It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Addario Lynsey

Author:Addario, Lynsey [Addario, Lynsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2015-02-04T22:00:00+00:00

VUMILA

SHE WAS SLEEPING WHEN she heard a knock at her door. Nine men speaking Kinyarwanda, the language spoken in Rwanda, kicked the door open, entered, and used strips of clothes and rope to tie her and her children’s hands in order to rob them. Her husband wasn’t home. Once they gathered the things, they untied Vumila and made her carry her own belongings on her back deep into the forest. When she fell from exhaustion from walking up and down hills and through the woods for about a week, they kicked her. They arrived at the first rebel checkpoint, and men—some in uniform, some in tracksuits—untied her hands. At least nine men raped her and several other women in a large, open room while the other men watched. The commander of the camp chose Vumila to be his “wife,” and she was forced to stay inside his house day and night. She was raped over and over and over for eight months. When she had to go to the bathroom, they put a string on her like an animal and followed her to the river. Those who tried to escape were stabbed to death, and their bodies were displayed before the other prisoners. Eventually one of the men who had been detained with her was sent back to the village to find three cows to exchange for each person’s release. He found only two cows per person. Vumila and the others were beaten, whipped, kicked, stripped of their clothes, and finally told to run away. They arrived back in their village naked, exhausted, and injured. By the time Vumila’s husband returned to the village, she was pregnant with the commander’s child. Her husband was angry at her for carrying the child of a Rwandan Hutu militiaman and told her she had to go back to her family. Vumila now wanted only one thing:

“All I want is that they accept my children to school. We used to have livestock that help us pay for the school, but now we cannot pay for school, and the government said that they [were] going to help everyone with tuition, free education, but now they sent the children home with no education. What kind of a country will Congo be with uneducated children?”

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