One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [30]
Still unsafe in the Congo, Rwandans of both ethnic groups fled once more, across the lake to Tanzania. Children, like Justin and Melanie have spent most of their lives without a homeland, without permanent homes. The dangers of ethnicity, of ethnic nationalism, the dangers of hate have chased them from their homes and followed them into the camps.
Justin told me that he saw his mother killed; he was hiding and watched it happen.
“One day the soldiers came and they cut my mother. They killed my mother with the big knives they had. I tried not to look, but I heard the noises they made and she made. Not loud noises, but I remember them.
“I ran away, and while I was running, I hurt myself. I met a Banyamulenge man.” The Banyamulenge are another ethnic group in East Africa, Congolese brethren of the Tutsi in Rwanda. “I told him my problems and cried to him. He was kind and he helped me get to Tanzania. The family I lived with first, they abused me. They took my food and blankets and were very cruel. I do not know if it is because I am an orphan or because I am Rwandan. I do not know why. I was moved by the Red Cross and live here now. It is very bad. I cry every day when I get home from school. I think about my mother and no one comes to comfort me.” By this point his eyes welled with tears. “I do not know how I will get over this. It would be better just to forget.”
Without any ties to his culture or his family, Justin feels adrift. He is lonely, he says, but he is beginning to feel better. “I am learning to forget.
“I like to go to school, though there are not enough books.” When I try to focus on those aspects of Justin’s life that he finds positive, that are making him feel better, he does not hesitate to answer: “I went to a training for children about rights.”
CORD, the organization that helps provide for the unaccompanied minors in Lugufu camp, has given adolescents training in children’s rights. This kind of involvement in his own well-being has given him motivation to wipe the tears from his eyes, go outside, and get involved with the world he lives in. As he speaks about rights, showing me his drawings on which he has written various empowering statements from the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, he becomes more animated, visibly more confident and eager to talk. He does not avert his eyes to look at the ground as he had for most of our conversation until that point.
“I learned that children have the right to go to school.” He shows me his drawing of a boy walking toward a church. Written in Swahili above it is, “The child has the right to do all kinds of work and go to school” (Figure 6).
“School will help me get a good job and become a professional. I would like to live in an urban area again. Here, the environment is very bad. Sometimes people don’t even use the toilets. And when you get sick, it is a long walk to the hospital and then, sometimes, you can’t get anyone to help you.”
Justin’s concerns about public health and cleanliness, his concerns about school resources, were pressing on him. He was aware that schooling was a way to secure his future, one of his “rights,” and that he was in danger of disease from the poor hygienic conditions in the camp. These stresses weighed on his mind a great deal—he brought them up or alluded to them during our talk several times, expressing frustration and once, nearly cried when discussing the uncleanliness. He felt helpless against these things and had no one to whom he could turn. Though he understood the rights he and all children should have, he could do little to realize them, and that might have contributed to his sadness, the realization of just how much he was at the mercy of forces much greater than he was, entire governments and armies and institutions that controlled his fate. A heavy burden of awareness