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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