Lorraine McIntosh: Poverty, peace and SCIAF on Rwanda's border

The Rwandan / Congolese border is no country for old women like me. Police with machine guns, checks for Ebola, and the people keep coming.

Women pass us as we wait for clearance, huge bundles carried on their heads, babies strapped to their backs, flapping chickens upside down in their hands. Border officials don’t like journalists which includes two of our group. This one is refusing entry until a call comes from the local priest. Suddenly we’re on our way. Crossing a bridge over the Ruzizi river. I realise this is another first for me. First day in Africa; first time crossing a border on foot.

Chaos and poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo are immediately apparent. No road – just a mud track.

I’m here to see the work of SCIAF and its local partners who are helping thousands of women affected by sexual violence. First, to the Olame Centre, where women come from miles around seeking help: medical, financial, post-trauma counselling and legal aid. Here they focus on the most vulnerable and desperate. It’s estimated that 40% of women in the South Kivu region where I am have been victims of rape and sexual violence. They are overwhelmed.

Inside the grounds, two young girls aged 14 and 15 accused of being witches, wait for us. They are supported by the director of the centre Therese Mapenzi. She will feature hugely in our trip, translating every interview with patience and compassion. The women trust her. The younger girl’s head is a criss-cross of machete scars inflicted by her uncle who thought he could beat the evil out of her.

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The older girl, accused of causing her father’s blindness, hands me a piece of paper.

It’s a drawing of a young girl on a platform, addressing an audience through a microphone.

There is a speech bubble above her head: “May peace reign all over the world, and especially in the DR Congo.”

“That’s me,” she says.

Sunday

6 am Mass: 2000 people singing and dancing. Joyous. The parish priest, Father Justin is hugely charismatic and plays a central role in the lives of his congregation. Living among them, he is open to all. Being a voice for the voiceless, as the director of the local Justice and Peace group, has resulted in two assassination attempts against him. His house is defended by barbed wire and an armed guard. When we need to leave the church grounds to take photographs, he comes with us as our security.

Women wait to share their stories. I sit with Marina, mother of eight children whose husband was murdered by rebels. Her 10-year-old daughter was raped and infected with HIV.

Through SCIAF’s partners, she is given antiretroviral medication and money to start up her own small business. She saves a tiny amount each week in the local cooperative savings group and this has changed her life.

A family with two children tell us their story. The father speaks of how gender equality education has changed the way he behaves. He says he is ashamed to admit before the training he “acted like a rapist” in his home but no more. His wife sits beside him. They have named their first child SCIAF.

Monday

Spent last night unable to sleep, reading over the information I was meant to have already read.

Today we visit Katana hospital, two hours’ drive from Bukavu and a place the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) states as a “no travel area”. Maybe it’s good I didn’t read it before we left.

We travel in convoy. People everywhere. Children at the side of the road breaking rocks. We have travelled back in time. We are told to keep our windows and doors locked. A makeshift road block brings us to a stop. A group of young men gather, banging on the window. They want money. The driver ignores them, eyes straight ahead. Eventually they let us pass.

In Katana Hospital Congolese doctors trained by SCIAF work to repair the bodies of women brutalised by rape. Many of the women live with fistula as a result of these rapes and are rejected by their communities and their husbands. These doctors are transforming the lives of thousands. Often these operations are carried out by torch light from their mobile phones as the electricity supply cuts out. The wards are crowded with women and babies. Conditions are basic.

Saffi tells how she was beaten and raped by rebels and how she managed to hide her rape and injuries from her husband for four years, before finding out help was available. She walked to the hospital and her surgery was performed the following day. After years of double incontinence, she says coming round after the operation was like coming out of hell.

One of the women is Albino, a persecuted people in the DR Congo. She has been trafficked and raped. As the bones of Albinos are reported to possess magical powers, they tried to kill her. She escaped and now receives help at Katana.

We leave before dark and the threatened rain, as the road would then be impassable. Feeling overwhelmed.

Tuesday

Today we visited the site of a devastating landslide in the shanty town in the hills above Bukavu. Father Justin is our guide. Suspicion turns to welcome as the locals see we are together and soon I am being led up the hill by the hand, through the mud and running sewage to the scene of the disaster.

We stand in cleared ground. The previous week four makeshift houses once stood here before being washed away by heavy rain. It is here that the bodies of five children and one woman were buried under the mud for days. The local young people dug them out with their bare hands and a few shovels. No outside help came. No ambulance, no rescue service, no police. These people are all but forgotten. They are desperate to show me video footage of the dead children. I can’t look. The people stand around, waiting on our reaction.

We look above at the houses already precariously perched at the top. We all know it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. It starts to rain. We leave to cross the border back to Rwanda.

Wednesday

Rwanda: We leave Cyangugu to drive out to Lake Kivu. We have arranged a safe place for the women who are appearing on SCIAF’s Wee Box appeal to be interviewed.

The landscape is beautiful. They call Rwanda the country of a thousand hills. The lake stretches as far as the eye can see, all the way across to the Congo.

I talk to Angela one of the women on the Wee Box. Raped by nine rebels, her children forced to watch, and her husband killed in front of them. She is now HIV positive and needs life-long medical care. She says with SCIAF’s help she has made some sort of life for herself and her children. She grows crops and has a couple of goats which is a huge help.

Lorraine with Angela

I ask how she views her future. She says she doesn’t care if she dies, but that it’s important that Therese (from Centre Olami) doesn’t die because of the work she is doing in helping the other women.

Therese is translating this. It is the first time I struggle to control my emotions. Therese has tears in her eyes but keeps on translating Angela’s words.

Before leaving Angela asks for one of the Wee Boxes to take home with her.

Thursday

This morning we visit a traditional village of the Batwa people. Previously known as pygmies, they were a highly persecuted minority in Rwanda and continue to be desperately poor.

We are warmly welcomed by them. The women sit on the ground making clay pots. The level of poverty is apparent. Behind the brick exterior of their homes, there is no running water or electricity. It’s only with the support of SCIAF that many of the children now attend school.

We are introduced to an immaculately dressed young women who is the first person from her village and only one of four Batwa to attend university in Kigali. She sits in her home devoid of any furniture except for a wooden bench brought in for us. Her parents sit on either side.

Their pride is palpable. She says she is studying finance as that is the best way she can support her people. It’s hard to imagine when dropping coins in the SCIAF Wee Box at home that this is the outcome. Those coins are paying for this young woman’s university fees and changing people’s futures.

As we leave, the villagers gather and sing us a farewell song.

Friday

The Bugesera district. A group of beautifully dressed women farmers gather in the village waiting for us. Support from SCIAF, matched by the UK Government, has totally transformed their lives.

One woman describes herself as having been “the poorest of the poor”. Now she has food, a home and most importantly for her, savings in the bank.

These women have control of their lives. It’s good to hear women laughing. It’s been a while.

Saturday

This is the last day of the trip. We visit Nyamta Genocide Memorial Centre, one of Rwanda’s six genocide memorial sites. Nyamta is the church where thousands of Tutsi’s sought refuge when the killings began in April 1994.

Women and children locked themselves in but were overpowered by the rebels, shot and then finished off by machete.

I was unprepared for the sight of thousands of items of clothing from the fallen folded and piled up on the church pews. The ceiling pockmarked with bullets and a line around the bottom of the wall which our guide tells us is the blood line from the carnage. A river of blood. In the gardens outside 50,000 people lie buried. We are silent as we are shown into the house of Claudette who survived the massacre when she was 13. We sit in her small house, waiting.

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The Nyamata massacre was only the beginning of the horror for Claudette. Nine of her siblings were murdered.

She escaped having been buried under a pile of bodies. Hiding in the bush, being discovered, being abused, being left for dead after machete attacks and spending days in a latrine with the dead being thrown in on top of her. It was thanks to these dead bodies that she managed to climb out and escape once more.

She spoke for nearly an hour, eyes closed reliving the horror.

Eventually she stops and the young girl acting as her translator asks the man sitting opposite me to introduce himself.

His name is Claude and he was of the men who carried out the genocide. One of the men who killed many women and children in Nyamta. One of the men who tried to kill the thirteen-year-old Claudette with his machete. Claudette moves her dress from the top of her shoulder to show her still visible scar.

The next half hour passes with the sound of many of us crying as we listen.

Claude talks on. He says he was ignorant, uneducated, brainwashed and poverty-stricken. He says he killed many people. He remembers leaving the 13yr old Claudette for dead.

After the genocide he escaped to the DR Congo, only returning when he heard about the Gacaca Courts. These courts were set up to try and bring some order back to the country.

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The perpetrators of the genocide could be tried and sentenced more leniently if they were shown to be repentant of their crimes and willing to ask forgiveness from their victims. Most of Claude’s victims were dead. But Claudette had survived.

He visited Claudette many times, sitting in her garden. At first screaming for her neighbours to come and refusing to see him. It was only when he appeared one day with his wife that she finally agreed to listen.

What happened between them is beyond my understanding.

Claude’s way of explaining it is; “She gave me back a human heart.”

Claudette says he is now her brother. If she is ill, he comes to care for her and if he is ill, she does the same. Claude was baptised and Claudette is his god mother.

They laugh over the coincidence of them sharing the same name.

All we have witnessed in the last week seems to be encapsulated in this room, caught in this moment.

The poverty, the horror and random cruelty sitting side by side with the beauty of this human relationship, forgiveness, compassion and hope.

To be here is to experience a glimpse of “the peace that passes all understanding” that we talk about at Mass.

A peace perhaps only the likes of Claudette and Claude have any right to claim.

WEE BOX BIG CHANGE

YOU can support SCIAF’s WEE BOX BIG CHANGE appeal. Thousands of women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo need your help right now. Sexual violence and rape are widespread. Decades of conflict have left a legacy of brutality and lawlessness in many areas. SCIAF is working with local partners to provide medical care so they can get treatment for their injuries, trauma counselling, legal assistance so they can prosecute their attackers, and help to become financially independent so they can support themselves and their families. GIVE NOW at www.sciaf.org.uk/weebox or call SCIAF on 0141 354 5555. This year, your £1 = £2. Give before 20th May and your donation will be doubled by the UK Government.