Living vicariously through my dear friend and international relief superstar Sarah M. is an old pastime of mine. Most recently, she realized my ultimate fantasy of appearing on a public radio program.
Far better her than me, though - only Sarah could speak so eloquently about the issue at hand on PRI's The World, namely gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the GBV coordinator for a large aid organization there, where she works with women whose bodies are used as pawns in violent conflict.
>> Listen to Sarah on PRI's The World, or read the full transcript of the interview.
A month ago, I sat in a funky Brookline hair salon with Sarah, catching up at the beginning of her holiday leave. She was still jet-lagged and culture-shocked, and the first order of business (after breakfast) was a cut and color. I ended up asking her about the women she knows in DRC, and why the hell so many of them are getting raped, and what the hell anybody could do about it.
(I can only guess what the stylist, coating Sarah's hair with dye and folding it carefully into aluminum foil squares, thought about this conversation. Possibly "God, lighten up and read Marie Claire, already.")
Sarah's stories, and her partly sad, partly angry, completely fatigued statement that "I'm really tired of rape," haven't left me since. Neither has her reply to a question I asked the previous evening, almost hypothetically, during a discussion about Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series. I was blathering about the tension between free will and determinism in the books, explaining how a dictatorial church would stop at nothing to prevent the heroine from causing a second fall. I think I asked something like, "If you had the chance to prevent the fall, even if it meant taking away free will, would you? I wouldn't."
I wasn't even sure Sarah was still awake at that point, a glass of wine tilting precariously in her hand, the jet lag taking over. "I would," she said, suddenly looking at me, smiling her Sarah half-smile. I saw a lot of things in her sleepy eyes just then.
She says she's tired of rape. She's more cosmopolitan, a true expatriate, than the last time I saw her; more detached from her work in a necessary, healthy way than she has been in the past. One must be blase after a certain point, or else live in a non-stop hell of emotions, fear, hatred, hope, despair.
But here is a woman who has seen what people can do to each other, and who says she would stop it all if she could. It left me feeling conflicted, and gladder than ever to call her my friend.
More about DRC gender-based violence:
> NYT: Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War (with excellent slideshow)
> Eve Ensler reports in Glamour
> Anderson Cooper on the DRC conflict
(Hi, by the way. I am unceremoniously back.)
