A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [55]
Hortense shrugs. “They are hiding themselves.”
They stare at me blankly. Okay, that was tacky and insensitive. I shouldn’t have asked such a personal question in a public survey. I try to rectify it, take them off the defensive. “In America, we believe if a woman is raped, it is never her fault. She has nothing to be ashamed of. So if any of you know someone who has been through this, I hope you will support her and let her know she didn’t do anything wrong.”
I’m ready to call it a failed experiment. I’ll just leave it alone.
We begin with “The trouble I got during war.”
Like most groups I have met with, these women are open about violent attacks. But an hour or so into our meeting, no one has mentioned rape. We land on the participant who led the singing earlier. She shifts on the edge of her wooden bench and speaks with a defiant tone. Even with the language barrier, I can tell by the others’ body language—they are folding their arms, rolling their eyes, or adjusting their dresses—they find her brash. Hortense translates. “When you asked about it earlier, we were not honest. Even if the others are hiding themselves, we were all raped. All of us.”
She continues with her story, motioning to her lap, slamming her fist between her legs, as she describes the attack. Some snicker with discomfort.
I thank her profusely for her courage to speak up and tell her story.
Later, others open up.
“They treated us the way they wanted. They met us in houses. They did what they needed.”
“When in the field, they were beating us with sticks, chasing us, doing whatever they were doing, downgrading us through raping.”
“They obliged my husband to have sex with my daughter. He refused. They killed him immediately.”
“All of my clothes, including my underwear, were torn to shreds.”
“My womb was seriously destroyed.”
“They tried to make my older brother rape me. He refused and was killed. So they raped me. They took my husband and raped him. He died from that incident.”
“We were sleeping in water, in a marsh, with so many mosquitoes. It was so cold. The FDD came at night. They made so much trouble. They took all our clothes. I was eight months pregnant, standing naked in front of my daughters and my husband. They inserted money and did the same to my daughters who were twelve and fifteen. They raped me. My husband ran away. We were left naked. I fell ill. I didn’t know where he was. People in the village found me naked in the forest. They took me to the hospital, but there was no one there. They took me to Lake Tanganyika, where they put me on the boat to Tanzania. I don’t know where my husband was. I delivered a baby there. The girl is six years old today. I came back in April. I found my husband, now old and poor.”
I ask, “How many of you have been attacked since you returned from refugee camps?”
About half raise their hands. A woman in her thirties explains, “Peace has not really been recovered. They are still raping women. When we go to our farms, we are stopped on the way to the fields and raped. Especially in the bush. In the center of Baraka, no. But when we go to the fields . . . it’s like me with my age, they ask me to stop.”
Another woman adds, “It was said the war ended, we were called back here. But since being back we had an attack from FDD.”
“Who has raped you since you returned?”
They all chime together: “FDD.”
This confuses me. The UN staff verified there are no longer foreign militias in the area, including FDD. I recall Maurice explaining, “A Congolese woman can never say she was attacked by another Congolese. It is not culturally acceptable. It is not safe.”
I think of the main drag running through Baraka, the armed young men standing idly on every corner, the innumerable Mai Mai along roadsides. The Congolese Army is in large part