By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Author’s Note: Grace Under Pressure is an on-going series of posts honoring everyday people who courageously and honorably make positive differences in their own lives and the lives of others. It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes reside among us and serve as quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours too.
Imagine a day where you are confronted by ten women who have been beaten and raped and are desperately seeking your help. Imagine those women have done nothing more than venture out to feed their families knowing full well that armed gangs are hunting them for sport. Then imagine you are confronted by ten more women the next day and then the next and so on in a horrific circulating daily struggle to survive. That is the world of Colette. Colette cannot give her last name for fear of reprisal from the same thugs who torment her fellow refugees at a camp just north of one of the Congo’s provincial capitals at Goma. Fifty thousand displaced men, women, and children are crowded in the camp which lies adjacent to the Virunga National Park. They are just a fraction of the estimated 250,000 people displaced in East Congo by the civil war despite the presence of the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world.
The women of the Goma camp receive some humanitarian aid to feed their families but is rarely enough to meet the daily dietary requirements. The only other source of food and fuel lies in Virunga where even Congolese policeman are afraid to venture in the daytime. Thus the women are forced into the Faustian choice between starvation and rape. The women must enter the park under cover of darkness to gather what firewood they can carry to cook their food and to sell in Goma’s marketplace. They are easy targets for gangs of armed men who rape on average at least ten women a day. Nationwide, the estimates are that 48 women are raped every hour in the Congo. One of the victims was Colette.
Colette occupies a tiny, dark corner of the Goma camp where she runs a counseling center for the rape victims. If emergency medical services are required, she accompanies the victim to the camp medical tent. Colette also intervenes with victims’ spouses to help them understand and accept what has happened. In this patriarchal society, this is no simple task. But mostly, Colette just listens to the stories of these victims. She provides a comforting ear and empathetic touch to counter the uncivilized brutality suffered by these women and young girls. Colette hopes a long-term solution can be reached to help permanently relocate the refugees even as the Congolese civil war continues to rage despite UN intervention. For now, all she can do it listen and hope. In a place as dire as Congo, that is still remarkable.
Source: UN Dispatch
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
A real unsung hero! Good job Mark!
Thank you Mark. Excellent work on this most important topic.
Very sad situation. It would be good of someone stepped up over there to put an end to this nightmare. Sadly, priorities are not what they should be.
excellent choice for a post, Mark.
Mark,
Thank you for a wonderful and yet depressing post. The way some of us treat other humans is so sad and the horror of this greatest genocide of this era barely gets a mention in our media.
This is a good choice. This area in & around the Congo must be the most dangerous place in the world to live; even worse than Syria & going on for a longer time; the men too are mutilated by the rapists. I was brought up as a kid in Kampala, Uganda. We went to the Congo a couple of times; saw the pigmys (tiny people) with their bows & poison arrows, the monkeys & the hot springs. Now I live in the USA, though I’m visiting my girlfriend in the Philippines right now. Lets not let America slowly degenerate to the level of dangerous third world countries. Our president has been trying very hard to speed such a process up with at least 3 draconian edicts in the past 14 months from the NDA Act of 30 Dec 2011 to the drone-targets-in-usa law to the ‘no one can demonstrate against me while I’m in town’ act, passed last March, as he goes in competition with Robert Mugabe of Zambia.There’s more stuff on this. including the real cause of the white male terrorist shootings in the USA, on Turley’s 10 Reasons the USA Is No Longer the Home of the Free.
There is always more to the story. Here is the reason why the Congo (and many other parts of Africa) is undergoing such chaos:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/19-american-companies-exploit-the-congo/
Mike S,
you are right in stating that this doesn’t get much media attention. The link above tells us why…………
Daring, mysterious topic Mark.
“the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world”
Peace does not come through force, it comes from peace within shared outwardls as love toward others.
For the most part, ours is a love-starved planet.
Even our own nation is adrift from the harbor of peace.
Thanks for the link RWL.
Mark indicated roaming armed gangs, RWL indicated American companies raping the Congo.
Here is what makes it possible:
(Journalism: Facts vs Fantasy). The world is divided in a manner most sophisticated, educated, and proud Americans are not aware of:
(The Virgin MOMCOM – 4). One of these daze we are going to realize, if we haven’t already, that the fundamental reality of our time is The POGO Principle.
Our part in it is to believe myth, to live mythology, to believe that The Force is there to help those people.
Mark, is this also one of the areas where the 9 year old males are trained and exploited by these rebels.
Here’s your gun Johnny Congo, see that woman over there go rape her and if she doesn’t let you kill her.!!
This is one of those stories where imagination invites more horror than human beings are capable of grasping. Myself included.
Exposing the politics, greed, and those that benefit from it is a start. Thank you.
Excellent job on a grim subject, Mark.
Thank you, Mark, for giving us the opportunity to bear witness to the courage of those who exhibit grace under pressure. I treasure anyone’s willingness to “look unflinchingly.”
Examples of human behavior like this sometimes make me wonder about the futility of dealing with the inherent duality of human nature. “You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others…” Robert Louis Stevenson said that. What evil lurks in the heart’s of men.
Thanks, Mark. This series is a great public service. When we compare people like these unsung heroes with the pomp and pageantry of large organized religious groups and their leaders, we know where the real teachings of Jesus are.
When there is a chorus of approvals, who pops up.
Actually, I was irritated by what was posted, not the comments that followed it.
First of all: solutions, some real and others facetious (are they?)
Move the camp to where it wlll be safe.
Provide them sufficient food so foraging is not necessary.
Put up an Obama style border around the park. 50 by 60 miles ain’t much.
Call them Al Quaeda Congo, and drone them from a nearby base. They may not have huts or groups, but believe they do. Surely we have a suitable base. If not, make one.(Mali?)
Offer an amnesty program for Hutus.
I rest.
Why the sourness?
“It is my own personal affirmation that unexpected heroes reside among us and serve as quiet but unshakable proof that virtue really is its own reward – and ours too.”
Sorry, pushed wrong button.
Such homilies were OK 300 years ago.
Now we have a big foot in every country wearing a combat or a alligator-shoed shoe, or both are there. Let’s stop playing lady Bountiful and get our force for good in there. That is why we have police, as often mentioned.
UN peacekeeping has failed so many peoples in so many countries. Not Mark’s fault of course. But proposes a series which will encourage us and distract us from true needs for action here and everywhere. I know, don’t read it. That is the line I am pushing.
Or will it become a new Afganistan says Obama fearfully.
Put a bounty on their heads. Let the Congolese do it.
Train gorillas to use M-14s with sniper scope. and to post guards out of their numbers. Not likely to happen.
RWL
Thanks, will repeat link and why.
==========
“RWL1, February 16, 2013 at 1:46 am
There is always more to the story. Here is the reason why the Congo (and many other parts of Africa) is undergoing such chaos:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/19-american-companies-exploit-the-congo/
Dredd,
How is the halo sitting. (Snark?)
“Dredd1, February 16, 2013 at 7:53 am
Daring, mysterious topic Mark.
“the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world”
Peace does not come through force, it comes from peace within shared outwardls as love toward others.
For the most part, ours is a love-starved planet.
Even our own nation is adrift from the harbor of peace.
===========================================
Difficult loving those who are raping you, killing you, etc.
Ever tried it+
But thanks for the Africom quote.
So AFRICOM backed the wrong side. Who could do such a harebrained scheme? I mean if Rumsfeld did it with Sadam, that is no excuse.
What were our real motives for backing them? Ahah,we wanted them to develop into a cause for war against terrorism. Did they get their training in Fort Bragg, NC?
Does the secret Pentagon cabal decide? Or is there an input as to where oil, rare earth minerial, or commercial profits made or be had?
Let us not forget the rule of commercialism established. A worthy goal in our ruters eyes.
JSOC is just a front (as well as being an operative cente)r. The demon lies elswhere.
Great article and information we in our global society should know about. And our major news media bring us news of big gulps in NY, kardashians, Michelle going on a separate vacation, and Mr. O golfing for the 143rd time since becoming president (that’s president with a lower case p).
RWL:
considering most minerals can be mined in far safer places, I am not sure why a large company would go to a festering sh**t hole and mine minerals. Especially if tonnages mined in DRC are less than tonnages mined in other locations due to better technology and higher skilled workers.
And any way the raping rebels are the ones mining gold with child workers:
“The conflict-gold rush is thriving in eastern Congo. Because of its skyrocketing price and the ease of smuggling it in small pouches for extremely high profits, gold has become the most lucrative conflict mineral for armed groups in eastern Congo. More than $600 million worth of gold is estimated to leave Congo every year, and armed groups are funding their operations through control of a significant percentage of that amount. As U.S. legislation and supply-chain pressure from tech companies have made it more difficult for them to sell the more cumbersome so-called 3-T minerals—tin, tantalum, and tungsten—rebels and army commanders have increasingly turned to gold.
Guided by war criminal Gen. Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, the leaders of the new Rwandan-supported M23 rebellion ran an extensive conflict gold smuggling ring in 2011 but was disrupted from this in mid-2012 following Ntaganda’s defection from Congo’s army. M23 is now attempting to retake control of the trade, as it builds alliances with the warlords in control of gold mining areas. Other warlord groups, from the Rwandan Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda to Congolese army generals, have also mined and smuggled gold and continue to trade gold for arms. As the price of gold has hit record levels over the past five years, new gold mines filled with child miners as young as 8 years old have sprung up in Congo, and armed groups are fighting over mines and trading routes.
There is a six-step process for getting conflict gold from mines in eastern Congo into its final form: jewelry or gold bars for investors. At the mines, the gold is mainly dug up by hand with pick-axes and shovels in dangerous shafts as far as 100 yards into the earth. Fewer than 5 percent of miners are registered with the authorities, and an estimated 40 percent are children. Armed groups and/or army commanders control a majority of mines, forcing miners to work, taking cuts from the miners, and/or taxing traders along supply routes. An estimated 5 tons to 7 tons of gold are produced in the Kivu region of eastern Congo annually—worth between $285 million and $400 million, a large percentage of which ends up in the hands of armed groups that target civilians with rape, murder, and other abuses.”
http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/child-miner-jewelry-store-six-steps-congos-conflict-gold
Arm those women with AK-47′s and a couple of 30 round clips and teach them how to use them.
Good piece, Espo. There is much evil in this world. What I like about your posts are you cover the good and evil in the world. Your posts aren’t polemics, they are edifying and inspiring.
I just responded to the posting about the “news”. This is a perfect example. I learned about this here but hear nothing about it when I go to the “news”.
Go to any European news site and read. The Guardian will do for a start. Al Jazeera.
Don’t have an African one. The Belgians made them learn French, those that survived the maiming by the Belgians. The worst colonial represson in the whole of Africa. Why were Belgians so? Mystery..
American news? Good summary provided by another, I don’t need to comment it.
idealist707 1, February 16, 2013 at 9:23 am
Dredd,
How is the halo sitting. (Snark?)
============================
Sitting?
I don’t know, but if I were you I would polish it again (?) or at least for the first time, or the last time, or the next time ….
Thank You Mark for a excellent story.. i havent been online for a few years due to serious health issues but its awesome to finally come back and see that mr Turleys site is still up and all of you are still here i never posted much before but read each and every blog posted. this time around i aim to change that. not just repost your blogs on my fb pages again Thank you !!!!
ALL OF YOU
This blog seems a little out of control now. Complexity in Africa may be one reason, but here are some basics applying to all. About 2.5% of any population from kings to homeless have a hidden fear of others. It’s the ‘Get them before they get you!’ attitude, ignoring the fact that most people are social and want to get along. These guys & girls are all over the spectrum of life, but some work their way to the top & we have that situation today. So please lets not have a chorus to let some covertly evil fellow like Barack Obama do something good about a situation. Better to expose these guys for what they are & don’t fall into the trap of partisan politics while you’re at it.
RobinH:
It was wonderful of you to stop back by after your recent health challenge. It’ s really pretty humbling for me to know you picked this post to let us know your situation. We’re beyond glad that you’re back and we’ll look forward to more comments from your side of the computer monitor.
Dredd,
I said snark, but you turned the tables on me.
Thanks for the classic Rolling Stones. So much music I missed not being tuned in. Was it a cover? Or a song that they had written?
Forget the questions. You are not my search engine. Searching on internet is also brain-expanding!
We should not say the internat. It is the Web that made this all possible.
Tim Berners-Lee did it at CERN, and gave it to the world. How rich he would be today from licensing? Got knighted! Big deal.
idealist707 1, February 17, 2013 at 4:42 am
Dredd,
I said snark, but you turned the tables on me.
Thanks for the classic Rolling Stones. So much music I missed not being tuned in. Was it a cover? Or a song that they had written?
===============================
It was an early work they did on their own.
It was before Brian died.
idealist707 1, February 16, 2013 at 9:38 am
So AFRICOM backed the wrong side. Who could do such a harebrained scheme? I mean if Rumsfeld did it with Sadam, that is no excuse.
What were our real motives for backing them? Ahah,we wanted them to develop into a cause for war against terrorism. Did they get their training in Fort Bragg, NC?
Does the secret Pentagon cabal decide? Or is there an input as to where oil, rare earth minerial, or commercial profits made or be had?
Let us not forget the rule of commercialism established. A worthy goal in our ruters eyes.
JSOC is just a front (as well as being an operative cente)r. The demon lies elswhere
========================================
General Wesley Clark said that a coup had taken place.
Idealist707,
And here is what the coup has resulted in, including the things Mark E blogged about:
(RWL’s Link, emphasis added). Those who rape 10 women a day have “sponsors” that any of you outraged are paying for with your tax dollars.
That is feudal life in the MOMCOM plutocracy folks.
Great posts, Dredd.
The last about Congo was a guess by me, and you provided the facts.
The connection to rape was tenuous but why look a gift horse in the A55.
Back to the Stones. Watch very carefully a second at the beginning.
There is man who leaves the scene rapidly to the left of the lead singer.
He looks black to me. suspiciously like someone I can’t place right now.
A black USA singer. Slim and long. Any idea?
Excuse me for not giving the other part more space.
Getting tired of juggling the world’s problem.
Said to the folks at JTs that for all their talk they could not encompass all the factors in any one issue, and were powerless to effect a change. So why do it?
The answer I guess is that misery loves company. or cultured smart people like to share the same salon.
SSSWWEEDDIISSHH forever. That or Chinese. Both dependent on use of tones. Japanese is the opposite to my ears.
Dredd,
I studied japanese calligraphy for two years once a week in the evening. An older japanese woman. Venerable and virtually mute when speaking Swedish. Two years of watching her paint over in orange ink our attempts to master the craft.
No words. Just a mumble or two.
A year or two later I discovered that she must have been a phony. Suspected it due to other factors earlier***. A book that I had read, had an appendix which I had not noticed before. There in a few pages was what this lady could not explain. I wondered if she could the basics of calligraphy at all.
***
If you know japanese script, then you know that they have three ways of writing.
Chinese style, simplified sound characters to render the sounds of Japanese, and one primarily to render the sound of foreign words.
I had asked her for the character, of my favorite word, using the style we were using. She was disturbed by my request, procrastinated, but came back later with two calligraphy characters. On a sheet of paper.
One of my fellow students was learning Japanese and saw the paper and revealed that in fact that it was a rendering using japanese characters for sounds. She could say the word which I had read in an Engish book. The word she said, matched the sound rendered in our alphabet..
Thus the teacher could not find the China style character in her PC based cheat system.
But it was a good course in some ways.
Whom do you trust? No one! It taught me a new lesson in distrust.
Good luck with yours.
idealist707 1, February 17, 2013 at 5:27 pm
…
The connection to rape was tenuous but why look a gift horse in the A55.
…
========================================
I quoted from RWL’s link to Project Censored.
Which I will quote from again to show the nexus between U.S. tax money and the armed rebels who rape women every day as Mark E has pointed out in his post today:
(RWL link, your re-link of it, and my quotes from it up-thread). There is no getting around the nexus from the raping rebels to the U.S. military and U.S. taxpayer money.
Dredd,
I’ve been on my feet since 8 AM, hospital for 3 errands. local clinic, pharmacy, and a walk of 20 minutes to a´stóre. And the back to the pharmacy. Home now at ca 6 PM.
New el-conversion for heart flimmer next week and ablation operation March 21. Plus other med stuff.
The point is that I don’t have the energy to keep up here or even pay close attention to what you post, which you deserve. Will have to content myself with lurking.
So so tragic. And a telling juxtaposition, this heroic woman doing the overwhelming and impossible for her fellows – while the leader of the church founded by the guy who would be doing the same retires to seclusion from his golden throne. The Gold that could buy food and water and fuel for these least of God’s children. Shame.
And THANKS to all the previous posters with helpful comments and links. I wish I could add one – I look every now and then – the book I read in High School that opened my eyes to the Congo is not online. One has to find a used paper copy of it – but it would be worth the effort. “Congo Kitabu” written by Jean Pierre Hallet is a wonderful background, and a great read and great adventure. Hallet was a Belgian officer, and more, who was there through the Belgian bug-out too – much of the seeds of the current conflict were sown then. On top of the history that he introduces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Hallet If anyone can find a copy READ IT! It’s worth it.
As a kid I also really enjoyed Animal Kitabu too, the only issue I would now find with it would be the observation that Hyenas were hermaphroditic – they do seem that way – it’s a mock-penis thing. Scientists didn’t know about that until way after publication.
Here’s a much more whimsical and better short bio of Jen-Pierre Hallet http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hallet.html Apparently those who go to Africa fall in love with it, and the great ones find a way to help the people. Thanks again for the post.
idealist707 1, February 18, 2013 at 12:58 pm
Dredd,
I’ve been on my feet since 8 AM, hospital for 3 errands. local clinic, pharmacy, and a walk of 20 minutes to a´stóre. And the back to the pharmacy. Home now at ca 6 PM.
New el-conversion for heart flimmer next week and ablation operation March 21. Plus other med stuff.
The point is that I don’t have the energy to keep up here or even pay close attention to what you post, which you deserve. Will have to content myself with lurking.
================================================
Get well soon!
In the mean time, here is some rock n roll from my Texas Sunday School Class to sooth your particulars: