Wherever we looked, we turned up nothing. The hours stretched on, and my anxiety and fear grew. I just kept wishing over and over they would appear or that we would get through to them by phone. We didn't search for them in a morgue, as I could not imagine or think of their death.
When people ask me why I forgave Rodney, I tell them: my son Kalen was not about hatred or violence or pain. He was about love and forgiveness, and my decision to forgive Rodney was an act to honor my son’s spirit.
Our target was not the poor, who are buried like dead animals covered with soil. We liked the graves of the rich, covered by a raised, cemented slab.
My husband, 10 years my senior, shouted at me for no reason. He would often beat me with his belt and throw me out of the house. Other times, he would grab me by the hair, throw me on the floor, get on top of me and choke me.
Many of us cried like little children—We had lost everything we worked for our entire lives.
A chokoraa like me cannot report a rape case and have it followed up, like people with stable homes. Where do you even start when you do not know the person who assaulted you?
Returning to my brother, I did not hesitate. I remember not understanding what I was doing, but I felt the rumbling of the gun shot pass through me. It was as if someone else pulled the trigger.
The guards mentally and physically tortured me. They called me a terrorist, rioter, traitor, jihadi. I wasn’t allowed to brush my teeth or read books, and I could barely sleep in my tiny, filthy, isolated cell.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speach, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel said "The lights and shadows of life must be shared".
The cops stripped me naked and beat me with sticks and belts. I'd cry, scream, beg — urinating was severely painful. They didn't give me water and food for five days. I had to chew my clothes. I was in so much pain I could have eaten grass.
I fight with the dictatorship so that my people can be free.
I managed to escape. I fled from the hell that held me captive. Thank God I still have a voice to say what happened to me.