Peace and the Aftermath

My dear friends, my community,

As you know, Hero Women Rising/Mama Shujaa has been living alongside and responding to the ever-escalating humanitarian crisis that’s been taking place in our homeland in the mountains of eastern DR Congo. Every day facing and responding to the unfolding and deepening crisis, including trauma and the critical daily needs. And often I don’t know how to keep myself. I cry, I write international authorities, post another video on my YouTube channel, doing all I can to get the word out, to help the world know about the genocide being perpetrated against this population by its government. I see it is urgent to get the word out. But I don’t know how to get the word out like I want.

I appreciate so much all of you that care and stand with us in love and support and even financial giving to address the ongoing needs of the crisis.

I’m so happy to tell you my dear ones, that today I have some good news to share, very good, but as is often the case, more good news is needed before all the effects of the unbearable suffering can be healed.

The drone bombings have stopped. The government military and their allies have left the mountain, not willingly, but by the will of a determined defense force. The population is celebrating like never before. Thankful, grateful, humble souls are beside themselves that the unconscionable acts of war waged against them have ceased, that peace is upon them.

But emerging from within are the signs of a deep, deep trauma that has gripped the population through the years of its intense suffering, not only due to the 9 years of being displaced, living in the bush, then in tents, then after the tents were burned down, back to the bush, but more especially, the last 5 months of the government and its allies dropping bombs on the population and any remaining schools, hospitals, livestock, etc. Now that things have calmed down, the trauma from the genocidal actions against them through the last 9 years is surfacing in varied, distressing ways.

Though it’s now quiet on the outside, it is still so very noisy on the inside of this traumatized population. If an airplane flies overhead, children will start screaming and run to the bush for safety, thinking the sound must be a drone coming back to drop bombs on them. It has been overwhelming to think about the children who have been on the front lines of the government’s assault against this population with drone bombings. It is a big concern for me about these children. I don’t want them to grow up with this trauma still inside them. We need counselors, psychologists, teachers, etc., to help this population.

I have been told by several sources, that the trauma is deep. We really need an assessment by international experts and then a mobilization of teams to begin helping this population deal with the trauma they have suffered.

And then besides the indwelling trauma of the population as a whole, they are still displaced, as all of their villages, over 400 villages of homes, were burned to the ground by the government soldiers and the allied forces of rebel militias they assimilated, as well as militias from other governments.

It is time to go back to the land of their grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa, but there is nothing to go back to, except the land. And there are only mud and sticks to rebuild their lives. Another hardship lies ahead for this people.

The good news is, peace has come to the land, and on that foundation we can rebuild; rebuild ourselves, our homes, our communities, and the hopes and dreams of a new future.