The Morning Time Ended

The morning without hours; the morning when time ended.

There is no place to hide oneself. No awareness of when night falls or when the morning sun arises. It is all darkness. Every fearful moment is a struggle for survival. Time is stopped. The world has ended. No future, no past; how do I make this moment last, for it is all that remains.

There were the first 100 days of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in neighboring Rwanda. The next 30 years of the Genocide Against the Tutsi has taken place in east Congo, where the Rwanda genocidaires fled for refuge, now killing all Congolese Tutsi they can find.

The ideology prospers until today. The Congolese authorities have drunk from it. They continue to deny Rwanda-speaking Congolese as Congolese, though the borders were drawn in 1885 at the Berlin conference by the European Colonizers, setting some Tutsi on one side of an imaginary line, and others on the other side, making those on the wrong side of the line non-humans to their neighbors and their countrymen.

Tens of thousands of Congolese Tutsi have escaped through the years as refugees to foreign lands to become safe from their fellow Congolese. But there is no where I can go to leave Congo. Congo is part of me. I was formed of the dirt of this ground.

Today is the 30^th Commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, but it is the 30^th year of the genocide against the Congolese Tutsi.

Hating those who are Congolese, but called other, is normal here. Living as Internally Displaced Persons inside our own country. Every day is the same struggle to survive.

Let’s tell the world about the crying of mothers for their children, and mother earth who cries for the hatred in the hearts of some of her children, for the rest of her children. Now after 30 years we cry for this moment to pass, for time to begin again, for the world to be set back on its axis. For our children’s children’s sake, may humanity become humane once again.

We long to say, "this is a new day; may the light of the sun never leave us again!"