The Genocide!

The road went on and on and so did we
Winding through hills and valleys
Across rivers and ridges
Into the night we walked
Until the morning came upon us
As we trod on into the future
Not quite knowing how far
Away destiny was…

Hoping that the wind on our backs
Would not be replaced by bullets
We followed the road
In the hope that where we were going
Could not possibly be as horrible as
As where we were running from

There were those who were
Fighting us with
Heavy artillery and weapons
We who were so weak the wind
Could have blown us away
If hunger, dysentry or cholera
Did not get us first
Sending us into mass graves
Where we would be buried away
From the eyes of the world…

And then there were those who
Wrote papers and dissertations
Our plight a great academic topic
In political science or International Law
For which they would earn
A graduate degree
Whether we lived or died

There were those who were brave
Enough to challenge aloud
The World sometimes referred to
As the United Nations
To put a stop to the massacre
The debates of which since the
Jewish holocaust continue to divide
The world into a debate on Human rights
And the right of sovereignity

While in churches, synagogues
Mosques and small prayer groups
There were those who
Invoked the power of the Word
In earnest prayer they did
Without ceasing they prayed
That our lives or what remained
Of them would be spared for another
Day or year until the next civil war…

The war is over
The NGOs are every where
Healing the wounds
Which the world should have prevented
The embassies fly the flags
Of nations that should have flown in
In time to save lives and keep the peace
The Doctors without frontiers
That found our pain a barrier to their commitment
The war is over
But the battle was lost before it began

Do I sound bitter?
Actually I am not
I am just stating facts so that history
Does not romanticize our horror
Justify this massacre
Or worse explain it away as civil strive
Between two warring tribes
The Hutu and the Tutsi
Names that sound like popular rock bands

So the war is over at least for now
The battle for survival now begins
To match orphans with family
Mothers with their young
To fill out the death certificates
Without the bodies for burial
To sing at gravesides that will
Hold but a memory
Of those who died for …nothing really
If truth be told!