Focus Congo - Jack's Journal

How Many Ways Can People Be Violated?

It’s a question I will ask myself many times over the next few days.

It is a Thursday afternoon. I am in Mangango, a small village alongside a rutted, red clay road in the Central African bush. Most of the residents are female, and almost all of them have been raped at least once.

When Elephants Fight, It Is The Grass That Suffers.

It seems that violence has touched everything in the eastern DRC. Between five and a half and seven million people are dead from the fighting. You have to go back to WWII to find that much death.

“Please, Lord, Make It Stop.”

Thursday Afternoon. We were late. We had been visiting centers which counseled, protected, and trained women who had been sexually victimized all day. My mind and heart had been beat up by the stories I heard as much as my body had been by the rough, unpaved roads we had been travelling.

The women at the Oicha center had been waiting on our arrival for hours. There were at least 150 women and children. They had come to tell us their stories, to help us understand what they and the country had experienced, and how much Worldlink’s help means.

The Sun Also Rises

Friday Morning. Niyi and I had been in the DR Congo for less than 36 hours, but it felt like a lot longer. Maybe today would be better.

It was. I really began to see for the first time the opportunities for healing and growth that God was offering people here in Beni.

Friday Afternoon

We are visiting another shelter, this one in a building lent to the ministry by a local church. It houses about 20 women and serves as temporary housing for women who have been abandoned by their husbnads and young girls who were married to military men and later abandoned.

“When Your Heart Is Open To God, Your Home Is Open, Too.”

So explained Dorcas on Friday night when Niyi and I visited her home, and found 15-20 other women, also victimized, living in her modest house.

Many of these women had been sexually violated. All had been victimized. Some had contracted HIV or AIDS as a result of a sexual assault; some had been rejected by spouses or parents because of their experience. This group gathers every night to share and support each other.

“The soldiers came for the war, but stayed for the gold.”

In May of 1997 an attempt was made to overthrow the brutal Congolese government of Mobutu Sese Seko in a coup backed by Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian forces. The coup attempt dragged on, and the foreign armies settled in the east of the country and began plundering the region’s abundant gold mines and other mineral resources.