Congolese banter is beginning to cheer her up and she smiles nervously.
It’s just what Eve needs to get her out of her shell-shocked, stigmatised mood. The taxi driver who brought her to Bukavu initially didn’t want her in his minivan and demanded extra payment because she was unlucky. He made a big fuss about getting plastic sacks put on the seat so she didn’t leak urine on it and no one sat next to her the whole journey.
But when the security guard shut the hospital gate behind her and she was inside the compound, Eve suddenly felt safe. It is the first time in years that she has had the feeling of being protected from the men with guns.
Mama Riziki is pleased with the girls’ smiles and beams back at them.
‘OK, so when you are under the care of your Mamas here you will do lots of things. You will help with cooking and cleaning in the hospital and we will keep you busy, oh very busy, with lots of courses. You can do bookkeeping or tailoring …’
‘Yes, and cooking with me …’
‘And I’ll do medicine and hygiene.’
The courses help to keep the women busy and heal the psychological wounds of the rape as the surgeons stitch up the tears and gunshot wounds in their genito-urinary tracts to stop them urinating and defecating uncontrollably.
‘We will always make sure you leave here healed and ready to go back to your families. Sometimes it does take one or two or maybe three operations before the tears heal but we will always be with you. Praise God for your arrival here today!’ Panzi is a Pentecostal-funded hospital and Mama Riziki prays over them.
Eve bows her head and prays hard. She knows her family doesn’t have the money to let her stay for more than one operation.
‘Yamba, hi, it’s Alex.’
A guffaw of delighted laughter comes down the line.
‘What?’
The cackling continues in such an infectious way that Alex starts laughing as well. Eventually, they both draw breath.
‘Alex Devereux,’ Yamba says his name and hoots again.
Alex grins and waits.
‘It’s good to hear from you.’
‘It’s good to hear you too.’
There was a pause as they both absorbed the pleasure of hearing an old friend’s voice after a long time. They have had only sporadic email contact since the end of the last mission.
Yamba is someone Alex feels at home with. It is an odd combination – public school cavalry officers aren’t often seen with Angolan mercenaries – but the two of them have been through a lot together. More important than shared experience are their shared values: a fierce, self-reliant professionalism offset by a black sense of humour.
‘How are you, man?’ Alex asks.
‘Yees, OK …’ Yamba says, smiling and nodding thoughtfully. ‘How are you?’
‘Yeah, OK.’
‘How is your hut?’
‘My hut? Oh, yeah, it’s good, thanks,’ Alex says, looking around at his house. ‘It’s got a new roof.’
‘Oh? Like a thatched roof or maybe some tin, yes?’
Alex laughs again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I got a piece of tin from the market, fits really well.’
‘And have you got yourself a wife yet?’
Alex guffaws. ‘No.’
‘Ah, you are behind the curve,’ Yamba says with relish; he loves using new idioms that he has picked up.
‘I know, I haven’t even got divorced yet. What about you, have you got a bird?’
‘No,’ Yamba laughs. ‘I have taken up cooking and most African women think I am gay when I tell them I cook,’ he cackles. ‘But I have a little lady friend who I visit in Luanda every now and then.’
‘A la-dy …’ Alex says in a ridiculously suggestive tone.
Yamba laughs.
‘And how are the poor and sick of Angola?’
‘Oh, they keep dying on me.’
‘Oh …’
‘Yes, I shout at them and tell them not to but they just don’t listen to me.’
Yamba is known as a strict disciplinarian with the soldiers he commands. He joined 32 Battalion as a teenager after his family had been killed by the communists and rose to the rank of sergeant major in a vicious bush war. He always wanted to be a surgeon.
He was educated at a Jesuit school as a boy – was head boy in fact – and the religious order’s disciplined morality has stayed with him. He admired Father Joao’s tough asceticism and still has him in his mind as the epitome of what a real man should be. It all shows in his appearance: six feet two, lean, shaven-headed. His face is as daunting as a dark cliff with lines like rivulets worn into it by exercise, self-denial and hardship.
‘How’s the clinic going?’
‘Oh, OK, you know. I bribe the right people in the Ministry of Health, I argue with the right people in the Ministry of Health and sometimes we get supplies and sometimes we don’t. We’re not going to save Africa but I am racking up God points big time.’
Alex laughs. ‘Good works.’
‘Yes, good works. Isn’t Catholic guilt a marvellous thing?’
‘Hmmm.’
The laughter eases out of Alex’s voice as he gets to the point of the call. ‘Well, I have a good work in mind.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Yamba sounds amused.
‘Hmm, this is quite a big good work actually.’
‘Oh no, what are we doing this time? Haven’t we interfered with enough governments? You’re not on that again, are you?’
Alex’s voice begins to sound more serious. ‘Well, this time we’re going to set up a new country.’
Yamba stops laughing.
Smoke drifts across the forest glade, catching in a shaft of lemony morning sunshine. Otherwise everything is still and silent.
It’s just after dawn and the raucous chorus of birds has died down. The glade is surrounded by high trees and thick undergrowth, wet with dew. Two large mounds covered in earth, ten feet in diameter, burn gently and little streams of smoke emerge from cracks at the top like snakes and, in the absence of any wind, slide away down the slopes.
The charcoal burner stirs from under his shelter of white plastic sheeting and pokes a long stick into the bottom of one of the piles, checking if it is ready. He is of indeterminate
