Some of the victims of wars and genocides in the Great Lakes region left by the road not properly buried.
Kasereka Roger was among the victims of Laurent Nkunda.
He was murdered on November 5, 2008 in Kiwanja in Congo.
A 14 years old boy was there.
He tells us about that day.
We were locked in the house and could hear the gunfire all around. Mum was in the kitchen and dad close to the door.
Two men dressed in uniforms ‘camouflage’ and carrying weapons entered into our house, without saying anything.
Suddenly, they shot my mother touching her belly. She fell into the fire and died. They shot my father in the ribs and he died on the spot.
I wanted to tell the man to kill me too, but the other kids, who were with me did not let me do it.
The old woman Leoncie Nyiransekerabanzi lived in Gitarama [Rwanda].
She lived peacefully cared for by her children, waiting to die of old age when the time would come.
When the 1994 war erupted she fled to Goma [DR Congo].
Within a few days she died.
Even today when her surviving children think about her they wonder how she died.
“Was she properly buried,” they wonder, or “was she buried like animals, meaning left in the open air to rot on the sun or perish eaten by wild birds?”
In Eastern and Northern 22 elderly women and children and men who were attending a funeral on 16/11/86 were murdered.
They included Ladit Olwoc Aloli, Mrs Tenna Acoko Apira, and Mr Abunery Okot.
In another trading center where over 150 people were rounded and killed. Among them were Mrs Yolanda Akot and baby.
At Odudui East Uganda, 1989 the following were killed; John Moses Elepu, Nelson Otim, Joseph Onyolo.
In August 1990, in Amuru, Ms Apele was killed trying to resist government soldiers abducting her daughter.
In April 1991 at Burcoro, Mr Justin Okumu and his father Raymondo Okwera, were beaten to death by government soldiers, after Justin escaped from a government pit prison where many were buried alive.
Today there are millions of them in the Great Lakes.
They had lives, they were loved, and they had names.
“Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction.” BK Kumbi
