Police states like Syria and post/in-conflict states such as the Democratic Republic of Congo are out of the mainstream news cycle except for small spells in which they are suddenly in vogue.

Access is difficult, not to mention expensive. Once you get there, corrupt border officials, weak media laws, intimidated sources and random acts of violence can roadblock reporting. In this lump of limitations women’s issues simply get lost.

Only extreme tragedy – honor crimes in Syria, mass rape in Congo -- tickles the front pages and headlines of the mainstream media. Missing from these snapshots is the strength, courage and resourcefulness of women living in the throes of poverty and tyranny.

Women’s eNews went deeper.

From Damascus, Syria, I filed articles on Iraqi women refugees eking a living in a police state that receives minimal international aid. Although the opportunities where limited, most women found ways to survive and sustain their families, often foregoing their own nutrition and honor in so doing.

A second article focused on Syria’s women rights activists fighting against paternalistic laws that cloak crimes of passion (or convenience) as honor crimes. While Syrian law makes limited room for NGO’s or women’s rights, activists and lawyers are laying the cultural foundations necessary to end honor crimes.

Earlier this year, The New York Time’s and Lisa Jackson's documentary The Greatest Silence put the plight of Congolese raped women under the spotlight. In viewing this coverage, one of the questions that plagued my mind was: What are the Congolese themselves doing to counter this? A lot, it turns out.

At the turn of the century, the Democratic Republic of Congo found itself at the epicenter of a regional war that claimed over 5 million lives. The country is vast and fragmented. Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North and South Kivu respectively, are not connected by road to the country’s capital, Kinshasa.

In a country where the state is a sham, where police and politicians are suspect, a refreshingly resourceful population has flourished. It is one that fights violence against women while struggling to put food on the table for families as large as ten to twelve children.

Organizations like S.O.S. SIDA and AFEM, highlighted in Women’s eNews east Congo articles, make a powerful impact in their communities with limited help or attention from the outside. Touched by Women’s eNews coverage, our readers have responded with words of encouragement and reached out helping hands.

Our first stop was Entebbe's beautiful botanical gardens. An expert guide showed us every type of tree and creepy crawler under the Ugandan sun.

Henna,  frankinsence, strangling ficus, nutmeg, bambu, eucaplyptus, cacao, ostridge tree, and canon balls towered above exotic shrubbery and mating dragon flies.

With each of our steps, microscopic insects surfaced from the soil. The dragonflies swept down and swallowed. Ant hills -- the size of hobbit homes-- portruded from the base of trees.

We encountered one ant colony marching across the road in multiple columns. Workers opened the path while soldiers stood guard, each waiting for the queen. Ants -- one of Aristotle's models for the polis -- are insanely structured animals.

On the banks of Lake Victoria we saw small monkeys, including a one-week-old baby. Unlike the aggressive monkeys that tend to crowd Buddhist temples in Thaliand and Indonesia, these were passive creatures, bored, almost, by our presence.

The 1930s black and white version of Tarzan was shot at Entebbe's botanical garden. Given the flora and fauna --the looping lianas, the white orchids, the fabulous fish eagles, the silly simians--it is easy to see why.

The road from Entebbe to Kampala was a marked improvement from Rwandan and Congolese roads. Homes also struck me as higher quality.

The city was clogged by lunchtime traffic when we reached it. In the absence of more creative alternatives, we stayed at the relatively cheap Tourist hotel.

After a 2-hour nap, we ventured out to the streets and supplied ourselves with some basics -- plane tickets, sim card, aspirins, pain killers, water.

To end the ordeal of our sleep-deprived day, we treated ourselves to an early, spicy dinner at Handi, an excellent Indian restaurant. Handi is theoretically owned by the sister of Kigali's best Indian restaurant, Khazana.

If this is true, the sister outdid the brother.

Kicking back in Kigali...

This is not a bad place to kick back. There is good coffee and internet, two essentials when you are filing stories. My productivity curve has been sharp. The only distraction was a short adventure into African cinema.

Daddy Ruhorahoza is rolling a film about a disenchanted expat and her African lover sharing a surreal bath and joint during a Halloween party. The script is fabulous. Audra and Daddy star. I and other budding actors party in the background.To read more about it, visit: www.torerofilms.blogspot.com

Tomorrow, at 5 a.m, we leave Rwanda for Uganda. Our layover there is just shy of 24 hours. The plan is to visit the botanical gardens in Entebbe and hang out in Kampala in the evening. We then take another wee-hour flight to Cape Town.

It is hard to digest that the African adventures end in a week.

***

The border crossing from Congo to Rwanda was easier than our arrival in Bukavu or Goma. In Rwanda, a greater degree of legality is expected from us Mozungos. After a week in the Congolese Kivus, this felt unfortunate. I was getting used to the bureaucratic-balloon-popping bribes. It devastated me when a smile was not enough to get a week long tourist visa versus a two-day visa for Rwanda. I was told to check-in Kigali within 48 hours.

Hotel Paradis is as beautiful as its name promised. Sadly, we did not do too much sightseeing or swimming. We collapsed into a food and drink comma at five p.m. By midnight I was awake again and wired. I was planning the rest of my life when I suddenly noticed a shadow on the door. It progressed to the third window/door. As it reached for the handle, I shook Audra awake, started speaking loudly and stomped to the lights. The intruder, real or imagined, was gone.

I don’t think it was the Lariam with its hallucinogenic side effects since I forget to take it. After our camping experience on the crater of the volcano – where after days of hearing rape testimonies we suddenly realized in the middle of the night that we were beyond the world’s earshot—I was curiously calm. Paul Kagame, I know, has put the fear of God into his citizens and turned the country into a law abiding Mecca. So, when I saw the shadow, I knew that at worst we would be dealing with a petty theft incident.

But it is a good thing we woke up. The door was unlocked. We are a little too carefree post-Congo. Better work on raising the paranoia levels before arriving in street crime intensive South Africa.

Camping on the crater of an active volcano was not among the harebrained schemes I hatched during sleepless nights in New York. There are certain things in life that are just too cool to for your cranium to conceptualize. Camping on the crater of an active volcano in the Congo counts as one of them. Personally, I had digested Congo, volcano and camping in that order. The last element, "active", was a last minute throw-in to the travel facts-on-file. It came as a pleasant surprise.

 
On August 6, 2008, at 11 a.m. exactly we set-off on the ascent with four fit porters, an erudite park ranger and an alcoholic armed guard. The volcano erupted in 2002, killing dozens and destroying much of the vegetation. But Mother Nature is superior at recovery, so for the first forty five minutes we found ourselves crossing a new rainforest. Clearings on the brush afforded us a hazy peak at a white tents refugee camp and the distant, muddy gridlines of Goma.

We marched over ants, brushed foliage aside, and arrived at the first stop: three logs lying in a c-shape. At this point, I learned that the four remaining segments of the journey got steeper, harder and longer. The park ranger's assessment was spot on. As soon as we broke clear of the rainforest, the soft muddy footpath gave way to giant rubble, coagulated volcanic ash that cut into the soles of our sneakers. One porter persevered like a mountain goat on flip flops. I had nothing but respect as I fell further behind, short on oxygen.

The journey began at 2000 meters. It ended at 3470 meters. I am not sure at which height exactly it got hard to breathe. But it got very hard. Audra was used to walking long hours in high altitudes from her time in Tyazo. The porters, surefooted and graceful like gazelles, do it everyday. I, despite my Alpine and Andenean gene-code, however, fared badly. Breathing was a struggle from stop two to three. By the time we crossed a second, steeper patch of rainforest, and reached stop four, I was in a murderous mood and ready to forfeit the final ascent to the crater. Pigeon, a Muslim Congolese porter who patiently followed my pace, lauded my ambition. It was not ambition, I told him, but absence of choice.

The final ascent was steep but not long. Thunder teased us the last half hour to the top. For all my silent cursing, reaching the crater was all the reward I needed to erase the final two hours of climbing misery. The red crater spewed sulphuric acid in welcome. I cracked a smile. Pigeon brewed coffee and sugar. The others made a fire. We chugged down the brown syrup and ventured to the crater's edge. It gurgled and spouted flames at the sky.  A rudimentary cross marked the place where a Japanese, female tourist fell 800 meters to her death. That can’t be a fun way to go.

We roasted hotdogs on the coals and sung African and American songs. Our socks dried on stones by the fire.At around 10 p.m. we collapsed into our wet sleeping bags (it rained for a good portion of the day). Thunder and lightning storms whipped our tent through the night. We couldn't sleep. The crater roared. At midnight, I had a migraine that fortunately passed after three Tylenols and two hours. The sulfuric fumes, the climb and the dehydration must have gone to my head. So much for mind over matter. I tossed and torned over a thin mattress contemplating the meaning of "hard core."

The next day, we woke up at 6 a.m., drunk more coffee, and packed up our drenched belongings into plastic sacks. While the climb up was bruising to the ego, the climb down almost cost me life and limb. Miss rubber ankles poor-grip-sneakers fell at least a dozen times. The soft landings were humorous. Less entertaining was slipping into a bush of pricklies. Even less entertaining was a 6-feet-look-out-below-fall that smacked me straight into a jagged stone surface. I thought my elbow cracked. It creaked for the next 48 hours but I didn’t break anything. Thank god I have my grandmother’s solid bones.

An extra day in Bukavu gave me an opportunity to touch base with judicial sources and meet up with AFEM again. Unfortunately, their office was broken into on Sunday night. The thieves took their cameras, radio and the computer containing all their sound files. I.E. All their hard work. It is truly terrible. I am hoping to hit up radios in New York when I get back for their old equipment to send it to them. If anyone has material they want to send on, let me know. AFEM doesn’t have a website but I plan to write an article on them so you should learn more about their work soon.

This morning we boarded Miss Rafiki. The boat took five hours across Lake Kivu to Goma. We passed countless, sizeable islands. Lake Kivu seemed less of a lake and more of a large silver ocean. It rained a good portion of the way. This did not deter local fishermen who braved the elements with their nets and small canoes, casting shadows on the horizon. While in Tyazo I had the opportunity to swim in this lake connecting Rwanda and Goma. I take daily pauses to digest where we are. It is beautiful.

Unloading in Goma was a quest. Boarding was painless since we were virtually the last two to hop on (we were a little late). Getting off, we joined a mass of perhaps two hundred. A porter took my bag. My height was a problem in terms of keeping sight of my goods. The mad rush of people grew out of control. I chased after him. Suddenly, a police man halted me and told me I had to show him my passport and go back to his port office. Audra caught up. We argued. I showed him my passport. He snatched it from me. I snatched it back. My luggage was disappearing around the corner.

We persuaded the police man that Audra would go back with him to fill out the forms while I went off to hunt down my luggage. He did not concede. A Congolese man, Gustav, that Audra had chatted to on the boat came to our rescue. He mediated an agreement. I rushed off after my luggage. Audra headed back to the port. After tracking down my porter and a taxi diver, I locked our bags in the trunk of the car and did a 180 to find Audra. She was in a locked side room office. Gustav followed me. We went in. There were a few quibbles about Audra’s “Frontier” visa. We were released after paying $2 for the registration process. I am certain that if Gustav had not been there admonishing the police for poor procedure the bribe would have been higher.

In Goma, we checked in at the Ihusi Hotel… First rate rooms… Lakeside views… Excellent internet access..decent pizza.... Loving it. Sidenote: The no same-sex room sharing rule also seems to exist in Goma. We suspect this has to do with the penalization of homosexuality in the country's criminal code.  Next time, I must travel with boyfriend to Congo. It could help the budget.

Tomorrow we climb the volcano that covered this town in ashes three years ago. Most of the houses are new here because of all the post-eruption reconstruction.

En route from Addis Ababa to Kigali I met Astrid, a beautiful merchant mamma who buys fabrics in Dubai and brings them to Bukavu for sale. I told her I was a reporter and gave her background info on Women’s eNews. Next thing I learn, her husband works for SOS Sida, an organization that deals with both HIV/Aids and sexual violence victims. The organization provides housing for men and women from rural areas who need to follow antiretroviral treatment. It is an amazing support system for individuals in need of care and otherwise rejected by their relatives and broader community.

Gratien and Astrid were our guardian angels while in Bukavu. Gratien in particular was a saint of the highest order. He fulfilled the role of interpreter, driver and fixer, without requesting anything in return. That generosity of time and resources from a father of eight in a post-conflict country warms your heart. Not to mention, Gratien was happy to work with me at a fast-pace New York rhythm. In one day, we managed ten, long back-to-back interviews without pause or meal. Thank god Astrid made a fabulous six-course meal to replenish us at the end of the day. Note: I love manioc and goat.

Bukavu is not an easy place for the press. At least not for the local press. I interviewed journalists and producer at Mandeleo radio, Bukavu’s first community radio, dating back to 1994, as well as members of women’s media organization, Association de Femmes de Media (AFEM). Both organizations reported an overall struggle at the level of security. The men journalists from Mandeleo are vulnerable to muggings when reporting at night because they can’t afford to pay for transportation. One was mugged last week on his walk back to the station after covering Miss Bukavu. Women journalists risk rape when venturing to rural areas to collect testimonies from survivors of ongoing sexual crimes. These are men and women of courage, committed to their country.

The border crossing itself was pain free. We received exit stamps on the Rwandan side before crossing a footbridge to Congo. There, we discovered that Audra forgot her health card in Kigali. This oversight forced us to pay our first African bribe in the sum of ten dollars, a small “penalty to solve the problem, a nicetie really.” The exchange took place with no shortage of humor and laughter but you couldn’t help but wonder what next. At least, we managed to secure a taxi from the border to our hotel, Hotel Horizon, at the local price, 400 CFR, less than one US dollar (This was half the price of what previous traveller’s told us, the same price that border police suggested to us, so approximately the local price.)

At the hotel, Claude and Aristide greeted us with smiles and a new moneymaking scheme. In principle, a double room costs 60 dollars, but since we were travellers of the same sex and not a married coupled they wanted to charge us 50 percent more. I dropped Gratien’s name, listed a long inventory of countries where this norm does not apply, and finally threatened to take our business elsewhere, threat rendered all the stronger by our taxi driver, Anthony, who was still waiting for us in the parking lot. To my great surprise, hotel management caved. Le client a toujours raison, meme au Congo. We dropped our bags and bolted out the door for the first round of reporting.

The road signs in Bukavu read  "Life is sacred . Rape is a crime.” The distance between theory and practice crystallizes at Panzi hospital, which caters to hundreds of victims of sexual violence. There, we met with Dr. Cecile, who counsels on average ten rape victims each day. Women are brought to Panzi to be treated for everything from fistula to Aids, legacies from mass rape and sexual slavery in the surrounding forests. The gunfire has stopped but the sexual violence has not. It shows no no reprieve since hitting international headlines earlier this year. Although there are now stronger networks to catch and support the victims, the problem of means and volume are still daunting. The number of individuals mobilized around this issue is encouraging but there is a pressing need for stronger international support.

She lives in a simple mud hut with her husband, eight adorable children and two goats. The family tills the land for potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and soya beans. This year, they cultivated a record 2.5-kilo potato. They are optimistic for the next harvest despite a three week drought that singed a few of their fields.

Marthe's new farm earnings have allowed her to start buying and selling fish at the market four times a week. She keeps the left overs to cook at home, a new protein supplement in her children's diet. In the meantime, her husband continues to work the fields. He has hired five men and added a new crop--cabbages--to their fields.

This small success story is part of the work that the One Acre Fund carried out in Tyazo. The One Acre Fund gives credit in kind --fertilizers and seeds--to local farmers. For more information please see www.oneacrefund.org.