A Separate Peace

A photographer shares her personal journey of heartbreak and healing in the rape-ravaged Congo.

By Lisa Shannon

As we approach in our rusty fishing boat, the sleepy lakeside village ahead looks more like a prime location for high-end vacation property than a war zone, with its quiet breeze and crystal-clear water. But this is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so I have no illusions. A group of women in elaborate African dresses lines the shore, greeting us with singing and dancing, beating old plastic tubs like drums, waving palm leaves and flowers. They lead us in a celebratory parade through the village. They know nothing about Run for Congo Women, the grass -roots movement that I founded in 2005. To them, I am just a Women for Women International sponsor who has traveled from America because I care.

As the singing dies down, I conduct an informal survey of the group of more than 50 women. “How many of you have suffered a violent attack on your home?” I ask. Each woman raises her hand.

“How many of you have had a child die?” Around three-quarters of them raise their hands. One woman holds up six fingers. “I have lost six children,” she calls out from the back of the group.

“How many of you have been raped?” Quiet descends. Eyes shift nervously. A few giggle with discomfort. Three women hesitantly raise their hands.

Later, one woman anxiously shifts to the edge of her bench and speaks with a defiant tone: “When you asked earlier who here has been raped, we were not honest. We have all been raped. All of us.”

According to Women for Women International’s interviews, 90 percent of the women in this village have been raped. The statistics on rape in the Congo as a whole are similarly masked. While official statistics indicate some 41,000 women have been raped in eastern Congo since 1998, estimates place the actual number in the hundreds of thousands, according to Relief Web.

Three years ago, I couldn’t have picked the Congo out on a map. Then I saw a television program on “Africa’s first world war.” Sparked by the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the war here has claimed more than 5.4 million lives. It’s the deadliest conflict since World War II. Despite a series of peace accords, eastern Congo remains unstable, and rape is a daily threat for women.

As owner of a photography production company, I spent years producing photos designed to embody beauty and perfection. Yet my life didn’t feel quite as beautiful. I decided to run. Though I considered five miles a long run at the time, I trained to run 30 miles of Portland, Oregon’s Wildwood Trail to benefit Women for Women International’s Congo program. Two years later, my lone run had blossomed into an international movement, with 26 group runs and events in more than 10 states and four countries.

Though I had never stepped foot in Africa, it was time to travel to the Congo to see the Women for Women program firsthand and meet the hundreds of women sponsored by Run for Congo Women.

After two weeks in the war-ravaged town of Bukavu – crawling with United Nations vehicles, crumbling vacation properties on Lake Kivu and washed out roads lined with women hauling 200-pound loads of everything from wood to cassava flour – I journeyed eight hours south to Baraka. Unlike areas to the north and west, where active fighting continues and foreign militias regularly attack villages to loot, rape and kill en masse, the Baraka region is considered stable. Though previously known for mass killings by foreign militias such as the FDD (a Burundian militia), refugee resettlement projects now flood this outpost on Lake Tanganyika.

At the Women for Women satellite office in Baraka, nearly all of the women in a group of 20 have returned from refugee camps in Tanzania in the past six months. As they each tell their survival stories, rape comes up.

I ask, “How many of you have been raped since returning?”

Nearly half raise their hands.

“Who raped you?”

They all answer, “The FDD.”

In the disarmament process, militia members are integrated into the Congolese army and promised $20 a month.

But they are rarely paid. They’re expected to take what they need – food, money, supplies – from the locals. And in the process, they rape.  Though rape is technically illegal in the Congo, the virtually nonexistent judicial system results in a culture of impunity. Perpetrators have little to lose. In eastern Congo, this is the face of security.

With eastern Congo’s astronomical child mortality rates, rape is only one of many concerns for Congolese women.

Sixty to 80 percent of women are now single heads of household due to the conflict. Their primary concern is how to support their families. “If I go to the fields to farm, I will be raped,” says Furaha, a mother of five. “But I must feed my children, so I go.”

As Ghislane, a sister I sponsor personally, sits in a corner across the dimly lit wooden classroom lined with women from her group, it is hard to reconcile her story with her glowing smile. “I was working in the fields when Congolese army soldiers came,” she says. “Seven men raped me. I became pregnant. I kept the baby, but he died after five months from only a cold.” For a brief moment, the pain of her rape and loss of her child has taken a second seat to her joy over my visit. When I ask about what she is doing for money these days, she lists the livestock she has acquired with her sponsorship funds: three goats, eight chickens, four rabbits and two guinea pigs. An impressive list in these parts.

Some sponsored women invest their funds in a business, some in livestock. Others buy new 400-square-foot plots of land every month for $10 each. After a few months, they have enough land to hire employees to farm for them, avoiding the risks of working the fields themselves. In every group I speak with, I hear, “I feel like a human being again.”

In a village outside of Baraka, I sit with 40 Congolese women in a compound sheltered by trees. We enjoy a quiet moment following hours of heartrending survival stories. One participant raises her hand.

“How can I build my business,” she asks, “so I can someday be a woman who helps other women?”

CONGO: By the Numbers

45,000: Deaths that occur each month due to the conflict, according to a 2007 International Rescue Committee (IRC) mortality study.

80%: Congolese population that survives on 20 cents a day, according to the IRC.

85%: Women for Women participants who raise children who are not their own.

How to Help

1. Urge your congressional representatives to support the International Violence Against Women Act (now under consideration in the House). If passed, the law would “require the U.S. government to address systemic violence against women internationally,” says Ritu Sharma Fox, co-founder and president of Women Thrive Worldwide.

2. Visit womenthrive.org to sign a petition of support. Sponsor a Congolese woman through Women for Women International.

3. Participate in Run for Congo Women. Learn more through The International Rescue Committee.

This article originally appeared in the September.August issue of PINK Magazine.