Sitting on the bus the other day, I was across from two disheveled looking men. I could not help but overhear that they just came from a hospital.
“They don’t care about us anymore,” one of them said to the other, “no one does.”
I found this to be so heartbreaking: they weren’t treated fairly, like every person deserves to be treated. This reminded me of the lyrics:
And yet the bird
Still cries to be heard…
These lines are from the song “A Rare Bird” in Lynn Nottage’s play “Ruined.” The songs in this play are fantastic, because they provide social commentary in addition to being ironically upbeat. “A Rare Bird” especially caught my interest because it shows how the world ignores the two people I overheard on the bus, and it relates to the book and the situation of the women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A whole war is going on there, women are treated so terribly, and I had no idea about any of this! Few people in the class knew that such atrocities were even going on. This song, where the bird “still cries to be heard” make me think of the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and all over war-torn Africa. They are crying out for attention, for their story to be told.
In fact, this was the point of Nottage writing this play: to give these women a voice. Look at the back of the play, of the pictures of the women taken right after they have told their story. Each pair of eyes reflects pain greater than we could imagine. I admit that towards the end of the play I even shed a few tears. The picture of the first woman is especially powerful; she is on the verge of tears. I am the type of person that cannot hold back tears once someone around me is crying, so this picture made me even more sad.
Despite shedding a few tears at the ending, I think it was a happy ending. As we touched upon in class, anything happier would have made it seem unreal. War has no happy ending. This play, however, has the happiest ending the girls are able to have in the story. Honestly, the hopeless romantic in me expected Salima to return to her home with Fortune. This would not be possible though, after all that she has gone though, and with a baby on the way, things just would not be the same with her husband.
I also think Mama Nadi is a very interesting and complex character. She is morally ambiguous, but I really think that she is doing a good thing for the girls. The soldiers do not bring weapons inside, so the girls cannot get hurt. Mama Nadi makes sure the girls are safe, even though she acts tough at times. She could have left the area long ago, but she chose to stay and protect girls who have nowhere else to go. Although she does mention that she stays for her own stubborn reasons, she is still doing a good thing for the women she employs. She is my favorite character in the play because she is so interesting and can be interpreted in many different ways.
When Mama Nadi tells Christian that she is ruined, I was shocked. This does make sense though, because she never does anything with the men aside from flirt. She is not afraid to flirt, but when things get more serious, as with Christian, she becomes hesitant to proceed. At the end, when she dances with Christian, she begins to accept who she is and that she is ruined. She allows herself to give in and accept love. Despite her tough exterior, she is almost as fragile as Sophie. The ending is so sweet, when the two dance and Sophie and Josephine are happy for her. In this scene, I can picture an old couple just like Edna and Walter dancing slowly and beautifully. They are so peaceful, and so content.
Overall, I really loved reading this play. It was one of my favorites of the semester; it was very informative and it achieved its purpose in drawing attention to the women of wartime Africa. If I weren’t a poor college student, I feel like right after the play I would have donated to one of the websites listed in the back. The references to the war and its reflections of how it has effected the women make one want to take action in a cause they had not previously known about (or at least, that I didn’t know about). It is really frustrating how something like this can go on in the world while we just sit in our comfy homes and cry over such insignificant stuff. Plays like these really put things into perspective.
