A Thousand Sisters (5 page)

After a hard run like this, I collapse for the rest of the day, avoiding social functions if I can. If I can't, I simply accept that forming complete sentences is not within my realm of possibility.

Over months of training, my toenails fall off; some fall off twice. Bloody blisters, severe leg pain, and sores caused by chafing are daily companions. Thanks to the sun hitting my sweaty upper lip for miles, overpowering my sunscreen, my summer look has a special new accent: the mustache tan. Sooo sexy.

It's raining? I run anyway. I'm in pain? I run anyway. I'm tired? I'm busy? Ted and I have a fight? I run anyway. When it all seems too much, I try to picture the women living in eastern Congo. Their faces are always a blank, but I try to imagine what they are doing. They can't pick up a cell phone and call a cab to take them out of the war zone. So I keep going.

Though I signed up as a sponsor in January, it is April before I receive a packet from Women for Women with a postage stamp-size image of my first Congolese sister, Therese. The photo is dark, distant, and blurry. Her head is smaller than my pinky fingernail, and I can barely make out her face. She stands against a white wall, shoulders raised in discomfort, but her eyes are
clear
.
Holding the photo feels like magic. Congo feels a little closer. Therese was born in 1970, she's married, and she has no formal education. From now on, I picture her on my long runs and fantasize about what I might say one day if I met her in person.

Four months into my training and two months before the run, it's time for another reality check. I need to raise ten thousand dollars. I've never done any fundraising or public speaking. My only ideas are to send out a bulk email and to invite ten friends over for a screening of Oprah's Congo segment. One of my best friends, Lana—a savvy Portland casting director known for her fundraising prowess—advises otherwise. “Don't invite ten friends over to your place. Ask those ten friends to each invite ten friends to their houses.”

I don't have ten friends to ask, but six friends finally agree to it. I squirm at the prospect of asking people for money, so I keep it simple and take a no-pressure approach. I give a little talk, show the
Oprah
video clip, and ask people to sponsor a woman in Congo, pledge a flat donation, or just read more about the conflict.

Another friend asks me, “What's the hardest part? I bet it's not the running.” She is right: It's feeling alone. When I talk about Congo, it's not just that people don't know about the war, it's that they assume there must be a reason no one is talking or doing anything about it. When I invite a thoughtful, politically aware friend out for coffee and try to convince her to host a house party, she questions the logic of my effort. “Why help women there, where it's a total mess? Why not help other needy women someplace where it is stable?”

I'm glad I'm wearing sunglasses because I'm so frustrated I choke up. I know my emotional argument won't get me very far, but it's all I've got. “Because they don't feel like human beings.”

This friend hosts a house party after all, where we raise eight sponsorships!

I try to read more, but news on Congo is shockingly spare.

There is one book I devour: Adam Hochschild's
King Leopold's Ghost
, a haunting account of Congo's colonial history. In the late nineteenth century,
with the help of the adventure-crazed Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Belgium's King Leopold staked out the Congo Free State as his own private colony
.
Under the auspices of science, religious conversion, and protection from Arab slave traders and from their own ignorance, he enslaved the Congolese people en masse to extract Congo's treasure trove of natural resources, from rubber to ivory. Leopold used his plunder to build pleasure palaces on the French Riviera and bankroll the Paris shopping sprees of his teenage mistress, who once boasted of spending three million francs at one dress shop. During King Leopold's thirty-year rule, the population of Congo was cut in half, with a staggering net loss of ten million people. Novelist Joseph Conrad labeled it “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.”

Yet in a strange and inspiring turn, the first major international human rights movement was launched against Leopold's oppressive regime by a modest English shipping clerk with no greater credential or connection to Congo than having read the subtext of the shipping records. Endless shipments of rubber and other natural resources were being imported from Congo, while only guns and soldiers were being exported back. That could only mean one thing, he guessed: slavery. Armed with the evidence, E. D. Morel recruited citizens and dignitaries from around the world and led the charge to end Leopold's brutal treatment of native people. His campaign led to the handover of the Congo Free State from King Leopold to the government of Belgium in 1908. It remained a colony until 1960, when it was granted independence.

E. D. Morel's story is a shot of pure inspiration, especially because I've been combing the Internet, searching for any other grassroots folks working for Congo. While the movement to end the violence in Darfur has gained momentum by mobilizing religious groups, students, moms, movie stars, journalists, and big news organizations, as far as I can see, the field for helping the people of Congo is painfully empty
.

AT THE END of my first twenty-two-mile training run, Ted greets me with the camera for a spontaneous photo shoot. Imagine how beautiful I look after twenty-two miles, red-faced, my body caked with salt. But we need a picture for
The Oregonian
. They have responded to my mom's pitch to do a feature article on my run. It is the only story they will publish on the Congo in 2005. After it runs, checks from people I've never met begin to appear in the mailbox, in amounts from US$5 to US$500.

Eventually I receive my first letter from Therese. It is written in Swahili and accompanied by a version that has been translated into English by Women for Women International's Congo staff.

The worn paper filled with Swahili cursive makes everything I'm running for suddenly feel concrete.

 

ON THE BIG DAY, I'm determined to run the whole trail, against the adamant advice of my trainer. (“You must walk the hills. You will walk the hills.”) At mile twenty-five, I hit Pittock Hill, by far the most brutal stretch. It's a mile and a half of punishing incline. I inch my way up in a shuffle-run. I call on every mental trick I can muster to get one foot in front of the other. But I run, I don't walk. Finally, I can see my sister and niece Aria waiting for me at the top with water and pretzels.

As the trail flattens out, I know I can do it. I'm home free. Better. Though I practically crawl through my last few miles, I'm on fire! A hiker walks past me. A grandma and her fat dog are gaining on me fast. But I refuse to walk. I run every step of those 30.16 miles. As I descend the final hill, a crowd of thirty or so people waits in the cool, early autumn drizzle—family, friends, girl scouts having a bake sale, but mostly people I've never met—all cheering.

I cross the finish line beaming.

Then I announce the final fundraising totals. We've raised more than US$28,000. Eighty Congolese women and their kids will now have different lives. And this is just the beginning.

IT'S STILL DARK
when we step out of the cab at Manhattan's Riverside Park. Rain and blustery winds soak my lightweight jogging shorts as I lug an Park. Rain and blustery winds soak my lightweight jogging shorts as I lug an oversize suitcase out of the trunk. I am here with my one never-say-die volunteer: my mom.

The cab pulls away, leaving my mom and me to set up the First Annual New York Run for Congo Women in a downpour with gale force winds.

I can't say we weren't warned. Last night, we got a call from the park service asking if we plan to cancel due to the severe weather. No way, I told them. Word has spread. After my solo run, I started getting random emails from people who want to get involved. I ran the numbers and landed on a new goal: a million dollars, which will pay for three thousand sponsorships. That's just a hundred runners (or walkers, swimmers, cyclists, bakers, or whatever) raising money for thirty sponsorships each. Or three hundred people raising money for ten sponsorships each. Or a thousand people, three sponsorships each.

My mom has appointed herself my full-time assistant. Sounds like a dream come true, but the mother-daughter dynamics are a challenge
.
Especially
since
I've
been trying to keep
her
organized since I was five. Mom has developed a little habit. During the question-and-answer period of my public appearances, she takes the microphone and talks about the depth of Congo's suffering, and she always ends in tears
.
It's an issue, but she works hard and long
.
Despite her unmeasured approach and regular fits of panic (the organizational tasks are tough on her nerves), we're pulling it off.

Over the year since my Wildwood Trail run, Run for Congo Women events have sprung up in ten states and four countries. Some are simple solo runs, some are community or group runs. Tracey, in suburban Texas, has trained all summer in 110-degree heat. Robin, a mom in North Carolina, runs with her son. Carrie, in Ireland, takes out a permit at a manor house and more than forty people join her on a run around the grounds. My friends in London are reaching out to their church to sponsor their walk. More than a hundred people showed up for the Second Annual Portland Run for Congo Women.

With all the interest, I decided to take the run on the road. I took out permits in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., hoping to spark a movement.

We have more than forty registrations for the First Annual New York Run for Congo Women. With this morning's rainy weather, I'm not optimistic about the turnout. We've already gotten several emails asking if we're still on.

Yes, we're still on.
When it rains in Congo, women still hide in the bushes from the militia. They sleep in the rain. Kids get sick and die. We're running today. No excuses, no deterrents.

My mom takes temporary refuge in a coffee shop a couple of blocks away from the start line, while I hold down the fort in my skimpy running clothes and Mom's oversize, ankle-length trench coat. It whips and snaps against my blotchy, red, goose-bumped legs.

Alone, sick of my own spin, I abandon the internal pep talk. I squint to keep the wind and rain from thrashing at my eyes. The driving rain stings, drops pelt me like needles. It's so cold that I have to concentrate just to hold still and control the reflexive shaking. The banner blows off. I climb up the
retaining wall and bury myself in the tree branches to re-tie it with my icy fingers. I find no comfort or inspiration from the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt looming over me as the dimness of nighttime lifts bit by bit. The rain continues unabated. I decide that this moment is officially harder than mile twenty-nine. There will be no break from the cold for hours.

At eight o'clock, our start time, it's just me and my mom. A cab pulls up and all the country directors from Women for Women emerge. I just met Christine, the organization's country director for Congo, in Chicago a few weeks ago. She is a vibrant, open, regal Congolese woman
.
We are both thirty-one years old and five foot ten, so she instantly branded me her “twin sister.”

One runner with cropped blond hair shows up in a pink jogging suit. She introduces herself as Lisa Jackson. We wait another twenty minutes in the rain, just in case. Finally, we run the five-mile there-and-back course in the atrocious weather. We finish and escape to a local diner, where Lisa hands me a promotional postcard for her documentary-in-progress,
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo.

 

ASIDE FROM LISA JACKSON, I've come across only a few other grassroots Congo activists: The Washington, D.C.-based Friends of Congo, who join me in organizing the first D.C. Run for Congo Women; a six-person-strong Chicago-based coalition, headed by a Presbyterian couple; and a woman in California who collects tea bags and combs to send to rape victims at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. Collectively, we seem to be the movement for Congo.

But I receive an email from another potential activist who lives in a town nearby. She is a Women for Women sponsor who also saw the Congo report on
Oprah
. Its subject line: I WANT TO DO MORE. Anxious to foster leadership in what I hope is growing into a movement, I hop in the car and make the three-hour drive to help Kelly engage her church in a Hike for Congo Women project
.
An ultraorganized, sweet-spoken former model and a devout Christian, she is yoga-chic, with the requisite alterna-girl nose ring
and flowing hair. Kelly spends her working life as a Pilates instructor and her free time blogging; she describes herself as a “peacemaker, justice seeker, healer, and dreamer.” Despite the suburban love nest she shares with her husband, at 35 she has the kind of idealism and passion that would make her right at home in a women's studies class on almost any college campus.