April 22, 2005
By Robyn Cohen
"When you can uncover what has happened in the past by learning from skeletons which are devoid of politics and opinions, it helps to get past propaganda about why those people were killed, who killed them and how.
"The more you can destabilise propaganda, the more I believe people begin to look at each other as individuals," says Clea Koff, exuding an inner glow of both strength and fragility.
As she talks at our interview in the gardens of the Vineyard Hotel, I remark that the setting is a long way from the killing fields of Rwanda.
Indeed, it is difficult to picture this slightly built, well groomed 32-year- old mucking into slime and mud in graves. She answers that unidentified bodies anywhere have an effect on our lives. "I believe graves provide not just a link to the truth, but certainly contribute to people understanding the past, and I think that helps with understanding the present."
Koff was catapulted into excavating atrocities of the recent past when she was selected by the United Nations to go to Kibuye, Rwanda as part of a forensic team sent to exhume victims from the 1994 Genocide.
At the time she was a 23-year-old graduate student analysing prehistoric skeletons in Berkeley, California. Evidence uncovered by the UN team was not only used in war trials but also helped relatives identify their loved ones. In the absence of dental and medical records, this was often not an easy process, and in The Bone Woman (Atlantic Books) Koff writes compellingly of "presumptive identification" through clothing and other markers.
When I was first faced with this book, I was a reluctant reader. A
narrative on genocide did not sound very inviting but I was won over by Koff's compassion and warmth and her ability to tell her story with potent images which transcend the historical perspective.
Her book is also about loss and the ways we grieve through acceptance or denial. On these missions Koff had to face her demons but retain her distance as a professional. At the same time she recognised the need to frame the skeletons as individuals; to affirm the humanity of the bones before her. The bones became witnesses beyond the grave.
In her narrative she constantly confronts the individuality of the bodies, and in so doing forces us readers to do the same. "I didn't want to distance myself too much. Being more emotional can make you a better scientist. You always remember that you are providing a service for the body - and for the living people," she explains.
It is the living who are the focus in her current project called Missing Person Identification Resource Centre (MPID).
This non-profit organisation, based in Los Angeles, is about "essentially linking families with missing persons [in the US] with the Coroner's office". Koff says there are about 4 000 unidentified bodies in the coroner's office in California and about 30 000 missing people reported each year.
When one considers that each missing person usually has at least two people who are searching, then the ripples through society are immense. "It is a social issue."
Of course it is not illegal to go missing and not everyone wants to be found. Dealing with those who are lost and those who are seeking is full of complexities
. Koff knows this from her UN work when not everyone wanted to be confronted with evidence of a death. For others, closure was critical.
At first, when Koff talks about MPID, it sounds like this could not be more removed from her UN mission work, but as she speaks, I begin to understand how issues of unidentified bodies - no matter where and who they are - have consequences for society which is profoundly affected on so many levels.
"With MPID we want to learn through people telling stories - not about someone's death - but of someone's life."
Relatives can take forensic profiles to police who may be persuaded to investigate further.
As with Rwanda and Bosnia, bones can tell stories and Koff is intrigued by what the bones in this part of Africa may foretell. "I am interested in the exhumations in Pretoria [of political detainees] and that President Mbeki has said it is about closing missing persons cases," she says.
This is a fundamental level of most exhumations: to acknowledge bodies as evidence. It was a critical aspect of the UN missions.
"This whole idea of justice has many dimensions," Koff reflects.
There is justice in the courtrooms. There is justice when identity is restored. For families to have bodies returned, for compensation. But they are not linear entities. "I see them as interconnecting circles and the bodies are central to that and people need to know that people are dead."
And yet this engaging woman repeats that sometimes people don't want to know of the finality of death. This is not the stuff generally taught at medical school, and she admits she has little idea how the work with MPID will pan out.
With this in mind, Koff is also working on a crime novel - a fictionalised version of MPID. She has only written a few chapters but for now it is helping her to envision the way MPID could work. "Writing fiction is almost like a way for me to work through some ideas but I know reality could be very different," says Koff.
I comment on the beauty of the writing in The Bone Woman and ask her about previous writing experience. Writing has always been part of what she does. She edited the literary magazine in her high school. Her parents - both documentary film-makers - encouraged her to keep a journal. With a mother who is Tanzanian and a father who is American and Jewish, her outlook is global.
"I never thought I came from one place." During her UN work, Koff kept a diary and this accounts for the vivid imagery in The Bone Woman.
Sam, who was one of the anthropology assistants who came to Kosovo in 2000, encouraged Koff to write about her experiences and bought her a pen to sign books.
"It is probably the most expensive thing I own," she says. She passes the silver pen to me. It is warm. I am surprised by the weight. This pen is not a dainty accessory but is etched with lines which and remind me of a dentist's tool.
"It does look like a dentist's pick", she agrees, smiling and swivelling it around in her hand. In a flash, I glimpse the intense concentration and focus. I picture her with drills and equipment, working with bones to reveal stories behind the utter violation of human beings.
  
 
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