Lumo
PBS
September 18, 2007
57 minutes
Ranking the abominations of war is an impossible and pointless exercise. But surely among the very worst must be mass rape and gang rape as a terroristic tool. The truism that rape is an act of violence and not of sex is amplified a thousandfold in the instance of war, when gun barrels are used not just to violate women but to destroy their insides, literally and psychologically too.
What sort of prime time-viewing is this? you ask. Necessary viewing. Twenty-year-old Lumo Sinai, raped by one of the groups of soldiers roaming eastern Congo after the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, was subsequently rejected by her fiance, her family, and her village. Her story mustn't be marginalized by us.
The Second Congo War, most active from 1998 to 2003 but still at a lethal simmer, has involved nine nations and a score of armed groups, and resulted in the deaths of almost 4 million people. A thousand lives a day are still lost in eastern Congo, the film tells us, and tens of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted. The filmmakers--Bent-Jorgen S. Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III, Louis Abelman, and Lynn True--don't attempt to delve into all the factors that have led to the ravaging of the resource-rich and beautiful postcolonial nation--that would be a miniseries at the least--but focus on this one aspect, the systematic brutalization of women.
This is the straightforward and restrained telling of Lumo's one-and-a-half-year treatment at a special hospital hundreds of miles from her village for a fistula resulting from her assault. A tear in the wall between vagina and bladder, the epidemic condition among rape victims is disabling, painful, and, if not treated, usually keeps them from being able to bear children.
"They really destroyed us," she says of her assailants. In the rape's aftermath, she tells us, "I felt forgotten." In addition to the rape, she describes how the soldiers shot up her village, beat her mother, set fire to her house, and stole the family's goats, chickens, and ducks.
When we meet her, Lumo has already been treated four times for the fistula, and doctors at the HEAL hospital in the town of Goma fear that the fifth operation is her last chance.
The hospital is primitive but adequate materially. Psychologically, though, it's the magical balm she needs to give her a fighting chance at a somewhat normal life. "I had never seen such loving people as those here," she says.
For all that, Lumo cycles, especially during her weeks confined to bed with a catheter, between hope and despair, adolescent irritability and a stoicism beyond her years. The hospital's counselors and Lumo's fellow patients are steeped in Christianity and prayer, but Lumo has moments of deep doubt. A counselor asks if she knows Jesus died for our sins. She smiles wanly and replies: "He died for our sins. But he is Jesus. I am just a woman."
The hospital's organizers have the temerity to organize a march against the war's victimization of women. The drunken bystanders, threatening soldiers, and the government spokesman who takes slim, feeble government responsibility for the situation but then decries the victims' proclivity for "indecent clothing" are not encouraging to watch. Indeed as painful as it is to see Lumo's treatment and recovery, it's almost more so to contemplate what she'll be returning to when she leaves the hospital.
The filmmakers inform us at the program's end that her village is still occupied by rebel soldiers and that they're unable to get in touch with her. We fear the worst.
-Alexander C. Kafka
Photo: From left to right, Lumo, Angela, and Machozi, three women being treated at HEAL. Photo by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, courtesy of PBS.
Ranking the abominations of war is an impossible and pointless exercise. But surely among the very worst must be mass rape and gang rape as a terroristic tool. The truism that rape is an act of violence and not of sex is amplified a thousandfold in the instance of war, when gun barrels are used not just to violate women but to destroy their insides, literally and psychologically too.
What sort of prime time-viewing is this? you ask. Necessary viewing. Twenty-year-old Lumo Sinai, raped by one of the groups of soldiers roaming eastern Congo after the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, was subsequently rejected by her fiance, her family, and her village. Her story mustn't be marginalized by us.
The Second Congo War, most active from 1998 to 2003 but still at a lethal simmer, has involved nine nations and a score of armed groups, and resulted in the deaths of almost 4 million people. A thousand lives a day are still lost in eastern Congo, the film tells us, and tens of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted. The filmmakers--Bent-Jorgen S. Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III, Louis Abelman, and Lynn True--don't attempt to delve into all the factors that have led to the ravaging of the resource-rich and beautiful postcolonial nation--that would be a miniseries at the least--but focus on this one aspect, the systematic brutalization of women.
This is the straightforward and restrained telling of Lumo's one-and-a-half-year treatment at a special hospital hundreds of miles from her village for a fistula resulting from her assault. A tear in the wall between vagina and bladder, the epidemic condition among rape victims is disabling, painful, and, if not treated, usually keeps them from being able to bear children.
"They really destroyed us," she says of her assailants. In the rape's aftermath, she tells us, "I felt forgotten." In addition to the rape, she describes how the soldiers shot up her village, beat her mother, set fire to her house, and stole the family's goats, chickens, and ducks.
When we meet her, Lumo has already been treated four times for the fistula, and doctors at the HEAL hospital in the town of Goma fear that the fifth operation is her last chance.
The hospital is primitive but adequate materially. Psychologically, though, it's the magical balm she needs to give her a fighting chance at a somewhat normal life. "I had never seen such loving people as those here," she says.
For all that, Lumo cycles, especially during her weeks confined to bed with a catheter, between hope and despair, adolescent irritability and a stoicism beyond her years. The hospital's counselors and Lumo's fellow patients are steeped in Christianity and prayer, but Lumo has moments of deep doubt. A counselor asks if she knows Jesus died for our sins. She smiles wanly and replies: "He died for our sins. But he is Jesus. I am just a woman."
The hospital's organizers have the temerity to organize a march against the war's victimization of women. The drunken bystanders, threatening soldiers, and the government spokesman who takes slim, feeble government responsibility for the situation but then decries the victims' proclivity for "indecent clothing" are not encouraging to watch. Indeed as painful as it is to see Lumo's treatment and recovery, it's almost more so to contemplate what she'll be returning to when she leaves the hospital.
The filmmakers inform us at the program's end that her village is still occupied by rebel soldiers and that they're unable to get in touch with her. We fear the worst.
-Alexander C. Kafka
Photo: From left to right, Lumo, Angela, and Machozi, three women being treated at HEAL. Photo by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, courtesy of PBS.
