All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [180]
“Rape is contagious,” she said. “And where it has become an epidemic, it has to be treated like a disease.” In the eastern DRC, she said, punctuating her points with jabs of her finger, literally hundreds of thousands of women had been raped since the mid-1990s, and the practice has become ingrained in the culture. The epidemic began during the Rwandan genocide and spilled across the border with the fleeing Hutu fanatics. Before long, the militias regrouped as a rebel army, which began terrorizing the Congolese and using refugee camps to stage raids into Rwanda. In 1996, Paul Kagame’s army invaded the eastern Congo to flush out the Hutu militants, while backing a rebel Congolese force to oust that country’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. It’s a long and complex story, but the invasion touched off what is known as “Africa’s world war,” with several far-flung nations sending troops to join the fight over control of the DRC. Much of the DRC is fairly peaceful now, but the war rages on in the easternmost provinces between various armed militias and government troops. Along the way, an estimated five million people have died in a conflict that few Westerners were even aware was happening. Zainab explained that this war, like all wars, has become about the economy and land and exploiting natural resources. And rape, as a weapon to terrorize and coerce civilian populations, has become a daily occurrence.
Zainab told me that WFWI, which has an extensive program to help the women of Rwanda, arrived in the DRC in 2004 to launch a multitiered program of direct aid and emotional support, rights awareness and leadership education, vocational skills training and income-generation support. So far it has helped eight thousand women in the conflict zone. But Zainab realized that any gains for women would be short-lived without reeducating men. So WFWI has started up leadership schools to change the behavior of Congolese men, to train them how to respect women’s rights, and to educate them in the value of women’s work in the development of communities and nations.
“It’s fascinating, Ashley!” said Zainab in her British-inflected English. “You must see our programs there.”
I decided on the spot that I had to check this out for myself—how cool would that be, after having been a WFWI sponsor to my sisters in Nigeria for three years? I called Kate and Marshall and told them I would no longer be joining them on a trek to visit the famous mountain gorillas in the Parc National des Volcans. Instead I wanted to slip across the border to the town of Goma to visit Zainab’s projects, along with some PSI partner programs. Dario was not amused when I told him, but I assured him that Papa Jack and Marshall would be with me and that Goma was said to be stable these days, with a large UN presence. The gorillas, much as I love them, would have to wait.
Downstairs at what would be healing dinner, rich with new friendships, Zainab introduced me first to the great Rwandan senator Aloisea Inyumba, who hugged me warmly. President Kagame’s legislature and ministerial posts are loaded with capable women, the highest female participation anywhere in the world, but Aloisea is a standout. In 1994, after he stopped the genocide, Kagame made her Minister of Family, Gender, and Social Affairs. Her job was to oversee the burial of the dead, resettlement of refugees, and placement in homes for the country’s five hundred thousand orphans. Her solution: Everyone must take in a child, and that meant Hutus raising Tutsi children (Gandhi would heartily agree). It was a first step toward reconciliation. Later, she was put in charge of one of the biggest challenges of all: finding a just punishment for the perpetrators of genocide living in Rwanda. Rather than seeking revenge, the Tutsis in charge of the country wanted to find a way for everyone to live together again in peace. When she took the job as head of the Unity and Reconciliation Commission in 2000, the fragile prison system was clogged with low-level génocidaires