I guess it’s important to clarify why I’m here. International Medical Corps is an incredible organization that is providing healthcare and support to people in dire need. I met with them in Los Angeles two months ago and they approached me to see if and how I could help in anyway. They desperately need funding and general awareness raised both for the organization, and for all the projects they are involved with. If my involvement in any way could contribute to either then I was more than happy to be involved. My one request was that if we were going to start working together, it was imperative, that I see and experience what is going on first hand….So here I am.

Today we went into the camps. It’s incredibly difficult to put down in writing what I saw and how I subsequently feel. I met so many courageous people: victims of brutal rape, mothers of children dying of starvation, and the children themselves. If a woman is married and raped here, most of the time her husband will leave her immediately. If she was too young to be married when raped, she will probably never have the chance to be married at all. It is brutal in every sense of the word. One woman recounted her story to me. She is twenty five years old, and was gang-raped five months ago. It is difficult to hear, but important to know that when women are raped it is sometimes not only by men, but by objects ranging from broken bottles and knives, to the butts of very large rifles. As a result of her experience, this woman will wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. I saw the scars, and the bag, and I can honestly say that it is one of the most harrowing images I will ever come across. A woman is raped here every eight minutes. This one, for better or worse, survived.

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Update: Watch Sienna’s short film about her trip to the Congo here.

We boarded the flight to Rwanda having spent a night in a gorgeous old colonial hotel in Nairobi. Felt such anticipation as we flew over Lake Victoria and watched the landscape beneath us with its deep reds transforming into luscious green and mountainous peaks. Rwanda is so full of history and so far from home. A country that has been ravaged by war and yet once landing we were met by a sea of smiling faces and stunning landscape. The only reminder of genocide on our four-hour drive to the border of Congo was the banners stretching across the road as a memorial to those who were so brutally murdered.

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