Don’t Close Your Eyes…

“On one trip to the city centre, I saw a Red Cross van, angled on the road, riddled with bullet holes.  Smoke was coming out of the engine compartment and all the windows were smashed.  The passenger door was open and a Rwandan in a Red Cross vest was hanging down, facing us, with blood oozing from his head in a slow steady stream.  The back doors were open and a body on a stretcher was still inside, with another held up on the bumper.  There were three other casualties their white and bloodied gauze dressings spun around them.  One body had no head.  Five blood-spattered youths sat on the curb, smoking cigarettes beside the ambulance.  Their machetes were stained red.  At most they may have been fifteen years old.”  

 

Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands With the Devil, p.298

Photo – British Red Cross

10 Comments

    1. Heartbreaking – but we need to face up to our part in it as an international community and not just dismiss it as an African problem.

  1. Thanks as always. Note: I’m reading, but not commenting lately, so please know I’m listening to what you have to say.

  2. How sad! And what an understatement I just made. I worry about the youth in my own country as they are more easily pulled in to this type of thing. What a mess. Angie

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