Thibaut Mbonyikebe, once a refugee in the Congo of Africa during a time of great civil unrest, narrowly escaped machete-wielding militiamen, leaving behind his life of famine and uncertainty.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR) is an African country of breath-taking landscapes and exquisite wildlife. Despite its beauty, this country- rich in natural resources such as diamonds, oil, uranium, and gold- is riddled with violence from rebel groups within the country and troops from neighboring countries. Due to the ongoing internal conflicts, Congo’s potential wealth has been all but drained, and its citizens are paying the price.
Conflict is nothing new to the people of Congo. The country has a long history of violence and civil unrest that began in the late 1800’s as a result of European exploration and exploitation of Congolese people and resources.
Although conflict has been present throughout the history of Congo, life was considerably peaceful for much of the 20th century. It was 1994’s Rwandan Genocide, a conflict that included the mass killing of nearly one million of Rwanda’s Tutsis by Hutu militia, that life changed drastically for the people of Africa.
The genocide was initiated by the assassination of the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana. Though the incident remains unclear today, at the time of the event, the Hutu media claimed the president’s plane had been shot down by rebels known as the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), a group made up mostly of Tutsis. It was this affirmation that sparked the ethnically charged, mass slaughtering of Tutsis people.
The origins of both the Hutus and Tutsis are unclear and the definitions have changed throughout time. The two ethnic groups are very similar- they speak the same language, follow the same traditions and inhabit the same areas.
In an article for the Journal of Genocide Research, John Hopkins University Professor, Alan Kuperman attributes the two groups’ ethnic definitions to European settlers. According to Kuperman, Europeans designated people as Tutsi or Hutu based on cattle ownership and physical features such as the Tutsi’s “long nose.”
The Tutsis, defined as those who owned more than 10 cows, were considered superior to the Hutus. Unsurprisingly, resentment among the Hutus gradually built up, bursting into a series of riots that began in 1959.
The ethnic tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis were all too familiar in Mbonyikebe’s life; his father, Hubert Nyembo, was a Hutu soldier, and his mother, Agnes was a Tutsi nurse.
“My dad’s mom, my aunties and uncles didn’t like my mom because she was Tutsi, they were prejudice. They didn’t have any love for my mom, [they] always called her stupid and asked my father, ‘why did you marry this woman?’
“[It was] some stupid stuff. If you had a long nose, people knew you [were] Tutsi. We [are] all just people. God makes us different. It doesn’t matter.”
The Rwandan Genocide began right after Mbonyikebe’s father passed away. Mbonyikebe was 9 years old. His mother, now a widow of six, had to keep the family together during what would become a most unstable time.
“I can remember, one month after my father died, the war started. We couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t go to school. It was so bad for my mom because she couldn’t leave the house [for work] and so we couldn’t eat. It was horrible.“
Mbonyikebe’s father’s brother came soon after the conflict began to bring Mbonyikebe and two of his siblings to his uncle’s house in Kimanga, a village town east of the Congo. The three children were separated from their mother who, because of her occupation as a nurse, traveled with her three youngest children to East Congo to help those wounded in the cross fires of the genocide.
“My uncle on my dad’s side came to my mom’s house and told me and my brother and my older sister to go with him. We couldn’t argue. We went to his house to be safe. I was frightened and so worried because they were separating us and I couldn’t do anything. It was scary.”
Though Mbonyikebe was safer at his relative’s house, life there was unkind. The three siblings shared a small bed at the back of his relative’s house. Said Mbonyikebe, “We didn’t have mosquito netting. It was easy to get malaria, I got sick.”
“Sometimes we couldn’t eat. Sometimes we would get a piece of bread for a meal for the night. All we could do was drink lots of water and that’s it. You go to sleep,” he said.
The few meals provided consisted of leftovers from his aunt’s cooking. “They would eat first and give us their scraps. We were treated like dogs,” he said. “My mom sent us money for groceries when she could and sometimes they would keep the money and not give us anything.”
Unable to leave the house or, much less attend school, the three siblings spent their days laboring inside their uncle’s home. “They would make us clean all day. It was hard- almost slavery- but I am thankful for it because it makes me who I am today. [It taught me to be] independent, to work hard and to be grateful,” he said.
Mbonyikebe’s life as a second-class citizen gratefully came to an end when the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels overthrew the Hutu regime, marking the end of the 100-day genocide. Mbonyikebe’s mother, with the help of a priest, snuck out of the shaken Congo countryside to rescue her children. The reunited family traveled south of the Congo to Mungala.
“When she came for us, we were so grateful,” he said. “Because every night, it seemed like there was no hope. When she came, we knew we would have food. We [were] so happy.”
Mbonyikebe and his family spent two peaceful years at their home in Mungala. They were able to go to school and their mother had a stable job that helped put food on the table.
“My mom had a garden, we used to plant. We had bananas, sugar cane, tomatoes, vegetables, and two mango trees. After school we would climb the tree and pick [mangoes]. It was so sweet, and when you eat it, the water [would] come out,” he said smiling broadly.
Though Mbonyikebe and his family had regained a sense of normalcy and stability in their lives, it was a vastly different scene in the Congo. Two million Hutus, in fear of a retaliatory genocide, fled from Rwanda, many seeking refuge in the Congo. In 1996, an uprising by Congolese Tutsis marked the beginning of the First Congo War.
The First Congo War quickly escalated into the Second Congo War, also known as the African World War, in 1998. Fueled by ethnic conflict and tensions, the wars involved six countries-the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
From the Rwandan genocide to the end of the Second Congo War, the fight tactics, brutal and bloody, have been described as being both modern and primitive. Through the use of helicopters and aerial bombs, warring factions unleashed unimaginable havoc on the already devastated nation.
It is the loosely organized militia groups, however, that have made the bloodiest mark on the Congolese landscape. Armed with rifles and machetes, these uncontrollable militia groups are responsible for countless executions, rapes, beatings and kidnappings of Congolese civilians.
“I can remember cleaning the house when I heard a soldier come to the house. My mom was outside washing clothes with her hands and had to run and hide. My brother went outside and the soldiers asked him if he was Tutsi. They said they wanted to take him and kill him but they only searched the house and then left,” said Mbonyikebe, his eyes wide with fear at the remembrance of the incident.
Most people who encountered militiamen were not so lucky. The most common and effective weapons used were machetes; its users would unabashedly hack their victims to death.
Often times during the Rwandan genocide, soldiers and police officers persuaded ordinary citizens to partake in the ethnic cleansing. Food and money were given as incentives to do so. Sometimes the militia groups would force Hutu civilians to murder their Tutsi neighbors, killing those who would not comply.
“My mom knew it wasn’t safe,” said Mbonyikebe. “So she worked really hard to get all our passports and visas together. It took a long time to process. Somehow we escaped in the middle of the night.
Riding in a van with nothing but the clothes on their backs, Mbonyikebe and his family fled Mungala. “We went to a family friend’s house and slept three nights there,” said Mbonyikebe.
“On the fourth day we escaped at five o’clock in the morning and went to a refugee camp in the east of Africa- Benin-Togo. We stayed there for six months with 5000 people. Everyone lived in tents and [we ate] nothing but beans, beans, beans and rice, but at least it was a little bit safe,” he said.
At the camp, refugees waited for acceptance to travel to the United States. They were taught basic English phrases and watched movies about what to expect in America.
“It took a long time to find out if you were accepted into the U.S. Some people there had AIDS and they couldn’t leave the country. In [the winter of] 2000, we were one of the first people to be able to go to America. We were so excited because when you think of America, you think it’s a paradise. It was a big thing,” said Mbonyikebe.
“The Catholic Community Center in Baton Rouge sponsored us and paid for us to come to America. When we arrived we [were given] a ticket for food. When we cashed in the ticket, we got five burgers each! It was so much! We couldn’t believe it. We were like, ‘are you serious?’ It was so good and [juicy] and delicious.”
The Catholic Community Center provided Mbonyikebe’s family an apartment in Tigerland and helped to get them on their feet for two years. Said Mbonyikebe, “My mom started struggling with money after the Catholic Center stopped helping as much, so she got two jobs.”
A single woman working as a seamstress, Mbonyikebe’s mother knew she couldn’t afford to support her six children. At the age of 45 she took online courses to get her General Educational Development (GED) degree. She is currently studying to pull up her American College Testing (ACT) score to apply to Louisiana State University and become a nurse at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital.
“My mom is a strong woman,” said Mbonyikebe. “When I see her, I want to be just like her. Even though she struggled in life, she didn’t let obstacles hold her back, it made her stronger. She had no choice! She had a family to take care of. She would come home after work and help my brothers and sisters with schoolwork and then she would study herself. She is amazing, she got us through the tough times.”
Mbonyikebe and his siblings enrolled at Robert E. Lee High School, where they faced struggles of another kind- high school bullies.
“Everything was different, it was hard,” said Mbonyikebe. “The students would laugh about me, call me names because I had a bald head with bumps on my head. People would ask me stupid questions like, ‘were you born in the jungle? Did you wear leaf clothes? Did you shower? Did you have soap?’ They called me names and stuff.”
Tougher yet was learning a foreign language. English was hard for Mbonyikebe to pickup and, as a result, he did not graduate high school with his classmates. Instead, he studied and earned his GED diploma and went on to study biology at Southern University. Currently, he hopes to go to medical school to get his PhD in cardiology and travel back to the Congo to help his people.
“When I came [to America,] I had anger because I saw the way they were mistreating those people. Now I feel I want to finish school and go back and make a change. I read the story of Abraham and he is my role model. I want to go and deliver my people from the wilderness into the promise. They have young girls whose parents send them to have sex and they have AIDS, diseases. I feel they should have a chance, an opportunity, to go to school and have food to eat.”
Despite living a life remarkably different than what it was eight years ago, Mbonyikebe says he will never forget his tumultuous beginning. “Everyday I thank God for bringing us here to America. I could be dead, starving, maybe serving in the army. I could be a member of that cavalry.”
The Second Congo War officially ended in 2003 when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power, however, warfare continues even today. According to a 2008 mortality survey by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the conflicts have taken the lives of 5.4 million people and continue to leave nearly 45,000 dead every month.
Extraordinary stories of escape such as Mbonyikebe’s are rare. The IRC reports that millions of people have been, and continue to be, displaced from their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict between the local militias.
Story: Jacqueline Mouton
Photos: Google Images
