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Quest Global Presence and Q Cafe invite you to join us for a special film screening of LUMO on Thursday, October 25. LUMO is an award winning documentary about a young Congolese woman named LUMO that aired on PBS just last month. Doors open at 6.30pm and film begins at 7pm. Conversation and discussion will take place after the film. Donations will also be received and ALL proceeds will go directly to the work at Heal Africa – the hospital and community development ministry where Lumo received medical treatment. Last year, I wrote a post on the Cooper Anderson’s heart wrenching report about what he witnessed in Congo and the work at Heal Africa. Couple of our church friends, Dick and Judy, are deeply invested with Heal Africa. Here’s the latest from their blog:

Goma, DR Congo….estimated to be at the center of the most violent war since WWII. The local population and the international community are at a loss to explain the brutal nature of this war….especially toward women! During the 6 weeks I was there (July -September) the UNFPA reported that the numbers of rape in North Kivu were up 60% over the past 8 months….351 cases in Aug. Everyone acknowledges that this is only the tip of the iceberg. When I arrived the UN briefing paper stated that there were approx. 370,000 internally displaced people in the region this year (over 700,000 in total)….and during the time I was there, another 30,000 were estimated to have fled due to the war. Goma is one of the major safe sanctuaries (surrounded by the UN Peacekeeping force) but has also become the home of thousands of militias and armies. The UN now says that approximately 150,000 people have been cut off from food aid…

Back to the film…Who is Lumo?

“Lumo Sinai was just over 20 when marauding soldiers attacked her in the eastern Congo. A fistula, a medical condition common among victims of violent rape, rendered Lumo incontinent and threatens her ability to bear children. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, she awaits reconstructive surgery.”

Here’s the synopsis of the film:

Twenty-year-old Lumo Sinai was engaged to be married and going about her daily chores when she fell victim to an act of brutality of “Africa’s First World War” — rape as a tool of political terror. On the road to her village, Lumo and another woman were kidnapped and gang-raped by one of the groups of marauding soldiers vying for control of the eastern Congo in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Lumo suffered not only the trauma of rape, but was soon afflicted with a resulting fistula, a chronic condition that leaves women incontinent and typically unable to bear children. Her affliction led to rejection by her fiancé and most of her family and village. Violently robbed of her future, Lumo faced a future of shame, loneliness, ill health and poverty.

“Lumo” is an intimate look into a woman’s tragedy and healing process, and, by extension, into the scourge of rape that marks the war-torn politics of central Africa. “Lumo” is also the story of a remarkable African hospital that works tirelessly to restore the physical and mental health of women suffering in an epidemic of fistula caused by rape. The hospital’s self-called “Mamas,” African women who work tirelessly as healers, even flout traditional prejudice and government policy by leading a march in defense of women’s human rights. But “Lumo” remains most of all Lumo Sinai’s story as she struggles through four failed surgeries and searches for strength to face the future — whatever the outcome of one more surgery by the hospital’s dedicated doctors. [read full story]