Men's Journal

DAY 3: INTO THE JUNGLE

The piercing cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster pops my eyes open, and then drumbeats and chanting begin to fill the darkness outside. Must be a wake-up band. The bell at the top of the rickety church tower tolls five.

This morning we take canoes carved out of single, giant pieces of wood and travel about 18 kilometers downstream. The jungle is on a scale of which I’ve never seen before — twists of massive vines wrapped around trunks of juggernaut trees. On the riverside children of the local villages giggle as they wave and throw us dorks the thumbs-up. Some are barely two or three years old, with no adult in sight. Kids grow up fast here.

Our destination is the small village of Lubao, a former center of the Mai Mai militia. As we approach, two canoes filled with young men singing a traditional Mai Mai song paddle out to meet us. On the shore it seems as though the entire village is waiting for us, chanting and clapping. After shaking dozens of hands (in a special Lubao handshake that I picked up by the third or fourth shake), we make our way through the village. The place is lined with windowless bamboo-framed mud huts with straw roofs. We sit under a shaded tarp while the children, in their white-and-blue school uniforms, dance to the throbbing beat of a drum. The guy who appears to be the host encourages us to do the same, and since I already look like a fool in my Crocodile Dundee hat, what the hell. Dance has the ability to quickly connect people without a need for language.

Afterward, as we introduce ourselves, I mutter to Yao that I’m not going to announce myself as an “Oxfam ambassador” again. Back in Goma, at the border, immigration officers burst out laughing when I told them that. But Yao explains that the people of the DRC are very concerned with titles. So against my better judgment, I reiterate the title to the village, which at that very moment goes stone quiet. Until the deafening laughter begins. And damned if I don’t deserve it. Face burning red with humiliation, I push my testicles back down from my chest and we start the tour.

This village has been under an Oxfam rebuilding program that, among other things, has led to the construction of a well for drinking water and sanitation. On a walk through the forest, with children grabbing at our sides, we come to a site where a spring is being turned into a manageable, constant water supply. Next we visit a medical facility, which consists essentially of three sparse rooms and mostly empty bottles of over-the-counter medicines. There is no permanent doctor in this village of several hundred people, and the nurse has no formal training. Jimmie and Liz comment that the medical facility is one of the best they’ve seen in a village like this. I can hardly believe it. Still, this is a village that is clearly getting better; just a few years ago it was marked by chaos and violence from rebels clashing with the local Mai Mai warriors.

Liz and Lyndsay go off to talk with some women in the village. Other than Yao, who translates, no men are invited. They return a half-hour later nearly moved to tears. The women, they learn, lack the access to sell goods in Kindu and instead are forced to make a shitty middleman deal with a local boater, who gets them an insanely small price. Lyndsay proposes that Oxfam start a water-transportation program to boost trade for all villages on the river. And that, I’m realizing, is pretty much what’s going to end poverty — the simple nuts and bolts of improving commerce.

The last man I meet before leaving Lubao is Assane, a six-foot-tall Mai Mai warrior with a face cut from marble. In his sister’s hut he calmly explains to us how he lost his left leg. In 2002 he was a soldier fighting a few miles upriver. He was shot in the leg, and without proper medical care it became critically infected. This is when the men in the village decided to amputate it in the traditional way, using nothing but a blazing hot machete. Now Assane sells tables and chairs in Kindu, going upriver twice a week for a small profit. He tells Yao that he still believes in the legend of the Mai Mai, which says that tribe members can dodge bullets. When Jimmie asks how he then can explain being shot, Assane cracks a slight smile. “Because,” he says, “at one point I retreated. Once I did, my invincibility shield was broken.” I look at Jimmie in disbelief.

Back in Goma we meet Justine Masika Bihamba, a Congolese woman who heads the Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles, a project that helps rape victims recover physically and psychologically. She shows us around a small compound with 24 beds. Eight women, sitting against a crumbling brick wall, are knitting clothes and weaving baskets as part of the process of healing, so the women feel they are not worthless. We walk into the operating room. Here a surgeon treats conditions such as fistula, repairing the wall between the rectum and the vagina that’s often severely ripped during rape. Without the operation many women become outcasts in their communities, shunned for being unable to control their bowels.

We enter a small, dark room with two beds and meet Kimanizani, who is 20. She looks frighteningly gaunt, her chest rising and falling in shallow, tired breaths. With a voice that never rises above a slight whisper, she explains that two months earlier she was in Rutshuru, north of Goma, working in a field with her two-year-old son, when two armed men came out of the nearby forest and raped her. When her husband found out, he rejected her as his wife. Emotionally shattered, Kimanizani began to drastically lose weight, reaching a fragile 66 pounds. That’s when Justine brought her to Synergie. Today, for the first time in a while, Kimanizani manages to stand, her body trembling. What gives Kimanizani hope are the other recovering victims around her, who wait on her and embrace her as a sister. The visit really confirms for me that women are the heroes of the DRC. They tend the fields and make the food and get the water and raise the children, and all the while take all the shit guys seem to have an endless supply of. Even Justine has to overcome physical assaults on her and her family — attempts to silence her cause.

When I get back to the hotel I’m exhausted from the day and disgusted with the violence men wreak on the world. I pass on dinner and lie down. Tomorrow will be a big day.

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