Chapter 3

Evelyn looked out of the window of her hut in the mist covered Rwandan mountains. At last she was finally feeling ready to face the strength sapping climb to where her gorilla troupe lived.

She had suffered badly at the hands of Doctor Mwanza. 'Doctor' was too kind a word, butcher would have been more appropriate. After he had re-modelled her uterus and opened the interior of her vagina with his scalpel, he had been able to insert his forearm at least twelve inches into her. At the time of the operation Evelyn had been unable to feel a thing; but several hours later when she came round she had been in agony as the local anaesthetic had worn off. Supplies of morphine, purchased on the black market from corrupt Rwandan Army medics, had nearly turned her into an addict. More black market antibiotics from the same source only cured the blood poisoning that nearly killed her. Evelyn's life had hung in the balance for several days; consciousness was a fire burning in her abdomen that could only be snuffed out with yet more morphine. Eventually it was Charity, Mwanza's wife who had become concerned and paid the Army medics with Evelyn's own video camera to have her moved to the Army's own hospital. This had probably saved Evelyn's life; and, coincidentally, cost her husband's life.

What he had done to Evelyn was revealed when an Army surgeon examined her. Being unconscious, Evelyn could not explain that she had asked for the operation, and nobody could believe that anyone would submit to such brutal treatment; so it was decided that Mwanza had been torturing Evelyn. They turned up in force at the clinic and when he tried to explain that she had asked him to do it, his explanation was met with derisive laughter. Mwanza showed no calm composure now, he begged and pleaded for his life, but as a Hutu, he did stood little chance of mercy. Young men of the victorious Tutsi militia, most of them still in their early teens dragged Mwanza out to the back of the hospital for a bit of target practice, laughing like children playing a game, their AK47 assault rifles were not the toys they should have been playing with. Mwanza's bullet riddled corpse became little more than another statistic in the ongoing conflict.

Evelyn only learned of the doctor's fate much later, as she slowly returned to something approaching health. She was surprised one day to see the doctor's widow sitting next to her bed, with a small pile of clean and pressed clothes that Evelyn recognised as her own. Charity explained (again in that strange, passionless way) that the soldiers had come to the clinic and killed her husband. They probably would have added her to the casualty list, but she had denied she was Mwanza's wife and instead insisted was Evelyn's maid. The lies had most likely saved her life, but now Evelyn was in a quandary: she could tell the Army medics the truth, which would be passed on to the Major in charge of the area, and so in all likelihood sentencing Charity to death, or, go along with the story and become involved with the deceit. Evelyn wondered, as she lay in the hospital bed, what to do...

Contracting malaria had made any decision unnecessary. Her already weakened immune system nearly gave in altogether as the fevers alternately burned her and then chilled her. Charity spent many sleepless hours doing what she could to try to ensure that her "mistress" survived. Evelyn pulled through this crisis as well as everything else she had suffered. The Army now decided that they wanted their bed back (Evelyn having run out of Walkman and cassette tapes, watch, sunglasses, gold neck chain, and just about all the clothes she had carried with her in the small rucksack she had when she visited the clinic).

Charity had helped her leave the hospital. Evelyn had no idea where to go but was stunned to find that the Land Rover she had left parked next to the Police Station still there, unmolested, still with half a tank of diesel. She could only assume that the looters had given the Station a wide berth and she had been lucky that the police themselves had not stolen it. Climbing in, she decided it would be best to recover in the mountains than risk staying in town any longer.

Charity looked at her passively as Evelyn climbed into the driving seat. Evelyn was unsure what to say. This was the woman who had watched as she was raped by her husband and yet had nursed her in hospital and was probably responsible for saving her life. Evelyn grimaced, in some ways they had saved each other. Evelyn felt some words were in order:

"What will you do now Charity?", she asked.

"I do not know mistress, if I stay I think I will be killed."

Evelyn felt the burden of responsibility falling on her shoulders again.

"I can't take you with me Charity...", she began.

"Please mistress, I know you are weak, let me aid you recover in the mountains, then when you are better I shall return, it may be safer then."

Evelyn cursed softly, yet she knew it made sense. She still had ambivalent feelings towards Charity, could she trust her? Yet she knew she was dangerously weak and may need help. She decided not to dwell on the decision and told Charity to jump in. They sped away from Kigali and the nightmare of the past weeks.

Now, as she looked out of the window of her hut in the mountains, she could see Charity preparing some breakfast, and was reminded of how hungry she felt. Charity had proved to be quite useful in foraging for food; she had been surprised when Charity had rounded up chickens and a goat from God alone knew where. She supposed that, with the civil war going on sporadically, farms sometimes got in the way of the fighting, and animals ran away from the noise of the gunfire. It had taken three months for Evelyn to recover her strength, but in the past few weeks she'd been getting back into shape. Avoiding the valley, where occasional explosions still disturbed the quiet, she started going on walks in the peaceful mountains, gradually pushing herself further each day as she felt the muscles in her body regaining their firmness.