The daily lesson starts in the morning with a bowl of cereal, a cup of coffee and some heavy-duty reading. With the world at his fingertips, Dr. Jess Brown starts sifting through the day's news. He'll read one newspaper online, flip to another to check its coverage of the same topic.

It's common nowadays for me to glimpse at something glimmering in a knuckle on my hand and realize that yet another sliver of glass has worked its way to the surface of my skin. The only way I can remove it is with my teeth. It's not so bad; feeling it crush to dust between my incisors is satisfying, as though it's another step away from a horrifying experience.

When the group started its mission, it was still legal in Alabama for a man to rape his wife. A boyfriend beating his girlfriend was, as the saying goes, somebody else's business or — even more chilling — a family matter. A police officer could arrive on a call, see a battered woman and terrified children and still have to get back in his car and leave because the victim was too scared to admit that the person who was supposed to love her was beating her instead.

In 1990, the streets of Nampula, Mozambique, would have been deserted. One of Africa's most under-reported and bloodiest conflicts, Mozambique's civil war was quietly raging. Renamo, a rebel militia financed by apartheid-ruled South Africa, might have been on patrol. Bands of soldiers traded the town back and forth, demanding more food and women each time. An estimated 900,000 were killed and 4 million dislocated.