unlocking the doors to the past.
unraveling the coiled thread that connects all events, seen and unseen, good and evil, profound and inane. following the line backwards, tracing the errors of the past, the cruelties of history, foreshadowing fundamental shifts in human interactions. seeing how we can get it wrong once again.
the thread seldom follows a simple route.
and the thread is often covered in blood.
"Then, the war started. This is the same place that the genocide happened. The heartbeat of that genocide came from about 15 km from the park boundary. This little patch of forest is where everybody hides. If you want to have a war, or do something bad, you're going to go into this forest where the gorillas are."
-Michael Nichols, National Geographic, talking of Virunga National Park, Congo
And thus, in a cruel twist of fate, the famous mountain gorillas of Central Africa, immortalized by the late Dian Fossey, magnificent beasts sharing 98% of the human genome, are cast into the murderous, demonized shadow of genocide in Rwanda. 800,000 people were murdered here in 100days in 1994; the perpetrators escaping to the lawless lands of neighboring Congo to continue their actions with impunity for more than a decade; the international community giving out little more than a wimper when faced with the continued images of massacre and desecration; the fallout continuing to this day, without mercy, without compassion, affecting both man and beast alike. The Rwandan Interahamwe militias, directly implicated in the bloodletting of their Tutsi countrymen, continue to ravage, punish, and destroy in this most delicate of lands.
And thus, we see the events unravel, not chronologically, but genealogically, and in the cruel chain of life, we massacre our closest relative, in addition to all others around, in a fit of madness, an offshoot of the horrific ethnic cleansing of 1994. and thus, the closest key in our short history on this small planet is brought closer to the brink; man's greed and destruction not hesitating to unravel the cord, and drench it in blood.
www.gorillafund.org
www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/mountaingorilla
Did You Know? (From the African Wildlife Foundation Website)
- There are only about 720 mountain gorillas left in the world.
- Humans and gorillas are 98% genetically identical.
- Male silverback gorillas can weigh 50-100 pounds more - and are about 10 times stronger - than the biggest American football players.
- When the group is attacked by humans, leopards, or other gorillas, the silverback will protect them even at the cost of his own life.
