By Lise Alves
Three young women enter the room with their heads lowered, suspicious of the visitors waiting to see them and hear their stories. They seem uncomfortable with the attention and divert their gaze downward, fidgeting with their hands, as they take their seats at the end of a long table.
The three women saw their lives shattered by ongoing civil strife in their native Congo. At the same time, they are beneficiaries of the work of Sister Angelique Namaika, winner of this year’s Nansen Refugee Award from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Sister Angelique has devoted the past four years to ministering alongside Congolese women displaced by violence. She herself was displaced at one point. And while these have never personally met Sister Angelique, they recognize that without her ministry they might not be alive today.
To make them more comfortable, Larissa Leite, who works for Caritas Brazil, tells them they will be identified only by their initials. The first one to speak is S.M., 18, whose father was an assistant to a politician in Congo’s capital of Kinshasa.
“One day he came home and told my mother they had to flee because the government forces were after him,” she said.
S.M. was at school at the time, and a friend of her mother came to pick her up. She stayed with the woman for two months before being put on a plane and sent to Sao Paulo in March.
“My mother’s friend was able to obtain a passport and visa for me and put me on a plane. I haven’t heard from my parents since that day I was picked up from school,” she said in almost perfect Portuguese.
F.N. was 17 when she arrived in Sao Paulo in January. She also came from a middle class family, had a high school education and dreamed of becoming a doctor in Kinshasa. Her uncle was a military commander and the family lived comfortably before he was considered an enemy by the government.
Her uncle and father fled, leaving F.N. with her mother and two younger brothers. Fearing for her safety, her mother sent her to live with a friend. She was not at home when government troops came to the house, kidnapped her mother and brothers and torched the family home. The family friend was able to get her a passport and visa to Brazil. She said her heart “hurts” not knowing if her mother and brothers are alive.
“Life here is very different from what I had before, I had everything I needed there,” she said. But F.N. said she feels safer in Brazil.
Today she is training to be a telemarketing agent, working at one of the country’s largest telecommunications company. Still, she dreams of going back to school and becoming a doctor.
M.C.P., 35, was pregnant with her sixth child in 2010 when her husband was arrested by government troops and accused of being a rebel. Fearing for her safety, she moved from inland Kinshasa to Muanda on the Atlantic Coast with her five children.
When rumors flared that her husband had been a rebel, she sought the help of the Catholic Church. One day this past February, a priest came to the shelter and told her she had to leave immediately.
“I explained that three of my kids were still at school, but he said it was either at that moment or not at all,” she said. So she left with her three younger children on a small boat to another part of the country, where she was put into the hold of a cargo ship. “I did not know where I was going. We did not have any documents.”
She states that she knew she was no longer in Africa when she landed in the port of Santos, Brazil, Feb. 28. “I knew because of the color of the people’s skins,” she said. She tells us that she has not heard a word from the three children she was forced to leave behind. “The missionary said he would take care of them for me and I have to believe that this is true.”
The three women who made their way to Sao Paulo are part of much larger group of refugees who have been arriving on a daily basis from the Congo at the doorsteps of Caritas Congo.
“Women are a very large part of the group of refugees we get from the Congo,” explained Larissa Leite of Caritas Brazil in the Sao Paulo Archdiocese.
Although none here today openly admit to being abused, Leite said that the majority of the women who fled have been raped or fled so they would not be assaulted. “Rape in the Congo is used as a weapon of war,” she said.
F.N. said she knows neighbors who were raped by government soldiers or rebels. She has heard of soldiers forcing fathers to rape daughters and sons to rape mothers. “One of my neighbors killed himself after he was forced by government troops to rape his own mother,” said F.N.
“I was the niece of a general that is why I escaped,” she said softly.
Stigmatized, these rape victims are rejected by their families and people in their villages, M.C.P. said. “There are lots of suicides.” – CNS