#SharetheJourney – Strong Women Working Toward their Future
This and all of the other photos of the women referenced in the story are by Wendy Karr Johnson
Women living in the developing world are not perhaps the first image that comes to mind in considering powerful people. When these are HIV positive Congolese women living as refugees in Rwanda all ideas of power are gone. This is not completely wrong as far too little ability to control their circumstances is given to such women, and yet…
Last week in Gihembe Refugee Camp, I was privileged to meet part of a group of fifty HIV positive women who formed a cooperative farming project. They farm both passion fruit and mushrooms, both to improve their diet and to add the ability to generate a small income.
Meeting the women was a study in contrasts. Gihembe is crowded with more than 14,000 refugees in a fairly small hilltop space. Its deeply rutted dirt roads also make for a dusty environment. The women who met us in their finest clothes with their neat as a pin farm stood in stark contrast to the setting.
All of the group shares the same story of refugeeing out of Congo in 1996 when rousted from their homes at gun point. The first refugee camp the group settled in was too close to the border and many were raped, tortured, or killed in an attack on their camp the following year. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees then opened the camp at Gihembe to move the refugees further from the conflict. They have been in place for 18 years since that move.
So, yes, this is a group that has suffered much and that back story I knew from my homework reading for the Episcopal Migration Ministries Pilgrimage to East Africa. I was pleased to see the women taking the power they could to work to better themselves and the lives of their children.
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“While third country resettlement cannot be the durable solution for the vast majority of the world’s refugees, it must remain a possibility for those refugees who are most vulnerable and for whom repatriation or local integration in countries of refuge are not viable options.”
This group is vulnerable and they can not return to the area of the Democratic Republic of Congo they fled as their land and houses have gone to others and they are not safe to return. The priority (P2) status for this group was set by our Department of State in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security, Non-profits working with refugees, UNHCR, and others. The experts have determined them as being in need of resettlement.
So these women who have taken advantage of the little control of their lives made possible while in Gihembe have worked together to till the soil and tend the plants. In the process, they have raised one another up. They also to continue to share community with the members of their group already resettled. I look forward to many of these women first resettling and then after years in our country, earning U.S. Citizenship. Yes, some may be resettled elsewhere, but whatever nation they settle in will be blessed to have such determined women and the children they are raising.
Peace,
Frank
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