All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [187]
We sat together for hours, each woman taking her turn to stand before her sisters and me, sharing her life story. They were each so incredibly beautiful! The eyes, the cheekbones, the lips—but mostly their spirits. They wore traditional, colorful dresses, and I so wanted to learn to wrap a foulard (head scarf) like that! WFWI teaches appressed, victimized, poor women to bathe, to feed themselves and in fact produce and sell food to others, to read, count, and write, and offers them parenting skills, social skills, money skills, a trade. Almost as important, it then gives them a network of sisters to rely on for support. Each woman is in contact with her American sponsor, who donates $27 per month—less than $1 a day—to pay for her counseling and training. All of the women had been in the program for about one year and would soon graduate. Having sponsored in WFWI for three years, I was familiar with the radical improvements self-described in a sister’s entry and exit interviews.
This is what their stories that afternoon sounded like to me:
I am an orphan, my husband was killed, my three sons were killed, I could not read, I could not write, I could not count, I lived like an animal, I have thirteen children, I have ten children, I am a widow, I am a refugee, I fled with nothing, not even a cup, I was half-mad, I was crazy, I was a corpse … People in the street were afraid of me, I begged, I scavenged in the dump, I treated my children like animals, my husband went to other women, my husband’s people pushed me from our home when he died, I was run off the land, I was cheated because I did not know how to sign my name, my children died, I knew nothing, I was filthy, I smelled bad, I came to this area to escape violence, I carried loads with my body to earn money for food, I starved, I had nowhere to go, I was dead, I was in a constant panic, I lived in terror, I abused everyone around me, I was in a rage, I was abandoned …
And then, the transfiguration:
I am the happiest woman in the world, I am so blessed, I know my rights, women have rights. I learned to read, I learned to write, I received a small loan to buy fabric, I sew now to earn a decent living, I can calculate my profit so I can manage my finances, I save a bit and I use my capital to expand my business, I learned about nutrition, I know how to eat, look at me I am clean, I use soap, I use lotion, my children eat three meals a day, my husband and I are partners now, I have a voice, I keep my pamphlet that describes my rights in my pocket, it is with me at all times, I was able to save enough to buy a small plot of land, I built my home, my soul opened up, a new woman was born inside of me …
Their sacred narratives were mind-blowing, each woman a Congolese Lazarus, nothing short of a miracle. As we listened, members of the group made clucking and groaning noises of recognition and would burst into applause at a particularly heightened expression of empowerment.
When the entire group finished, we talked in more detail about sexual exploitation, rape, HIV, malaria, and unsafe drinking water. Each of these women had had malaria, yet strangely, not a single one had slept under a net last night. Half had babies die from it. A few knew their HIV status, and oddly, only one was using modern birth control.
During this roundtable dialogue, I was able to complement WFWI’s extraordinary work by sharing reproductive health, safe water, and malaria lessons with them. We talked about injectable birth control as long-lasting and safe, but how they needed to use a condom each time to protect from HIV. Then I asked if they would be willing to make a commitment to buy long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
“Imagine how you would feel,” I said, “if you had to write your sponsor that you had missed your WFWI graduation with a case of malaria!” Each woman raised her hand and said she