In this world, here’s no good and there’s no evil–well there are, but they’re aren’t so clean cut and exact. No where is this more evident than in a civil war. When both sides are fighting for a cause and at the same time committing atrocious acts, it isn’t clear which side is “right.” If you’re against the government, then you’re battling government soldiers with an unsupplied militia; so you take what you need from the small villages: food, money, supplies and also women. Those on the government’s side, enter villages seeking out rebels and confronting any who they think are harboring them. Neither side cares much for the damage they leave behind, simply claiming it’s “for the cause.” Death isn’t the only scar left from a war. Civil war, like the one that ravaged the Congo, leaves a lasting impact on the women who were raped and kidnapped from their homes. Ruined, a play by Lynn Nottage, tells the story of the women who suffered through the horrors of rape only to survive and be out casted from society.
Rape is a brutal crime that deserves the harshest of punishments. Anyone who is willing to harm and scar a woman that way is the lowest of scum. Rape leaves a woman with not only physical scars, but also mental and emotional scars. In the Congo, the also leaves them socially out casted, because any woman raped is considered unclean and sullied, a disgrace to her family and her spouse. In Ruined, we learn of what happens to three women who were shunned by their family and village. Josephine, Salima, and Sophie.
Each woman ends up staying with a woman called Mama Nadi who runs a brothel that services both government soldiers and rebel militia. When it comes to Mama Nadi, depending on your morals, she’s either saving the girls, or exploiting them. To me, Mama Nadi is making the best out of a truly horrible situation. While the act of running a brothel isn’t a good one, she is changing the situation so that she is in control and that the men must follow her rules. No weapons are allowed in the brothel and by enforcing rules she is also protecting the women. The women in the brothel are all rape victims who were savagely attacked by soldiers. Sophie, a singer at Mama Nadi’s who prides herself in not being a whore, has had it worse than Salima and Josephine. Not only was she raped by soldiers, she was tortured with a bayonet, leaving her body destroyed, “ruined” as a woman. She was supposed to go to college to be an educated woman, instead ending up stuck in a brothel in the middle of a war torn nation. But what else can they do? These women have no other options, they can either work at the brothel, protected to a degree by Mama Nadi, or go back to the “bush” and risk running into more soldiers. No matter how you look at it, sometimes you have to accept a bad situation as it is. Morally, Mama Nadi is ambiguous; she’s an opportunist and a business woman who has found a way to make money and keep these survivors and herself safe during this difficult time. It’s easy to say she is without any compassion for the women, which is seen when she sends Sophie to “service” the men. But at the same time, she connects more with Sophie because she knows what Sophie is going through. Both women are “ruined” so Mama Nadi understands Sophie’s desire to get the operation to fix herself; in fact she even plans for Sophie to go with Mr. Harari and use the money from her diamond to pay for it. Sadly this plan fails, and the brothel is left at square one, possibly even worse off than when they started.
This play demonstrates some of the horrors that women go through and more. Such suffering should never be felt by an innocent person, and I only wish the heartless attackers could feel for themselves the pain they inflict. Stories such as the one Salima tells do happen in the Congo, where a woman is raped and then shunned by the members of her culture. What makes the situation so difficult is that the women who suffer this crime are out casted and shamed. They are accused of seducing their attackers into having sex with them and then chased away. So not only do they bare the pain of their attack, but the have to live with the knowledge that those closest to them now consider them unclean and filthy.
The world is full of evil; but for some reason (thanks to morals and beliefs) some people are able to use an excuse like “its in the name of justice” or “its for the cause” to get away with harmful atrocities. No “cause” requires the destruction of an entire culture or the torturing of innocent people. Shades of gray just don’t exist for this. One who commits these acts has nothing but a cold, black hole where their heart should be.
