The following is an excerpt from Lamentation of a Warrior:
CHAPTER ONE
Volcanoes National Park – Mount Muhabura, Rwanda
April 1994
As Joseph Kalisa ascended Mount Muhabura, he turned and glanced down at the
numerous bodies floating in the Twin Lakes of Burera and Ruhondo at the base of
the mountain. It was midmorning and the view would have been
spectacularly pleasant, had it not been for the corpses floating in the lakes
below. Joseph then thought of the international law books on the desk of
his office, thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., and about the 1948
Genocide Convention, which made genocide a crime under an international
law. The law must be enforced, he thought. Yet, it was not.
So, he had become a soldier in one of the many battalions of a rebel army.
Assigned to one of the platoons within the battalion, Joseph and other rebel
soldiers in his platoon ascended the verdant base of Mount Muhabura, one of the
mountains of Volcanoes National Park.
He was in his homeland, Rwanda, for the first time in fourteen years.
Two days ago, Joseph had a filling meal of sorghum porridge and beans, yet he
had walked off that meal in the two day trek into Rwandan territory. He was a
part of a two platoon group. Joseph was tired and hungry. His feet
and legs ached. His shoulders and back were sore from the weight of the
M-60 machine gun over his left shoulder, the M-9 Pistol in the holster on his
waist, additional ammunition, his backpack, which contained his tent, food
rations, personal items, extra clothes, and a blanket.
Joseph thought about what Colonel Alexander Nkusi, who commanded their
battalion, had said two days earlier, that killing groups were brutally killing
Tutsi people, because of their ethnicity. He then thought of his family
in Rwanda, his mother, his sister, and her children and husband. What was
happening to them? He hoped that they’d miraculously survived the
genocidal mass murders which were taking place all over his homeland. He
wanted to see his family members and embrace them.
Sweat poured down Joseph’s back. He remembered his life growing up in
his homeland of Rwanda. His mother was related to Rwandan royalty,
although the official monarchy was defunct and no longer had any power.
His father, who was murdered in 1973, had been a professor at the National
University of Rwanda, before he was killed.
Joseph pondered on the signs of eventual disaster. His father was
murdered, and, three years later, he was expelled from the Lycee, where he was
an exemplary student. Joseph remembered that his expulsion was for no
apparent reason. It was the ethnic division issue, coming back again, he
thought. There was widespread harassment and killings of the Tutsi people
during that time. These events convinced his mother to send him to
Cameroon to attend school and to save his life.
Joseph survived and rebuilt his life in Cameroon, and then in the
U.S.A. Yet, the ethnic division issue in his homeland kept getting worse,
as his family and friends conveyed their experiences to him in phone
conversations and desperate letters.
He thought about his recent lifestyle back in Washington, D.C. Two
months ago, he was a corporate lawyer in a prestigious law firm in the heart of
Washington, D.C. He had graduated from Princeton University and
Georgetown Law School. He enjoyed life with his beautiful wife,
Sojourner, and his toddler son, Joseph II. They lived in an elegant condominium.
That life seemed like a dream, as he climbed up the mountain.
Copyright © 2007
By Angeline Bandon-Bibum
Purchase Lamentation of a Warrior on Amazon.com
