A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [57]
“What you say is too complex for them,” she says. “Keep it simple. Just say, ‘Your sisters love you. You’re good dancers.’ Stuff like that.”
I am wearing thin. I hang back during the second procession, focusing on the children who have joined in. I touch their clean-shaven heads or hold their hands, which elicits smiles. When we reach the center, I slip to the sidelines and let Kelly take center stage.
I scan the crowd for Fitina, or anyone in bright pink, on the off chance she would wear the same headscarf and top shown in the photo that is stapled to my paperwork. I can never pick out my sisters in these crowds.
Then a heavyset woman lumbers up the path, wearing a bright pink headscarf and top. It is Fitina! She looks exactly like she does in her photo.
Our twelve sisters give stiff before-and-after speeches that feel more like testimonies. I ask Fitina to stay behind.
She sits alone on a wooden bench. I join her and pull out my notebook. “Mama, this is the intake form I received about you. Is it true you have had seven children die?”
Fitina looks a bit lost, but she searches her memory, counting aloud. “Nine . . . Ten . . . Ten children have died.”
“How many children are living?”
“Five.”
“I would like to visit your home and talk with you more.”
Hortense is already anxious about time. “Make it quick. The port closes at dark.”
It is late afternoon, but I don’t care. I want to talk with Fitina. Nothing else is on my radar.
Kelly and Hortense enjoy a traditional Congolese feast of fu-fu (a variation on cream of wheat), greens, and meat, while Maurice and I slip away to follow Fitina through the village. Villagers stare at a polite distance as we pass compounds of brick huts with thatched roofs and gardens lined with rickety homemade stick-fences. Cooking smoke is rising in the late afternoon sun.
Fitina leads us to her lakefront property on the far side of the village. Her family’s mud hut is flanked with pecking chickens; sardines are laid out to dry on warped metal sheets. The hut sits next to an empty plot where their former house stood before a militia burned it to nothing. Now the same land bears eggplant and vegetables with African names I can’t follow. For a brief moment, I picture this plot in an alternate universe, as a perfect spot for a modern prefab home, straight from the pages of Dwell magazine.
A neighbor laughs and teases Fitina; she is trying to get in on the action. Children linger. I won’t be able to talk with Fitina privately.
A few minutes later, we head back through the village with a troop of children escorting us like bodyguards. British radio emanates from one of the huts. I look up towards the forested hills. Mai Mai are out there somewhere, threatening to attack.
“Do you feel embarrassed?” I ask Fitina, hoping she is okay with being followed around by an American who is flashing an expensive camera.
We round a corner. Three men with guns stand in our path.
Uh. . . .
I go blank with shock.
The men meander past us, and one sizes me up. I glance at them, catching their backwards glances at me. They are young and have mismatched uniforms. One wears a bright yellow beret. Their weapons look second-rate. I ask Maurice under my breath, “Are they Congolese army?”
“Um . . . yes.”
Then we’re fine, I reassure myself.
I turn around and see another soldier standing in front of a hut with an older couple. He stares at me and beckons.
“What did he say?” I ask Maurice.
“He wants you to film him.”
Under other circumstances, I would probably find this amusing, a scene straight out of the movie Blood Diamond. Everyone’s a sucker for the camera! Instead, I move slowly, like someone approaching a strange, haggard dog that’s been found roaming the streets. I don’t know if he bites.
I’m tense, fumbling. “You want me to film you?”
He’s intrigued, but not friendly. He knows he’s in control. I flip around the viewer so he can see himself, an attempt to