
“My name is Joelle, I am 22y, and I am from Congo… When I arrived at the hospital that night I was very scared, and even more scared when I saw the faces of the doctors when they assessed my condition. There were white and black doctors speaking words I don’t understand, and took me to surgery very fast. I took a “lost bullet” in the abdomen, when drunk military were shooting close to my hut. During the operation they found severe bleeding inside my belly and saved my life very fast. 12 hours after the first surgery doctors said I was very sick again, and took me back to another surgery. When they reopened my belly they found that most of bowel was dead, and had to be removed. During the operation doctors had different opinions: Some thought that they should just let me die to prevent further suffering, and some thought that maybe I could live for a while. They decided to save my life again, but only less the 50 cm of my bowel remained, and this is not compatible with life, at least not in the conditions that we have in the middle of the war in Congo. After one month of being in the hospital I am steady at 26 kilograms. Nobody knows how long I can live like this, but for sure its not long… I am sentenced to death. People think that wars are sad because a lot of soldiers die, but the real cruelty of war is that the air that we breath is not human anymore… And when we loose humanity even the ones that are alive are already dead or sentenced to death, in their hearts, like me… Well, life is not easy on nobody, and one way or the other we need to act on what depends of us. So I decided to smile back at life, and asked the doctors to go back to my village to see again my two children. I will probably not give them much more than a few smiles. But these smiles will last in their minds forever, and will work as an antidote to the lack of humanity that we breath everywhere in the horrible war of Congo. I can’t wait for the war to be over to show them that in my heart I have no wars… I understand the doctors that wanted to let me die, but for a day, or a week, or month I while show the world that my smile was worth it.”