A Thousand Sisters (35 page)

I WANT TO BARK at one of my Pakistani Army UN escorts, “Stand down, soldier!” He is pointing his gun squarely at a seven-year-old boy. The little guy's only infraction was to move a few steps closer to me after we exchanged
jambos
.

We are in Kaniola at the trailhead of what Major Vikram referred to as The Last Walk, a point marked by the rusty, bullet-ridden sign on the side of the road that matches my video-print photos. Never mind my camera being mistaken for a gun. We have real guns this time, and a crew of five armed and jumpy men committed to securing my perimeter. They've only been stationed here in Congo for a few days and this is their first visit to Kaniola. They've heard the stories. But they don't quite grasp the security threats on hand; they're drawing on military exercises that don't apply here. There are no child suicide-bombers in Kaniola. The Interahamwe don't hide in thatched roofs
waiting to pounce. They announce themselves and kill openly here, so there is no point in harassing children who just want to say hi. I'm not going to let the ambiguity of who's in charge get in my way. I'm the only one who has been here before. I smile at my security guy and kindly request, “Don't point the gun at children, please.”

He eases off the boy. But as we set out on our walk through the stunning, now-familiar valley, their tense, by-the-letter approach continues. One stays in front, another in back, both with guns poised for action. In theory, having guns should make us safer, but in a place like this, I'm not sure if guns protect or provoke. They do not endear us to the locals. We approach a group of young men, ranging in age from late teens to early twenties. Though they gather and tolerate my trigger-happy guards, who are stalking the periphery of the crowd, my questions about security land flat.

“There is nothing wrong. Everything is okay.”

I can see it in Maurice's discomfort. They are unwilling to talk.

Around the next bend, I spot a familiar old woman: the grandmother. She's heading towards her compound. I call out,
“Jambo, Mama!”

She sizes up the group, unimpressed with the lurking armed security. As Maurice approaches, she turns and walks away. I follow her and say, “Mama, I wish you would talk to me.”

“I'm too hungry to talk!” she calls behind her. Maurice and I follow with the guards running to stay in position in front and behind.

“But I met you last year,” I say. “Do you recognize me?”

She ignores us, continuing on. I chase her. “I've been worried about you all year. I've traveled all the way from America to make sure you and your family are okay.”

She slows down and turns around to size me up.

“Here is your photo. Do you remember?”

She looks at the fuzzy photo of herself, baffled. “I can't think of anything but hunger.”

She caves and agrees to talk for a few minutes. One of the guards
searches the compound for any lurking evil-doers on the roofs or in the hedges and huts. The grandmother perches on a little wooden bench and laughs. “Can you give me clothes, so I can be beautiful?”

She wears a tattered gray sweater and has calloused, cracked bare feet. “You already are beautiful. I wish I had clothes to give you,” I tell her.

“It is difficult for a woman like me,” she says. “I am alone. I've already lost my husband and relatives. I live only with my grandchildren. I don't have a hen, a goat, nothing for myself. Not even clothes.”

She introduces us to one of the five puffy-cheeked kids who have been watching from a distance; it's her granddaughter, who's maybe five years old. Both the girl's parents died four years ago, when she was still an infant. She curls in towards her grandmother, who keeps a hand on the child's arm.

“If you have nothing, no money to feed yourself, why did you take in this little girl?”

“She had nowhere else to go.”

On the way out, I slip her ten dollars.

We trek along the last ridgeline on the far outskirts of the village. The clusters of huts and cabbage patches are unchanged from last year. But then we approach the soccer field. It's become a small Congolese Army camp. Temporary straw shelters, something like tents, with ditches dug in front of them, dot the field that is otherwise overgrown with grass. The hilltop is windy, which adds a haunting feeling to this outpost at the edge of civilization.

A plainclothes Congolese soldier sees us and calls out,
“Commandant! Commandant!”

A clean-shaven young man, with the fresh face of a virgin soldier, emerges from one of the huts. He's wearing a tracksuit jacket and fashion jeans. Embarrassed to be caught out of uniform, he disappears and greets us again in full, crisp uniform, complete with creases and a green beret. He gives a formal salute for the benefit of the UN major. He straps on his gun, trying to impress the UN, desperate to prove himself. He has just been transferred from the west; this is his fourth day in Eastern Congo. His first assignment is this
last ridgeline in Kaniola. Their unit is split, with five soldiers at this camp and four on a neighboring hillside. He's heard the stories. He points to the hills, the forest. “This place is attacked; they come from over there.”

The UN commander cuts him short. “But there has been no such incident since last May.”

“That's what they said,” I comment, thinking of the edited information we may have gotten, given our guns. “Have you had any attacks since you've been here?”

“The day before yesterday, I saw four flashlights during the night, right there, coming down the mountain from the forest. I fired three shots,” he says, pointing to a spot on the opposite hill. “Then I saw the flashlights climb back up the mountain.”

Three shots and they ran way?
Wow. That's how it's supposed to work.

He talks discreetly, confiding in the major. “Our commander left us up here with no supplies. No food. We sent someone the day before yesterday to ask for something, and again yesterday, but nothing yet. We hope our commander will send something soon.”

Apparently he's not yet initiated to the ethics of Eastern Congo. I ask him, “What have you been doing in the meantime?”

“The villagers share with us.”

We continue on our walk with local guides, who say they will take us to see one of the girls in her new home, which is a few compounds away from the one we visited last year. We wait twenty minutes or so, then a familiar young woman enters the compound, which is filled with baby goats and calves. It's Nadine! She's bewildered to find me waiting for her. An oversize sweatshirt reading “Charge Spicy Sporty” hangs over her swollen belly. She is not maimed or mutilated or slaughtered or taken to the forest. She's married! Pregnant! It's the height of good fortune for an eighteen-year old girl in these parts. I embrace her, squealing,
“Jambo!
Look at you! You've had a good year!” Her young husband stands close to her. We've been waiting with him,
indulging his English. He wraps his arm around her and with a broad smile pronounces in English, “My woman!”

His possessiveness would be annoying were it not for the obvious pride. He has scored the woman of his dreams, the envy of the hamlet. She seems amused, like she's tolerating her husband's enthusiasm. He adores her.

I pull out my white notebook and show her a photo from our interview last year; she can't contain her smile. I ask, “Are they all okay?”

“They are all okay.”

I ask about the massacre.

“This is Mashirata; the massacre happened at Chihamba,” she says, pointing out the next hill.

On the way home, I'll think about Chihamba, questioning whether I should feel any better that seventeen people were murdered there, not here. But after a year of worrying, I'll decide to enjoy the moment.

Another girl enters the compound. Rahema! She looks years older. She's put on weight and wears her hair cropped short and sophisticated, without a headscarf. I hug her and size her up. I'm just so thrilled, I cry, “How have you been! You are okay!?!”

She looks at me like I'm completely crazy, but I don't care! She smiles, half amused, the way you smile at that barely tolerable long-lost auntie who squeezes your cheeks and talks about how much you've grown since the last time she saw you. “I am okay,” she says. “I am healthy. There is no problem.”

“You have no idea how happy I am to see that.”

 

SISTERS CROWD AROUND the gate of the Walungu Women for Women compound, waiting for us. I'm surprised, and I shoot Hortense a disapproving look. We were only supposed to meet with the women from Kaniola I talked with last year. I shake my head and say,
“Secret
visit. No receptions.”

But as the car slows and I emerge, I wave, smile, and give a short stump speech.

As I slip inside a spare meeting room, it quickly fills with more than twenty women. “What's going on? I don't have time to meet with a huge group.”

The truth is that the prospect of a group meeting is painful because I feel terrible for not being able to give each woman the attention she deserves.

Hortense is mildly defiant. “You said, ‘sisters from Kaniola,'” she says. “These are all your new sisters from Kaniola.”

Twenty-one brand new sisters from Kaniola. I look at each of their sponsorship booklets. Each one reads: HOME VILLAGE: KANIOLA. SPONSOR: RUN FOR CONGO WOMEN.

“I am so happy to be here to meet all of you,” I say, scanning the room as they smile slightly, intrigued. “But I am sorry because although I packed gifts of scarves and earrings and postcards, the airline lost my bags. I feel bad showing up empty-handed.”

From the back of the room, one of the women says quietly, “We need you first. Things come second.”

I've been thinking about what André said. He may have been on to something. Whether it is cell phones or sailboats or salt, isn't this—the war, the atrocities, the world's response, and even my own journey—all really about what we deem precious? However silly or grandiose or blind, my efforts for Congo have ultimately boiled down to the simple act of pushing the reset button on my life and putting human beings before stuff. As I look around the room, it's humbling to realize that
people first
was never even a question for these Congolese women.

I ask the group, “How many of you have taken in orphans?”

Seventeen out of twenty-one raise their hands. Eighty percent. Even in this group of women who live in Kaniola.

Those Who Kill Together
may come knocking. They may chase these women from their homes, burn their families alive, take them to the forest,
rape them, rob them of everything, leave them with no means to support themselves. But then these women see a child who has no one and they take that child in.

As I describe Run for Congo Women, they squint and lean in to hear clearly; a few lift their eyebrows. Several mumble quietly to themselves, “Please, may you continue this work.”

We go around the room. “We were living in Kaniola. We left after my husband and my child were killed, burnt in the house. . . .”

I don't need to collect more horror stories. I already have enough to fill volumes, and most I will never share. As each woman talks, I look into her eyes. How do I spin each sweet face that hangs in desperation? How do I turn her into a talking point? I can't. And I don't want to anymore. I picture their long walk home to Kaniola. I picture myself on a plane. I don't want them to go home tonight. I don't want to let them go.

A woman speaks. Her tall, slender frame and pronounced cheekbones give her a majestic beauty. She wears a dress printed with religious scenes from the Last Supper. While she speaks, she instinctively places her hand on her heart. I hear the word Interahamwe.

As Hortense translates, the lady dwells on her memory. She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her tattered jacket. “At 8:00 PM, we saw the flashlights. We went to hide in the bushes as usual. Women went to the stream, men to the cassava fields. We only heard the men screaming, but we couldn't do otherwise. They killed two of them. I held my baby in the stream; he was about to cry, so I took grasses. . . .”

She turns her neck, pressing hard against the cement wall, crying. I get up, abandoning Hortense's translation, which trails off behind me as I walk across the room.

“I heard the cry of the men. It wasn't easy for us. . . .”

I put my hands on her shoulders. She looks at me. Sisters mumble behind me. I can't hear the translation. I'm not listening anymore. The specifics don't matter.

I look in her despondent, deep-set eyes and say, “I'm so sorry.” She doesn't know what I'm saying. She doesn't need to know.

I don't know how to stop the atrocities. I don't know how to make people care.

But looking in my sister's eyes, we seem to have carved out something between us that none of the madness can touch.

Invisible threads.

I take her hand and lead her across the room, making a place for her next to me, resting my hand on her back for the remainder of the meeting.

I discreetly dig in my purse and count to make sure I have enough. I do. I distribute one crisp five-dollar bill to each of them. I'm so embarrassed. Five dollars is nothing. Peanuts.

Yet, you would think I've just handed each one a US$10,000 check. They leap to their feet, erupting in a Congo-style
fete d'amore
, like the hundreds of women I've met before have done.

I take a photo of each woman, as though this will help me lock her away somewhere safe.