Thumbprints

Esperance lives in the Democratic Republic Congo, the worst place in the world to be a woman. She is 50 years old, a mother of four children and a widow. Esperance watched her husband die at the hand of rebels. She was violently raped and would have died if her sisters did not rescue her. She is a survivor of the worst violence imaginable, a violence that has plagued nearly 90 percent of women in Congo. Today she is a peacemaker living in a war zone, helping to stem the tide of violence in the Congo, waging peace in tangible ways with thousands like her.

Esperance is preliterate. To give permission to share her story, she asked her pastor to write these words: "Tell my story." Then, underneath, she stamped her thumbprint.

Thumbprints, a defining biometric, prove that every person is as human as the next. They speak to the irreplaceable and unrepeatable nature of a single human life. Esperance’s thumbprint is our mandate to tell her story, and thousands like it.