Gender-based violence survivors learn to rebuild engines as they rebuild lives
Gender-based violence survivors learn to rebuild engines as they rebuild lives
By Vittoria Moretti, in Kananga, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 10 Dec 2021
URL: https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2021/12/61b3015d4/gender-based-violence-survivors-learn-rebuild-engines-rebuild-lives.html
UNHCR is training women in the DRC to learn useful skills that enhance their self-reliance while challenging gender stereotypes. Therese draws a small crowd of curious onlookers as she kneels before the rusty, broken-down engine of a truck parked near her house in the outskirts of Kananga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kasai Central province.
Her neighbours listen in amazement as she carefully assesses the extent of the damage, explaining what repairs are needed.
While the 47-year-old may appear out of place in the traditionally male-dominated field of auto-mechanics, it was in a mechanic’s garage that she first found hope again after surviving a brutal sexual assault, and its aftermath.
In 2017, violent clashes between armed militia and Congolese armed forces engulfed her hometown of Luebo, some 300 kilometres from Kananga. “That day, there was a stampede. There were gunshots everywhere and we started running away in panic,” she recalls. A group of armed men killed her husband in front of her before setting her house ablaze. Therese managed to escape into the forest with her 10 children. “What [the armed men] did to me destroyed me completely.” But her nightmare was just beginning. In the forest, she encountered four soldiers who raped her and her 22-year-old daughter at gun point, in front of her other children. For more than three weeks afterwards, the family hid in the bush to evade further attacks. During that time her two youngest children died of starvation.
Her neighbours listen in amazement as she carefully assesses the extent of the damage, explaining what repairs are needed.
While the 47-year-old may appear out of place in the traditionally male-dominated field of auto-mechanics, it was in a mechanic’s garage that she first found hope again after surviving a brutal sexual assault, and its aftermath.
In 2017, violent clashes between armed militia and Congolese armed forces engulfed her hometown of Luebo, some 300 kilometres from Kananga. “That day, there was a stampede. There were gunshots everywhere and we started running away in panic,” she recalls. A group of armed men killed her husband in front of her before setting her house ablaze. Therese managed to escape into the forest with her 10 children. “What [the armed men] did to me destroyed me completely.” But her nightmare was just beginning. In the forest, she encountered four soldiers who raped her and her 22-year-old daughter at gun point, in front of her other children. For more than three weeks afterwards, the family hid in the bush to evade further attacks. During that time her two youngest children died of starvation.