A Thousand Sisters

by Lisa Shannon

  “If only you could open my heart to see how happy I am to see you. I am buying hens. Whenever I am hungry now, I slaughter one.”

  “If I was a bird, I would fly and meet you in America.”

  “If my kid grows up, it is because of support from you.”

  “I don’t know what measurement I can use to measure my joy.”

  “I feel somehow a person in life, a woman in life. I didn’t think I would feel like other women.”

  “You have to continue up to the coming of Jesus.”

  “Thanks, thanks, thanks.”

  “May God bless and bless and bless and bless.”

  “It doesn’t arrive every day to be in this kind of joy. But I am really happy.”

  WE’VE DRIVEN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES up the long, winding road that hugs the hillsides above Lake Kivu. With Congolese military hanging around the ramshackle shops at the village crossroads, I emerge from the SUV. Squishy clay mud sucks my flip-flops under.

  The women who have been waiting burst into song. The men and children stand back. It’s a women’s party today and they are not invited. Singing and dancing continues during their long procession to the Women for Women compound. The reception today seems almost surreal, the women in saturated colors against the lush landscape dampened with morning rain. Two women lead the group in an impromptu call-and-response chant of endless thanks.

  “My kids couldn’t go to school, and now they have education because of you.”

  “We were hungry. Now we eat because of you.”

  Twenty minutes into the reception, Hortense leans over to me and says, “The woman in yellow is your sister Therese.”

  She is a modest woman, perhaps early forties. She wears a traditional African dress, crisp and precisely wrapped, in vivid yellows and purple. I tower above her. (My friends will later laugh at me in the photos. “You look like an Amazon next to her!”)

  “Did you ever receive my letter?” I ask, hugging her.

  “I got one letter.” She says, “I had already finished the program.”

  “Did you get photos?”

  “I love them,” she says. “I told my husband you were coming. He wanted to meet you too, but this place is only for women.”

  “You said in your letter that your husband had been taken to the bush. Is it the same husband or did you remarry?” I ask.

  “I have many, many things to tell you.”

  We file into the cement classroom with eight other sisters, whom I greet individually. I kneel down next to a sister in a leopard-print headscarf and a dress with puffy sleeves and shiny embroidery. I look at her booklet.

  Beatrice. Her sponsor line reads: Kelly Thomas.

  Though it would have been easy to schedule this meeting on a day that fit Kelly’s needs—just a minor coordination via email—her plans prevented her from making it today to meet her own sister. She entrusted me with a letter and photos to pass along to Beatrice. “It’s probably better if you don’t tell her I traveled all this way, but didn’t make it to see her,” she told me.

  Why on earth would I want Beatrice to know that?

  Gesturing to Beatrice, I tell Hortense, “Don’t mention that Kelly is in Congo.”

  “Beatrice was called here to meet Kelly,” Hortense says, “I’ve already told her Kelly didn’t come.”

  Ouch. Beatrice keeps her eyes cast downward to hide the awkward, sinking look of someone trying to hide disappointment. I pull out Kelly’s packet, tied with a bow, and say, “Kelly was so sorry she couldn’t be here today. She wanted to meet you so badly. She asked me to send you her love. It just wasn’t possible.”

  I snap a shot of Beatrice holding the photo of Kelly and her husband.

  We move on with the meeting, while Kelly’s sister holds a half-smile, fingering the photos and letter quietly. Still, she looks like a person who’s shown up at the wrong party, like she wouldn’t mind disappearing.

  We begin with “the trouble I got from war,” but conversation quickly shifts when one of my sisters says, “Some children died.”

  That’s one of my talking points. I ask, “How many have children who have died?”

  Six out of nine raise their hands.

  “How many of you have had more than one child die?”

  They hold up their fingers. A couple of them hold up two fingers. One of them holds up three fingers. Another woman raises four. “Four children died.”

  Another explains, “The twins died, and a baby after.”

  They each launch into their own one-line explanations, “The baby was tired after birth and didn’t breast-feed.”

  “My 13-year-old daughter died from anemia, after she had four packs of blood.”

  “Two babies, both died at the clinic. I remain childless.”

  Therese adds, “One child died because of bad living conditions in the bushes. We buried her in the yard.”

  These stories always shock me, though they shouldn’t. I’ve been citing the statistics for years. Congo’s child death rate is twice that of sub-Saharan Africa, which is already the highest in the world. Fifteen hundred people continue to die every day as a result of the war. In fact, less than one-half of one percent of the war-related deaths in Congo are violent. The vast majority of the deaths are due to the war’s aftershocks, primarily easily curable illnesses. Almost half of the deaths are children under the age of five.

  We get so wrapped up in the discussion about everyone’s lost children that the meeting time flies by. I hear almost nothing from Therese, who remains quiet and unassuming. When it’s finally her turn to speak, she says, “I escaped with my children. It was dark, but I saw them take my husband away.”

  The Interahamwe took five girls and eight other men that night. “The abducted girls escaped death, but the other eight men were tied on crosses and killed, except my husband.”

  “Did your husband become an Interahamwe soldier?” I ask her.

  “He was a slave, cooking,” she says.

  “He was sent to get firewood the day he escaped,” she continues. “When he came back home, they sent letters. They say they will come for him one day. My husband is a good cook, so they say they want him back because they can’t find someone else who cooks like him.”

  “Can’t you move to Bukavu and open a restaurant?” I ask. “Do you still live in the same house?”

  “We’re still there.”

  Sadly, we are out of time. We take a few group photos and I give Therese a big hug. We wave to each other as I pull away, and I call back to her, “Kwa heri!” Goodbye.

  On the drive home, as we peel around corners that reveal soaring views of Lake Kivu, the meeting feels like a letdown, as much for Therese as for me. After her months of waiting and wondering who Lisa Shannon might be, and after my years of thinking about her fuzzy, dark photo while I ran miles on the trail, rehearsing what we might say to each other, I’ve met her in person. I’ve embraced her. But we spoke for less than five minutes. We exchanged only a handful of sentences. I know almost nothing more about her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gift from God

  SO THESE ARE the Walungu sisters, whose black-and-white photos radiated damage. Here in Walungu, an hour from Bukavu, the town itself is secure. It’s crawling with Congolese Army and UN officials, but it attracts Women for Women participants from villages neighboring “the forest” (a.k.a. Interahamwe territory), like the notorious Kaniola, five miles down the road. That is plenty to account for the shell-shocked looks in their photos.

  Wandolyn sits close to me and weeps. She hasn’t cracked a smile since we met a few minutes ago. I try to break the ice. “Did you get my letters?”

  She ticks her tongue, looking away.

  I show her the letters she wrote to me. “I saved them. When I was running, I had your face in my mind, sometimes for hours. I saw in your photo, in your eyes, that you’ve been through difficult things.”

  She covers her mouth, mumbling something. Hortense says, “She remembers he
r difficulty. That is why she is weeping.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?” I ask.

  It’s a smaller group today, only the four sisters, so we have the luxury of time.

  “Congolese soldiers came to our village and raped me,” Wandolyn says. “At the hospital, they asked why I had kept silent. It was then I knew I was pregnant from the rape.”

  I keep my hand on her shoulder.

  “How old is the baby?” I ask her.

  “One year, eight months. I didn’t think I could accept it. Whenever I saw it, I was only seeing a sign of my bad life.”

  I give her a little hug.

  She smiles. “I’d like to keep you near me.”

  Then Wandolyn starts crying again. “You are the only one who takes care of me and knows about my situation. The money helps me take care of my baby and my children at school.”

  “I consider you my friend,” I respond. “I’m happy to do it.”

  “I am extremely happy to see you,” she says. “My mom died when I was four. You are my mother. Even my husband is proud of my new mother. My children always say, ‘We have a grandmother who takes care of us. We are studying because of our grandmother.’ Every day my children ask me to show them your photo. They ask, ‘Can we see our grandmother someday?’”

  A grandmother! I’m only thirty-one!

  I’m stunned. A couple of postcards, letters, and photos have given me near mythic status in this family and transformed me into a kind of magic fairy godmother.

  Wandolyn continues. “My husband encourages me. He says, ‘In the past, you wanted to put an end to your life, but now you’ve found a mother and that mother helps us. You should be happy.’”

  I ask her, “You wanted to end your life?”

  She looks me in the eye and says quietly, “Ndiyo.” Yes.

  There is no way I can live up to the impossibly personal role that Wandolyn has cast for me. But there is also no way I can dismiss her at the end of this meeting, after only a ten-minute exchange. She has staked her claim.

  Despite Women for Women HQ’s warnings that these visits only cause problems, I cannot leave without meeting my sweet little “grandchildren.”

  Wandolyn’s son greets us as we emerge from the car on the outskirts of Walungu. He shakes my hand shyly. I follow Wandolyn up a long, winding path through the rural countryside, past banana trees, and pigs and calves munching on underbrush, to her home compound—a perfectly round African straw hut.

  If I had dreamed this scene a few years ago, how absurd it would have seemed! Me, meeting my half-grown African grandchildren in their tribal compound, something straight out of a storybook but tense with the weight of war around us. I would have woken up and thought it impossibly bizarre.

  The turns life can take.

  I announce, “Grandma’s here!” and embrace each of the children. Wandolyn’s husband is fourteen years older than she is and he is frail, clearly in bad health. He shakes my hand with a gentle formality. I peek inside their dark hut. Scrawny white rabbits stumble around in the dark like ghosts.

  Wandolyn holds her baby daughter, Nshobole, who is a stoic child. But little ones are often shy around new people, so it’s hard to measure the impact of the event on her psyche. “May I hold her?”

  I take her in my arms, searching her eyes for evidence.

  Neighbors gather, and I know that can mean trouble after I have gone. It starts to rain and it’s best not to stay, so I say goodbye.

  Yet it isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. I ask Wandolyn, “When can I meet you again?”

  A few days later, we meet at the program center in Walungu. Her neighborhood has been abuzz with my visit. They’re saying I’ve come to take her family to America. Demands for money are sure to follow.

  Wandolyn brings Nshobole with her. The baby sits on my lap while her mom talks.

  “I was coming from fetching water in the valley when I heard gunshots,” Wandolyn says. “When I got home, men were in the compound. They were Congolese, speaking a local dialect. My husband had been at home with my kids, but they hid on the farm. Tutsi soldiers had invaded Bukavu and Congolese government soldiers retreated here to Walungu.

  “I tried to escape, to run, but they caught me and told me to go in the hut. I asked them to enter the house and take what they pleased instead of taking me. They said they would take rabbits and the cassava flour I had just gotten from the mill. They didn’t. They said, ‘From you, we need only yourself.’

  “The commander told me to lay down.

  “I said, ‘I don’t need to do that.’

  “They threw me down and began cutting me. They slapped my ears, so I couldn’t hear. They stabbed one of my buttocks. It was so painful, I cried. They laughed at me and told me they would kill me.”

  Wandolyn spaces out, rocking; her breathing is labored. Hortense says, “She’s having emotional flashbacks from reviewing what happened to her. It’s as if this is the first time she has told the story.”

  “They laid me down and started to rape me. They used a piece of cloth to wipe. When one finished, he wiped with the same cloth. Then the other would introduce himself. When I cried, they said stabbing my buttocks was nothing compared to what they would do. They told me they would stab me in the neck, they would kill me. I felt dying was better than suffering like this. There were so many, but while I was conscious I only saw three. I lost consciousness.” She folds over, collapsing her head and hands on her knees, crying.

  I approach and hug her, interrupting. “You don’t have to talk.”

  She sits up and continues, seemingly determined to get it out. “They folded the cloth and passed it, wiping.”

  In my best attempt to usher her through the story, I ask, “Did your husband know about what happened?”

  “When he came back, he found they had split my legs. I was lying in pain. He knew because he was the one who treated the injury. When I started to tell him, my husband said, ‘Keep quiet. Don’t say more. Don’t tell to anybody. ’ He kept silent.

  “It was June. I hid myself until December. I wouldn’t go out. Only my children did housework, went to farm. As days went by, I felt woozy. I would fall down because of the level of infection. My husband pushed me to go to the hospital. I was ashamed to go to the doctor, because it was taboo to speak about rape. After six months, I accepted to go to hospital because my wounds were so infected that flies were getting in the house everywhere.

  “The doctor was angry to see they kept me at home so long. The infection was high. A nun stayed close to me, to take care and wash me.

  “The day the doctor told me I was pregnant, I felt dying was better than remaining with that pregnancy. When I went into labor, I was revolted.

  “I delivered a baby girl. They brought the baby to me. The nun counseled me, ‘The baby is innocent, the baby needs love.’

  “I said, ‘Keep it away.’ I didn’t even like to hear about that baby. I didn’t even like to see that baby. I considered it the source of my misery and suffering. I said, ‘I won’t even look at that baby.’

  “The next day, the nun asked me to breast-feed. I said there was nothing inside.

  “They had to ask other women in maternity to give the baby some milk. After two months, the doctors told me they were tired of asking for milk. They asked me to take the baby. I said no.

  “I was worried about my husband, who was sick, who I had been looking after. I was the only one looking after my kids. Now they were suffering from malnutrition because I was in the hospital. The doctor promised to take care of my husband and me.

  “The nun sent for my husband. She told him I delivered a baby girl. When my husband heard, he said, ‘You are not guilty. I won’t say anything against the baby.’ My husband told me to take the baby, because it was a gift from God to us, even if it came from suffering and pain. That’s how she got her name, Nshobole, which means ‘Gift from God.’

  “My husband was suffering malnutrition; he couldn’t walk. But
the doctor took care of him. He started standing up. I regained hope, little by little.

  “My husband developed a friendship with the doctor. My husband told them we would take the baby home, but we didn’t have the means. The nun told me I would only have to help with breastfeeding, but on all the other counts she could be responsible. They even gave me baby clothes. Everything for the baby came with us when we left the hospital.

  “I was careless with the baby. I left the baby to the father. When I had babies before, he wouldn’t touch them. He said he didn’t know how to take care of them, but this one, he was taking it each time she cried. Of my children, that was the one my husband loved the most. He couldn’t accept the baby crying.

  “My husband loves me so much. He is sad when he finds me unhappy. He said he would never separate with his wife. But even if I were to be infected [with HIV], he would rather be infected with me so we can die together or live. He said only death will separate us.”

  “How do you feel about your husband?” I ask her.

  “I love him so much,” Wandolyn says. “When I’m angry and I quarrel with my husband, he keeps quiet and asks me to cool down. He never speaks when I’m angry. He is grateful because I suffered in order to take care of him, and I didn’t tell anyone we were living separate lives because of his health.” “How do you feel about the baby?” I say.

  “He loved the baby so much. He tells me the baby is my own blood and I have no right not to love the baby. He was even angry because I told the doctor the baby is not his. He needed me to tell everyone it is his. With his support, I love the baby, because I love him so much. Even today, he never once speaks about the event that led to the baby. I didn’t choose to have this baby, but the baby is mine. The baby is the profit of our misfortune.”

  Hortense says, “You must give her something to care for the child.”

  It’s not a suggestion. It’s mandatory. I scrounge around my bag and pull out US$40, slipping it to Wandolyn with the uneasy feeling I’ve just paid her to relive all that.

  Wandolyn’s husband joins us later. I speak to him privately and ask him about the event. “How did you feel when Wandolyn came home with injuries?”