Life after rape in Congo

"So many women were killed; so many were raped; so many were displaced," Pacuriema says. "When the militias came, the husbands fled – the women often stayed alone. They had to support all the weight of the family on their heads. We realized that we needed to help each other."

By 2003, the war had come to Bunia, too. Different ethnic groups fought for control, and periodically one militia group would triumph, killing and raping its way through town. A few weeks later, another ethnic group would take revenge. One humanitarian agency, Cooperatione Italiano, estimated that in Bunia – population 250,000 – approximately 10 women were raped every day during 2004.

Pacuriema said her group tried to unify women during this violent period – bringing women from different ethnic groups together for meetings and workshops. They would sew together and pack food parcels.

"Women were divided because they belonged to different ethnic groups," she says. "We helped women to meet and to look for peaceful cohabitation."

They also tried to find help for rape victims. They talked about the attacks and told women that they should not flee their villages in shame. If a woman's family refused to take her back, Pacuriema's group would try to arrange other housing. Sometimes Pacuriema would invite women to stay with her own family.

The forum also organized work programs and microfinance loans, coordinating with some of the donor groups pouring into eastern Congo. They opened a makeshift sewing center.

"We wanted to help them be busy," says Jacqueline Borive, who works with Pacuriema. "We wanted to give them a way to keep their mind off what happened."

This is why Judith, a 17-year-old girl with downcast eyes, came to the organization. (The women in Pacuriema's program asked not be identified fully because of the stigma of having been raped.) Although she did not want to talk about her experiences in the war, Pacuriema and others say she was raped multiple times.

"I came here because I had nothing to do at home," Judith says. "It's just living."

The other women clustered around the sewing machine have equally violent stories. Most do not want to talk about rape.

A 17-year-old girl with big eyes holds her squirming 2-year-old son, Moses.

"I didn't want to be a mom, but they took me by force," she explains, looking downward.

She says she came to Pacuriema's group when she was still pregnant, hoping to learn some skill that might support her and her baby. Today, she says, she makes some money from the clothes she sells.

M., who asked that only her first initial be used, was raped on two separate occasions. During the war, a militia group raided her village and killed her parents as the family ran away. Then they raped her. After the war, she and her siblings lived together in a house on the outskirts of Bunia. There, drunken Congolese army soldiers raped her again.

After that attack she came to Pacuriema's organization. She had heard about it on the radio and spent three days looking for the actual office. She says Pacuriema made her feel welcome immediately.

"I came here in order to know how to make clothes, so I might have something to make with my life." Today, she says, she helps other women with their sewing. She has friends here – women who understand what she has been through without needing to ask.

"We Congolese women, we are doing what we can to help each other," Pacuriema says. "Women here have long felt neglected – but we hope this feeling will one day be over.

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