A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [53]
They also yell, “Muzungu!”
“What does muzungu mean?” I ask.
“White person,” Kelly says.
“Sometimes you can also call a Congolese a muzungu,” Hortense adds.
“What is a Congolese muzungu like?” I say.
“They are an important person like your boss,” she says. “Someone who will take care of you, give you money.”
When we are outside the city of Uvira, we pass our first militia. The Mai Mai attempt to flag us down for a lift. Fortunately, this is a common issue with a common solution. All charitable vehicles display a special sticker—a gun with a red X through it, like a No Smoking sign, but with a gun instead of cigarette. It is a universal symbol indicating that the vehicle is for humanitarians only. No guns, and hence no militias, on board. It is surprisingly well respected. We breeze straight past the hitchhikers. Within a few miles, I lose count there are so many Mai Mai around. We make it into a road trip game, watching out for them like wildlife, trying to guess who is Mai Mai and who is Congolese Army.
“What about that one?” I ask.
Maurice and Hortense alternately answer, “Congolese Army.”
“What about those guys?”
“Mai Mai.”
I don’t have a clue as to how they can tell the difference. To me, they look exactly the same. You could argue the Mai Mai look a little scruffier and occasionally wear red, but the Congolese Army is pretty ragtag too. Even after passing more than fifty Mai Mai, I still can’t tell which is which.
We pull up to a gas station in Uvira, about halfway to Baraka. It’s already past four in the afternoon. The fill-up takes forever. Hortense chats on the phone.
My cell phone is out of range, and I can’t say I’m sorry. My mom has been calling twice a day, giving me anxiety-ridden pep talks, as much to calm herself as to soothe me. I’ve tried to keep my reports lightweight and clean, partly for her peace of mind, but also because she takes notes and likes to broadcast “what Lisa said,” peppered with editorial embellishments, to the whole Run for Congo Women email list.
Hortense approaches Kelly and me with some news. “The UN advises no travel after dark,” she says. “We will need to spend the night here and make the rest of the journey in the morning.”
We check into a grossly worn-down motel with open corridors and balconies. I bypass the Presidential Suite, with its crusty patchwork carpet, for a smaller, more basic room. I peek out of the sliding glass doors to the panoramic view of Lake Tanganyika, the longest lake in Africa, which is swarming with mosquitoes. I retreat and lock the sliding glass doors. Double check the locks. Triple check the locks.
I lug my camera bag onto the bed, tuck in my mosquito net, snuggle up to my prized equipment, and spend the night spooning my camera bag.
I dream that a man breaks into the room and looms over me in my bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Separate Peace
I OVERSLEEP. By the time I scramble to pull it together, the others have been waiting for me outside for quite some time. Today is my thirty-second birthday.
Outside of Baraka, the landscape tells the story of the past decade. It’s obvious the region was abandoned for years. Villages are mostly ruins, their mud-brick huts, roofless and crumbling, are overgrown with weeds. Hortense says, “In the next village, there were only four civilian families left.”
We slow down as we drive through a village. I notice a large cement slab, painted with a mural: huts burning, soldiers hacking people with machetes. It reads: MASSACRE DE MAKOBOLA/BANWE, 20/12/1998.
Hortense points toward the hills and says, “They buried them up there.”
We pull off the main road and drive up narrow grass tracks. In a clearing above the village, a stone monument marks the site. A local villager tells us the story, which Hortense translates: “People hid along the waterways to escape war. Then those people came and called