by Lisa Shannon
“I prayed to God for her to heal,” he says. “My father advised me to take another woman, but I said it won’t be possible.” He wags his finger. “I made a vow to live with her in good and evil, only death would separate us.”
“What would you say to men who want to reject their wives?” I ask.
“I can advise them about mutual forgiveness, show them it didn’t happen willingly,” he says. “We were faithful; we were living a Christian life. That’s when the event happened. I kept it a secret. I wouldn’t reject her because we were faithful to each other. We have mutual acceptance. We share everything. She loves me. She hides me nothing. She respects me. And I feel she makes me happy.”
Wandolyn and I sit outside a church compound, in the shade under some trees. Nshobole perches on her mom’s knee. I snap a photo. The mother, with her child, looks like a living religious icon. An African Madonna.
I give the baby a sheet of sparkly heart stickers. The little girl is mesmerized. Wandolyn peels off stickers and sticks them on Nshobole’s wrists and arms. Nshobole pulls one off, then she reaches back and sticks the sparkly heart on her mother’s cheek.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Generose
OF ALL MY sisters in Congo, the one I’ve most been looking forward to meeting is Generose. Her letter describing the way her leg was cut off, though it was only a brief sketch, was the most awful incident any sister had written about. Her photo intimidates me, for sure—she looks so shell-shocked, even angry. But I felt we were working as a tag team when her letter helped me lobby.
Our meeting was scheduled for this morning. She didn’t show.
I’VE SPENT ALL MORNING on the veranda at the Women for Women ceramics studio, lazily sipping soda in the shade with the other twelve sisters in her group. I watch them all walk away together under the trees, laughing and chatting. They look a little fatter, dress a little smarter and smile a little wider than most Congolese women I see around Bukavu. We’ve had a lovely time, but as they glance back and I wave goodbye, I’m trying to conceal my disappointment that Generose was not among them.
One sister lingers, sick with what she believes is malaria. We drive her to the neighboring Panzi Hospital to get checked out. Doctors shortly confirm that this young, unmarried woman’s “malaria” is actually a pregnancy.
On the way out of the hospital in the parking lot, I work overtime with a pep talk: “My American sister is a single mom. It happens all the time. I’ve met so many Congolese single mothers who thrive all on their own. . . .”
As we are saying goodbye, someone calls my name.
I look up. A woman on crutches approaches me, smiling warmly and wearing a traditional dress under a Puma sports jacket. She says, “I am your sister. I am Generose.”
I look closely at her. She’s much heavier—and happier—than she looks in her photo. But it is her!
I embrace her. “How did you know it was me?”
“I saw you walking down the corridor and recognized you from the photos you sent me.”
Unbelievable! “I was so disappointed you didn’t make it to the meeting,” I say. “Of all my sisters, I had especially looked forward to meeting you.”
“I know,” she says. “You wrote me sometimes when you didn’t write the others.”
Generose is in the hospital with a life-threatening bone infection—her leg is rotting where the Interahamwe cut it off. We find a quiet corner in the back of the building and I ask her about that day.
“I was in my house preparing food for my husband when they came,” she says. “They made me prepare food for them, then asked me to wake my husband, who was asleep. They demanded money. I had one hundred and thirty dollars, and I gave it to them, but they didn’t care. They said, ‘That money was the nurse’s participation. The husband is head of the school. He has to make his contribution.’
“My husband said, ‘I have nothing.’
“They started to beat him, so I cried for help. The Interahamwe shot him immediately, killing him.
“I continued to cry to alert other people. They said, ‘Shut your mouth. Put your leg on the chair.’
“They took a machete and cut off my leg. We had six children at home; one was my sister’s child. The Interahamwe cut the leg into six parts and burnt them in the fire. They gave each child a piece of my leg and commanded them to eat.
“One of the children said, ‘I can’t eat a part of my mother. You already killed my father, so you will have to kill me.’
“They killed my child.
“They tried to burn the house. The children got us out. They took me to the garden outside. Because of the burning of the house, because of despair, because of the loss of blood, I was like a dead person. The next day, I found myself at the hospital in Walungu without knowing how I got there. The UN and the head of the neighborhood had taken me.”
“When was the next time you saw your children?” I ask her.
“Two months and a week,” Generose answers. “It was painful when they saw me with only one leg. They ran away, saying they would wait until the leg grows back before they would talk to me. I could only cry.
“I approached them, and told them, ‘You need to thank God. I am alive. I only lost my leg. Not like Mama Annie.’”
“Who’s Mama Annie?” I ask.
“The Interahamwe began the attack that night with our neighbor Mama Annie. They killed her husband. She was pregnant. They cut off her eyes, nose, and mouth. They cut out her pregnancy. I met her in the hospital. She died after four days.”
Generose stops for a moment. “Neighbors came to visit us and they told us about the wedding. . . .”
The wedding. So here it is, and I sense it before she even begins the story. “After us, they went to another neighbor’s. They took the bride to the forest, where they raped and killed her. They burned her compound where the wedding feast was supposed to take place. Forty-six guests were inside. They burned them alive.
“I would not stay one day in my village. There was no husband there, no house.
“I can’t go back, I can’t see the souvenirs. I asked for help from a neighbor who had a car. He drove us the forty-five kilometers here and dropped us with a relative, a cousin I knew well. We grew up in the same house. We arrived, she prepared cassava. Her husband said, ‘I’m sorry, there is no place. I don’t have enough money to accept another in my charge.’
“We went to a parish, where we were welcomed. They fed us dinner. They needed to know if I was really an internally displaced person, so they called a woman to vouch for me. We ended up staying with them for two months. Then the priest rented us a house, paid for it six months in advance, and gave us food for a month.
“I spent a month begging. People gave money, clothes, food. By chance, I met an employee of Women for Women who knew the story from Kaniola. He saw me begging. He lent me twenty dollars and told me to go to Women for Women.
“When I had my leg cut off, I felt I was not a human being. But when I enrolled, I was accepted unconditionally. I began to feel like a different person. I was told I had a letter. Your letter made me very, very happy. To know there was someone thinking about me. I was a nurse in a hospital there in my village. I became a seller with money from Women for Women, and already the benefit has been more than a hundred dollars, which I used to buy a cow. I sent it to my village. Maybe in a few years, it will have babies that I can sell and buy a house here in Bukavu.”
“How are your children now?” I ask. “Are they okay mentally?”
“They are traumatized,” she says. “They passed a year without eating meat.”
We are silent.
Eventually, Generose begins again.
“I can’t find exact words to say thanks for what you did. A person can’t forget someone who does something for them. That’s why I recognized you. Since getting your photo, you’ve stayed in my mind.”
Generose’s bone infection requires a two-month stay in the hospital and two successive surgeri
es. The price tag? Three hundred dollars. She doesn’t have it. The surgery has already been stalled due to lack of funds.
I offer to pay. She’s over the moon and showers me in thanks as she leads us through Panzi’s maze of corridors to her ward. When we reach her bed, she asks, “Can you accept to look at my leg?”
She shows me her amputation scars, mid-thigh.
“Is it painful for you?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says. “It hurts.”
That’s when I notice her low-end, make-do prosthetic leg sitting off to the side. She has painted the toenails.
GENEROSE IS DESPERATE to get home to check on her children. We catch up on the ride. I show her my notebook with her photo and letter, which I read back to her: “‘War is a very bad thing.’”
“If you compare my photo, I have changed terribly,” she says. I think she means good-terrible. “I was thin and pale. Today I have become big and brighter. I’m fat with joy.”
She does look in good spirits.
“How’s Ted?” she asks.
I hold my two pointer fingers together, tip to tip, then split them, and tell her, “Life in the U.S.A. isn’t perfect.”
“Are you still running?” she asks. “I felt bad to see someone suffer for me, to run.”
Is she kidding? There is no trace of sarcasm in her voice. All I did was go for a run. I do a quick mental scan. What did I say in those letters? Did I complain? Was I melodramatic? God, I hope not. My poor friends; I whined for months about the mustache tan and losing my boyfriend and my toenails. All I can say to Generose is, “It was a privilege.”
We pull up next to a steep hill overflowing with makeshift wooden huts, the Bukavu slums. Generose invites me to meet her children, an offer I can’t refuse. I follow her down a narrow corridor between shacks, with thick mud squashing around my flip-flops.
Her little ones come up and greet us on the path, “Karibu! Welcome.” The twins, around ten years old, smile shyly and offer a handshake. I carry Generose’s sweet four-year-old daughter, who’s wearing a polka-dotted dress and has big baby-doll eyes, to their dark stick-and-mud hut.
Generose introduces a matronly, officious looking woman who is lurking in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She says, “This is the proprietor of the house.”
I sit down, ignoring the woman.
Generose continues. “The problem I have is, I’m at the hospital. The proprietor is chasing the children from the house. We do not pay at the moment.”
I’m doing my best to ignore what she just said; I feel like I’ve walked into a trap. “Right,” I say. “Which of the children is sick? The little one?”
Generose reiterates. “The proprietor is chasing us.”
Is this posturing, some kind of act?
“Who stays with the children when you’re in the hospital?” I ask her, forging on.
“They stay by themselves. Sometimes the proprietor takes care of them.”
Generose pulls out a small bundle of my letters and photos. She has tucked them in between her only remaining photo of her husband. “I want to show you my husband who died in the war.”
In the photo, they stand together casually at the hospital where she worked. “The request is, as I don’t have a husband, I’d like to have a small house of my own. If possible, I can live quietly if I have my own house.”
Mercy. I have to nip this in the bud. “I can’t do that,” I say. “I’ll pay for the surgery. But I have so many sisters. I can’t build everyone a house. It wasn’t even my money that sponsored you. I asked other people to give money.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she says. “The children are being chased from the house. I have a debt of sixty dollars in back rent.”
“Sixty dollars?” I say. “The problem is, every sister has told me they have problems. I don’t have enough money to give every sister sixty dollars. Do you understand? If I give it to one sister, every sister will expect it. They’ll be angry with me.”
I do the calculation in my head: 200 times US$60 equals US$12,000. “I don’t have that money.”
“Ndiyo. Ndiyo. Ndiyo. Ndiyo,” she says. “ I understand. Thanks for what you promised to do for the surgery.”
“It’s a special case, because it is life or death,” I tell her.
Fellow slum-dwellers have piled up in the doorway. It is exactly what HQ warned: If you visit sisters in their homes, all of a sudden they are tagged as having money. Nothing but harassment will follow—demands for money, theft—unless I can address it publicly, right now, head on. For the benefit of onlookers, I speak loudly and clearly. “The other problem is, if I left money with you, you would have problems with neighbors coming. So it would be dangerous.”
“I thank you,” Generose says. “I would like for you to take this photo.” She hands me the photo of her husband. I can’t believe she would offer it to me. “This is your only photo of your husband, isn’t it? You keep that one.” She thinks the better of it too. “Yes, okay.”
The landlady hangs around. I look back at Generose after we say goodbye and her expression—apprehensive, strained, disappointed—says it all. That was no act. Her kids are going to be thrown out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Road to Baraka
“YOU’R E GOING TO drive us through ‘treacherous rebel territory’ today?” I ask Moses, Women for Women’s field driver.
“Yes!” He bursts out laughing.
“Do you think the drive is safe?” I ask.
“No problem.”
“We’re driving through Mai Mai territory?”
“Yes.”
“Will we see the Mai Mai?”
He smiles. “We hope we can.”
I laugh. So does Kelly. I’m actually not sure why we’re laughing. It isn’t that funny. But it is nice to have someone from home to giggle with, even if we are only half amused, half feeding off of each other’s hunger for adventure.
Kelly is joining me for this leg of the trip. She surprised me a few days ago when she came to visit me at Orchid and told me she has run out of money. With only US$300 left, she doesn’t have nearly enough to make it through her last week, even with the homestay. She asked if I could float some of her expenses, offering to pay me back once we make it home. This is no place to run out of cash, so I agreed.
Fortunately, the Baraka leg of the trip is cheap. Christine has called in favors so we can stay at the UNHCR guesthouse, which is only US$25 per day, including food. I’m happy to have the company.
One thing I’ve figured out thus far: Congo is safe—as long as everything goes according to plan. Still, when I quiz Congolese, they seem to confuse “I’ve never had a problem” with “It’s safe.” Half of the women sponsored by Run for Congo Women live in the small town of Baraka, eight hours south of Bukavu. That war-affected region has been flattened by conflict and is known for mass killings. Most of the locals abandoned it years ago for refugee camps in Tanzania. These days, most foreign militias have fled the region too and it is now a stronghold of the Congolese militia, the Mai Mai.
With the area stabilized in recent months, the UN and other aid organizations like Women for Women have established outposts in Baraka to serve the returning refugees. Though there’s been fighting this week in the mountains west of Baraka, Christine has spoken with the UN. They said we’ll be fine.
As we load up the Range Rover, I ask Hortense the question anyway. “What’s the security situation there?”
“The security is good,” she says. “No problem.”
“What about the Mai Mai?” I ask.
“I’ve had seven trips to Baraka with no problem,” she tells me. “The Mai Mai are very kind. We will see them on the way. The general is a good man, taking care of them properly. They do not bother people.”
The Mai Mai don’t bother people? They must have a stellar spin machine, because that’s not what I’ve heard in the conversations I’ve had with former child soldiers. Initially formed as a commun
ity-based defense force to fight foreign rebel groups, the Mai Mai are widely known for mass atrocities against the very people they claim to defend. As one Congolese told me in strict confidence, “The Mai Mai do everything any other militia does. But if you speak against them, they will come to your home at night and kill you and your family.”
At present, the Congolese government is attempting to engage the Mai Mai in what’s known as “brassage,” a process of demobilizing combatants and integrating them into the Congolese Army. But tensions are brewing as some among the militia’s leadership grow agitated at being left behind in Congo’s emerging post-election political scene.
The Mai Mai do have one unifying thread: their use of witchcraft. The translation of “Mai Mai” is literally “Water Water”; the name comes from their belief that if they douse themselves with an herb-infused potion prior to battle, no bullet can penetrate them. By magic, whatever they encounter in battle will pass through them like water. Codes of Mai Mai behavior are based on traditional beliefs and range from wearing lucky sink plugs, to maintaining abstinence or committing rape prior to battle, as a source of power.
The pro-Mai Mai sentiment strikes me as more of a cultural courtesy. I’ve noticed Congolese rarely criticize other Congolese.
Maurice and I slip away to the market to stock up on Marlboros and a case of beer—emergency love offerings. We divide the cigarettes between us and tuck them away in our bag so they’re ready in the event that we have to make quick friends.
Hortense sees the beer and shrugs. “I don’t understand why you think of problems.”
We hit the road about four hours late and cut over the border into Rwanda to borrow a good stretch of road. Meanwhile, Moses blasts Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.” I can think of very few songs that are less Congo-appropriate. Thank God they don’t understand the English lyrics. When it’s over, he rewinds and plays it again. And again.
