Little has changed in Africa ever since the genocide took place in Rwanda in 1994 and the Hutus fled to Congo. After that, the tribal clashes made sky full with the cries here in Congo and sheer government apathy along with paucity of funds added more to the woe of innocents who cried and cried and cried but no one to come for their rescue from anywhere.

God has blessed Africa with the greatest mineral wealth. I really don’t know why he put so much conflict and brutality in the region. In Africa, people are sitting on top of the greatest mineral wealth and busy in butchering humanity than exploiting the resources that would certainly open their way for the growth and development.

However, no development only genocides and ethnic cleansings are following one after the other. Here innocence is a curse and to be a woman or a child is even a greater one. Here only the frantic and brutes survive. I have seen men literally lost, for they were the killing machines and emotionally bankrupt. They know nothing else but to kill. Yes, they kill slowly, inch by inch, if they don’t do it at once…they not only kill physically but psychologically, emotionally…they are haunted for sure because humans can’t be so devilish and pitiless.

For women and children, the so-called DR Congo is a living hell and for likes of Zola, miseries are beyond our imagination. Zola, 12, is an intelligent and perspicuous student of seventh class. She belongs to the South Kivu province of Congo, lives in a two-room mud shack house and oblivion of the violent situation that has engulfed thousands in Congo. Going to school and working with parents in the fields was a daily routine of hers.

However, this was the story eight months ago and since then, much water has flown under the bridge. At that time, Zola was as cheerful as the children used to be. But, one day while coming back from the fields she was surrounded by the Hutu tribe people. They took her to the jungle where the brutes crushed her innocence. The lechery and ferocity overpowered their sense to judge and the poor child counted as many as seventeen before she went unconscious.

After that, bearing sexual violence and cooking food to scores of Hutus replaced her daily routine. Now she was slave of those people where no one was caring for her but raping her innocence and pushing her life inch by inch to death. Finally, they let her go but only when she turned pale and too weak to do any work.

Yes, she came back home but not to survive for many days. She is no more afraid of death because it won’t do worse to her. When doctors in Panzi Hospital examined her, they pronounced the verdict for her. She is infected with AIDS and her womb was so badly damaged and infected that reconstructive surgery even can’t do things right again. Irony becomes more astute as Zola does not even know what has happened to her and what she is destined to.

There was no fear in those stoned eyes, no will to live but innumerable questions. Why, why after all innocents have to pay that much for no fault of their own? And above all, how long will it continue, but who to put answers forth – None!