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ROUTE TO PEACE

THE CRIES OF FORGOTTEN

REFUGEES IN DEADLY CAMPS

By

Fidel Nshombo

2008



ii

Route To Peace

The Cries of Forgotten Refugees in Deadly Camps

Copyright ©2009 by Fidel Nshombo

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system without written permission from the author, except

for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Borderline Publishing

305 N. Steelhead Way

Boise, ID 83704

www.borderlinepublishing.com

ISBN 978-0-984190279 (Paperback)

Cover design by Keith York, Boise, Idaho

Printed in the United States of America on post-consumer

recycled paper



iii

This book is dedicated to

the seventy-two refugees

that were deported to

Democratic Republic of

Congo in 2001 from

Zimbabwe for

demonstrating about

refugee rights. I was oneof 12 people that avoided

deportation by escaping.

I also dedicate this to my

family who experienced many of the same

situations while being

separated from me for

many years...

Fidel



iv

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION........................................................ ‐ 1 ‐

PREFACE ................................................................‐

10‐

CRIES OF THE FORGOTTEN ..................................... ‐ 13 ‐

LOVE OF THE NATION............................................. ‐ 15 ‐

LACK OF LOVE ........................................................ ‐ 20 ‐

SELLING SHORT ...................................................... ‐ 22 ‐

REFUGEE CAMP...................................................... ‐ 25 ‐

JUST LIKE

A

DREAM................................................

‐34

‐

THE WORLD NEED PEACE ....................................... ‐ 36 ‐

AFRICA................................................................... ‐ 40 ‐

THE WARS NEED TO END........................................ ‐ 42 ‐

RUNNING............................................................... ‐ 44 ‐

TAKES COURAGE TO BE A REFUGEE ........................ ‐ 47 ‐

HOW DID YOU MANAGE ........................................ ‐ 49 ‐

MOM ..................................................................... ‐ 50 ‐

THE WORLD HAS NO FUTURE ................................. ‐ 55 ‐

FOR LOVE............................................................... ‐ 59 ‐

HOME IS HOME...................................................... ‐ 62 ‐

THE END

OF

KADOGOS...........................................

‐66

‐

A NEW HOME A NEW LIFE ...................................... ‐ 72 ‐

HELL....................................................................... ‐ 75 ‐

I WISH.................................................................... ‐ 79 ‐



v

KILLING .................................................................. ‐ 81 ‐

HAPPINESS............................................................. ‐ 84 ‐

I AM ME................................................................. ‐ 88 ‐

CHOICE ..................................................................‐

90‐

WHERE DO PEOPLE GO AFTER DEATH..................... ‐ 93 ‐

THE ROOF .............................................................. ‐ 97 ‐

LISTEN ................................................................... ‐ 99 ‐

HARD PART .......................................................... ‐ 105 ‐

SURVIVING .......................................................... ‐ 106 ‐

SUFFERING........................................................... ‐ 107 ‐

ENDURANCE ........................................................ ‐ 109 ‐

WAR .................................................................... ‐ 115 ‐

LONELY ................................................................ ‐ 118 ‐

LIVING WITNESS................................................... ‐ 122 ‐

LET PEACE

RAIN ...................................................

‐125

‐

DEATH OF A LOVING FAMILY MEMBER................. ‐ 128 ‐

ABOUT THE AUTHOR .......................................... ‐ 137 ‐



- 1 -

Introduction

Social, friendly and loving. Don't you

think we miss it? Oh life in a well culturednation. My Africa. My Congo. My village,

Bukavu.

Days full of activities, without taking a

look at a clock, without marking on a

calendar... Oh, what a wonderful life I ammissing out on back home. I miss the daily

activities, farming. schooling, hunting,

playing soccer and many more...This is

how it goes daily in most Congolese

families.

Most families spend two hours

worshipping before bedtime. Do kids need

bedtime story? No! "Good night kids and

God be with you." That's all they need.

Deep and peaceful sleep and wonderfuldreams all night long. No alarm clocks, but

they keep the schedules... busy schedules.



- 2 -

My mom used to put a Bible under my

pillow saying it's protection against the

power of evil to keep me from having

nightmares.

God is good indeed. Three-thirty in the

morning, the roosters will crow. Will they

last long? Couple of seconds, may be a

minute. Even though every body in the city

will hear it, they don’t get up. Thirty

minute later, the roosters crow again. This

time the crowing will last longer. Who

doesn't know that it's four in the morning?

Great sleep. Wake up now...it's morning!

People will start getting up, this is the

beginning of an African day (four am).

Every woman will be preparing to go to a

morning prayer service. Most parents go

along with the entire family. Will parents

excuse us because it is a school day? No!School start at 7 am. Morning prayer

service starts at 5 am and goes to 6am.

School comes after prayers. “Every body,



- 3 -

it is prayer time - get up!” Unlike in

America, we don't have heaters or bath

tubs, therefore we take a quick cold

shower and put on our blue bottom/white

top uniform. We check in the kitchen if

there is any leftovers to feed our stomach,

then spring out of the door in a moving

freezing crowd to morning prayers.

My nearby church was called Chapelle

Doms. It was small and made out of wood

in a girls school yard. Actually, some of

my seven sisters where attending that

school. At 6 am the prayer is done and in a

blink, there thousands of blue/white peoplecrowding the street, which signals you that

you are still on time...

My mother would stay home getting the

house clean and food ready for us after

school. My dad would go to work rightafter the morning prayer and we won't see

him until seven at night. While at school,



- 4 -

the teachers take full control of us and we

have to abide by their rules.

Today it's different and we watch studentssay whatever they want to teachers and get

away with it in other countries. What we

call discipline in Congo, it's called child

abuse in the United States. We grew up

with that total respect we needed from

school to our homes. At the end of the day,

we go home and find mother had

everything under control. The sisters will

help her with few works around the house.

The boys will go play soccer with friends

until six in the evening when everybodyneeds to be at home and take another cold

shower before supper. Then pray again and

sing for hours in family and sleep again.

As you can tell, I miss that routine since I

had to become a refugee. I was driven outof my country by war, separated from my

loving family and left living in woeful

conditions in foreign countries.



- 5 -

At the age of about 13 I had to travel

illegally from Zaire to Tanzania, Zambia

and then Zimbabwe.

I spent a long time in Zimbabwe - a place

where I matured and learned how to

endure, persevere, tolerate, and fight for

what I believe in. It wasn't that easy at first

as I was crying every instant, missing my

family, but six month later I toughened up

and just assumed they were all gone

forever.

I had to learn English, Shona and Ndebele

in Zimbabwe in order to integrate in thesociety. Six month went fast in a scorching

refugee camp of about three hundred

people, with me being the youngest

unattended child. I could speak English a

bit and grasped the I.C.M.C scholarship to

attend a boarding school in the nearbyvillage.



- 6 -

Later on there were many problems

happening in the country with the

Zimbabweans abhorring refugees, saying

they are taking opportunities belonging to

them and destroying their country. That

brought plenty of tension between us

(refugees) and the citizens of Zimbabwe.

At some point, the refugee camp got hits

by a flood and we all had to leave, walkingsome six hundred miles to Harare.

Between the flood and the fights, we had

to negotiate with the United Nation High

Commissioner For Refugees seeing if they

had any durable solution option for us

rather than returning to the washed out

camp. This never worked and we were

punished for discussing our rights. All the

adults in the group were jailed for a year

then deported, while the women and

children were placed in a detaining campbefore deportation. I and three women

escaped and all but one ended up in

Botswana.



- 7 -

That was the second phase of a long

adventure: one year in a Dukwi refugee

camp in Botswana, crossing borders

illegally to South Africa and struggling on

the streets of Johannesburg for weeks

before meeting with a friend that helped

me reestablish stability. Three years later I

was on another adventure to Angola, and

then back to Zimbabwe. With so muchhappening in Zimbabwe, I was detained

again, kidnapped and tortured before the

UN High Commissioner For Refugees

finally granted me protection and resettled

me to Boise, Idaho in The United States of

America.

Boise was a place I never dreamed of, a

place I never heard of, a place where today

I think I really was destined to be all along,

a place of peace, love and prosperity, a

place that allowed me to search for myself,

my family, my dream. I am now at peace

and can depart with a peaceful heart.



- 8 -

In Boise I had to start life with the healing

process, medical healing as well as

emotional healing. I was still traumatized

by the things I saw, the things I did, and all

that I heard while I was in war fronts,

refugee camps and in forests running for

my life. Taking therapist classes and

medications daily, having anxiety and

many sleepless nights ended up with mecollapsing and ending up in a psychiatric

clinic.

My Therapist urgued with me to start to

use writing as a healing process, every

night that I can’t slee I will wake up and sitat my donated laptop and start typing my

emotions until I feel relieved. This was the

beginning of my writing. I would later on

decide to let the rest of the world share my

experiences. I had to start breaking the

long stories in short summarized ones that

I finally decided to put in a poetic form.

This was to try and see if young people



- 9 -

would know what may be ahead of them

beforehand.

My history teacher used to tell me "historyrepeats itself" and that tells me that

whatever I went through, will still be

repeated by someone else. So by me telling

hard paths, maybe it may be simple for

who ever will face them in the future to

understand and solve them without trauma.

I feel freed and relieved whenever I am

speaking to a crowd about my life. It

occupies my mind and saves me from a lot

of anxiety and stress that I would be

having about where I am going in life.

Let God Himself reign and lead me in the

path ahead.



- 10 -

PREFACE

Most refugees have lived their lives

already. Be they 1 year old or 99 yearsold, the best part of their life was when

they were in their home countries.

Being rescued from war and persecution

by bringing them to foreign land, it’s a lifesaving opportunity, but it never takes them

long to realize that the best life was back

home.

Help restore peace in our countries for usto continue our lives.

In these poems, our voices (refugees) are

weeping about;

Peace in our land,

The losses we had,



- 11 -

The family we left behind,

Hatred in our own heart,

Your prayers for us,Your love for us,

How you can help us,

Without forgetting,

I, Fidel, have love for all creatures,

And as every one goes to bed at night,

My heart wakes,

My mind gets at work,

And all I dream about is me in the war,

Is me in the refugee camp,

Is me fighting together with those refugees

I left behind to bring peace,

I have never found peace,

Reason why I am writing to you,

To hear our voices in the empty space, Blowing in the wind, seeking to catch the

ears of the merciful,

I know I have done wrong,



- 12 -

I am not a righteous man,

But please!

Do not hate me,For the bible say no one is.

I may not have wealth, but I am not

greedy,

I am a poor refugee, and for that I am

proud,Proud of every thing God has made me

and put me through.

But I do not use my gift to relegate others,

Or to humiliate others,

I love all creatures, and bear the pain withthem always.

“Every human being has an experience;

never let yours pull you down by trying to

lean on it your entire lives … use it to

improve yourself and not to discourage yourself.”



- 13 -

CRIES OF THE FORGOTTEN

I thank you father,

For all the goods,

That you’ve done for me,

In my entire life,

Since my childhood,You loved me so,

And you gave me life,

And again your protected me,

Thanks to you God almighty,

You are my light,

Again my shield,

Even if I suffer,

I won’t fear a thing,

Thanks to you God almighty,



- 14 -

“Many refugees feel ashamed of being

called "refugees," others feel minimized or

relegated, but until you know how much it

has impacted your life, you’ll never stand

in front of people and proudly shock them

with you fascinating experiences. Being a

refugee is learning subjects such as

patience, hopefulness, endurance,

perseverance, tolerance, humility, love,and struggle.

These are the subjects you don’t learn in

school. These you learn from the world

and as refugees, our status allows us to

earn a degree in these majors. Since we aresaved from the refugee camps, it is the

time to implement all the lessons you learn

while struggling to succeed in this world.”



- 15 -

LOVE OF THE NATION

Refugees of war in a foreign country

Failing to cope, in the new cultureThey had a home one time

And a beautiful life too

But all was lost and they were forced out,

Leaving all behind

Surely, I can hear their voices crying

As they are abused and denied their right

People are making fun of them

Reminding them of their lossesForgetting that, they once been at peace

And are now living the next stage of life,

People going home from their works

Leaving them pondering,

Pondering of how they will get peace in

their land



- 16 -

In the middle of the night

Others dream,

Dreaming of how they will buy cars, Dreaming of how they will by houses,

Dreaming of how they will get married,

All he dreams about,

Is the peace of his country?

When the people will stop killing oneanother like flies,

All he dreams about is the of the being

When all man will be allowed to live

equally,

And as he gets ready to sleep he cries

again,

Ooh Lord, I am getting my soul to bed,

I ask you to bless our nation

Whatever happens in this night?

War or massacre



- 17 -

I pray you to rest the souls of those that

will be the next victims.



- 18 -

“For those refugees that have been

resettled, now you can go to school, have

dreams and have much higher percentages

of achieving your dreams compared to the

99 percent risk of poverty those refugees

in third world countries have. I had wealth,

I lost it. I had a family I lost them. I was in

school, I stopped. I had a home, now I

don’t… These are the stories we were in,but remember! After all that, we carried on

suffering for years in refugee camps and

wished we would be saved.

Now we are somewhere were we can

rebuild our lives again, the memories maycome back to haunt you. These memories

coming back to take back the courage you

gained while struggling, the strength, the

endurance, hope, perseverance and to

make you depressed and traumatized even

more compared to when you were in the

refugee camp. Please! Do not let this

happen to you, you are a hard worker, not



- 19 -

lazy; you had been living with hope for

years. That's how you became who you are

today, hoping, Refugee Day after Refugee

Day … you endured the pain of living in a

tent, of farming in the desert of Botswana

where it never rains or sleeping in the

street of South Africa, while you were

crossing those borders illegally and putting

your life on the line walking in the middleof the wildest forest ever, that’s the

courage we need now to rebuild, that the

hope we need to make our life better, that

the endurance we should have when it

comes to learning English, looking for a

job, trying to integrate into this new

countries”



- 20 -

LACK OF LOVE

Didn’t know we were all one

Until I looked in the bible and read God created man from his image

Why are we killing each other

Why are we killing our own brothers

Why are we killing our own people

While we know that already

They are hurt and victims of war and

abuse

They are still in pain of brutality

They are still in pain of discrimination

They are still in pain of slavery

And all we do is killing them

Are we humans or animalsOr we lovers or haters

Who are we that we don't have compassion



- 21 -

Still loosing touch with our love ones

Still loosing touch with our families Like my mother told me

" Son, love is everything"

While we standing there,

Killing our own brothers without mercy

We shall all die one day

Love is what we lack

Love is what we need

Love is everything....



- 22 -

SELLING SHORT

I did it for my kids,

For their education,

For their stomach,

For their well being,

We were selling ourselves short.

To get scholarship with would a daughter,

You will need to sell yourself short,

With a daughter she will need to sell

herself short,

They are doing all this In order to get assistance,

Poor we are, no one seems to care,

We are selling our body for our kids

education,


stomach,



- 23 -


future,We are selling ourselves short.

They work for us,

Something so called charity,

However, for us to get them we need to sellshort,

We were induced to sell our body to get

assistance,

They are taking advantage of our poverty,

They are taking advantage of our vulnerability,

They are taking advantage of our refugee

status,


education,We are selling our body for our kids

stomach,



- 24 -


future,

We are selling ourselves short

We carry their kids,

Abort their pregnancy,

We parish from their illness,

Hiv and std’s ,We throw our lives away for the sake of

our kids,

Feel mercy on us.

We are selling our body for our kidseducation,


stomach,


future,

We are selling ourselves short

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