Boise to Bukavu

Hang On

Now y’all are asking me about the journey that my family and I took to escape

But how much do you value my experience?

Because I am not a victim here and I do not need your pity whatever that may coast for I am a criminal, a criminal, an innocent criminal.

In any war there’s always been a survivor whose story is ignored and forsaken.

Like the miseries of the Congo that’s ignored in-order for you and I can text and play angry birds.

We been deprived of school but not education,

We been denied a voice but not the memory

For we remember, every single evil that was done to us like it was yesterday.

I have always said that what you told is not what’s happening,

It’s more serious than a bloody civil war.

Ooh! Yeah!

But you can’t believe me right!

Because you have a PhD and I am just a little boy from Africa,

An uneducated boy at that!

Hey! I saw what happened okay!

It was not a civil war, it was an invasion.

It was not 5 million casualty, it was double that.

What you read was a government covers up like in 1994 when they refused to call what was going on in Rwanda “genocide”.

You still want to hear my story right!

But what will you do when you see your reflection in the tear drop of my cousin after he had killed his family under order from the rebels?

Will it make you a better person?

Will it make you appreciate your own life?

Or will it make you learn more, and encourage you people to work and make a difference in the lives of those that need it the most?

Remember, I am a witness to an evil that was done to my people,

And your own country may have some of their blood on her hands.

Look at our children!

Most of them have killed!

Yet they are innocent of any crimes,

All of them were ordinary boys and girls before you prioritized minerals over lives,

They became expendable.

Their parents were killed before their own eyes; some were forced to participate in the killings before being abducted.

Our boys and girls have all killed, but yet, they are all innocent of any crime.

Abducted after watching their parents murdered,

Injected with drugs and alcohol,

Thought how to kill and have no mercy over anyone.

Our boys and girls chopped off limbs, hands and breasts while doing many terrible things under order from rebels who are supplying the world with minerals in exchange for guns that are then used to kill more of our people.

Over six million people have been murdered in the Congo, half of them children.

Every time you buy a new cell phone you are financing the killings of children in the Congo.

More people have died in Congo in the last ten years, than any other conflict combine in the last 40 years.

But nobody has heard of it right! Because it’s happening in Africa

I ask you all which sides will you choose? You either with life or war

With refugees or none

When everyone pretend not to see them violated, will you fight for them?

And when the world turn away with them bleeding will you stand by them?

Do you want to be the voice of the voiceless?

Do you want to give them a hand out, hand to hang on, hold on?

Let the world not act but at least they have heard of them.

Tell them positively about refugees you met here today, not like a label,

We have the tendency of labeling victims of attrocities

Like the great and outstanding human that is talking to you today.

I know that there are systems in place that works against refugees,

Trouble, trouble and trouble it seems as though they running out of time.

Thinking tomorrow will bring better days but it passes by.

The system is helping them but barely keeping them alive,

Leading them to next meal and a day closer to death,

I am terrified; I am terrified of lying to the mirror,

Telling myself that I am worthy of respect, but outside there I am looked at as “just a poor refugee, stateless, homeless. “

Africa must be the responsibility of every one, the western nations that are benefiting from its wealth, and the African who are dying calling it home.  If you are the government, act. If you are a people, persuade your government to act or stop benefiting on her misery so that we would not have to tell you these horrible stories again.

So, I am from the Congo where diamonds, gold and col-tan cost lives

I get questions daily, like “why you won’t cry when you tell your story”

I’m the lost son of the Congo; I’ve seen worse.

Tears don’t come because you don’t cry for the dead when you live in graveyard.

I’m an eight year old child staring in fear as my city is burned down to ashes

I was born of refugee parents, but not in the camp, in America,

Regardless of what I achieve I will always be known as a refugee

My soul died in Zimbabwe, shoot down by evil troops who shoot for a living,

I am a ten year old child marching holding a sign when a colleague got shot in the heard.

I am a twelve year old war victim, displaced person, internal refugee at the bottom of society. The strength, intensity I learned during this time paved the next ten years in my life mixed with lonely feelings locked away in my head

I am a 13 year old illegal immigrant, border jumper, crossing deadly Rivers, crawling under bridges to gain illegal access into countries in search of freedom;   these were trips of my life, adventurous

I am a 14 year old asylum seeker, Refugee, struggling for acceptance and equality hearing voices calling you all kind of names that do not define well who I am

Life of refugees is not all that fun, they’ll never let you be who you are

I once heard a man say “Refugees refuse to learn English, huddle together in their own little groups and clans, sponge off the taxpayer, bring their criminal intentions, and other socially unacceptable habits and diseases with them, commit more criminal acts than the natives, don’t and can’t be bothered to fit in to the native way of life, and are a general blot on the landscape.”

I stared at him and shook my head and murmured, Hum, Hum!!!

I am telling you, Life of a refugee is not that fun,

I am a 15 year old high school student, struggling to integrate with native who discriminates bully me out.  People! I don’t care how much education you have, if you are not teaches these children humanity you adding nothing positive to the world.

I am a 30 year old father, husband, citizen of the world. I am a world traveler, multi-lingual, multi-cultural multi-national, and a citizen of the united state of America but my citizenship is only noticed when I open my bedroom dresser and take a look at the certificate.

I am a hard worker, courageous, an outstanding human, an innocent’s criminal that has been left out an orphan by the war you all have neglected in order to text and play angry bird.

I was imprisoned, tortured, deported, racially abused, sexually abused and emotionally abused but I thank God for all that came to shake my life but ended up shaping it for the best.

Life of a refugee is not all that fun, it’ll pop open, exposed you for insults,

It will leave your eyes popping out of their sockets,

It will leave you feeling for water and food I am telling you

It’s a man fifty year old opening fire on a group of twelve year old hell no!

They leave the bodies’ rotted, they leave their cops rotted food for vultures

Tell their mothers, keep that casket open

Let the whole world see that it’s not only burning here in the Congo hell it’s hot where you be.

From the Congo to Sudan, from Iran to Iraqi, Pakistan to Afghanistan

People I am a sacrificial lamb for you, my life is what I am willing to give for it

I challenge you to find a cause that’s worth dying for and live for it.

I am not just a Refugee!!! I am human being.