If heaven keeps dates..
If it has an earthly calendar or a way to tell time..
then this day 25 years ago would have been etched as one of its prime moments..
Faces upon faces coming in..
From today and for a hundred days..
Angels should have been puzzled..
“We’re not used to saying droves like this entering on a single day..”
and “What is happening within the gloomy globe called Earth?”
Must have been the questions of those who preceded this influx..
Almost a million..
Children who are yet to grow..
Elderly men and women whose haven’t finished passing on their wisdom..
Able-bodied men who got betrayed by their complexion or their ID..
And women with babies in their bellies, destined for a heavenly delivery without fear of infection or complications..
A million story in the making..
A million heart of flesh..
A million mind filled with aspirations and dreams..
A million catastrophe..
A million heart of stone..
and A million pair of hands bearing machetes and axes, harvesting their bodies but never their souls..
Please forgive us, O beautiful martyrs of Rwanda..
For we haven’t learnt our lessons..
For the Never Again that preceded yours did nothing to prevent your deaths..
And the Never Again that came with your name written on it didn’t seem to bear fruit and others followed you to the same path..
For we still vote for tyrants and for demagogues who raise holy books and flags to use the masses..
For the messages of exclusion and dehumanisation haven’t vanished after the 100 days of your inferno but have piggy-backed on our tech booms and now ironically, we’re as disconnected as ever..
Pray for us, O beautiful martyrs of Rwanda..
That we all may find the meaning of being human..
That we all embrace vulnerability and not bomb or exclude others for a false sense of insecurity..
That we may find prosperity in peace, and not in stock levels and numbers in bank account..
That we unearth compassion from wherever it is hiding within our souls, and push it in every corner and to every person..
Maybe only then, Never Again would truly mean Never Again.