A Thousand Sisters

by Lisa Shannon

  Wait. Wait. Wait. Let’s be clear. The militias responsible for the Rwandan genocide are still out there? Killing people?

  Oprah says, “They are hoping somebody in the world will hear their screams for help.”

  Could I be one of those people?

  Zainab Salbi, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Women for Women International, appears on the show. The articulate, thirtysomething Iraqi American woman suggests sponsoring a Congolese woman for $27 a month. Oprah concludes, in an unusually pointed tone, “Now that you know, you can’t pretend you didn’t hear it.”

  I’ ll do that. I’ ll sponsor a woman.

  The show ends. Ted shouts from the next room, “Would you like some tea?”

  The phone rings. I chat with my mom for a couple of minutes. I check email then initiate the daily discussion, calling to Ted in the next room. “Where should we have dinner?”

  Walking down the hall, heading for my tea, I remember the show. I know how this will go. My mind will drift to cash-flow charts scrawled on yellow legal pads. I’ll log onto modeling agency sites to see what new face might spark a shoot idea. I’ll move on. Weeks, months, maybe years will stack up, and I’ll think back to those faces, those numb eyes I saw on Oprah, and wonder, What if I had tried to help?

  I have to do it now, before it becomes one more thing I meant to do. I stop, turn around, go back to the computer, and sign up to sponsor two women. I am one of six thousand viewers to sign up as a sponsor because of Oprah’s show. THE WOMEN’S FACES don’t retreat, though. And I continue to feel like something is missing in my life. I’m hungry for something all my own, beyond Ted and Lisa, Inc. I want to do something, but I can’t think of what. There is this faint sense, somewhere in the background, of a person I haven’t seen in a long time: the person I always imagined I would become.

  I remember the day when I was eleven and my older sister, Marie, and I met my mom for lunch downtown, where she worked as a legal secretary.

  Afterward, Marie and I walked to the bus stop. I took the last available seat on the bench, next to an African American lady. Marie stood beside me as we waited. A few minutes later, a disheveled homeless man, probably drunk, approached. He asked, “Can you spare any change?”

  One of us responded. “Don’t have any, sorry.”

  He turned to the lady next to me, who gave him the same polite answer. As he turned to walk away, he sputtered none too quietly, “F——ing n——.”

  It was one of those moments when time slows, like during a traffic accident. My heart beat heavily. An impulse overtook me. I can’t just let that go. I jumped to my feet and blurted out, “You are a racist!”

  My skin burned. Everyone milling around the bus stop stood still. My sister was shocked. The lady was shocked. I was shocked. Yet I continued. “I don’t want to hear your garbage!” I said. “You have no right to judge people by the color of their skin. You need to watch your mouth!”

  The man looked at me for a moment, then turned around and shuffled away, murmuring, “Damned kids . . .”

  Then there was that time after a gym-class volleyball game, during my freshman year of high school, when I noticed a group of boys swarming around the net. It was another problem with Trevor Samson, the school geek. This time he was in a verbal sparring match with a popular kid, one of those who commuted to school from their prestigious, sprawling West Hills homes in spanking new Jeep Cherokees. I didn’t care that Trevor and I had a lot in common—we’d been in middle school together, and we came from the same part of town. We weren’t friends. I didn’t like him. He was a nerd’s nerd: obnoxious. Vulnerable. Pathetic.

  The confrontation heated up quickly as I edged in closer to see what was going on. No teachers were in sight. More than thirty boys, mostly of the West Hills breed, had gathered around and were egging on the aggressor. They wanted to see a fight. As people started pushing and violent threats were hurled, Trevor was saying all the wrong things—the kind of defensive garbage that only fuels the confrontation. Boys shouted from the crowd, “Kick his ass!”

  Without considering the social risk, I pushed my way past the pack and stepped between Trevor and Mr. Popular. I stuck my finger in Chip-or-Chador-Seth’s face and declared, “Stop!”

  A kid with the chiseled features and glowing tan that seem to come with a moneyed background shouted from the herd, “Shut up, you f—ing hippie bitch!”

  I stood my ground, squarely in front of Trevor, shielding him with the hard fact there is no social status to be gained from hitting a girl. The crowd disbanded.

  Later that year, I saw an ambulance in front of the school. Down the main corridor, covered in bandages, came Trevor; he was being wheeled out by paramedics. Someone had cornered him in the locker room and beaten his head against the cement floor until he collapsed, bloody. The teacher who found him called 911.

  A lot of us, when we were kids, couldn’t stand to see a starving stray cat. It’s not right, we’d think. Something has to be done. Then, somewhere between ages fifteen and twenty-five, the feeling fades. We shut up. We get “real.” We learn to mind our own business.

  I’ve been no exception.

  STILL, ABOUT A WEEK LATER on my last-day-of-my-twenties party, I abandon social graces and herd the conversation back to Congo at every turn. “No, you don’t understand. Four million people have died. Don’t you think we should do something? Let’s have a fundraising party or bake sale or walk. . . .”

  I am met with awkward silences, blank stares, and polite changes of subject.

  Despite attempts to map new terrain for myself, I wake up on the morning of my thirtieth birthday without a clue about where I am headed. Ted says he has a surprise for me. Whatever it is, I welcome the change.

  On my last birthday, we were in San Diego prepping a photo shoot. We spent hours in sprawling malls, driving from one chain store to another. We roamed the aisles at Target, Ross, and the Saks Fifth Avenue outlet, hunting for size 2 summer dresses and swimsuits. By the time evening came around, we abandoned plans to eat at the nicer strip mall restaurant, opting for rice and beans at the Baja Fresh across the parking lot to avoid the long lines outside the marginally fancier place. Back at the hotel, Ted presented me with my birthday treat—a card picked up while we were prop shopping. I stayed up late, wrapping empty boxes in flower-print and striped gift paper and tying them with inviting bows for the next day’s shoot, a fake child’s birthday celebration.

  So wherever I am headed to inaugurate my thirties, it’s already something better. When we get in the car, I have no idea: The beach? The mountains? The desert? The train? A drive? The airport? I’m not used to this lack of control, “Can you at least tell me when I’ll know?”

  “Soon,” Ted teases.

  When we pull up at the airport, I am just as lost, even after we check in for our flight to San Francisco.

  As we sit in the airport terminal, I spot a newsstand with the February issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, which has an article on women in Congo. Minutes later, in the crowded waiting area, I read the article, then its online expanded version, “Postcards from the Edge.” One woman describes a militia dragging her away to the forest to rape or kill her. She pleads for her life. One of the militia responds, “Even if I kill you, what would it matter? You are not human. You are like an animal. Even if I killed you, you would not be missed.”

  I decide to run.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lone Run

  I AM NOT A feel-the-burn kind of girl. I am a casual runner. Make that very casual.

  Years ago, my then roommate and I decided to train for our first marathon. We trained consistently for about a month, then scheduled our first fourteen-mile training run. We procrastinated until late afternoon, forgot our water, and set out in ninety-five-degree heat on an endlessly flat, sun-exposed cement path. (I still call it “The Corridor of Hell.”) Our chatter about frozen dessert could only keep us distracted for so long, and around mile ten, it trailed off into the sound
of panting and footsteps. My running buddy asked, “How are you doing over there?”

  “Exhausted,” I admitted.

  “Want to stop?” he asked.

  “Got your cell phone?”

  “No,” he said, then he pointed to a convenience store. “But I bet they have a pay phone there.”

  We called a cab to drive us back to the car. I collapsed in the back of the taxi, delighted to declare that giving up was one of the nicest things I’d ever done for myself. That marked the end of my marathon ambitions.

  Now, back from our San Francisco trip and over my midwinter bug, I find a five-mile run long, but doable. Though I’ve tried to enroll friends to join me in creating a run or walk for Congo’s women, not one of them has agreed. They don’t know anything about the conflict and aren’t interested in learning. So I’m doing this alone. Because everyone and their cousin’s boyfriend do 5Ks and marathons to raise funds for every cause imaginable, I need to take it a step further. I realize I need an effort that can’t be faked: something extreme. Something that will get my friends and family to see how seriously, how personally, I take the situation in Congo.

  So I decide to run 30.16 miles, the entire length of Wildwood Trail, a muddy, rugged forest trail which zigzags up and down Portland’s West Hills. My goal is to raise thirty-one sponsorships for Congolese women through Women for Women International, one sponsorship for every mile I run.

  I’m not sure I can do it. That’s why at first I keep it a secret.

  Everyday I hit the trail alone. Each week I go on the longest run of my life. I hire an ultrarunning coach and follow her training schedule to the letter. Ted drops me at the trailhead in the morning. While he works for hours, grocery shops, and does laundry, I pound miles of trail, getting smacked in the face with branches and spider webs. If I’m lucky, I brush them off my face or hair. Less lucky for me and the spider, I sometimes get a surprise high-protein snack.

  I REALLY NEED TO PEE. Never mind public toilets; I am ten miles from the nearest porta-potty. Without any other option, I climb off the trail to the most secluded, dense underbrush I can find and I squat. When I continue on my way, I run like a snail. I crawl, shuffle, wince, and spend miles trying to forget what I’m doing. I try all kinds of mental tricks, from counting my steps to reciting the Vedic prayer I sang to my dad when he died and composing letters to my future Congolese sisters. Anything to distract myself from the searing pain that shoots from my sciatic nerve. Anything to get through the remote stretches of the park where I don’t see another jogger for hours. When I reach the more populated section, everyone is faster than I am. As college girls in bushy-bushy ponytails bounce straight past me, I reassure myself: They are probably on mile two; I’m on mile eighteen.

  Another jogger rounds a corner and says, “Nice job!” as he passes. I mumble on an exhale, “Thanks,” and then get misty-eyed! No one ever warns you that on these long stretches, with the body’s resources beyond tapped, you get wiggy.

  On the final stretch, I feel like I’m running while I have the flu. I was overly optimistic about my pace again. Ted has been sitting dutifully in the car, waiting almost an hour for me to round the last curve of the trail and emerge, sweaty and exhausted. When I see him waiting with a cold bottle of water and a sandwich, I think, That’s love. My gait disintegrates to a crumpled, stiff shuffle back to the car.

  After a hard run like this, I collapse for the rest of the day, avoiding social functions if I can. If I can’t, I simply accept that forming complete sentences is not within my realm of possibility.

  Over months of training, my toenails fall off; some fall off twice. Bloody blisters, severe leg pain, and sores caused by chafing are daily companions. Thanks to the sun hitting my sweaty upper lip for miles, overpowering my sunscreen, my summer look has a special new accent: the mustache tan. Sooo sexy.

  It’s raining? I run anyway. I’m in pain? I run anyway. I’m tired? I’m busy? Ted and I have a fight? I run anyway. When it all seems too much, I try to picture the women living in eastern Congo. Their faces are always a blank, but I try to imagine what they are doing. They can’t pick up a cell phone and call a cab to take them out of the war zone. So I keep going.

  Though I signed up as a sponsor in January, it is April before I receive a packet from Women for Women with a postage stamp-size image of my first Congolese sister, Therese. The photo is dark, distant, and blurry. Her head is smaller than my pinky fingernail, and I can barely make out her face. She stands against a white wall, shoulders raised in discomfort, but her eyes are clear. Holding the photo feels like magic. Congo feels a little closer. Therese was born in 1970, she’s married, and she has no formal education. From now on, I picture her on my long runs and fantasize about what I might say one day if I met her in person.

  Four months into my training and two months before the run, it’s time for another reality check. I need to raise ten thousand dollars. I’ve never done any fundraising or public speaking. My only ideas are to send out a bulk email and to invite ten friends over for a screening of Oprah’s Congo segment. One of my best friends, Lana—a savvy Portland casting director known for her fundraising prowess—advises otherwise. “Don’t invite ten friends over to your place. Ask those ten friends to each invite ten friends to their houses.”

  I don’t have ten friends to ask, but six friends finally agree to it. I squirm at the prospect of asking people for money, so I keep it simple and take a no-pressure approach. I give a little talk, show the Oprah video clip, and ask people to sponsor a woman in Congo, pledge a flat donation, or just read more about the conflict.

  Another friend asks me, “What’s the hardest part? I bet it’s not the running.” She is right: It’s feeling alone. When I talk about Congo, it’s not just that people don’t know about the war, it’s that they assume there must be a reason no one is talking or doing anything about it. When I invite a thoughtful, politically aware friend out for coffee and try to convince her to host a house party, she questions the logic of my effort. “Why help women there, where it’s a total mess? Why not help other needy women someplace where it is stable?”

  I’m glad I’m wearing sunglasses because I’m so frustrated I choke up. I know my emotional argument won’t get me very far, but it’s all I’ve got. “Because they don’t feel like human beings.”

  This friend hosts a house party after all, where we raise eight sponsorships!

  I try to read more, but news on Congo is shockingly spare.

  There is one book I devour: Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, a haunting account of Congo’s colonial history. In the late nineteenth century, with the help of the adventure-crazed Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Belgium’s King Leopold staked out the Congo Free State as his own private colony. Under the auspices of science, religious conversion, and protection from Arab slave traders and from their own ignorance, he enslaved the Congolese people en masse to extract Congo’s treasure trove of natural resources, from rubber to ivory. Leopold used his plunder to build pleasure palaces on the French Riviera and bankroll the Paris shopping sprees of his teenage mistress, who once boasted of spending three million francs at one dress shop. During King Leopold’s thirty-year rule, the population of Congo was cut in half, with a staggering net loss of ten million people. Novelist Joseph Conrad labeled it “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.”

  Yet in a strange and inspiring turn, the first major international human rights movement was launched against Leopold’s oppressive regime by a modest English shipping clerk with no greater credential or connection to Congo than having read the subtext of the shipping records. Endless shipments of rubber and other natural resources were being imported from Congo, while only guns and soldiers were being exported back. That could only mean one thing, he guessed: slavery. Armed with the evidence, E. D. Morel recruited citizens and dignitaries from around the world and led the charge to end Leopold’s brutal treatment of native people. His campai
gn led to the handover of the Congo Free State from King Leopold to the government of Belgium in 1908. It remained a colony until 1960, when it was granted independence.

  E. D. Morel’s story is a shot of pure inspiration, especially because I’ve been combing the Internet, searching for any other grassroots folks working for Congo. While the movement to end the violence in Darfur has gained momentum by mobilizing religious groups, students, moms, movie stars, journalists, and big news organizations, as far as I can see, the field for helping the people of Congo is painfully empty.

  AT THE END of my first twenty-two-mile training run, Ted greets me with the camera for a spontaneous photo shoot. Imagine how beautiful I look after twenty-two miles, red-faced, my body caked with salt. But we need a picture for The Oregonian. They have responded to my mom’s pitch to do a feature article on my run. It is the only story they will publish on the Congo in 2005. After it runs, checks from people I’ve never met begin to appear in the mailbox, in amounts from US$5 to US$500.

  Eventually I receive my first letter from Therese. It is written in Swahili and accompanied by a version that has been translated into English by Women for Women International’s Congo staff.

  Dear Sister,

  Hello! I’m happy to write to you today. I’m happy with the $10 you are sending me. I’m using $5 of it in selling charcoals and $3 a chicken to raise as well as $ for medical care. I’m making a profit of $2 through my activity.

  My husband was taken to the bush by the Interahamwe soldiers.

  I don’t have much to say.

  Your friend,

  Therese

  The worn paper filled with Swahili cursive makes everything I’m running for suddenly feel concrete.