Letter From Eve From Goma

From Vday Vmail

Dear Friends,

I am writing at 6AM as we board the five-hour boat ride from Goma to Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The sky is a V-Day pink as the sun rises over Lake Kivu, the sound of tropical birds, the greenest flora, and a morning alive with hundreds of passengers and porters and travelers. I have been here over a week and it has been full of many extremes - enormous despair, potential violence, criminal poverty, regular power failures, tropical storms, streets of dried lava from the last volcano, and encroaching war. Laurent Nkunda's forces were at one point this week within 27 kilometers of Goma. Moments where we were not allowed to travel, moments when the event was almost canceled as the security threat was too great, but we prevailed.

Then, there is our amazing campaign, the activists, the survivors and our brilliant team working on the ground - UNICFE'S Pernille Ironside, Francesca Morandini and Esther Ntoto. The V-Day team here with me, V-Day Campaigns Manager Purva Panday, photographer Paula Allen, and videographer Taylor Krauss, will be joined later this morning in Bukavu by Congolese activist and V-Day's newest staff member Christine Schuler Deschryver. Christine will officially begin working for V-Day in December.

I spent the last week preparing for our very successful event on September 12th in Goma. I worked with ten survivors, women who have suffered terrible rapes and losses and shame and still they were willing to stand in front of their communities and break the silence. During the week we did numerous theater exercises, releasing trauma and rage and sorrow and they rehearsed telling their stories...

Eve's Letter