These women aren’t video vixens gyrating in the latest music video. They aren’t lined up to sell a story about how they performed oral sex on some big star and they could care less about the hottest handbag or newest night club. Please don’t speak to them about a baby daddy or a child support check. To these women survival isn’t about finding a man to to take care of them, it’s about hoping…no praying… that after he and his friends have any way they want with you, after they torture you and kill your family, that they will show some mercy and spare your life.
Sex for these ladies isn’t a commodity traded for a bottle of champagne, a pair of designer shoes or access to a jet set lifestyle…sex for them is violence, a weapon of war and many of them die every day from the crimes afflicted against their bodies.
If you’ve ever had a man touch you, speak to you or even look at you in a way that made you feel dirty or objectified then watch these stories. If you have ever been careless with your body or have a daughter who you want to value hers, then watch these stories. If you have a son or nephew…MAKE him watch the stories of the women in the Democratic ( can you call it that?) Republic of Congo who aren’t competing with each other or vying for a rich man’s attention, they are helping each other everyday survive and thrive with the help of one powerful organization.
Sunday on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper introduced us to Lucienne, a woman living in war torn DRC who’s steadily rebuilding her life with the help of Women for Women International, a program that empowers survivors of war to reclaim their life through economic self-sufficiency. The program provides job skills and business development training so that women of war can gain their sense of self back through what they accomplish rather than what they are given.
Lucienne’s story, of being held captive, tortured, abandoned by her family, and left alone to give birth to the child of one of her rapists, was sadly familiar to me, as it is the story of Jernine Fadida and Clementine Murekeyisoni, two of the women I have been honored to support in the three years since I became a Women for Women sponsor.
My sisters, like Lucienne are picking up the pieces of their lives that have been ripped apart through horrors most of us cannot imagine, yet they continue to look toward the future and plan for the next generation of women who will carry on. Lucienne after becoming pregnant through rape named her baby girl “Luck”. There would seem nothing lucky about bringing another female child into such a world, but Lucienne says, in a voice filled with optimism, “I named her Luck because I went through many hardships. I could have been killed in the forest, but I got my life back. I have hope.”
I joined Women for Women, three years ago, during a period when my own hope was low and I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. The best way I knew how to pull out of my own pity party was to place my energy into connecting with a stronger sense of survival than my own. I completely underestimated how much these women, my sisters, would truly change my life.
It may sound trite, but it’s hard to cry in a letter to your sister in the Congo about a fight with your boyfriend or how your boss passed you over for a promotion, when you’re encouraging her to stay hopeful through the atrocities of war. It is also impossible not to feel joy beyond measure at her well wishes when you find true love or tell her of a man whose kindness helped you not harmed you, that there is a place where you can in fact call a man ” trusted friend”. I could never give them a portion of what they have given me, the chance to see beyond myself and find meaning in humanity, a gift for which I am eternally grateful and a lesson I will never forget.
If you missed last night’s episode please go to www.womenforwomen.org/congo for more information on the women of the DR Congo, to watch Sunday nights show, to make a donation, to read Anderson Cooper’s blog about his visit and to find related news articles on the ongoing crisis.
I encourage everyone I know, especially the men in my life, to become a Women for Women sponsor!
If you have a favorite organization empowering others please tell me about it and let me know why it’s so meaningful to you!
