All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [186]
I decided to engage him and try to lighten the mood with some playful questions. I asked him—in French—if nets were available in the private sector.
Yes, he said, but he had no money to buy them.
I scoffed. It is well documented that women in the developing world save and invest every pittance, while men waste money at shocking rates. This man, who was dressed in clean, matching, store-bought clothes, did not seem like a pauper.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I bet you have a little money from time to time for a smoke!”
“No!” he exclaimed.
“Beer, what about a glass of beer?”
Again, “No!”
“Ah, you have so much virtue! Such a clean life!” I said. “But … I bet from time to time you have a little money to spend on a woman!”
The room erupted into roars of laughter.
We debated the value of investing in prevention by spending half a franc on a net. “Wouldn’t it be wise,” I said, trying again, “to spend a little money for a net, so as to save all it costs when you’re sick? When the children are sick?” I gestured to the tiny, stifling room loaded with inert bodies. He had no response to that.
I didn’t think he had anything against buying products for himself. For example, he had a high-end mobile phone with the latest bells and whistles, to which he turned his attention when our conversation ended.
A lovely little girl sitting near the man’s son was eyeing me cautiously. She began to stare at me more openly, and I thought to take her picture and show her the image. Perhaps it would please her. I took my camera out of its bag and aimed it in her direction. The man leapt up in front of my camera, blocking me from photographing not just his boy, but everyone in the room.
I put the camera away but explained what I had meant to do and that it was a means of reaching out to a new friend. The man started mocking me. He took out his phone, scrolled through its zillion features, found the camera, and ran all over the room as if taking my picture with it. I hammed it up, posing from each angle to which he darted—voguing in the DRC. Everyone giggled, and the tension was slightly broken.
Finally it was time to go. I thanked everyone for the visit, wished them a good afternoon, a speedy recovery, and good health. I may have been wrong, but I walked to the car wondering not if but how many women and girls that man had raped.
Everywhere the car lurched, children with stunted growth stared. Once eye contact was made and a wave offered, their faces would joyously crinkle into smiles. They wore tattered Western clothes. I saw one little girl in a raggedy pink tutu. The sight of her still haunts me, the distorted Goma version of the precious little American girl who discovers ballet and won’t take her tutu off for weeks at a time.
Our next stop was the HEAL Africa hospital in downtown Goma, a 180-bed hospital that specializes in repairing fistulas and reconstructing the damaged genitals of rape survivors. There is so much demand—there are usually 150 women on the waiting list at any given time—that dozens have taken up residence outside and around the facility. I visited with some women who were squatting in the courtyard, washing their clothes or children in ubiquitous plastic tubs that serve many household purposes. Inside, patients were sitting blankly on beds. All looked unbelievably traumatized and dark. Most clutched babies, and a few had been made pregnant by their rapists. One was disfigured from having been burned, her otherwise night black skin raw and pink. A clutch of women in a doorway, mute and scared, stared at me when I wished them a good afternoon and said goodbye and thanked them for letting me visit.
It was like walking out of the gates of hell, and I was ashamed of myself for feeling relief at escaping, to put this place behind me and head for the Women for Women International compound.
In the midst of this ragged and seemingly doomed city is a walled courtyard filled with grass that is actually green, a garden that is actually tended, a building that is clean and proud. Zainab Salbi had notified the women in advance