by Lisa Shannon
“I would like to visit your home and talk with you more.”
Hortense is already anxious about time. “Make it quick. The port closes at dark.”
It is late afternoon, but I don’t care. I want to talk with Fitina. Nothing else is on my radar.
Kelly and Hortense enjoy a traditional Congolese feast of fu-fu (a variation on cream of wheat), greens, and meat, while Maurice and I slip away to follow Fitina through the village. Villagers stare at a polite distance as we pass compounds of brick huts with thatched roofs and gardens lined with rickety homemade stick-fences. Cooking smoke is rising in the late afternoon sun.
Fitina leads us to her lakefront property on the far side of the village. Her family’s mud hut is flanked with pecking chickens; sardines are laid out to dry on warped metal sheets. The hut sits next to an empty plot where their former house stood before a militia burned it to nothing. Now the same land bears eggplant and vegetables with African names I can’t follow. For a brief moment, I picture this plot in an alternate universe, as a perfect spot for a modern prefab home, straight from the pages of Dwell magazine.
A neighbor laughs and teases Fitina; she is trying to get in on the action. Children linger. I won’t be able to talk with Fitina privately.
A few minutes later, we head back through the village with a troop of children escorting us like bodyguards. British radio emanates from one of the huts. I look up towards the forested hills. Mai Mai are out there somewhere, threatening to attack.
“Do you feel embarrassed?” I ask Fitina, hoping she is okay with being followed around by an American who is flashing an expensive camera.
We round a corner. Three men with guns stand in our path.
Uh. . . .
I go blank with shock.
The men meander past us, and one sizes me up. I glance at them, catching their backwards glances at me. They are young and have mismatched uniforms. One wears a bright yellow beret. Their weapons look second-rate. I ask Maurice under my breath, “Are they Congolese army?”
“Um . . . yes.”
Then we’re fine, I reassure myself.
I turn around and see another soldier standing in front of a hut with an older couple. He stares at me and beckons.
“What did he say?” I ask Maurice.
“He wants you to film him.”
Under other circumstances, I would probably find this amusing, a scene straight out of the movie Blood Diamond. Everyone’s a sucker for the camera! Instead, I move slowly, like someone approaching a strange, haggard dog that’s been found roaming the streets. I don’t know if he bites.
I’m tense, fumbling. “You want me to film you?”
He’s intrigued, but not friendly. He knows he’s in control. I flip around the viewer so he can see himself, an attempt to break the tension. This always works with children.
“Nice,” he says, nodding. “Good.”
“Are you visiting your family?” I say.
Maurice translates, but the soldier looks at me vaguely.
“Okay!” Hortense approaches from behind. “We really must hurry! It’s going to get dark soon.”
I am not willing to leave without interviewing Fitina, so Hortense ushers us back to the compound. “Try to make it short, eh? We will run into trouble at the port.”
I grab a chair and find a quiet spot where we sit on the edge of an open, unfenced field, with the forested hills just behind us. Fitina holds a young child on her lap and another little girl, about six years old, clings to her. They are her grandchildren.
“Can you talk with us for a minute about your experience of the war?” I ask Fitina.
“We didn’t go to Tanzania,” she begins. “We went up to the hills and stayed in the bush, where we stayed in bad conditions until the end of the war.”
I ask about her children.
“Five of my children are alive. Two among them are in school in Baraka.”
“How many children have you given birth to?” I ask.
“Fifteen. I gave birth to fifteen. Five are alive and ten have died.”
“Can you tell me how they died?”
“From illness.”
“What were the names of your children?” I say. “How old were they when they died?”
Fitina’s voice grows thin, “Maribola . . . Makambe . . . Maribola died from illness. She was a teenager. She only had a headache and she died. Makambe died when she was a few months old. . . . All died from illness.”
Fitina has a remote look in her eyes. But I am feeling the pressure. Military in the village. Port closing. Long boatride home.
I press Hortense to translate again. “Can she just list the names and how old they were when they died?”
“Liza also died,” she says. “Ruben also died. Na . . . Na . . . Nape also died.”
She struggles. “Some died when they were two, some others were a few months old, a few more than three years old. Maribola died just after the war. She already had breasts. She was a teenager.”
“But can she list their names and how old they were when they died?” I plead again. “Just a list?”
My pushing does not strike me as inappropriate in the moment, but she is swimming in her own thoughts, not listening to me. And Hortense does not translate; I take note of her cue.
“The others . . . I don’t remember their names because I never want to talk about them.”
“Is it difficult?” I ask. “Would you prefer to not talk about them?”
With a crack in her voice and desperate, evading eyes, she ekes out, “I feel grief when I talk about them.”
We sit in silence for a long while.
Then I try again. “Do you remember other names, or do you want to just forget?”
Hortense snaps. “She has already given you five names. She has forgotten the names of the others because she never wants to talk about them.”
Fitina fiddles with her hands. An exasperated, pain-soaked smile spreads across her face. She strains to say, “They were all so young.”
Another long silence. The child still hangs on Fitina, resting her head on her grandmother’s shoulder, watching me like I am the enemy. Even with the language barrier, the child sees what I’ve missed. My push to reduce Fitina’s losses to a list has shut her down completely. There is nowhere to go.
Finally, I ask, “Is there anything you would like to say to other mothers in America?”
Fitina smiles shyly. “I send my greetings. If you are strong, it is my happiness.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Water Water
WITHIN MINUTES OF wrapping up with Fitina, we load onto the boat. The motor revs up and we are off.
Cruising along the edge of the peninsula, Maurice, Kelly, and I sit outside on the wooden benches, exhausted from the day. I ask Maurice, “Were they Congolese military?”
“Ah, no. They were Mai Mai,” he says, as he leaves to retire inside.
Fear chemicals surge through me and I start to shake as I describe the soldiers to Kelly.
The boat slows down suddenly. The skipper and first mate are throwing on their life vests. This is not a good sign. They’ve been barefoot and shirtless most of the day.
I look ahead. A few miles in front of us, rain pours from storm clouds onto the lake; it looks like a steel wall.
“What’s happening?” I ask Hortense.
“They are turning the boat around. We will spend the night in the village.”
With our new Mai Mai friends?
I ask rhetorically, “The Mai Mai . . . Do you really think it’s safe?”
She flashes a big, tension-diffusing smile. “Safer than drowning trying to cross the lake, yes?”
The canvas canopy covering the deck flaps wildly, while the first mate grasps the canopy frame, trying to keep it from flying off. He maintains a tense gaze forward, anxiously blowing a plastic whistle as if to a drumbeat. I can only imagine that he’s poising himself to send out a louder, high-pitched call for help should the boat capsize without warni
ng.
So these are our choices tonight, more only-in-Congo choices. Would you rather be raped or watch your children starve? Drown, or camp with the militia?
So be it. We’re sleeping over with the Mai Mai.
I grab my camera and try to capture it all on video. By the time the boat rocks to shore, slate-gray clouds blot out the remaining evening light, leaving just enough for my eyes to adjust and glean detail, but causing my video camera viewfinder to go black. I wobble back down the wooden plank.
I notice a little girl I walked with earlier today among the handful of women waiting for us. I touch her shaved head affectionately and say hello while the others disembark and Hortense talks to the women on the beach.
“They are glad we have returned,” she says. “They knew it would rain and were concerned.” (Much later, Maurice tells me what he overheard the villagers muttering to each other. Tension between the Congolese Army and the Mai Mai is at its peak, they were saying; it could erupt into gun battle at anytime.)
I kneel on the pebbled shore and grope around putting my camera away. The first fat raindrops hit, warning that a downpour is moments away.
“We must hurry!” Hortense calls back to me, chastising me for dallying.
I don’t understand why you think of problems.
I look up. The others are already halfway across the beach.
The girl lingers, her reedy frame draped in a tattered white dress with a faded strawberry print, a rounded collar, and buttons up the back—the kind of dress American girls wore in the 1950s with Mary Janes. She stares at me with her thin dress flapping in the wind.
I take her hand. We walk across the beach, squinting in the wind and pelting rain. I glance towards the lake and see another girl walking beside us. I’m not sure where she came from, but she must be my little friend’s twin. I can’t distinguish her features in the dark, but she wears an identical flimsy white dress—open in the back—over her thin frame, and she has the same shaved head.
I offer her my other hand.
The rain is immediate and heavy. The instant drench of a monsoon washes over us. By the time we reach the narrow footpath that leads to the village, the others have disappeared completely.
My flip-flops slip and grasp at the mud.
I stop, lost. We’ve reached the main path, but everything is black and blurry with rain. I can’t see two feet in front of me. I don’t want to do this. I want to retreat to that familiar cocoon: I’m an American. They won’t touch me. But then, the Mai Mai are a militia that attacked the UN. Took twenty-five foreigners hostage. It is one thing to stumble without warning across unidentified guys with guns; it’s another to do so knowing who they really are. And it’s quite another to know they are here, in the dark, in the rain, after they’ve seen me wagging my oversized camera around.
I’m still clasping two small, wet hands.
The girls continue ushering me forward. I’m at their mercy.
I take slow, hesitant steps. I imagine men with guns must be just beyond the blur, waiting. The girls walk in front, patiently guiding me. All I can see is the dim glow of their white dresses and their eyes peering back at me. Wide-eyed African angels.
A lantern appears in the distance and floats across the path, then disappears.
We follow in its direction.
A wooden door opens and unseen hands shepherd us into a dim cement room. Maurice, Hortense, Kelly and a few villagers stand against the walls of a small storage room, weakly illuminated by a kerosene lantern that casts colossal shadows around the corners of the space. The children stand next to me as the rain pounds the corrugated metal roof and leaks down the walls, pooling on the floor, making it impossible to sit down or lean against anything. We stand still and listen to the rain.
One of the girls inches towards me and stands close. I put my hand on her shoulder. Someone offers her a shawl. She lifts it to share, draping it around my shoulders. Am I comforting her or she is comforting me? I put the shawl back around the two children, patting their heads dry. We are waiting for the rain to subside, unsure of what is next.
But the rain continues to pour, with no signs of letting up. It feels like we’ve lingered here at least a half-hour. We make a mad dash outside, then run to another door. We settle into a living room, furnished with a few wooden benches, in a half-constructed cement house with no inhabitants. We dry off and the girls sit beside me. I can see their faces better by the kerosene lantern. I dig out my gift bags and divide stickers between the girls and another child. We plant big blue daisies on each other’s faces, ignoring the world.
Kelly and I take underexposed snapshots of the room with our digital cameras, musing that the blurry, out-of-focus quality will give them a high-art vibe. The rain softens. An older woman comes to the door to collect the children. They go home for the night.
I would feel secure, cocooned away in this house, were it not for one problem. I need to pee. So does Kelly. The house has no toilet, so the nearest place to go is about a hundred yards away via the main path through the village.
I scramble through my bag and dig out the two flashlights Ted packed. One for Kelly, one for me. After all the resentment toward my Congo work and what it cost our relationship, he still meticulously packed my camera bag for every eventuality.
We step outside onto the empty mud path, still dripping from the rainstorm. My steps are quiet and self-conscious. I am trying not to think about the Mai Mai, or words like exposure or bait. It’s like my dad used to tease me when I was a kid: Whatever you do, don’t think about elephants. I try to steer my thoughts away from calculating our risk factor in a village where 90 percent of the women have been raped. I fixate on the flashlights. They seem like the most romantic gift ever, making up for all the skipped birthdays and Valentine’s Day presents. I feel the way I did after my first 24-mile training run, when I descended the last hill and saw him, my one-man cheering squad. This is love. We arrive at the outhouse on the remote edge of the village, backing onto fields and forest. I step inside. Its rough wooden slats go only as high as my shoulders. It is full of gaps and holes; mosquitoes are circling. Still, it feels like security. I turn off my flashlight and pee, imagining I’m invisible.
When we return, we meet a man sitting in front of our hut, wearing rain boots and a slicker, a machete and ax at his side. Two men, husbands of program participants, have been assigned guard duty for the night.
Back inside, someone delivers foam pads for us. Somewhere in the village, a family is having a far-less-comfortable night’s sleep because we are here. The run supports twelve families in this small village. Is that why we’re getting special treatment? Or is this simply a Congolese welcome they would extend to any stranger stranded for the night?
We decide to sleep. I stretch a small cloth over the old foam pad, drape my sweater over my shoulders, and position myself for sleep. No one mentions the fact we wouldn’t be here right now if I hadn’t taken so long in the village earlier today. Instead, we listen to a squeaking bat climb around somewhere up above. Hortense assures us the animal is not inside with us. Kelly and I both know she’s lying, but we prefer her version of the story and decide to go with it.
Listening to the bat squeak, I wonder what the protocol is when someone fails to return from a day-outing in Congo. I picture our UNHCR hosts filing through the buffet, lounging in the living room, nursing beers. Would they notice? Would someone say, “Where are those girls?” Would they make phone calls? I imagine the call to headquarters in D.C., or worse, to my mom, igniting hysteria: They didn’t make it home.
“At least it will be a good story for the grandkids,” Kelly says from the opposite end of the room.
As though today’s events weren’t enough, I add in my best movie-trailer voice, “They clung to the tiny boat for their lives, as the gusty winds and waves threw them to and fro, bringing the young American girls ever-closer to the menacing rebel forces lurking beyond the peninsula’s looming cliffs. . . .” We bust up lau
ghing. Yeah. We’re fine. This is no big deal.
We spin embellished, melodramatic versions of the day’s events, and Kelly and I laugh ourselves to sleep, or at least the pretense of sleep.
With my camera bag propped under my head like a pillow, I wait all night for the knock everyone in eastern Congo dreads: the knock of a militia outside your door.
In the middle of the night, I hear men’s voices out front. I strain to hear. Someone is talking to the guards. Who else would come calling at this hour? It must be the Mai Mai. I brace myself, grasping the straps on my camera bag like the emergency strings on a parachute.
The voices disappear between intermittent rain and the foggy angst of an adrenaline-infused attempt at sleep. The knock never comes.
A soft, blue, early-morning light appears in the cracks under the door and around the windows. Hungry and edgy, I step out of the house. The guard still sits out front, awake. He’s been up all night.
As I wipe my eyes, adjusting to the light, the Mai Mai I met yesterday, the one who wanted me to film him, saunters by with a Kalashnikov strapped to his back. He greets me with the casual air of a neighborhood shopkeeper. “Muzungu, habari.”
White girl, good morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Long Drive Home
AT DAYLIGHT, we don’t waste any time. Fitina, along with a few others, escorts us to the boat without ceremony. We wave goodbye and I dash into the cabin in search of the rolls and peanuts I left on board last night. I’m hoping to quell my acid stomach and edgy bad mood induced by no sleep, no morning caffeine infusion, and no food. I find my plastic snack bag. Empty. The crew, who slept on board last night, devoured every bit of bread, every remaining peanut.
My empty stomach proves an asset. On the ride back across Lake Tanganyika, there are no raging storm clouds. It doesn’t even rain, but the wind is strong, splashing water over us, and waves swell dangerously close to the lip of the boat. Agitated by all the talk of sinking boats, I cling to the railing as if we are about to sink, calling on every in-flight, bad-turbulence ritual I’ve developed over the years. Measuring my breaths, muttering prayers, I run through a series of complex rationalizations, closing my eyes to imagine how much worse I would feel if I was being tossed around like this on an airplane. It’s not the best fear-control strategy since it leads me to recall the rationalization I always use on planes: It may feel scary in the air, but I am much more likely to die in a car crash or on a sinking boat.
