Goma

Goma is not a nice place. Just over the border in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Goma was the home of one of the largest and most awful refugee camps for Rwandans during the 1994 genocide. (By awful, I mean awful – living conditions were deplorable, and members of the Interahamwe, the extremist Hutu militia responsible for the genocide, terrorized the refugees living there as well as mounted raids into Rwanda from inside the camp.)

The DRC is very unstable – a lot of it is really still a war zone, and the trauma that Rwandese women went through 12 years ago is now being inflicted on Congolese women. Because my organization has a lot of experience dealing with sexual violence and HIV, they’ve been acting as consultants to some newer organizations across the border trying to follow our model in the Congo. ACD (my boss), Heidi (a law/business intern from Northwestern), Megan (a lawyer from Toronto) and Rebecca (one of the daughters of my other boss, Kathy) spent the last couple of days in Goma, taking testimonies from Congolese women who had been raped and visiting a hospital that does fistula surgeries. (So far this hospital has performed about 600 of these surgeries, and has been able to reintegrate most of the women back into their communities.)

Not surprisingly, it was a very intense trip. But the group's most dramatic story came from their attempts to get back home. On their way to the border on Friday afternoon, they were flagged down at a roadblock by what turned out to be an extremely drunk, belligerent Congolese policewoman (she literally hissed at AC several times) who took all their documents, stuffed them in her bra, and tried to leave with them. AC had to coax her off a motorcycle several times, finally putting her hand on the driver’s keys so he couldn’t take the woman anywhere. Meanwhile Rebecca, who was pretty sick, was on the side of the road, dry heaving over the side of the car. In the end, they had to bribe this woman with all the money they had (about 60 USD) just to get their papers back and be allowed to leave. It’s safe to say that everyone is very happy to be back home in Kigali!