A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [106]
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.”
So it begins.
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.”
Indeed. I need you first too.
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?