Free A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon Page B

mosquito netting has tiny rips and tears. In the bathroom, the rim of the yellowed plastic tub is lined with peeling, mildewed caulking.
    Christine picks me up and we stop at her home on the way to dinner. Though she is the country director of an international NGO, Christine lives in her childhood home while awaiting her wedding next month. I sit in the dim living room—though it’s late January, there are Christmas decorations still in the corner—with her younger brothers and sisters and a six-year-old orphan with that unmistakably vacant, glazed Congo stare.
    Christine has just convinced her family to take the boy in. He has suffered severe neglect and illness and has only been here a few days. The adults are in the next room while the other children are fixated on a Congolese TV show shot on low-end video, something about men breaking into a woman’s home. I call the orphaned child over to me and he sits obediently, stone-faced, at my side. He doesn’t move. He won’t interact. I can’t elicit a smile. He is a little island.
    I don’t notice that look again in Congo. Yet back in the United States, when I review my video footage, it will be there, in the eyes of nearly every person I interview.
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    CHRISTINE AND I APPROACH the guesthouse where Kelly is staying with her group tonight, located on Bukavu’s main road, near the boarder. She invited us for dinner so we can hammer out the details for the remainder of our trip. After a draining day, I’m exhausted and desperate for the anchor of a travel buddy.
    Kelly greets Christine and me at the guesthouse door, which has been left open and unlocked beyond an unguarded metal gate. The group’s bags sit exposed in a bunkroom, with the door flung wide. I reach back and touch my camera bag, as though I could forget the twenty-five pound monster that will
stay glued on my back for the duration of my trip. Kelly fills me in on their journey so far. “Kinshasa was rough,” she says. “Very aggressive. Tons of people. But here, everyone is so mellow. It’s pleasant, safe to walk around. . . .”
    Are we in different countries?
    The place is spare and lit with fluorescent lights. I’m introduced to the church delegation as we take our places at the table for a traditional Congolese meal of whole, deep-fried fish, which my vegetarian credentials excuse me from eating. Something feels off. Conversation is strained and tense with the pale, sweaty missionaries. An American doctor quizzes me about Run for Congo Women and my contacts in D.C., while fussing with precise spellings as she takes notes. Patrick, the group leader, jumps in and asks occasional questions. But each time I start to answer, he turns away to talk to someone else.
    Kelly casually drops into conversation that she’s hired her own car and driver and plans to do the homestay for the duration of her time in Bukavu, which is several weeks shorter than my planned stay. I stare at the fish skeletons on their plates, at the way the other guests pick at the bones.
    Patrick looks at me and asks, “What are your plans?”
    My plans. Not our plans.
    Now I get it. I’m not in Congo with Kelly. Though she’s happy to occasionally piggyback on my outings that appeal to her, Kelly has no intention of making this a joint trip.
    I watch them pick at the deep-fried fish heads, the breaded eyeballs, as reality settles in : I’m in Congo alone.
    Though everyone who knows me would call me an “independent woman,” I wouldn’t choose a situation like this. I let go of trying to earn my bad-ass credentials years ago. At twenty-five, I drove ten hours across Oregon to go on a lone camping trip in a remote canyon on the Idaho border. When I got there, I pitched my tent, made myself a beautiful meal over an open fire, and watched the sun set over the canyon walls before I thought how much better it would all be if I were not alone. The thought