ADDENDUM

Karen is a mother, wife, Google employee, art advocate, scrapbooker, photographer, educator, and blogger. She shares visuals and art created in part through her own life experiences.

Karen’s message is simple: Your life is worth sticking around for.

Pooh Bear is in his thotful spot.

They will be heard: The rape survivors of Minova

MINOVA, Democratic Republic of Congo — When it was her turn to testify, before entering the courtroom, she donned the head covering and gown designed to render her anonymous, a costume so complete that cloth covered her hands as she gripped the microphone.

Then she told her story.

On a November evening in 2012, around 8 p.m., Congolese government soldiers knocked on her door. Her five children scattered and hid in the bedroom. Her husband was already gone. He fled when he heard bullets fired earlier. When the soldiers entered the house, two of them threw her on the ground and began to rape her. The others began to pillage her home, carrying off the goods that her family had just received from an aid organization — sacks of rice and corn, cans of cooking oil. Her husband returned in the morning. When he learned she had been raped, he left. He never returned.

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