黑暗，林恩.露丝（Lyn Lusi）早已习惯了这个词；来到她的医院时，西方记者也本能地四下搜寻它的踪影。

　　Goma itself was a black and grey place, a town built on volcanic basalt tough as broken glass through which green shoots struggled to grow. She knew; she gardened in it.

　　这所医院位于戈马，隶属刚果民主共和国，约瑟夫.康拉德（Joseph Conrad）笔下的《黑暗中心》。戈马灰黑一片，建在碎玻璃般坚硬而支支棱棱的火山玄武岩上，绿色的嫩芽只能挣扎着钻出地面。这些露丝都明白；在这里播种耕耘的人正是她。

　　But the real heart of darkness, Mrs Lusi would say quietly, was man's heart.

　　若在泉下有知，她或许会静静说：真正的黑暗中心，即为人心。

　　The proof lay all about her. Congo was a rich country, but its minerals were swapped by local strongmen for weapons, or stripped away by corporations who left the people in poverty.

　　在露丝的身边，证据俯拾皆是。刚果富裕过，但是强壮的当地人用她的矿藏交换武器，各大公司也不遗余力地刮着地皮，老百姓只落得个穷困潦倒。

　　It was ostensibly at peace, after years of warfare in which millions had died. But remnants of militias still haunted the forests, preying on the villages. So much evil. So much selfishness.

　　连绵数年的战火夺去了数百万人的生命；时至今日，刚果表面上像是消停了，但是在丛林里，残余的军队依旧阴魂不散，到处洗劫村镇。这里究竟忍受着几多邪恶，肆虐着几多自私啊！

　　In this vast, damaged, neglected place her husband Jo, a Congolese and, like her, an ardent Baptist, was the only orthopaedic surgeon for 8m people.

　　在这片伤痕累累，被世人遗忘的广袤土地上，露丝的丈夫乔是800万百姓唯一的整形外科医生。

　　He alone had the skill to mend the crushed arms, the crooked feet. Irrepressible as he was, bubbling over with plans, he often used the image of a little bucket bailing out an ocean.

　　他是刚果人，和露西一样是浸信会教友，只有他能治好折断的手臂和扭曲的脚掌。他谈起计划来，就会兴高采烈，但也常形容自己是想要舀干大海的小桶。

　　She preferred the words of Isaiah 61:1: "The Lord hath sent me…to bind up the brokenhearted."

　　露丝则更喜欢引用《以赛亚书》中的话（61:1）：“（主）呼召我……差遣我去绑扎心里破碎的。”

　　Their hospital at Goma had been set up in 2000 to train young Congolese doctors.

　　2000年，夫妻两在戈马修建了一所医院，培训年轻的刚果医生。

　　Two years later the building was destroyed by a volcano; they built it again, low brightly painted buildings behind battered metal gates, and called it HEAL Africa.

　　两年后，火山摧毁了医院，他们又重新把医院修建起来；在破破烂烂的铁门后面，他们给了这栋小楼亮丽的色彩，把它叫作“治愈非洲”。

　　By 2011 they had trained 30 doctors there, often with the help of students from American medical schools. Yet the hospital became most famous for something different.

　　到了2011年，在美国医学院学生的帮助下，医院里同时培训着30名医生。不过最让这所医院出名的，还是其它原因。

　　Hundreds of the patients were women with genital fistulas, or tears: some caused by childbirth, but a startling number the result of rape by militiamen.

　　在这里，数以百计的病人是泪流满面的女人，有些还患上了生殖器瘘管：有人是因生育受苦，有人则因被军人强暴受难。受害者的数量之大让人瞠目结舌。

　　This, too, was hidden in darkness. Mrs Lusi was unaware of it until 2002, when a sobbing young woman came to her office.

　　这些苦难都隐藏在黑暗中。2002年，一个女孩哭泣着走进了露西的办公室，露西才得以知晓隐情。

　　She realised then that horrific sexual violence was taking place in every village round Goma. Women working in the fields, or girls as young as five walking back from the market, would be abducted and raped repeatedly.

　　她发现，戈马大大小小的村镇里，到处都是这种可怕的性暴力。在田间地头劳作的女人，甚至从市场回家的五岁稚童，都有可能被绑架，被一遍又一遍地强暴。

　　Sticks and guns were forced into their vaginas. Sometimes the guns were fired. The brutalised victims, once home, would often be disowned by their families.

　　罪犯会把棍棒和枪械塞进她们的身体，有时还会开枪。即使受害人有幸捡回一条命，回到家中，亲人也不会再认她。

　　Over almost a decade HEAL Africa treated 4,800 such cases. The women would arrive in buses, traumatised after travelling for hours and stinking with the urine and faeces that leaked from their injuries.

　　将近十年里，治愈非洲处理了4800起这样的病例。有的病人搭乘大巴车过来，数小时的旅途过后，她们依然满心惊惶恐惧，排泄物从伤口里溢出，散发着恶臭。

　　At the hospital, energetic local “Mamas” recruited by Mrs Lusi would welcome them and wrap them in their arms. “Love in action”, she called it, and she too was “Mama Lyn” to everybody there.

　　到了医院，露丝召集来的精力充沛的当地“妈妈”们就会上前迎接她们，挽住她们的手臂。露丝把这叫做“爱的动作”；那儿所有的人都管她叫“林恩妈妈”。

　　She was not a doctor. Her only training, after the degree in French that took her to Congo in 1971 to teach in church schools, was in administration.

　　她不是医生。1971年在法国获得了学位，来刚果教会学校任教之后，露丝做的都是行政工作。

　　Handling paperwork was her job both at the church hospital at Nyankunde, where she and Jo worked for 19 years, and at HEAL Africa, where “programme manager” was the unexciting title she gave herself.

　　她的任务就是处理文件，无论是在19年中与乔一起在Nyankunde教会医院工作，还是自愿在治愈非洲做个平淡无奇的“项目经理”。

　　It frustrated her to sit among a mountain of papers; but the role of a background worker, patiently picking up after Jo, also suited her.

　　整天埋头在纸山案牍中，难免会有些沮丧，但是做一位幕后工作者，耐心地接过乔尚未完成的任务，倒也很适合她。

　　She did not want accolades, though she got many, and both gorgeous George Clooney and Hillary Clinton came to call on her.

　　尽管得到了许多嘉奖，光彩熠熠的乔治.克鲁尼和希拉里.克林顿都曾来此拜访，她想要的却不是这些。

　　At fed-up times she revived by chatting to the remarkable, recovering women outside. If she felt bogged down, she had only to remember that God with his strong hands would haul her out and set her feet in a firm place.

　　与那些引人注目的、正在康复的女人们聊天，无数次让她重新抖擞精神。遇到困境时，只消相信上帝会用有力的双手将她拉出泥淖，让她重新站到坚实的地面上。

　　She had once risked rape herself, when militiamen stopped her car on the road to Kigali at night. He had saved her then, and would again.

　　有一次，她大晚上一个人在基加利开车，被一名军人截住了，差点被强暴。当时，上帝拯救了她；此后，上帝一直眷顾着她。

　　The fact was that he intended her to be there. Like Jo, she was meant to heal. "Isn't that a beautiful word?” she would say.

　　是上帝的旨意让她到了刚果；她和乔都为治愈而生。“这难道不是个美丽的词吗？”她可能会这样说。

　　The letters stood for Health, Education, Action, Love. Healing meant not just of the body but of the whole person: mind, spirit and potential, bringing it back to work as God intended.

　　H—健康（health），E—教育（education），A—行动（action），L—爱心（love）。治愈，不仅仅是治好身体，更要让整个人复苏，复苏人的思维，人的精神、人的潜能，让一切都恢复到上帝赋予的原状。

　　And not just of the person but the whole community, teaching villagers to bind up wounds, support each other and provide for themselves. While her patients were in hospital she saw that they were taught to read and write, or to use a sewing machine, in order to go back skilled and confident as well as healed.

　　治愈，也不仅仅是救治一人，而是要帮助整个社区，教授村民包扎伤口的方法，让他们能够互助，也能够自助。在医院里，她的病人们学习文化知识，学习缝纫技术；这样，她们就能带着技术回家，自信满满，创伤痊愈。

　　Single tiny points

　　点点烛火

　　It had taken her time, too, to build up confidence. A Ramsgate girl, from England's soft south-east, she was horrified when she first arrived in teeming, filthy, sweltering Kinshasa.

　　露丝自己也花了不少时间建立自信。她来自英国东南部风和日丽的拉姆斯盖特。首次来到拥挤、肮脏、酷热难当的金沙萨时，这位拉姆斯盖特姑娘吓坏了。

　　Her French was the wrong sort, incomprehensible to her pupils, and she seemed unlikely either to prosper or stay.

　　她的法语也不对劲儿，很难让学生们听明白；看起来，她在这儿既过不好，也呆不长。

　　But apart from a few short spells abroad, mostly to keep her two children safe from the worst of the war, she never left Congo. Her determined mission was to tell the world about this place.

　　可是，她只短暂地离开过刚果两次，主要是为了保护自己的两个孩子免受战乱之苦，其它时间则一直坚守在这里。向世界讲述刚果，这就是命运为她钦定的职责。

　　In other ways, too, she defied the darkness. In the hard black basalt of Goma she managed to grow sweet peas and roses; she liked to walk among them to say her morning prayers.

　　她还用别的办法对抗着黑暗。在戈马黝黑坚硬的玄武岩上，她种出了香豌豆和玫瑰；她喜欢在它们中间漫步，进行晨祷。

　　What she was doing, she reflected sometimes, was very small. It seemed no more than nurturing single tiny points of candle flame. But she had faith that, eventually, they would all join up to make a huge blaze of light.

　　有时她会反省：自己做的事都太小了，似乎只点亮了几星微弱的烛焰；但她坚信，有朝一日，点点烛火终能汇聚成壮美的光芒。