What do you do when you're twelve years old and your neighbors turn into your worst enemies? It was happening in 1994 throughout the tiny country of Rwanda, where Hutu extremists shot, chopped, clubbed and speared 1.1 million Tutsis, their fellow Rwandans, in just three months. It was the most efficient large-scale slaughter in history. This story carries you off to East-Central Africa and into a delightful childhood interrupted by circumstances that force young Kaka to leave home with a cousin his age, a nine-year-old sister and a six-year-old brother. After a while it's just Kaka and his cousin. Everywhere are signs that the country had gone crazy. But Kaka keeps his wits. There are ditches filled with corpses, bodies trying to crawl out; acts of courageous generosity and costly risk; close calls; unhindered killing; funny moments; sickening loss; constant hunger; humans at their worst and humans at their best.Does a person have to forgive in order to move beyond the trauma of brutality? Does forgiveness have to be the issue? What were people thinking while taking the lives of their neighbors? Why did some killers spare one neighbor and slaughter the others? Who's responsible for a genocide? Is it possible not to be controlled by memories of wicked deeds committed by people who aren't sorry for what they did? Angels on My Path faces these questions in firsthand experience. If you love life, or would like to, this book was written for you.
| Author: Max T. Russell, Kayiranga Jean-Leonard Kagabo
