Over the summer, my mom and I decided to go visit family in England and stopped in France along the way. On the night we landed, after visiting Versailles we grabbed an early dinner at the hotel restaurant and elected to spend the rest of our first night in Paris watching television in our barely air-conditioned hotel room. Because every other channel was in French, my mom and I turned to BBC for our nighttime entertainment. After watching for about 30 minutes my mom was out cold, but I was still wide awake.
Around midnight, the stories changed from European politics and weather reports to a profile piece on a Congolese woman named June living in England who wanted to get back in touch with her roots. After living in the United Kingdom for over a decade, she decided to go back to the Congo and bring BBC camera crews with her. After being reunited with her mother and spending time with her family for a few weeks she decided to investigate her heritage and identity as a Congolese woman by touring the country and learning about the political turmoil that existed there.
She visited a number of woman’s shelters that housed victims of the ongoing war in the Congo. These women had been “ruined.” Like Sophie and Salima in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Ruined,” Congolese Soldiers had raped the women in these shelters in the name of Justice. By destroying the reputations and irreparably damaging the sexual organs of women of the opposite decent group, the men were in essence destroying the livelihood of their opponent’s community.
Unable to go home to their husbands after having been violently raped by groups of men, these women had no choice but to seek shelter among other women who had been ruined. June was moved to tears when she heard some of the stories of the women in the shelters and so was I. Not unlike Salima’s account of her rape, witnessing the death of a beloved child and/or husband also scarred most of woman who had been attacked. One woman described witnessing the rape of her six-month-old daughter and another described her husband’s murder. After having seen her husband hacked to pieces by her attackers machetes, she was forced to eat her husband’s genitals.
I was rendered speechless by these stories and found myself remembering them clearly while reading Ruined. In Ruined, Lynn Nottage fulfills the artist’s roles of both the preserver of culture and educator. By writing a play as extreme and shocking as Ruined, Nottage forced the general public to think about the horrific war crimes occurring in the Congo. She not only educated her audience, but also provided an emotional connection by presenting her audience with photographs of the women on which the play was based, making them more than just characters but real, living breathing people.
The seriousness of sexual crimes against women cannot be emphasized enough. While the crimes in the Congo are particularly heinous, sexual crimes have impacted woman all over the world. What I find most upsetting is that the victims of sexual crimes, including the women in the Congo, are viewed by members of their culture as criminals themselves and are accused of “tempting” the men who “ruin” them. This, to me, is appalling. Instead of receiving sympathy and aid, these women are ostracized and rejected by their communities. They become outcasts, “untouchables.”
The psychological damage inflicted on rape victims can never really be completely repaired and the memories of the violent act inflicted upon them are carried with the victims of rape through life. It makes me sick to think that some men can inflict such terrible pain on women without feeling shame or remorse for what they have done. We don’t realize how lucky we are, how good our lives are until we realize all of the terrible things that could happen to us. When I hear about human rights violations such as rape and genocide, it reminds me how insignificant my little problems are.
