation process. I'm not sure how I feel about keeping the local men liquored up, but her pride is contagious. “I wanted to have some for you to taste, but I sell out after only one day. I can make two batches per month, for a profit of seventy dollars per month.”

Considering the fact that most families here live on US$20 per month,
I'm impressed. She's making enough to send her kids to school, buy plenty of food, grow veggies in the back, and bit by bit improve her house. A woman joins us and shakes my hand. Generose nods, raising her eyebrows as she introduces her. “She is among the ones who help.”

An employee?
This little house is her new empire!

Inside, we pull the curtains closed and wait for the neighbors and children to disperse, so we can talk privately. It's dusk and we talk by candlelight. I ask about her son.

“He was a child I loved so much,” she tells me. “The fact that he is the only one who refused to eat a part of me marked my heart.”

“What was your son like?” I ask.

“He was nine years old, in third grade. He loved to play soccer and to go fishing on his grandparents' compound. He loved to create cars with banana leaves or to make paper airplanes. He liked to provoke others. He took a toad and put it in his friend's bag. So we were called to the school to justify his behavior. The first thing he used to ask when he came home was, ‘Where is the food?' If there was no food, he would get angry with everyone in the house, ‘Why is the food not ready?' Or ‘Why don't you put salt on the fish? Is the problem poverty, or what?' Or ‘You prepare vegetables every day. I don't want vegetables. When I visit my aunt, she makes meat. Why don't you prepare meat?'”

Maurice and I laugh and I say, “Quite a fiery little man.”

But Generose looks blankly at the wall.

“Do you remember the last thing you said to your child?”

“What I remember is the last speech he gave to the killer.”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“To his father's killer, he said, ‘I do not accept to eat a part of my mother.'

“They said, ‘Then we are going to kill you.'

“He said, ‘If you kill me, kill me. But I will not eat a part of my mother.'”

Generose spaces out, slowly rocking back and forth, while Maurice translates, “They said, ‘Then you better pray, because you are going to die.'

“He said, ‘You're asking me to pray to God? Why? I do not love you. I am angry with you. How can I pray to God when I have such a bad heart against you?'”

We are quiet for a moment. Then I ask her, “What did the soldiers say?”

“They said nothing. They shot him. I heard the sound of many bullets, but what I saw was the one that entered here.” She points to the middle of her forehead.