I decided early on as a child to make up the world. But on the day that Angelique crawled on the floor, my will and imagination collapsed. If humans were capable of this, if the superpowers were able to send militia proxies to do their bidding and steal the Congo’s minerals, if the international community was able to turn a blind eye for thirteen years and eight million people were dead and hundreds of thousands of women raped and tortured and babies were cooked in pots, then all of us, every single one of us, was complicit and we were bankrupt and hopeless. I fell through this hole, this fistulaed crack in the world.
Cancer is essentially built into our DNA, our self-destruction programmed into our original design—biologically, psychologically. We spend our days, most of us consciously or unconsciously doing ourselves in. Think building a nuclear power plant on a fault line close to the water. Think poisoning the Earth that feeds us, the air that lets us breathe. Think smoking, drugging. Think abusing our children who are meant to care for us in old age, think mass raping women who carry the future in their bodies, think overeating or starving ourselves to look a certain way, think unprotected sex in the age of AIDS. We are a suicidal lot, propelled toward self-eradication. And now, they were putting a tube in through my nose, down my throat, into my gut, as if I had poisoned myself.
In the middle of this, Dr. Deb walked in.
I sat up and grabbed her arm hard, as if I had suddenly woken from a dream, and through my tube-filled nose and mouth I heard myself scream, “I want to live, Deb. I want to live. I don’t want to die.”
SCAN
CONGO INCONTINENT
Three weeks after the takedown surgery and the removal of the bag, I return to the Congo. I am basically incontinent. I need the women. I need the jasmine and hibiscus and the howling night dogs and the mad rain and the lake that is an ocean and sometimes turns a certain moon blue. I need the South Kivu heat that surrounds and calms. I need the bougainvillea and the shocking orange blossoms on the tall trees. I need the bulging mangoes and avocados. I need to be woken by boisterous zebra finches, the colibri, moineaux—the chattering chorus of ancient morning birds. I need the incantations of women and men in the distance with drums summoning celebration or loss.
I return with my doctors: Dr. Sean and Dr. Deb from the Mayo. Dr. Sean, who removed my uterus and discovered my fistula, has to my astonishment and joy, offered to come to the Congo and perform surgery on women at Panzi Hospital, and Dr. Deb will advise and give support. They have brought tons of medical equipment. They are an entourage of love and healing. I return bald and twenty pounds thinner. The women do not know what to make of me. My naked head suddenly feels like insane privilege—all the attention and care I have received. I am embarrassed by how much money (insurance), equipment, healers, surgeons, nurses, and medications have gone into saving me.
These are the women who have been praying for me. When the women builders of City of Joy see me, they dance in the rain and mud. I dance with them. City of Joy is not finished.
Mama C is exhausted and we spend most of our days raging and worrying, but laughing a lot and singing along to blaring tragic love songs by Leona Lewis as we drive on what are euphemistically called roads.
One night after everyone has gone to bed, Dr. Sean and I end up talking. The night air relaxes me and gives me courage. This is the man who saved my life. This is also the man who scared me with his straightforwardness. He explains to me that he meant no harm, that he was only doing his job, laying out my options. I see how we have each been wounded in our various wars: Dr. Sean fighting on the front lines of cancer, me fighting on the front lines of sexual violence. He protects himself by preparing for the worst. I protect myself by not allowing space for it. I ask Dr. Sean what would happen if he were to let himself believe I was going to live. He says, “I am a doctor. It is about the science.” I press him again. He finally says, “Honestly, Eve. I have no idea why I’ve become so cynical. Maybe it is all the cancer, the recurrences, the losses I have seen.” His sorrow enters me. All the times he feels he has failed. He does not want to disappoint by promising what he cannot guarantee.
“There are no guarantees, Dr. Sean, but I would rather live on the mad edge of belief than shrink away, anticipating my doom. And right now,” I say, “I need you to take a leap off the doctor cliff and believe with me.” I am suddenly about seven years old. Dr. Sean is about five. We are in my backyard under my favorite weeping willow tree. I tell him if he closes his eyes and squeezes them really hard, he will see magical fairies. He says, in a frustrated voice, “I only see spots.” “Squeeze harder, Dr. Sean,” I say. “You will see them if you squeeze your eyes harder.”
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LEAKING
I go to visit Esther, Mama of the wounded at Panzi Hospital. We do our ritual together with hundreds of the women survivors. We breathe, scream, kick, punch, release, and then there is mad drumming and we dance. I am still weak from the takedown and chemo, but it doesn’t stop me. As I dance, I have no control over my bowels, and for the first time I don’t care. Before when I was with the women and they were leaking from their fistulas, I could only imagine what it felt like. Now we are one wild mass of drumming, kicking, raging, leaking women.
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SHE WILL LIVE
Dr. Mukwege and I often visit his favorite places. We have been to the top of the hills that overlook all of Bukavu; there is one beaten, narrow footpath that weaves like a snake through the lush fields. There the air is soft and the Earth is fecund. We have walked in the forests behind Panzi Hospital where the late-day light filters through emerald trees and falls on a soft carpet of pine needles and brush. We have walked for hours through the back roads of the village of Panzi, down by the river. Everywhere we go, Dr. Mukwege stops to shake a hand or offer a remedy, or calm a heart. He is the mayor, the pastor, the doctor, the healer. He knows almost everyone’s names and remembers each of their maladies, stories, and treatments. Dr. Mukwege is the antidote to my father. He is humble, quiet, careful, methodical. He listens. His story is in his hands, large, capable, gentle, strong. Sometimes the magnitude and weight of what he has witnessed and experienced lies like a blanket of extended silence between us.
Today we drive for four hours to Kaziba, the village where his father was born. We drive on windy roads, through small dusty villages, past feeding goats and women who light up the road like fireflies in their brightly colored panges. From time to time I notice Dr. Mukwege checking me out, trying to assess if I am really well, if I am going to survive. It is seven months since I last saw him, since I was first diagnosed. I have lost my organs and my mother, and he has lost his father, who died last month. We arrive in the small backyard of his father’s house where his father’s body is buried. The markings are fresh. There is so much death in the Congo. I am suddenly aware of the new earth tossed over his coffin. I could easily be under that ground. I wonder where I would be buried or if I would be buried at all. I wish I had a village to return to. I dream sometimes of a plot in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, where Beauvoir and Sartre are buried, but here, in the backyard of Dr. Mukwege’s father, that feels seriously pretentious. If I had my wish, they would take my body out to sea, gently lower it in the waves, and let the sharks and whales and other fish feed on it. I don’t mind the idea of being left in water. I begin to have the “death thing,” but I notice it is not scary like it used to be. I have already come so close, the proximity has changed my relationship to death, and my gratitude for being alive provides a new protection. I am lost in these musings when Dr. Mukwege says quietly but decisively, “I want to tell you something.” As you know, my father was a pastor,” he says, “and he knew things. In 2000, he came to the family and said, ‘I will leave this world in ten years on October 7, 2010. I have received a message from God.’ For ten years on October 7, we had a family celebration of the day of his passing. In fact, he died on October 7. It was strange that it happened during your last operation, but there are so many strange things
about our connection. When I heard you were sick, I got very depressed. I couldn’t understand how God could take you away when you had come to help us. I was in a bad place. My father could see I was not well. My faith was in question. He came to me and said, ‘Denis, listen to me. Your friend Eve is sick. She will go through a rough time, but she will not die. The cancer will pass and she will be fine. You do not have to worry. God is protecting her.’ ”
Dr. Mukwege says, “I did not fully believe him, but when I see you, when I see how strong you are, I know now he was telling the truth.” For the very first time in seven months, something unhinges inside me and I sense the future. As we drive back to Bukavu through the melting green countryside, I am not sure if it is the jeep or my newborn faith propelling us forward.
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SUE
Sue: “I am imagining you writing, looking out a window, with snow falling, quiet—your heart and creativity safe, sheltered, expanding.
“I cherish our bond, always, and I can feel how much your joy has grown, and how much it is the great force behind your work now. Amazing how cancer could transform you like this, isn’t it?
“Wouldn’t it be incredible if everyone could be purged, somehow, of the projected not-them badness that they internalized and perhaps have acted out because their souls have been so damaged?
“Wouldn’t it be incredible if everyone could find the joy that comes with committing to our own goodness? Perhaps we would stop dividing ourselves into malignancies of various forms.”
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JOY
My hair is cropped. My body is lean, dressed in a special Congolese-designed short skirt and geometric top. It is Western enough to prevent me from looking like a tragic white-wannabe-African but Congolese enough to be respectful. It is colorful. I am trying not to wear only black. Dr. Mukwege and Mama C and I stand at the entranceway and greet the thousands of guests who are arriving for the opening of City of Joy. There are dignitaries who have come from all over the Congo and the world, government and UN officials, the governor of South Kivu, ambassadors and their wives; there are famous actors and funders, and my dear friends Pat, Carole, Rada, Naomi, Avi, Katharine, and Stephen, my team at V-Day, and our amazing board. Paula is taking photographs. Toast is here. There are thousands from the surrounding community: pastors, doctors, nurses, and social workers. There are ministers and teachers, mothers and fathers, and babies. My son has flown here. When he walks through the gates, I start to cry.
I stand at the entranceway of a vision that propelled me through surgery and infections and chemo and rockbottom worry and despair.
City of Joy is a place, but it is also a concept. It grew out of the women of the Congo and it was shaped by their desire and hunger. It was literally built with their hands. It is a sanctuary for healing; it is a revolutionary center. It is a place where on any given day women will learn English, literacy skills, self-defense, computer skills, agricultural techniques, communications, and civics. They will spend mornings singing and dancing and healing in group psychotherapy, and end the day with massages and cooking together. Their healing is entwined with their empowerment so that when they leave City of Joy after six months, they will be leaders who teach their communities what they have learned. Through the dissemination of their skills and training, a network of Congolese women leaders will spread and Cities of Joy will grow everywhere.
There will be joy here. Joy—happiness, delight, pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, elation, thrill, exultation, rapture. This joy will be palpable when you walk through the gates. It will be found in the green grass, in the voices of the women, in the taste of their home-cooked cassava, sweet potatoes, fufu, and peas, in their grateful bodies dancing and dancing to what will feel like a ceaseless drum. It will move through you and you will touch joy and suddenly realize you have never felt joy because it requires abandon. It grows from gratitude and cannot exist where there is mad cynicism or distrust. You will touch this joy and you will suddenly know it is what you were looking for your whole life, but you were afraid to even acknowledge the absence because the hunger for it was so encompassing.
I am standing at the entranceway of the new city. I am still thin and weak. My body is not yet fully mine, in the last stages of this cancer conversion. I am not sure who I will be when all this is over or where I will live or even what I will want to do with my life. But I know for sure that there will be joy.
SCAN
MOTHER
I have never gone to see the gorillas. I have never felt comfortable being a tourist in the middle of a raging war. I have said I will go when the women are free and safe. The day after the opening of City of Joy, it suddenly feels right. I will take my son. He will love the gorillas. We drive with Mama C’s husband, Carlos, and son, David, up to the national park. We are told to wear high boots and socks so the red stinging ants do not attack our ankles. We are told this is agony. We are told we will go into the forest and walk until we find the gorillas. We are told it could happen right away or it could take hours. I am not sure what I am more afraid of—ants, or snakes, or spiders, or getting lost in the thick jungle and being captured by raping militias. I do not want my son to be afraid, so I turn my terror into enthusiasm. I am dancing and leaping over rocks and vines and roots. Dancing through the forest. Part of it is a strategy to avoid crawling things or leeches. We have two Congolese guides who carry huge machetes and chop at the vines and trees to make a path. They thrash and thrash at wet leaves as we move deeper and deeper into the jungle. Serious jungle. This is the Earth, raw, untended, untamed. This is the Mother before makeup, dieting, cutting, and pruning. The earthy smell of wet soil, the green oxygen of trees, the solid dirt floor. I can tell that my son, who lives in Brentwood, is trying to manage his terror. His jokes get funnier and more inappropriate.
This is a fairy tale. The handsome prince who lost his mother to an evil killer gets taken by the wild stepmother into the woods to see if they can find the secret that will set them free. As they step deeper and deeper into the tangled woods, part of them would like to turn back, but something drives them farther. After a while they stop talking. The cacophony of the forest—the overworked woodpeckers, the croaking frogs, the incessant cicadas—fills their beings. Maybe an hour in, their guides suddenly come to an abrupt halt. The handsome prince and the wild stepmother cling to each other. The guides motion them to hush, and they slowly climb a hill, gently pushing back the trees with hands, no longer using their machetes. They all tiptoe until they come upon a small clearing. Their guides, smiling and proud, motion the handsome prince and the wild stepmother to come closer. There in the middle of the forest, in the middle of an ordinary day, is a family of totally happy gorillas: the ancient sleeping grandfather, snoring and scratching; the teenager, like an acrobat from the tree circus, swinging from vines above; the mother sitting crossed-legged on the ground, her newborn to her breast, making the simplest and most earth-shattering gesture. When she sees the approaching invaders, the crowd of seekers, she simply, calmly, without thought or hesitation, closes her arms around her baby. The prince and the stepmother are stunned. It is this simple gesture they have each been searching for all their lives—the arms of the mother who instinctively and absolutely protects her vulnerable baby. The handsome prince and the wild stepmother, two orphans, gripping each other’s hands a little too hard.
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SECOND WIND
Live as if you were already dead.
Zen admonition
I am on Essence Road. It is after the rain.
I am cancer-free eighteen months.
I know the crisis on Essence Road in Bukavu is the crisis in the world. Indigenous people starving as their government exports their crops. Indigenous people making a dollar or two a day (if they are lucky) as the West and the world pillage their plentiful oil, gold, copper, coltain, or tin. Women carrying insane loads, sacks, tanks, baskets. Women putting their lives at risk, and getting raped.
Each time I take this jou
rney, I force myself to look out at Essence Road, to pay attention to the details, to map the changes and outrages, insults and miseries. I do not look away, and, believe me, I want to look away. It’s hot on Essence Road. It’s crowded and it’s impossible. Most of the people here have fled violence. Nearly everyone has left their homes. Most are traumatized, dislocated, orphaned, hungry. Essence Road burns in me and I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that some days when I consider why Essence Road and so many roads like it exist all over the world, I have very violent fantasies. I think of rapacious greed, the hunger for more and more, the tiny percentage of those who have everything, and the majority who have nothing. In my rage, I imagine the overthrow of corporations, industrial destroyers, rapists, corrupt leaders, and the arrogant and disinterested rich. Some days I think there will be no other way. None of the powers that be will voluntarily give up their private holdings and their dreams. I try to explain to myself how I can be having such murderous fantasies about uprising and revolution when I have spent my life devoted to ending violence. And the only answer I can find is also on Essence Road—the City of Joy. Each time I arrive there, I am reminded again that we can build the new way, build the new world, birth the new paradigm.
I do not know how to end the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I don’t know where governments end and corporations begin. I cannot show you exactly how the mining of the coltain that is in your cell phone is linked to Jeanne being raped in her village. I don’t know how to move the UN Security Council, or the secretary-general, or the European, British, or Canadian Parliament, or Congress or Downing Street or the White House, and I have made impassioned visits to all these places and have left each time, crushed and bewildered. I do not know how to arrest the war criminals or the corporate exploiters.