by Ashley Judd
Minister Philomène had a lot to do with writing a set of tough gender violence laws and passing them through Parliament. The laws are comprehensive and inclusive, codifying penalties for all permutation of rape and abuse: elders to youngers, youngers to elders, men to women, women to men, men to men, women to women, body parts, objects, persons of authority, dependents, sex slaves, incitement, pornography—nothing is left out. Of course, the laws must be enforced, and the government, with help from USAID and others, is in the progress of training and sensitizing judges and magistrates. Impunity is a fundamental social and legal laxity that allows wide-scale rape to run rampant. Just as important is changing cultural norms and reaching men with behavior change messages. The torn fabric of this society will take years to mend, but the work, at least, has begun.
After nearly two weeks in Central Africa, I was already starting to burn out. Each morning when the alarm went off, I awoke in disbelief and exhaustion, spent the days slogging through the tough times in between clinics, slums, programs; through the joyful discoveries of various successes and ideas, my amazement at the enormity of the problems, the quiet moments of desperation spiked with rage, the rage laced with utter hopelessness, the plaintive seeking of answers from the universe …
I needed to hightail it out of Kinshasa and connect with nature and animals to restore my own peace of mind. So for the first time in eleven countries, I gave myself a break and took a Sunday afternoon to visit a very special animal sanctuary I had heard about called Lola ya Bonobo.
Bonobos are a rather forgotten primate, similar to chimpanzees but less fractious and highly endangered because their habitat has been hammered by decades of war and deforestation. They exist in the wild only in Congo and in captivity in a few zoos. Adult bonobos are snared and eaten as “bush meat,” a delicacy in this protein-starved region. The babies are captured and sold in markets to witch doctors, idiotic tourists, and unscrupulous animal collectors. In 2002, in the midst of all the chaos and fighting in and around Kinshasa, a Belgian woman named Claudine Andre set up the sanctuary in what had been one of Mobutu’s deputy’s private estates outside of the capital.
Behind the gate was a sixty-acre oasis of forest and lakes and parkland where more than sixty bonobos of all ages roam about in a protected enclosure. Visitors are separated from them by a chain-link fence, which I walked along until I met the eye of a very fetching male. He solicited, meaning he was trying to entice me to play. I could not believe it. He would run, drop a shoulder to execute a perfect roll, sit up, cross his legs, look at me, and wait. I would imitate him: run, roll, sit. He would then laugh with unmistakable pleasure and joy. We ended up frolicking for an hour, running, playing, jumping, and sitting on either side of the fence, fingers intertwined, kissing. He was mischievous, tender, playful, and in general an angel from God who blessed me with an incredible experience, rare and heart-expanding, that soothed me deeply.
I later learned the name of the handsome bonobo I had loved from the researcher and conservationist, Vanessa Woods, who wrote the fabulous book Bonobo Handshake, about her time at the sanctuary. I emailed her photos of him and me running and rolling, laughing and kissing, and she wrote right back, “Oh, that’s Keza! And he doesn’t like anybody!” Before he was rescued, he had lived for fifteen years in a biomedical lab in Kinshasa, never seeing grass or trees, often so starved that he ate cobwebs to survive. Naturally he was terrified and quite unpredictable when he arrived at Lola ya Bonobo in 2004. The only human he likes is Mama Claudine, so Vanessa felt that Keza’s afternoon of play was probably as healing for him as it was for me!
The more I’ve learned about bonobos, the more enthralled I’ve become. Like chimpanzees, they share 98.7 percent of our DNA. But unlike chimps, who have a male-dominated social structure and engage in humanlike pathologies such as war, rape, and murder, bonobos are peaceful creatures known for strong female alliances that prevent, contain, and correct male aggression. They might squabble, but they resolve social stress without violence. Researchers like Vanessa believe that the key to their pacifism and remarkable group tolerance and cooperation is a matriarchal society: Whenever a male starts to bully or attack a female, she cries out and other females band together and discipline the males, re-establishing calm and cooperation. Bonobos relieve their tension with lots of sexual behavior, giving new and poignant meaning to the slogan “Make love, not war.” They are appealing in many ways, but perhaps what I love best is that a baby can take food out of an adult male’s mouth. A baby chimp would never do that, and aggressive male chimps are known to occasionally kill babies. The bonobos’ endangered status is salient for humans, as studying bonobos can reveal the key to the one thing we have never been able to figure out: how to live without war.
A century ago, Joseph Conrad set his masterpiece novella, Heart of Darkness, in the Congo. At its center is the tale of Kurtz, an idealistic adventurer who is sucked into the madness and savagery that he encounters in the cruelest of colonies. There but for the grace of God go you or I. As always, I am in awe of people who maintain their boundaries, who don’t succumb to despair. I so admire people like Theresa Guber Tapsoba who persevere daily on in the face of hopelessness, and heroes like Zainab Salbi, like Therese and Victor, like the Women for Women program graduates in Goma and other survivors, and those who dedicate their lives to supporting them. But as I packed my bags in my sad little hotel room to return to my privileged life back home in America, I found myself brooding over my own culpability in the hideous drama of Central Africa.
I thought about Astrid, a tiny starving toddler whose cotton dress hung slack on her frame. I met her outside of a ramshackle health clinic in Kinshasa. Her mother had abandoned her, her grandmother walked to the clinic when she was literally on her last legs, and I watched Astrid clutch a UNICEF-provided refeeding formula with the fury and the rage that only the starving can truly understand.
Yet before I knew it, I would be easing back into my velvety world of abundance and first-class problems. I would be barefoot in my office—the back porch—wearing a white nightgown, looking at fireflies, eating black raspberry chocolate-chip ice cream with Dario, surrounded by our well-fed, inoculated pets, while Astrid and all the friends I made on this trip will still be … here.
I couldn’t stop thinking about a photograph in the genocide memorial in Kigali, the one of the Belgian priests measuring the heads of Africans and consigning them to their fates through the delusion of ethnic separation. The priests were committing acts of evil, but did they know it? What about the United Nations countries that ignored the genocide spawned by these false divisions? Were those decision makers perpetuating evil by acts of omission? And what about me? I know I am human, I am fallible, I am capable of greatness, and I am capable of atrocity. In these pictures—I could be on either side: the measured or the measurer; the abused or the abuser. My mind’s eye kept returning again and again to the image of the white priest, the black women … and which side of history I was going to be on.
I am grateful that in countries like Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo, with challenges so great, my work with Population Services International and other organizations helps to put me on the right side of history. And somehow, in spite of it all, my faith, my hope, and my core belief that we can change the world and manifest peace is ever renewed.
Chapter 22
THE CLICK
Rain or shine, we love to hike. Here we are in the Great Smoky Mountains, accompanied, as always, by Buttermilk and Shug.
O, Great Spirit
Whose voice I hear in the winds
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
Hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.
—CHIEF YELLOW LARK, “Let Me Walk in Beauty”
fter twenty-five hours of travel back home from the Congo the plane touched down in Nashville, but my mind was still in Africa. Reentry is always difficult, and the tougher the p
lace, the harder it is to adjust to the affluence and ease of America. I gaped at people in the airport: They were washed, clean, neat, their clothes free of stains. Everything was so bright, too bright.
I asked the driver who picked me up to open the windows and turn off the AC, then I reflexively braced for the potholes of Kinshasa. But the roads in Tennessee are as smooth as ganaches. The hills are packed with densely foliated trees—so strange. I was raised in the South, and yet these familiar sights were overwhelming. I tried to shut down. I closed my eyes and was soon dozing. But my body marked each turn, and once the roads narrowed and I perceived, even in my sleep, the approach to our farm, home called my spirit forth.
Although I had tried to mentally arrive home, imagining walking through the gate, up the garden path, trying to acclimate in advance, the exercise did not eliminate the shock of actually arriving. Disembarking from the car, I stood stock-still in the side garden of our brick farmhouse, shocked by the smothering of green, the lushness, the ethereal beauty of May in Tennessee. It was too beautiful, too cocooned, too soft, too womblike.
Buttermilk ripped out of the house to see me, soon joined by his sister. I was stunned. I had forgotten we had dogs. Their leaping knocked me back on my heels and I had to kneel, let them wag it out.
I crept through the garden, unable to handle it all at once. I eventually made my way to the backyard, and was again arrested, this time by the explosion of a green undulating valley. I was glad Dario had not heard the car drop me off, did not yet know I was home. I needed some time to acclimate. I said hello to each cat as they one by one discovered their mama was home, and gave myself the space the breathe.
Eventually, I slowly entered the kitchen, taking in with disbelief our calm, ordered home. I opened the fridge. There was a riot of color, so many shapes and sizes. My brain became flooded and my eyes could not individuate any one thing. Finally, I focused on one large block on the top shelf, Dario’s leftover lunch. I retrieved the plate. It was enough to feed four people. I removed the plastic film from the feast, and carefully set it aside, having been taught in poor households that such an item is a valuable treasure. But I ceased seeing the food before me, and instead, behind my tears appeared the image of a little boy’s legs, shredded, layers of peeling wounds. He had just walked four days to arrive at a hospital, his daddy knowing it was either starve at home, or risk dying on the journey to a place where he might possibly receive food. I waited for the tears to clear, to emotionally come back to our kitchen, then I devoured the vegetables, of which I had recently had none. This food and ease of access to this food brings on a new round of tears.
I headed upstairs and find Dario in the bedroom, doing a Winston Churchill, reading and working from bed, propped up so as to enjoy the spectacular views, and rest his ankle, which he insisted was fine and indeed, he would be racing again soon. When he saw me, there was the moment I love, of recognition and reunion. We hugged, and I took a big bite of his devilishly handsome hair into my mouth. He didn’t even say, “quit annoying me,” as he usually does, with that secret smile in his voice.
When night fell, with all the windows open and the gentle air cosseting us, I knelt beside the bed, transfixed by the maple trees that nearly touch the windows, benedictions of softness, of generosity. I didn’t say much. God understands. In bed, I occasionally blurted things out to Dario, staccato thoughts about my trip. I was physically present, but emotionally, I was in Africa. I was in India. I was in Central America.
The next morning, I sat on our upstairs back porch. I could feel the fecundity of spring on my skin as I regarded the morning glories, how well the hyacinth bean vine had started. The heirloom lilacs, as always, were heartbreaking, wafting fragrance everywhere, and the sweet peas were peaking. Dario brought my tea, having correctly identified the “morning glory teacup,” saying he left Buttermilk’s poop in the dining room for me to clean up. When he had been let out to do his business last night, Buttermilk made his choice, and running the hills was far more important than pooping outdoors. I smiled. Home.
“Okay,” I told God. “I belong here, too. Home, my home, this home, and Africa, both are real, equally real. Thank you for letting me know it’s okay for me to be here.”
But my energy was very low, and I had to drag myself to my daily meeting. I continually made nests for myself and lay down on the bed, in the backyard, in the woods, with our animals who, with the softness of their eyes, regarded me deeply. I watched documentaries about rape in the Congo, about other African issues, and I tried watching the news. But for the head space I was in, it was too gruesome, and I realized that I needed a break. I didn’t feel guilty at all when I relied only on Jon Stewart to keep up with the world, because if I wasn’t laughing, I was near tears.
Some days, I did my own Churchill, windows open, skeptically regarding the improbably blue sky, still feeling myself in the liminality between very, very different worlds. Congo is primary colors, vivid, urgent, raw, visceral, a palette of red, orange, brown, black. Tennessee is like walking in the green fluffy grass of an Easter basket, so soft, pale, ethereal, like it’s not real, like if I stepped off the bus everything I see would recede from me, like in a dream when I step forward into the dreamscape and it stays just ahead of me, out of my reach, so real in appearance, but untouchable.
I played a song, “Calling All Angels,” sung exquisitely by Jane Siberry and k.d. lang, accompanied by cello, an old favorite of my sister’s and mine.
Just then, my email inbox gave a ding, and I saw Zainib Salbi had written. She was checking on me after my trip, thanking me effusively for having visited the program, and for what I have written thus far that had been published, describing it as so helpful. I gave myself a few more days to feel rotten but when it didn’t lift, I headed to the doctor for my routine, posttrip physical, with the usual parasite test. I studied the awesomely modern, pristine room, and resisted contrasting it with the clinics I have visited around the world. It would be a futile exercise. It is what it is.
My physician was wearing very thick sterile plastic gloves. They looked industrial strength, in fact. When he opened an alcohol swab, I was suddenly confused. I wasn’t having blood drawn. I wondered if I was receiving a shot of which I was unaware. He lifted the end of his stethoscope, and wiped it before placing it on the fabric of my dress to listen to my heart. His mouth was moving, but I stopped hearing. I began to cry. He had sterilized the end of his stethoscope. Across the world, surgeons at Panzi Clinic scrub without running water, using bar soap, and sometimes operate without electricity. Many patients leave at night, and sleep in parks nearby, as the clinic cannot accommodate them all.
Although I seemed to be exotic bacteria- and virus-free, I was clearly ill. My doctor then surprised me, this same sweet man who told me years ago if I went to a mental hospital for depression it would go on my “record,” diagnosed me with severe reverse culture shock. He said there was nothing he could do but suggest I rest and give myself time to heal from the effects of what I had chosen to expose myself to and take on.
I continued slowly to work at my desk on the advocacy tasks I created for myself during my time in Africa, with each email and call, praying the effort made good on promises made to my new sisters.
Once the Africans had gone offline for their nighttime, I turned my attention westward, to Hollywood. I spoke to my agent who as ever was full of information about scripts and green-lit movies, phone calls and appointments, and all the latest show business news, that nonetheless made my head spin. I started reading a few scripts she had sent me.
Having been offered TV shows for years, I had begun to take the idea of doing a cable series seriously. But I rejected the idea of network, however lucrative, however fantastic the writing in this new golden age of television, however flattering the entreaties. A hit network show would consume nine months of the year for five to seven years of my life—and I would have to make that commitment before knowing whether the show was a hit. I would have to o
pt out of doing international feminist social justice work, resign from all the boards on which I served. I was unwilling to give up the life I had made for myself, to deny myself the chance to meet another Ouk Srey Leak, to have an old woman with whom I pick rubbish to call me her granddaughter. I remember a labor slave in India whose lair I visited, and the moment when our eyes met in a shard of mirror. I had said to him, “Mohammad, when I see you, I see a beautiful child of God.” Holding my gaze, he replied, “I do, too.” A deaf mute woman I met in a brothel in Kinshasa, Congo, came to mind. She was still there. When the networks call, I say thank you and no thank you, and I have watched beautiful, talented women sweep acting awards for shows I declined. I smile, and bless them, and some I email, cheering them on. I DVR the series I enjoy.
I read scripts for several proposed series on cable. One was about adoption. I perked up. That fit my interests, confronted all sorts of salient social themes, and would allow me to be polemical with a smart character. I would be interested in such a show, but my agent called back later, saying it was a nonstarter. Another script came along, and to my surprise, I loved it. I had been talking with producers who pitch me material about my preference to film in middle Tennessee, and surprisingly, most have been very willing to accommodate. If am going to be on a show for four to six months a year, I would like sleep in my own bed. It would be too much to keep up my current pace of international travel and film something in New York or L.A.
Then, I read a movie script with a lot of buzz, an action thing, written all male, but they sent it to me to read, asking if I’d like this flashy supporting role to be written female. I lied and said yes. Someone associated with the director emailed me to schedule a Skype call with him, and I became more honest with myself. I called my agent and said, “I hated that script.”