10%

"We are together."

Stories of Healing from Survivors of Sexual Violence

By IMA World Health

March 8^th, 2017

Walikale is a small village town located in the heavily forested mountains of eastern Congo.

Asha Wanda lives in a small mud hut in Walikale, in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The air is damp and cool inside the hut, where the only source of light is small beams that shine through cracks where the mud has fallen back to the earth. She sniffs and wipes her eyes with her pagne skirt. Cherubin Sadiki, the communications officer for Ushindi, reassures her gently in Swahili, telling her to take her time, it’s okay.

“It happened four years ago,” Asha begins. “I was traveling to Ngunga, two days’ walk from my village, to sell palm oil. I was with 10 other women and six teenage boys from my village. On the second day of our voyage we set out at 7 a.m. Soon after, we were surprised by two armed men. They took us into the forest and they raped us, one after the other. When they were done with us, they took the young men and put a gun to their heads and forced them to also have sex with us. This was a great dishonor. These young men were like children to us. I didn’t tell my husband what happened because I was afraid he would leave me. But two months later, an armed group came to my village and took four men by gunpoint to transport baggage. My husband was among them. I never saw him again.”

Asha Wanda is one of many women who have been raped by militias in eastern Congo.

Asha makes her living collecting palm fronds for use in woven roofs.

Asha is one of many beneficiaries of Ushindi, the USAID-funded project IMA World Health oversees and Heal Africa implements in the North and South Kivu provinces to rehabilitate and reintegrate survivors of sexual violence. Heal Africa has been working in Walikale for nearly 10 years with private donations and internal funding. The opportunity to leverage USAID funding through Ushindi significantly augmented their reach and effect and has enabled them to offer a safe house, higher-level counseling, outreach, provision of medical services and community engagement.

In DRC, Asha's story is not unique, especially in the Kivus, where civil war and rebel groups have wreaked havoc on the simple farming communities for several years. In Walikale, there has been a significantly higher rate of sexual violence due to its history of conflict and insecurity, a high number of internally displaced people and a history of mining—and with it sex-trafficking.

Ushindi means “we overcome” in Swahili, and the program began in 2010 with about $20 million in funding from the United States Agency for International Development. Since then, close to 30,000 individuals in 10 health zones have received services, including psychosocial therapy, medical assistance for violence-related injuries and fistula repairs. In addition to medical services, Ushindi also provides capacity building workshops and reintegration assistance. USAID reports show that Ushindi has reached four times as many survivors as other projects with similar funding globally.

Walikale is one of three health zones that began receiving services through Ushindi in September 2016 as part of an expansion to pilot a new therapy, called Cognitive Processing Therapy, that USAID will use in future programs. CPT is an innovative form of group counseling for survivors of sexual violence and is being introduced with support from the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University. Recent research has shown CPT to be significantly more effective than "active listening" and is offered to survivors after a mental health screening tool developed by the program and its advisors.

“The first thing was to find those who had experienced violence,” said Godefroid Kabuku, Supervising Psychologist at Walikale Safehouse. To do this, Godefroid and his new team of staff members created community-led activist groups, called Noyau Communautaire, and trained them to go out to their surrounding communities and educate them on gender-based violence and services available to survivors. It was one of these groups that found Asha.

A Noyau communitaire group meets to discuss advocacy activities in Walikale.

Godefroid Kabuku, Supervising Psychologist at Walikale Safehouse, leads the group to Asha Wanda's village.

Walikale's first Noyau Communautaire group is responsible for finding and bringing many survivors of sexual violence to safety.

Survivors attend group therapy sessions at the Walikale Safehouse.

Soon after the militia took Asha’s husband, her village was massacred. Thankfully she escaped and was resettled by the government in Walikale. “Ushindi came to my village here in Walikale and spoke to our chief. They asked him if they could speak with the women to see if anyone had experienced violence,” says Asha. The group spoke to Asha privately in her hut. They told her about the services available through Ushindi. Each week following, they sent a car to take her to the safe house in Walikale for her weekly therapy sessions.

With the help of the Noyau, the Ushindi staff in Walikale have registered 382 people like Asha for Ushindi services since their start last September. “Disaggregated by type of incidence, 71 percent of reported cases have been victims of sexual violence (rape, sexual harassment, early/forced marriage), among whom 96 percent are survivors of rape,” says Joseph Ciza Nakamina, Program Coordinator for Ushindi’s SGBV and Women’s Empowerment Program.

Asha's husband was abducted by a rebel group just before her village was massacred. She was resettled to this one room hut in Walikale.

These groups have also educated many women on the importance of seeking treatment at a local health center within 72 hours of an event. This may be what saved Riziki Muhabwa’s life.

Riziki was five months pregnant when the men found her and three other women working in their field. “When I told my husband what happened to me, he took all of our money and belongings and left me. He has already found a new wife,” says Riziki softly. “I went alone to the health center, where I received a PEP Kit. I encourage other women to find Ushindi and receive these medicines.”

PEP is short for post-exposure prophylactic. Kits are given to survivors of rape to prevent HIV and are quite effective if given within 72 hours. If given in time, the medicine can prevent HIV from making copies of itself and spreading throughout the body, thus preventing infection. Unfortunately, only 60 to 70 percent of rape survivors get reach the health center in time to be able to benefit from this life-saving treatment. Fear, stigma and insecurity often keep women from seeking support. The team in Walikale is working to change that. Ushindi delivered 100 PEP kits to health centers throughout the three new health zones in September and have prepared another 120 for delivery this month.

Riziki Muhabwa, a guest at the Walikale Safehouse, shares her story with Cherubin, the communications officer for Ushindi.

Receiving a PEP Kit is just the beginning of Ushindi’s comprehensive program for rehabilitation and reintegration of survivors. When a survivor of sexual violence is registered at a safe house, she receives a mental health screening and may be enrolled into a CPT program. The therapy encourages survivors to reformulate negative thoughts and emotions about the causes and consequences of traumatic events, thus allowing survivors to move past any blocks that may be caused by the avoidance of traumatic triggers.

IMA Technical Advisor Dr. Alice Mudekereza says that each facility Ushindi services has an Ushindi-trained psychosocial counselor that leads survivors through 12 weekly sessions.

“Groups of four to five women or men take their thoughts about an incident and, together, create more balanced feelings about what happened to them,” she says.

Survivors attend a group therapy session at Walikale Safehouse.

A group of survivors listen attentively during a group therapy session at Walikale Safehouse.

A psychologist leads a group therapy session at Walikale Safehouse.

When we talked, Riziki was staying at the safe house in Walikale, where she had already participated in four of her 12 weekly sessions of CPT.

“I am starting to understand what happened to me,” she says. “It’s an incident that can happen to anyone.”

Riziki Muhabwa is beginning to understand that she is not to blame for what happened to her.

It’s important for these women to know that these types of incidents can and do happen to anyone. The group sessions they attend with other women who have experienced violence help them to understand that they are not alone in their suffering.

Suziki Uzima, another temporary resident at Walikale Safe House, wipes the tears from her eyes with her shawl as she explains the suffering she has experienced since her incident one year ago. “I wanted to die. I ate a battery to try and kill myself,” she says. When she became sick from the battery, her family members brought her to a local hospital where a counselor told her about Ushindi. Suziki had arrived at the safe house one week before our talk and had already undergone several sessions with counselors, including her group CPT session.

“I feel better, more or less,” she says. “When I feel bad, I see that the others do too. We share it.”

Suziki was only 19 years old when two armed men abducted her and a friend as they were foraging for bananas. The men led them at gunpoint for two hours through the forest to a camp where seven more men waited. “The nine men took turns with us repeatedly over the next two days,” she says, “and when they were tired of us, they simply told us to leave.” They walked four hours back to their village. When she arrived home she found only an empty hut.

“When my husband heard that I had been taken, he left. He was gone before I got home.”

Suziki Uzima was abducted by a militia group and raped at gunpoint repeatedly for two days. When she got home, her husband was already gone.

Riziki and Suziki are like many women in the Kivus, who suffer alone after their husbands have left due to sexual violence by another. This is why Ushindi’s work to reintegrate survivors is crucial. Even if their husbands stay, many women are displaced to new villages and have difficulty finding work. “When I was moved to Walikale, I lost my land. I can no longer farm,” says Nesuru Namushipi. She comes from the same village as Asha, where a militia group massacred 260 people.

She recalls for us the day the militia came to her village. “I heard bullets and explosions everywhere. I was so scared. I didn’t think, I just ran, leaving my children with my grandparents in our hut. I ran down into the valley to hide. When I reached the bottom there were two men dressed in military uniforms. When they were finished I could not move, I was terrified. The next morning a neighbor found me trembling on the ground.” When Nesuru finally made it back to her village, she found her hut burnt to the ground, along with the remains of her family inside. Luckily her children had escaped with the neighbors, but her grandparents were too old to run. Once her family was reunited, she tried to go on as if nothing happened. Each night she had violent dreams and woke in terror. Her husband calmed her, not knowing the full extent of what caused these terrors. She felt abandoned, useless.

“I felt as if God didn’t know me anymore. He rejected me,” she says.

After one month she finally told her husband what happened to her. He could not accept it. “It’s not possible,” he told her. In the moment of his anger and grief at what had happened to his wife, he wanted to leave. “Our family counseled him to stay with me. They told him that it was not my fault and that he should not punish me for being a victim of a crime. Finally he agreed to stay.”

Nesuru Namushipi escaped just before her village was burnt to the ground, only to be found and raped by two rebels in the forest.

Nesuru and her family were resettled to a village in Walikale. It has been difficult to make ends meet since they lost everything to the militias. To help families like Nesuru’s, Ushindi staff work with community members to implement Village Savings and Loan Associations across Walikale. Members of the community come together to create savings, from which small loans can then be given to members of the VSLA. In Walikale, there are now 44 VSLA programs. The Tuungane VSLA had their first meeting on October 30 of last year. They now have 22 members. Each week members meet and pay 1,000 to 5,000 FC, about $4 USD, into the savings. Each member has a notebook where they write down how much they gave and the total amount in the account. Three members hold keys to the safe.

Since October, Tuungane has raised $1,325 and has funded 12 small operations. Loans range from $80 for a soap making business to $350 to build a tilapia farm. Members who borrow have three months to pay the loan back with 10% interest. So far, four loans have been paid off.

Maliaseme Ibari is a member of the Upendo VSLA, which also began in October 2016. She borrowed just $25 to purchase fish for salting and selling in the market. She started paying back her loan in late January and has already paid back $16.

The Tuungane Village, Savings and Loan Association has saved over $1,300 and funded 12 small operations.

Crispin Babingwa records donations each week and keeps track of the account.

A member of the Upendo VSLA donates 1200 Congolese francs to the group's savings account.

Upendo VSLA had their first meeting in October 2016. They currently have about $300 available to fund small operations like tilapia farms.

The Upendo VSLA welcomes the Ushindi team with high-spirited song and dance.

Each member of a VSLA group keeps track of how much they have donated and the group's total savings in little notebooks like this one.

Another member of Upendo donates to the group's savings account.

Maliaseme Ibari borrowed $25 to purchase fish for salting and selling in the market. She has already paid back $16.

Cherubin Sadiki congratulates Tuungane VSLA for their success in saving and funding small operations in Walikale.

Survivors of violence come to Ushindi feeling as if their lives have ended, feeling separated from their communities and alone to face the worst of traumas.

“I was afraid of everything. I was afraid to declare myself a victim,” Nesuru says. “After finishing my therapy sessions, the hope has come back. I learned that it was a problem of my mind, and they treated my mind.”

Nesuru says the only thing now is finding the money to start working again, but this problem too will soon be addressed by Ushindi, which trained her village on how to start a VSLA. Three weeks ago her village held its first meeting.

The Upendo VSLA has 28 members and has funded nine small operations.

nous sommes ensemble

When speaking with the beneficiaries of Ushindi there is one common message that each of them takes away from the program: Nous sommes ensemble, which in English means, “We are together.” Asha and Nesuru’s group therapy sessions ended months ago, but each week they still come together with their group to provide comfort and to support each other.

“We have become very good friends. I learned that everyone felt the same shame as me,” says Asha, “and the shame began to leave us. We began to feel alive again; to understand what happened, and that it was time to leave it in the past.”

Perhaps this is the greatest gift that Ushindi has provided to its beneficiaries—the gift of a shared past and a future that can be forged together.

From left to right, Raziki, Nesuru, Asha and Anette are all survivors of sexual violence. They are leaving their pasts behind, together.

As hard as it was for Nesuru's husband to accept that she had been violated, he stayed by her side. And together, they are healing.

Footnotes

Story and photos by Crystal Stafford / IMA World Health

Button Label

FootNotes

Story and photos by Crystal Stafford / IMA World Health

Story Told With

Start publishing stories like this