A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [83]
MY CHEST TIGHTENS as we follow Major Vikram and Major Kaycee’s UN SUV down an increasingly narrow dirt road. We chew clay-dust and hug blind curves for ten kilometers up the road to Kaniola.
Yes, Kaniola. The home village one of my sisters was talking about when she commented, “If it was safe to go back home, do you think we would accept to suffer in Bukavu?” The home village Generose swears she will never return to. The village where people are regularly burned alive in their houses.
Fear seeps through my body like a slow adrenaline drip. With every poverty-porn stereotype floating in my mind, I picture charred and barren hills, fresh graves lining the pathways, morbid sounds in the air, decrepit people in rags with smoke slowly rising around them, like refugees in the mist. I ask Maurice for reassurance. “Do you really think this is safe?”
I don’t know why I ask. By now, I should know the answer: Everything is safe to the Congolese. Maurice is predictably soothing. “Oh, yes. Safe. The Interahamwe only attack here maybe twice a week.”
The UN vehicle in front of us pulls over at a rusty, bullet-riddled road sign. Locals are gathered around and children lug badly beaten-up, five-gallon water jugs. The UN translator accompanying the majors asks for directions while Major Kaycee motions for me to get out.
As I emerge from my unmarked SUV, villagers stare blankly. An old man on crutches watches us suspiciously. Who can blame them? We must be quite a sight and, frankly, hard to place, with the major in combat boots and camouflage, Major Vikram in jeans, a sporty red T-shirt, sunglasses, and tennis shoes (he’s dressed more for a casual day at a suburban shopping mall or football match), and me in a long skirt and flip-flops.
I’m not sure which getup will provide us more protection. Nonthreatening, feminine skirt? Major Vikram’s sporty casual? Or Major Kaycee’s official uniform? I love his pale blue UN cap and the UN ID tag that hangs around his neck; they’re the only real protection we’ve got in the event we come across any evil-doers. We do not have guns.
I follow the majors down a narrow winding path, between a few compounds lined with tropical-plant fences and around a couple of blind corners, then I get my first glimpse of the valley. Some long-buried belief comes into play, lulling me into a sense of security: Bad things happen only on cold and stormy nights with howling, ominous winds. Or in dead-of-Africa-night, during the silent hours that one might expect to be filled with panic and bloodshed.
Bad things can’t possibly happen during the day—or in a place—like this. I look over the valley and see that Kaniola is nothing like I’ve pictured. “It’s so beautiful,” I say, stunned.
Major Vikram concurs. “Too beautiful.”
Yes, Major Vikram, it is too beautiful. These aren’t the small undulating hills of Rwanda, but broad, grand hills with room to breathe. Some are solid, saturated green; others are dotted with round, thatch-roofed mud huts or shaggy igloo-shaped straw huts that might be mistaken for haystacks. I see banana patches. Tidy, sweet rows of cabbages. Sunflowers. Water flowing in gentle streams. Voices of children drifting in the breeze. Birds, who apparently failed to read the memo titled Kaniola: Very, Very Dangerous Place, chirp away. The Kaniola valley is mythic-pretty.
Major Kaycee points across a valley to the hills, or perhaps the mountains, just beyond. “That is the hamlet which was attacked. Maybe a twenty-minute walk.”
If you were born here, you wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, I don’t know if I want to leave. I wonder what a little African compound on the cusp of Kaniola goes for these days. Do they have building codes? Would the village elders allow a permanent structure? Would they welcome a foreigner among them? We’d have to carry supplies in on this path to the far side of the valley, to those grass-covered hills, where I could have a compound all my own, perched on a tiny hilltop. I could grow old and someday say, “I had a farm in Africa . . .”
“You see those forested