How strange to be out of Congo. As Isaiah, our incredible translator, and I walked across the border he showed me the river that marks the boundary between the two countries here: on one side, chaos – a young man shaking down every old lady carrying insanely heavy loads up the mountain side, everyone crowding the immigration window at once – on the other, relative order, neatly organized single-file lines, gas stations, power lines. How strange to be on that other side again.

Yesterday I felt completely engulfed by sadness. I wrote a blog entry that I will not post with you now, crushed by what I had seen and heard during a long day visiting clinics with International Medical Corps.

I had hoped that when I came here, I would be able to focus on the stories of survivors, the stories of strength and resolve. But I realize that I have fallen prey to reducing the people of Congo to their victimhood. I have given in to the faces of the starving children, the raped and burned women. I think anyone would have.

When your translator is in tears, you know you’re in trouble.

This morning we met with two women, both of them survivors of rape. Both captured and violated by the Interahamwe – the FDLR militia, some of whom are former perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. One woman was pregnant – she said that she had accepted the situation, but it didn’t look like acceptance in her eyes. The other woman had lost her child, and had sustained burns over her entire body – her community had rejected her.

Yesterday, at the Goma border crossing, a local Congolese official told our translator that she wanted to go through our luggage. We knew it was a shakedown, but wanted to avoid any trouble. Isaiah talked to her to try to smooth things over, so that she would let it go. And she told him, “Isaiah, please, make me feel better now.”

I knew I shouldn’t have gone into the room about children long before I stepped inside. It’s the last room of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center here in Rwanda, and it’s not like the kind young man that greeted us at reception didn’t give me fair warning that it was coming. I was already in tears – the memorial is intensely powerful and personal – and I knew it would push me over the edge.

By all accounts I shouldn’t be making this trip. My mother keeps tracking me down to tell me that she is “opposed” to it, my father sent me several emails reminding me that “Congo is not Cancun” (thanks for the reminder, Dad), and therefore, perhaps I should reconsider. But most importantly, most pressingly – perhaps I shouldn’t be making this trip because I have a five and a half month old daughter at home.