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Photo: Todd Heisler/The New
York Times
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The playwright Eve Ensler,
center, danced with Congolese women who helped build City of
For years,
diplomats, aid workers, academics and government officials here have been vexed
almost to the point of paralysis about how to attack this country’s staggering
problem of sexual violence, in which hundreds of thousands of women have been
raped, many quite sadistically, by the various armed groups who haunt the hills
of eastern Congo.
Sending in
more troops has compounded the problem. United
Nations peacekeepers
have failed to stop it. Would reforming the Congolese military work? Building
up the Congolese state? Pushing harder to regulate so-called conflict minerals
to starve the rebels of an income?
For Ms.
Ensler, the feminist playwright who wrote “The Vagina Monologues”
and who has worked closely with Congolese women, the answer was simple.
“You build
an army of women,” she said. “And when you have enough women in power, they
take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll
say ‘Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,’ and they’ll put an end to this
rape problem fast.”
Over the
weekend, Ms. Ensler took the first step toward building this army: the opening
of a base here in Bukavu called City of
The gleaming
new compound of brick homes, big classrooms, courtyards and verandas will be a
campus where small groups of Congolese women, most of them rape victims, will
be groomed to become leaders in their communities so they can eventually rise
up and, Ms. Ensler hopes, change the sclerotic politics of this country. They
will take courses in self-defense, computers and human rights; learn trades and
farming; try to exorcise their traumas with therapy sessions and dance; and
then return to their home villages to empower others.
The center,
built partly by the hands of the women themselves, cost around $1 million. Unicef contributed a substantial amount, and
the rest was raised from foundations and private donors by Ms. Ensler’s
advocacy group, V-Day. Google
is donating a computer center.
It is a
gutsy concept, to invest this heavily in a small group of mostly illiterate
women — about 180 leadership recruits per year — in the hope that they will
catalyze social change.
But Ms.
Ensler has faced long odds before, encouraging rape victims in
“This could
be a turning point,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Unicef official whose private
foundation is helping City of
When City of
It was an
upbeat moment in a country that has had few. The legacy of brutality and
exploitation goes back to the 1880s, when King Leopold II of
In the
mid-1990s, the country sank to new depths when a civil war broke out and
neighboring nations jumped in, arming this or that rebel group in order to get
their hands on this or that gold or diamond mine. Millions died. Although the
other African armies eventually withdrew, many of the rebel groups never
disbanded, exploiting the fact that
These armed
groups have to a striking degree vented their rage against women. Sadistic rape
— sometimes of men and boys as well — has become a distinctive feature of the
violence here, sometimes to terrorize civilians, sometimes for no apparent
strategic purpose.
Draw a line
in almost any direction from Bukavu and you will hit a village where countless
women have been brutalized.
Just last
month, in the nearby town of
The
government, which has done little to address the problem, sent a high-level
delegation to the opening of City of
Ms. Ensler
came up with the idea for the center about three years ago after hearing from
Congolese women that they wanted a safe place where they could learn skills.
While some of the center’s alumnae will return to their villages, others will
carry out the mission in other ways.
“I don’t
want to go back to my village and get raped again,” said Jane Mukoninwa, who
had been gang-raped twice and will be in the first class of leadership
recruits. “I want to learn to read and write so I can stay in Bukavu.”
She added:
“I’m angry. And if I can get some skills, I can be an advocate.”
On Saturday,
the women gave Ms. Ensler a spirited send-off. They surprised her with a gift
they bought, a wooden carving of a mother and child, and pressed around her,
dancing.
They sang:
“Why did you accept to carry us? We will never leave you to the end.”
Ms. Ensler
wiped the tears from her eyes.