Seraphine totters down a long hallway. She is two years old and her hair is braided tightly into columns that stick out radially from her head. Dark purple fl owers decorate her white dress. She pauses to look into a ward and then continues, stopping again briefl y before entering the room where her mother is sleeping. The room contains twenty-four beds lined up against two opposite walls. In each bed, a sleeping woman waits for surgery. These women, like so many other mothers, daughters, and sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are victims of brutal rape.

But these women are luckier than most. They await help in the pre-op ward of a hospital administered by HEAL Africa, a U.S. non-profi t organization. HEAL stands for Health, Education, Action in community, and Leadership. The organization seeks to “provide holistic care for the people of Congo through physical, spiritual, and social healing as well as to train professionals and strengthen social activists.” In Congo, the obstacles to holistic healing include war, sexual violence, and rape. “Rape,” says Judy Anderson, HEAL Africa’s co-executive director, “is a weapon of war, intimidation, and domination in Congo.” Its physical and psychological wounds do not heal easily.

Since 1998, the Congolese government has waged a bloody and complex civil war against various rebel factions. Although the war offi cially ended in 2003, violence in the country continues. The United Nations (UN) dedicated only 12,000 soldiers to keep the peace in a nation roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River. With the help of foreign governments, Congo’s factions have managed to sustain armed confl ict both with the government and with one another. Since 1998, war, famine, and disease have claimed over four million lives, more than any confl ict on the planet since the end of World War II.

In Goma, where the HEAL Africa hospital is located, residents remain constantly on edge. When Mount Nyirangongo erupted in 2002, an already war-torn city was covered with molten lava. Just across the border in Rwanda, the neighboring city of Gisenyi has rebounded from the genocide of 1994 to become a relaxed vacation town. But Goma, like most of the Congo, has not recovered from war.