Stephanie Nolen answers questions from the audience. (Tom Bateman/AQ)
International correspondent moves crowd with stories from war-torn Africa
Stephanie Nolen spoke about her five rules of journalism, each with a story. One was about elections in Zimbabwe, another about displaced people in Sudan. However, what had most of the audience holding back tears were her stories of sexually abused women of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I get home to Johannesburg and it’s very hard to think over the sound of screaming in my own head,” she told a full house at the Kinsella Auditorium Wednesday. “I was acutely conscious in trying to write that story that I could do absolutely nothing for these women. They needed food, they needed physical safety, they needed security, they needed medical care and I had a notebook.”
Nolen’s stories were disturbing: women raped by soldiers on the bodies of their parents; women raped while their husbands watched at gunpoint. Women held captive and subjected to repeated rape, who are later freed and willing to walk for three months to find the only Congo doctor who can stop the bleeding and repair their reproductive and excretory systems.
The rule that went with this story was “manage your anger,” but Nolen said she doesn’t think that it’s possible to get beyond the anger when writing certain stories.
“You do try, I guess, to quiet the screaming in your head so you can think, but I don’t think there’s a beyond.”
Stephanie Nolen, a foreign correspondent with the Globe and Mail, finished her Dalton Camp lecture to a standing ovation. Afterwards, she was surrounded by young journalists wanting to speak with her.
Nolen admitted that she doesn’t really like writing. In fact, she’d “rather do anything in the world than write.”
“Eventually, you just got to sit down and write…that first draft on the page,” she said. “It’s the worst thing in the world. I don’t know anyone who writes for a living that actually likes it, though.”
And sometimes it’s hard to simply listen to the stories as she’s writing them. But she keeps going with the hope that her actions will make a difference.
“All I’m doing is listening,” Nolen said. “It’s nothing like living through it, right?
“I’m not going to glorify my misery here,” she said. “I’m not the one who was raped by 10 soldiers, I just have to hear it. That’s not an incredibly [horrible] task.”
