Congo Prequel

 

“Are you sure?” I ask.  Max nods, “Yes, it’s better than sitting in a drawer. At least it will be used for something beneficial.”  Max is my ex-husband and good friend. He has suggested I sell my wedding ring to pay for a trip to the Congo I am planning. I like the idea. I can’t go without the cash.  I’m not celebrity and have no big Not-For-Profits or NGO’s knocking on my door asking me to represent them and inviting to pay my way. Simply, I am a single mother and screenwriter living in Santa Monica, CA.  I had to find a different path.

I’ve been an advocate for several years, working on the disarmament of child soldiers, the genocide in Darfur, and women’s rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But I felt limited in my ability to move our government, to move anyone into real action. So inspired by Nicholas Kristof’s May 31^st Op Ed in the NY Times about how college students should self-educate and experience the world beyond our borders, (third-world that is), I decided to take the plunge and go to the Congo to see for myself how I could help. I’m not the student Kristof exhorts, I’m 45 years old. (But hey, it’s never too late, and sometimes denial works to your benefit).

My journey to the Congo didn’t actually start with the Op-Ed piece, it started three years earlier with a dream, or rather a nightmare. Actually, it started with an article. Not the Kristof Op-Ed, a different one. Then the dream. Then a film.  And I might add as a personal note, the three years between the dream and the actual trip were book ended by my divorce, and a heart-wrenching break-up with the first man I fell in love with after Max.  It didn’t work. I learned a lot. Enough said.

The article –

I think it was in the NY Times, maybe the Washington Post. Anyway, the article was about the war in Eastern Congo, about how rape is being used as a weapon of war, a tactic employed to intimidate and destroy villages, leaving them vulnerable to militias determined to take over their mineral rich land. Within the article there was a story about a mother. As the mother is being raped by two soldiers she watches helplessly as another soldier forces her seven year-old daughter out of the home.  Most likely the young girl will end up a sex slave.  I have a seven year-old daughter.

At the time the article was printed, the mother did not know where her daughter was or whether she was still alive.

The story haunted me all day. I cried at Whole Foods. I broke into tears in the car.  I wept through The Daily Show for Christ sake.

The dream –

That night I had a dream. Men broke into my house and held me down as they took my daughter. She screamed for me as they carried her away. I will NEVER forget that scream. I shouted and yelled but no one came, no one heard me. The next day I went to my daughter’s school to see if by some miracle she was there.  Hysterical, I told the head of the school what happened. She gave me a harried look as she shooed the kids into their respective classrooms, too busy to listen. I told my friends, and fellow moms. Rushing to meet their daily schedules, they smiled politely, and walking backwards to their cars, offered a few platitudes: “I’m sure you’ll find her.” “Did you try big yard?” “Don’t worry, she’ll turn up.” By the end of the day I had pled so much that I lost my voice. In my dream I collapsed into bed. And cried alone.

When I woke up I was seized by paralysis—the kind that comes with a nightmare that seems so real.  My breathing was shallow. I couldn’t speak.  Shaking the dream, I got up and brushed my teeth, relieved that the nightmare was just that, a nightmare. Not real. I pulled back my hair and headed to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. It was then the realization hit me. The nightmare was real– Very real to hundreds of thousands of women and girls a continent away.

The film -

A year after the dream I saw the film ‘The Greatest Silence,’ directed by Lisa F. Jackson. After being brutally gang raped, one woman spoke quietly about the shame she felt when her husband rejected her.  She said she felt so alone. Then there was the doe-eyed four-year old child with red braided cornrows who had also been raped, as well as an eighty year-old grandmother who sat silently in a field, her face turned away from everyone, as she awaited treatment. Bearing witness to the shocking and tragic violence being perpetrated on the women of the DRC was sobering.

I understand what it is to be marginalized, to be abused, and to feel you don’t have a voice. I understand what it feels like to be forgotten. Although I never experienced the depth of violence the women of the Congo have, I have experienced enough.  And I am a mother.  There was no turning back. I had to go to the Congo.  So….

Two jewelry stores, and one pawnshop later, I had gotten three prices. The last guy—offering the highest price– tells me he’ll make me a deal. “I’ll buy it, then I’ll hold it for you until you get back from your trip. If you change your mind you can buy it back from me for a $1000 more.” My brain swirls. I don’t know what to do. Finally, I tell him, “Okay, write up the agreement.” Then with a little too much excitement, he heads to the backroom to draw up the papers. He showed his poker face. And I split.

So I started thinking, how? How can I get there? And this is what transpired:

Six degrees of Separation between the Congo and Me -

My friend and fellow school mom, Lisa Shue, introduced me to her friend, Deb Newmyer. Deb and her late husband, Bobby Newmyer, started the Lost Boys Foundation, an organization set up to help Sudanese refugee boys after the civil war. Deb and I, both newly single, bonded not over men, but over the Sudan. I told Deb about a documentary/PSA idea I had, and Deb introduced me to her friend John Prendergast. John introduced me to the Enough Project’s, Raise Hope For The Congo Campaign manager, Candice Knezevic, and to Lisa F. Jackson (director of The Greatest Silence). We met. I told Candice and Lisa about my doc/PSA idea and about my frustration over not being a celebrity. Not that I want to be a celebrity but I envy the ‘right of entry’ they receive as far as their access to conflict zones. (That must sound strange to most people).  Anyway…Lisa introduced me to Joseph Mbangu, her National and International Project Manager, fixer, translator, and all around outreach guy. I contacted Joseph, and Six Degrees later I am heading to the Congo.

I don’t have a celebrity face, but I do have the commitment, determination, and will, to  help ensure that the women of the DRC are given a strong voice, that their opinions are heard and considered, that their nightmare ends.

What I have come to learn is that I am only separate from humanity to the degree I wish to be, to the degree I decide to turn a blind eye, instead of act.

Perhaps through my actions, I might inspire other 45 year-old moms to take the leap, to act on behalf of their hearts, a testament that it’s really never too late, and that each of us, if inspired, can construct our own path.  And like Nick Kristof wrote in his May 31^st column, “…If everything goes wrong and you’re robbed and you catch malaria, shrug it off—those are precisely the kinds of authentic interactions with local cultures that, in retrospect, enrich a journey and life itself.”

And as for a the wedding ring… I didn’t have to sell it. My ex-mother and law and my own mother gave me a gift that helped pay for the trip. But I am planning my second trip and now the ring must go.

I think of all the wedding rings gathering dust in a drawer—every one of them

represents the end of a journey.  But imagine if those rings represented the beginning. Imagine thousands and thousands of women selling their old rings and traveling to distant lands, experiencing a life they would have never known.

My journey didn’t stop with the end of my marriage. It began.

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