A Thousand Sisters

by Lisa Shannon

  I get up to leave. As I’m heading for the door, his mom asks, “What about sugar for my tea?”

  I stop cold and look back at her, fed up with the muzungu routine. “You can live without sugar.” Without waiting for the translation, I leave and don’t look back.

  HORTENSE CALLS. Zainab, Alice, and Christine will arrive at any time. The staff has cleared the compound completely, but my first group of sisters (“Money! More money!”) showed up three hours ago hoping for one last goodbye celebration. They refuse to leave.

  We beeline it over there, load the women and babies ten at a time into the SUV, and take them to the vocation skills center down the road in the last harried minutes. On the main road, we pass the Women for Women SUV carrying Zainab and Alice.

  At the skills center, we settle in and relax, drinking sodas. I notice I’m sitting across from little Lisa, so I greet her. The sister next to her holds a baby as well, her hair braided with pink ties and barrettes. “Her name is Lisa too,” the mother says. Two little Lisas! I wonder how many Congolese babies are out there sporting American names like Ashley and Deborah because their mom was sponsored when she was pregnant.

  Another sister presents me with her newborn. “I told you, if I deliver the baby while you are here, you will name the baby.”

  I’ve never had plans for children, so baby names have never been on my mind. I draw a complete blank. I stall. “Can I hold him?”

  She hands him to me, wrapped in blankets. Yep, he looks brand-spanking-new, his face still pale and wrinkly. I ask her, “What do you hope he will be like?”

  “Strong, responsible, someone who supports the family.”

  No pressure there. I stare at the little guy, at a loss. Strong, responsible . . . a lightbulb goes on. “I have an idea, but it’s not going to sound like a Congolese name,” I say. They all laugh.

  “My father was strong and responsible.”

  They burst into applause, saying “Yes!” and “Amen!”

  “My father’s name was S-T-E-W-A-R-T. Stewart.”

  They look puzzled. They all try to rehearse it. It does not roll off the Swahili-speaking tongue. “Stu-ad. Stu-at.”

  The new mom tries to write it on her hand, but I jump in. “I’ll write it.”

  I hand the baby back. They cheer, laughing, as I write STEWART in block letters on Mom’s palm. She looks skeptical. “He was a loving, compassionate man,” I tell her. “He worked with people to heal their war trauma.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to change the name?” I ask, hoping my smile gives her visible permission to name her baby anything she pleases.

  “I will keep the name.”

  They present me with a carefully wrapped gift. One woman, standing at my side, says, “We have nothing to give you as a present. But what we can do is thank and thank and thank you for what you did for us. May God bless you and increase your power to give and to give and to give and to give.”

  They present me with a woodcarving, a sculpture of a woman with a baby strapped to her back. One woman interprets it for me. “This is your image as Mama Congo. We are like your babies.”

  The expression of familial love is so sweet. I smile and thank them.

  But the metaphor lands hard. I don’t want to be their mother. Oh, how I wish we could let this “mama” stuff go. I have grown tired of the muzungu role. I just want to be their friend.

  NOELLA HAS HAUNTED me for weeks. I’ve pictured her at the child soldier center, alone with all those boys. After I say goodbye to my sisters, I decide to make good on a promise I’ve made to BVES boys every time we’ve run into them on Bukavu’s main road (which has been often). I pick up gobs of chocolate and soda, the sort of thing I would never feed kids at home, and head over to the center.

  “Shanella!” They’re happy to see me. Looks like we’re buddies now. Luc is bright eyed, proud to be one of the boys now, and he can’t be bothered with his sister. While the boys are feasting away on the treats, I slip away with Noella to her room. Two new girls have joined the center and share her room, but they are sharp edged and much older. They clear the space so I can talk to Noella alone. I present her with a matching, green-floral-print skirt and blouse. She puts it on and smiles. But her eyes are heavy. I instantly feel silly bringing her a trinket present, especially one that reminds her she’s a cute little girl in a place where it is her greatest liability. I take her photo in the pretty outfit, which is barely large enough for her. It only fits when she stands still; every slight move of her arms pulls at the buttons or makes a sliver of her tummy protrude.

  I look out the window, picturing her on her trips to the bathroom. Does a staff member escort her there? Certainly not. I hope she doesn’t wear that dress.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” I say. “It must be difficult for you here, the only girl with so many boys. Are you okay?”

  She struggles to say something back, muttering, “It is no place for a little girl.”

  I’m at a loss. I look in her eyes, and struggle for any words of encouragement I can muster. “I don’t know what it’s like for you here. But I do know that whatever happens, there is a place inside you all yours, that no one can touch. Do you understand?”

  Maurice explains to Serge, who translates to the girl. I suspect the translation wasn’t exact. “What did he say?”

  Serge says, “I told her, ‘sometimes it’s better to forget.’”

  “That’s not what I said,” I tell him. “I would never say that to a child.”

  They look at me patiently, waiting for my anger to pass.

  “Tell her that’s not what I said. Tell her what I really said.”

  Maurice and Serge smile; Serge doesn’t translate.

  As we drive to the outskirts of town, my thoughts are flying like a fast-moving tennis match. Why didn’t I offer to drive Noella and Luc to Rwanda myself?

  International law.

  Or take her with me back to Orchid. I could have been her foster mom for at least a while.

  It’s not your place.

  Not my place? I could have pushed Murhabazi to place her somewhere safe.

  You did bring it up to him. He said not to worry.

  How stupid I was to listen. I could have protected her. I’m a grown-up. And I knew. I knew.

  You did what you could. It wasn’t your role. . . .

  We park the car and start walking, winding our way past an abandoned warehouse, up the eroded paths on a hillside overlooking Lake Kivu, to check in with another sister who has sick kids. As we pass women carrying loads up the hill, I marvel at their efforts. If they catch me looking, I smile and extend a “Jambo Mama!” Some manage a vague smile under the weight cutting into their foreheads. But occasionally, one will flash a big smile and “Jambo” back, a reminder there is a woman under that load just waiting to be seen. When I pass one woman who gives me such a smile, I take it as an invitation for friendship. “It looks heavy!” I say. “You must be very strong.”

  She pauses to wait for the translation.

  “Ah. Ndiyo. Yes. Heavy.”

  “Is it okay? Are you okay carrying it?”

  I don’t know why I ask questions like this. Out of concern, I suppose. What is she going to say, No?

  She smiles weakly.

  I wonder how heavy it is. I want to help her. On an impulse, I say, “Why don’t you let me take it. Let me carry it for you a while.”

  Maurice and my new friend laugh. “It is not possible.”

  But I love a challenge and I want to help, so I persist. “No. I’m serious. Let me take it.”

  Maurice is gentle but firm. “You will hurt yourself.”

  A few others have stopped to watch the spectacle. “Maurice, I can run thirty miles,” I tell him. “I’m fit. Ask her if I can take it for a bit. I want to help her.”

  “Lisa,” he says, “you will break your back.”

  But I have already started to move in on the load. She turns it towards me in acquies
cence. I place my hands underneath her load, which is flour of some description. By the size of it, I guess it is about a hundred pounds. I try to lift it off her back. I cannot lift it one inch. It’s that heavy. I reposition myself, remembering to lift with my legs. I muster all my strength and try again. It doesn’t budge.

  My new friend and I look at each other with resignation. She still smiles, amused, but struggling to hold the weight. Embarrassed for offering help I can’t deliver, I offer the obvious explanation. “I want to help, but you are stronger than I am.”

  We continue up the hill. Our moderate pace quickly leaves her behind, struggling step by step with her load. I walk in silence the rest of the way up the hill, contemplating the visit and the last few years. How I’ve let my business slide. How I’ve traveled here to run around foolishly . . . for what? Most NGOs haven’t taken me seriously enough to even return my phone calls.

  Maurice reads my pensive mood and attempts to encourage me. “I’ve never met anyone like you before, Lisa.”

  I try to hide the welling tears. Maurice can see he’s getting to me, so he continues, “You make me want to do something else with my life. I want to work helping other people.”

  It’s not that I’m not touched. It’s that his praise rings painfully untrue. I think back on the last five weeks: the endless hours at the hospital, the cheerleader speeches, driving up and down South Kivu. All the time, doing nothing but, what, collecting stories? Hugging women? Silly stunts. Paltry presents. Who am I against Congo? I feel ridiculous; my hurling antics at this country’s problems has been like tossing teaspoons of water on a raging fire.

  I AM BACK ON the terrace at Orchid, having a late-afternoon tea, when Zainab enters. I met her once, in D.C., but I’m not sure she’ll recognize me. Despite all the public speaking, I’m often shy and reserved when I meet new people, especially those I greatly respect. Zainab is certainly one of those people. She glances at me, so I wave hello.

  “Oh—I didn’t recognize you!” she says and gives me a big hug.

  Ebullient as ever, gracious to her core, she joins me for tea and a long talk, which meanders from topics like self-care—an essential ingredient to the work—to her childhood in Iraq. She explains that in Iraq they have women who attend funerals with the specific function of coaxing the grieving to cry. Zainab says she is like one of those women, only she coaxes women to tell their stories. Not only in war zones, but even after public talks in America, women often approach her and spill their life histories.

  “Congo,” she says, “is one of my favorite places on earth. You have the worst of humanity and the best of humanity. It’s raw, but it is real.”

  Alice and her filmmaker friend Prathiba join us. Alice is much what I have imagined. In gray dreadlocks and loose-fitting, natural clothing, she is quiet and has a piercing gaze that makes me feel transparent. Even if I met Alice Walker poolside following a month-long relaxation retreat at a high-end spa, I would be inclined to not say much. But under the wear of Congo, I clam up and just observe. I’ve never spent time around this breed of women: self-possessed, comfortable in their skin, nothing put on, nothing to prove. I cannot imagine her spending a moment on anything petty. She has the aura of a visionary.

  They invite me along for dinner. Alice says little through our meal. I’m quiet too, aside from a comment about my decision to not cry around Congolese women. At the end of the meal, Alice looks at me directly and, as though confirming that I am, in fact, transparent, says, “It’s okay to cry with them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The End of Logic

  I’M NOT SURE why I told Maurice to come today. He needs a day off and I have nothing on the agenda. My time in Congo is nearing its end. I have and I have nothing on the agenda. My time in Congo is nearing its end. I have left messages all week for the country director of an NGO who said he had planned a trip so that I could tour their facilities up north. But we were supposed to leave yesterday, so the silence has turned into a brush-off.

  I feel like a fifth-year high school student, or the last lingering guest at a dinner party who’s stuck in the kitchen washing dishes long after the other guests have gone home. So I am sipping my tea on the terrace at Orchid, observing the gardens and Lake Kivu in the morning light.

  Maurice arrives and joins me. Perched on the edge of his chair, he hands me a scrap of paper. It’s a note scribbled in French, directions of some kind and a couple of names. “Jean Paul has sent this for you,” Maurice says. “The UN in Walungu has a woman who just returned from the forest.”

  Normally, I would not go on this kind of goose chase, especially in Congo. Especially in Walungu. But today I have nothing better to do. What the hell, let’s visit the UN and try to track her down.

  We drive through Walungu, past the church and the Women for Women compound on the edge of the town and then deeper into the town center. It is crawling with Congolese military. They are everywhere: meandering down the roads with guns casually dangled over their shabby uniforms, hanging out in front of shack restaurants, chatting with girls. Few are occupied with any meaningful task.

  “This makes the Congolese very tense,” Maurice comments. “So many soldiers, just . . . around.”

  Jean Paul’s directions are vague. We cruise up and down the main drag several times, ask at the UN office, then stop at a playground nestled in the middle of a military camp, where Congolese army officers play with local children on teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds. A sign boasts this playground was constructed as a gift from Pakistani UN troops, who appear to make “hearts and minds” a priority.

  We pull up to a small cement compound and Maurice runs inside with the piece of paper to get any information he can. Serge and I wait in the car, watching a Congolese army officer stumble down the road dead-drunk, yelling at himself and everyone around him. Maurice returns a few minutes later with news. The man we are looking for is away, but he will be back in a few hours. In the meantime, the UN majors manning the station would like to say hello.

  They invite us into the brick compound and we meet the majors, who have been stationed here for a little over a month—one from Nigeria, one from India, and one from Uruguay. They are welcoming. Major Vikram, the major from India, is particularly friendly after I warm him up by sharing my India travel stories; I spent time there when I was in college. He offers us chai and biscuits as the men collectively answer my questions after an informal briefing. I am not allowed to film. I try to ignore the fact that one of my hosts is wearing only boxer shorts. After all, I have disrupted their Sunday morning.

  They offer me a copy of the report taken on the woman we’re hoping to track down. By reading the report, I get the real story. It wasn’t one woman abducted, but three girls, two of them fifteen and one of them seventeen.

  On Wednesday, Interahamwe came to their compounds in Kaniola and took them to the forest, but apparently the Congolese Army rescued them.

  This story is a first. Rescued? By the Congolese Army?

  Both Major Vikram and Major Kaycee, from Nigeria, disappear for a few minutes. A laminated map on the wall catches my attention. It is a map of a range of hills, with villages and hamlets on one side of the range, Kaniola included. On the other side are Interahamwe camps.

  I am shocked. I’ve always imagined the Interahamwe as elusive bands of men roaming vast tracks of the Congo forest, evading the UN and international eye. Surely, I assumed, the reason the international community has allowed these guys to slaughter, torture, and maim civilians is because it’s a complicated territory, like mountains-of-Afghanistan complicated. But this map isn’t complicated at all. On one side of mountain ranges, villages. On the other, Interahamwe camps, neatly marked and color coded with flags and Xs to note how many combatants live in each camp. No secret societies or elusive rebels here.

  Major Kaycee reappears in full military fatigues—camouflage—with his UN badge on broad display. “Okay,” he says. “Shall we go there?”

  MY CHES
T 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.