In Congo, confronting legacy of rape

Where sexual attacks were a weapon of war, countless victims struggle

(Liz Lucas photo)

Justine Masika, whose organization works to raise awareness about sexual violence toward women, sent her daughters to live in Nairobi after they were attacked in her home.

Coco McCabe, a resident of Ipswich, is a writer for Oxfam America, an international relief agency. Together with a small team from the organization’s communications and advocacy departments, she is visiting the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo to collect stories about Oxfam’s work in the region and to get a better understanding of the current situation for the Congolese people and their ongoing efforts for peace.

By Coco McCabe
Friday, March 7

GOMA, Congo -- We’re sitting in a tiny room on the slimmest of beds. Through a small window in the bare plank wall, the light traces the contour of Bamora’s brow and cheek. She is balanced on the edge of the mattress, her back straight, her head held high, elegant in her blue blouse and white head wrap.

But as she tells her story -- the words offered in a monotone that barely break the stillness -- her face remains expressionless. Bamora has been raped more times than anyone can count.

Through a pair of interpreters, she recalls that the men who did it -- five ragged soldiers -- dragged her from her house in the village where she grew up and told her to sit in a chair in the yard. It was April and she was a new bride, very much in love with her husband. She recalls that the soldiers fetched him and ordered him to sit in her lap. There, they cut off his head with a machete before forcing Bamora into the forest with them, she remembers. She tells of being raped day and night for three months, and then being dumped by the side of the road, her internal organs severely damaged.

Bamora, now 23, is just one of the untold numbers of women in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo who have suffered unfathomable acts of sexual violence during a conflict that has eroded all moral boundaries.

Here, rape is a weapon of war, a way to humiliate women, husbands, communities, and ethnic groups, says Justine Masika, coordinator of Synergie des femmes pour les Victimes des Violences Sexuelles. A Goma-based group and an Oxfam partner, it aims to raise awareness about sexual violence toward women. Its mission is to find ways to take care of women who have been sexually abused and to push for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Since 2003, the organization has helped 7,018 women.

But challenging these trends is dangerous work. Musika knows that all too well. Last September, six military men came to her house in the early evening and tortured her two daughters, 22 and 20. They slashed the face of one and beat her, and jammed a knife into the anus of the other.

Masika recounts this story with the bearing of a woman who refuses to be cowed, even when terror invades her own home. Yes, she says, she was afraid, terribly afraid. She has sent her daughters to live in Nairobi, and an aid organization paid to surround her house with barbed wire.

“Sometimes, I can’t stand up (to this) anymore,” Masika says. But in the next breath she concedes she can’t give up either: Too many women are counting on her.

Behind her, propped against a small wooden building in the medical compound where her organization carries out some of its work, women are weaving baskets from strips of plastic. The bright fabrics that drape the women -- brilliant oranges and greens, yellows and blues -- stand out against the black volcanic rocks, so sharp beneath our feet, and theirs. And if you didn’t know what heaviness filled these women, you would think the scene, bathed in the afternoon light, was a beautiful one.

But all that color, all that industry masks a dark reality: Basket-weaving is a skill the women have learned to help them earn a living, as many may need to do once they are well enough to return to their homes. Women who have been raped face rejection by their husbands and their community. And girls who suffer the same misery are considered unworthy of the dowry that would normally go to their families upon their marriage. Rape is a travesty for the whole family.

For Congolese women, getting married and having children are an important way for them to participate in their communities. Women bring both power and dignity to their households. But for victims of rape and for women, like Bamora, who have suffered so much physical damage that they are no longer able to bear children and are therefore incapable of playing their full roles in their communities, those dreams have been shattered. Shame is all they are left with.

Bamora remembers asking the soldiers to kill her -- as they had every other member of her family. She tells of being sick with the wounds they had inflicted and of the flies buzzed around her incessantly. But the soldiers ignored her, she says, and the rapes continued until the day they tossed her, naked and near death, onto the edge of the road.

That was four years ago. She may never be able to forget the horror. And the knowledge that she can neither have children nor earn the full consideration of her community weighs on her heavily.

Who, Bamora wonders, will take care of her in her old age? What is life without a family?

For more information about Oxfam American and its work, please visit their website at www.oxfamamerica.org. For information on how you can contribute to the Passport blog, please contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at K_Kaplan@globe.com.