A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [32]
Marie disappears for a minute, returning with a photo book, the home-designed kind printed at Kinko’s, apparently made for her by “American friends.” Someone in the United States heard about her situation and sponsored her to come to the States for treatment, accompanied by her grandmother. A church? A family? Someone in Texas? I can’t tell.
I flip through the pictures of Marie in someone’s suburban home, her grandmother in an American kitchen, Marie in the hospital. She stayed for months, undergoing multiple surgeries and receiving the highest standard of care as they rebuilt her insides.
A year after her return to Congo, she is back in the hospital with complications. The American operations were unsuccessful. Everyone knows why she is here. I don’t ask her any more questions.
A haunting silence hangs in the fistula ward, like the gauzy netting that hovers above each patient. In the dingy yellow room with twelve basic metal hospital beds, women lie flat, shrouded in white sheets that they pull up to their chins. Only their heads peek out. They are recovering from fistula surgery and watching us with a reserved curiosity.
The nurse prompts me, “Would you like to say something to them?”
I look over at Kelly, who motions for me to take the lead. Even with hundreds of letters to my sisters behind me, now that I’m facing a room full of women who have been tortured, I feel impossibly insignificant. I scramble, trying to remember the speeches I rehearsed mentally on all of those long training runs.
There is no choice but to stumble through whatever bits and pieces come to mind. I tell them about what we’ve done through Run for Congo Women, trying to get to resilience and beauty and inspiration, the part about them being my heroes. “All of you . . .”
I can’t. I am at a loss. Blank.
And worse, I choke. I start to cry.
I have their attention now. They sit up, watching me keenly.
I can’t say anything else.
The nurse says something to them.
I ask the translator what the nurse just said.
“The nurse told them, ‘She feels very sorry for you.’”
Not heroes. Not beauty. Not resilience. Pity. The opposite of what I wanted to say.
The nurse coaxes them into a weak round of applause. Should I take a bow?
I vow that I will not cry in Congo again.
We are ushered into the open warehouse space that serves as the hospital activity center, where hundreds of women are crammed along the tables like sardines. They form a beautiful mosaic of headscarves and colorful dresses, yet it feels like a holding pen on a factory farm. I recognize it from Lisa Jackson’s film, in the scene where she asked, “They were all raped?” Her guide responded, “All of them.”
The nurse explains the program. “Each day, they start with prayer and Christian songs. Then they are taught literacy and numeracy and different skills.” She holds up plastic bags and mats the women weave in fluorescent yellow, pink, and orange. “They sell them. They sew as well. Before they had any activities, they were very, very sad. Many psychological problems. You would find them sitting off to the side, just weeping. But when they are doing this activity, they seem to be very happy—very pleased.”
I stare at the viewfinder on the camera, watching them. Journalists have made a habit of filing in and paying their respects here at this warehouse. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear my friend Anne’s warning: “So many journalists show up in Congo saying, ‘Show me the raped women!’ Be human about it. Be a woman about it.”
They know they are being studied. I wonder if they have agreed to be filmed, and how often they are asked. Do they feel herded, transparent, with their deepest humiliation on broad display, simply by virtue of sitting in this warehouse? I scan their eyes. They look indignant, numb, suspicious, exhausted, angry, bored, defensive . . . but pleased? I don’t see it.
I want to prep my speech