On 26 January, 2002, Lisa Ndejuru and two other activists from Montreal/Ottawa communities left Montreal for Iraq. They were going to Iraq to join the Iraq Peace Team, an international solidarity effort organized by Voices in the Wilderness. Voices in the Wilderness has been actively opposing the sanctions and ongoing bombing of Iraq since 1996. In the face of mounting threats against Iraq, they initiated the Iraq Peace Team project in September 2002, which has maintained a constant presence of international activists in Iraq, standing in solidarity with the Iraqi people and working to prevent the invasion. The Iraq Peace Team intends to remain with the Iraqi people during an attack, sending back reports about how the assault is affecting people on the ground.

As the volatile situation has allowed or demanded, Lisa and the others visited families, hospitals, schools, and other public centres; engaged in media work; helped to organize anti-war actions inside Iraq and involved themselves in other activities aimed at demonstrating solidarity with the people of Iraq and opposing the war. When the other two members of the team returned to Canada a few weeks ago, Lisa decided to stay. This — her second dispatch for rabble — is what she wrote to explain her decision to remain in Iraq, as long as she can.

There are some beautiful children here. There is one, Hassan, who has his portable business just in front of the hotel. He shines shoes. He’s very good at it . I can’t stand to see it, and I don’t quite understand why. He’s working and supporting his family — and very proud of it too.

There’s a another boy I love in the neighbourhood; this one has dimples and stole my heart without even trying. I often think to myself that if worst comes to worst, he’ll know how to get around.

I can’t hand out money to begging children. If you go to booksellers’ row there are many little girls, dragging littler brothers and sisters with them, holding out cartons containing two sweets or tissue paper. I can’t do it, because I can’t accept doing it sometimes but not others. So I don’t do it at all. I don’t understand myself, but I can’t do it.

The children are very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. All the shades of brown. Beautiful eyes.

Yesterday we met the archbishop of southern Iraq. He lives and works in Basra, the city in the south where so much of the bombing has been taking place, where much of the depleted uranium can be found, where health and sanitation conditions today are very difficult. The archbishop told us that families who were expecting used to ask to know the sex of the child, hoping for little boys. The number of birth defects is so high now that all people want to know is if the child has hands or feet. From a feminist perspective, this breaks my heart. As a woman in her childbearing years, my tummy cramps in desolation.

We went to visit the children at the St. Raphael orphanage. There are several orphanages here. This one takes care of disabled children. I was afraid to enter, afraid to see and smell and hear their pain. I was afraid to see neglect and misery. Instead, I saw smiles and strokes of welcome. The children are well taken care of, every single day. It was so easy to plop down on the mat for lunch, wipe some noses and feed some rice and chicken into smiling hungry mouths. I kept thinking that for it to be easy for me to drop by for lunch, somebody had to keep the place up and running every day. To give and give and give. Gracefully.

I don’t know if I will ever be a parent. I’m so afraid, so greedy. I don’t know that I could stand to love and fear as the parents here in Baghdad do, or the ones back home — my own and all the others. Possibilities are endless: accidents, health problems, loss, harassment, substance abuse, depression, homelessness…

* * *

War means bombs dropping from the sky, soldiers in the streets shooting and throwing grenades. It means killing, raping, maiming. It means food and water getting scarcer and scarcer, and garbage and sewage and disease getting out of control. War means people killing and dying and breaking under pressure, settling old scores because nobody is watching right then. War means humanitarian agencies and relief programs and people fleeing, trying to get out; it means refugee camps and sub-human status; it means people giving up.

Here in Iraq, over forty per cent of the population is under sixteen years of age.

I’ve decided to stay. Because I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I need to hope and keep going. I’m learning that here. Hope for no war, for a lifting of the sanctions that have a chokehold on these people.

When I left Montreal, I said Canada should not participate in this war. Today I go much further. I think in times like these it’s not about taking sides for one or the other, but to look out for one another, stand up for one another and not be afraid.