When the women of the Congo cried out for assistance, for aid, for help, to be rescued, the world ignored us. There were a few noble men who gave us aid and comfort, performed surgeries on our broken bodies, but for the most part, we dragged our violated selves around, trying to make sense of a world where we, specifically women, had been selected as targets of war.

If our men could not be defeated on the battlefield, then we and our children would be dragged from our homes, raped, beaten, mutilated, and sometimes killed, as object/abject lessons to all of us that we were defenseless. The more important message was that no one cared: we did not sit atop oil reserves; within our bodies were not the jewels of the black African earth. We were simply flesh and blood, and that is an inexhaustible, and therefore, valueless commodity. 

The frequency of rape in eastern Congo, which has suffered more than a decade of war, appalls aid workers. Mr Ciza's hospital admits four women on a typical day. In the last five years, it has treated more than 18,000. In neighbouring South Kivu province, the United Nations reported 27,000 sexual assaults in 2006. In some villages, every single woman has reported some kind of sexual abuse, usually inflicted by armed men from Congo's shambolic national army or the dozens of local militias and rebel groups.

"I've worked in Angola and Darfur and the situation there was horrific, but in Congo the scale and brutality is at a whole different level," said Martin Hartberg, the protection advisor for Oxfam in Goma.

"It is as if rape has become ingrained into the culture of these armed groups. This country has to be the worst in the world to be a woman."

No, we were simply war booty. Cunts. And targeting us specifically—targeting our vaginae, our mouths, our rectums, our breasts--hurt us, our children, the men who loved us and could not defend us.

But you? You turned your back on us. And now Bemba will be tried for war crimes. But so what. Even if he is convicted and executed, who will sit with the shell of my daughter, gang-raped and sliced open, my daughter who is convinced now that she is nothing more than the parts of her the soldiers abused?

I wrote the following paragraphs when all of this was happening. I pleaded with you to help me. And you did nothing. Nothing.

Newspaper reports in 2005 reported that Congolese women had taken refuge on small spits of floating land in the rivers, in an effort to escape the rape squads that seek them out.



I have come to this  island because I do not want to die. The water rises around me, but the small spit I stand upon is dry. It is the one place on earth I can still claim my body as my own. Here, there is no soldier-thug who cracks my skull with his rifle butt and uses his penis as a weapon to tear my flesh.

Here, I am alone but not alone. I am surrounded by the refugees, the terrorized, the weary, who have come here because there was nowhere left to go. I float on an island of papyrus. Paper. Paper where words are written, words that claim ownership of my flesh. Words that claim me as the lesser creation of a God. According to the words written on the paper, I am not to be trusted with my own self. I am territory to  be seized, owned, granted dominion over. According to the words on the paper, which are translated into the words from their mouths, I am the bounty of war. I am fair game. I may be raped, mutilated, forced into pregnancy, covered up, disappeared.

They told me these words when they raped me. They told me I was dirt, evil, that I had it coming. They did not shove their papers at my face then. They used their fists and their guns instead.

You have not shown the will, the desire, to protect me. But why should you protect me? You have not yet even recognized that I have a right to life.

And I am here, on a floating jumble of papyrus, isolating myself in order to try to be safe. I am hunted. If I am found, I will be killed.

Today, my floating island is in the Congo, but tomorrow, my floating island may be on the Mississippi or the Euphrates. On those islands, there will be no scolding matron who smacks me with her Bible, tells me that I am evil for not wanting the zygote that floats toward my uterus. There, there will be no Imam, demanding I cover my shameful flesh in cloth that blots out the sunlight. I would pray that you never have to know this terror, but I no longer believe that there is some power to hear my prayers.

There is only paper. And that paper dissolves under my feet as I float.

For those who might be interested in helping, Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues will be dedicated to raising money for the women of the Congo. You can find more information here.

I participated in my college's production of the VM a couple of years ago. I performed one of the monologues. Even at our small college, the three shows sold out. Look for a production in your area.