One

One

I am not a writer. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't even take up a pen to write anything outside of getting good grades. But these aren't normal circumstances. Everything has gone downhill. The world has gone to hell. Or at least, our world.

Africa has been abandoned, segregated, cast aside. It's not a surprise, it was bound to happen sooner or later. The way governments handled their affairs there were only two options; one, western and other powers colonize Africa again and African countries lose their sovereignty or two. We chose two and now, here we are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not absolving the west and Africa's other trading partners from its downfall. Policies from the IMF and crony businessmen from India, China and the States didn't help. They supplied illegal materials, facilitated corruption and allowed murder and genocide. But just like the first time( slave trade), they only poured fuel on the fire. It started before they arrived. They simply gave it more life.

There is no government, no electricity, thousands lie dead in the streets, the situation gets worse day by day and the rest of the world has forgotten that just next door, a country lies in waste.

To be fair, it's not like they wanted it to happen. But after countless machinations and acquiring of African resources, blacks just decided they'd had enough. They were tired of their leaders oppressing them, lying to their faces, ignoring them. They were tired of the police, extorting bribes from them and being treated like foreigners abroad and ignored at home. They wanted their voices to be heard. They wanted…justice.

What happened in Rwanda was tiny compared to this. In the Rwandan crisis, about a million were killed. More than ten million have died so far, and this looks far from over.

The rich, at least those who say this coming earlier, fled to foreign countries. Many of those that didn't and the middle class, were … I'm sorry. The thought of dead corpses littering the street just came to mind. And …the rebel groups. Their charismatic leader, Ngugio is very frightful indeed.

I am one of the middleclass. Not the upper middleclass. Just the barely hanging middle class. It doesn't matter to them of course. To them we're all the same. Middle class and the rich are the elite who conspired to keep them in poverty.

Ngugio is calling for a return to what Africa used to be. I have no idea what that is. Four years ago, I had entered the university, simply hoping to graduate and get a job, like everybody else. No one, except maybe the rebels themselves, no one knew what would happen just four years later.

How could this happen? What is the UN doing about this? Answer nothing. It couldn't prevent one million Rwandans from dying or the wars in other African countries. Better yet, it doesn't want to. It's simply going to sit and wait. Wait for the culling, for Africans to weed themselves out.

Do I sound bitter? I can't help it. I am. I used to believe the grownups knew what they were doing. Even though politics and democracy was a joke…Ghana was a peaceful country. We'd gone through fifty years of relative peace, compared to other countries. Whilst Nigeria was attacked by Bukum Haram, Burkina had been its own issues, I deluded myself into believing Ghana was different.

In hindsight I should have seen, that from the start, this was where we were headed. But what could I do even if I knew? I was just one university graduate. Start a movement? Go on a demonstration? Occupy Wall street and Anonymous haven't had much impact in their environments, so even if the youth bounded together, how much impact could we really have?

As we lie in a shack, shivering from the cold I look at my family. We were ordinary, good citizens. We paid our taxes, they voted,( I didn't), they didn't commit any crimes. So why?

Because you're weak.

That were the words that loudly formed in my mind.

The Americans, Chinese, Europeans and just about all other foreign countries had pulled out. They'd taken away their malls, their telephones, their electricity. General Electric pulled out first, then the others followed. Now even water is a problem.

Ngugio isn't the real leader. We in the middle class know that. And the poor probably do as well. There's no way Ngugio got all the resources he used for this war from the poor, disgruntled and betrodden. There was someone else. Someone calling the shots. We suspected even the poor knew this. But they didn't care. They were blinded by their rage. Their rage at us.

It started so suddenly that within one week the attacks had become an international incident. Bombings in Ghana, South Africa and in some parts of Northern Africa. There was confusion. The West as usual was pointing fingers at the religious groups. ISIS was their top target. After all, Islam was quite prominent in all these three regions. International and local media houses collaborated to cover the news.

But when there were subsequent attacks in the second and third weeks, international media did something strange. They withdrew. Their numbers dwindled. Although a few, courageous and concerned people stayed, many ran. Those that stayed had seen wars in Africa and the Middle East. They weren't scared.

International organizations constantly met to discuss how to solve the 'African crisis'. It had changed from the 'migrant crisis' to the 'African crisis'. Of course we suspected the term 'migrant crisis' had always been a euphemism for African crisis anyway.

The African Union couldn't join them. Most of their leaders were politicians who had been murdered. The rest couldn't show their faces in public. After all, they were being chased by the ICC(International Criminal Court) for these issues.

How did I know all this? Of the few things we had managed to salvage before running away we had gotten a radio. I listened to the news both local and foreign. I was listening to it that night as the rains poured and we were cuddled together, trying rather unsuccessfully to go to bed in spite of the cold.

"You're listening to that stupid radio again aren't you?" James, my older brother said.

I glanced at him. But I didn't say anything. The last time we'd talked about it, it had ended up in a big fight where my radio almost got smashed.

"Leave him alone", my father said in a sleepy tone. In a way I was surprised. He was able to go to sleep in this cold? That was …in hindsight quite obvious. My father had spent a few years in the military. Just about three years. His father, my grandfather, wanted to toughen him up. My grandfather was dead. But I wasn't exactly keen on meeting him. From the stories my father told about his childhood I was glad I didn't.

My mother didn't say a word. She'd grown increasingly quiet and reclusive. She simply stared upwards.

Water started to drip through the shack's leaky roof. Drops splashed on her face. She turned around and covered her head with the cloth.

"You could suffocate", my father said. She didn't answer. James and I exchanged glances. Had they had a fight?

I did what I had become accustomed to when things got uncomfortable. I crouched closer to the radio trying to listen to what they were saying. It was at minimal volume so that even though I was very close, I still had to strain to listen. Batteries were scarce. Partly because we were down on physical cash and partly because most batteries were produced by foreigners. Increasing the volume would cause the battery to die out early and nobody else was so interested in foreign affairs so I had to keep it down.

"…the UN today failed to come to any consensus on what to do about the situation in Africa."

I shook my head. I wasn't surprised. The migrant crisis was child's play compared to this. But I understood their situation slightly. These rebel groups weren't just a minority. It consisted of most of the poor. Sending in soldiers would be tantamount to committing genocide. And nobody wanted to publicly condone that. I used the words publicly because they were rumors of the CIA and MI6 hanging around.

"It has been almost a year since almost the entire African continent dissolved into chaos. There is pressure from all sides for leaders of the UN to make a decision to resolve this latest crisis. There are fears that if this isn't resolved. Europe and the West will become the next targets of these rebel groups after they establish a totalitarian state".

So basically, they're scared. Scared that their citizens will be next.

I almost laughed. It served them right. They after all played a huge role in the economic crisis that hit the entire continent.

My rational mind kept trying to convince me to be reasonable. But I wasn't interested in being clear or objective. Not since my life had been thrown into disarray. I hated them. Hated that I had no control over my life because of them. That they failed to accept responsibility and they were still calling the shots behind the scenes.

"What are they saying?" my brother whispered. He was trying to listen in.

"Go away", I said.

"You can't still be mad, grow up already. Let it go. You're 20. Stop acting like a kid".

"Really? That coming from you is…" I stopped. I was known to be sharp with my words, even when I didn't mean to be. I didn't want to cause another fight. Besides my brother was more hot tempered than usual. We all were.

''Let's go outside", he said.

The rain had stopped. We moved out into the open. The plastic heap of rubbish less than a mile away would have made me shrink in disgust a year ago. But it didn't even merit a shrug now.

"Mom and Dad had a fight alright", he said. "They don't use words anymore. It's just boiling buried resentment".

"Why?" I asked.

James sighed. "It's basically what happens when people feel control slip from their hands and things go bad. They look for someone to blame for their unhappiness. In this case, it's each other".

My mind drifted to the rebel groups.

"What are we doing?" James asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He sat down on the bare dirt and held his head in his hands. "I haven't really paid much attention to international events lately. But locally… There's nothing here, Sawyer. Nothing. What is this revolution supposed to achieve? Freedom, Equality? It's absurd! "

He was frustrated. Up until last year he was doing well for himself in a tech company. So why couldn't he escape? Well, tech companies in Ghana weren't as big and powerful as those outside. And since my brother wasn't in management, his salary and benefits weren't enough to get all four of us out of the country. Especially since we weren't the only ones trying to leave.

Even now, time and again, boats and ships came around, offering to sneak us past the rebel's boundaries and into another country. You needed some amount of cash. Fortunately we had enough of that. But that meant we had to eat sparingly. But that was our only hope. The rebels were constantly patrolling, so the ships had to constantly change meeting places.

My father, what about him? He probably could have scraped money to get us through. But his property was seized, he couldn't access his bank account and he didn't have enough walking around money. How? Unfortunately, my father was a politician. Not a very high one. Not enough to steal millions. And I doubt he would, although on rare occasions, I doubted he wouldn't.

He had been one of those targeted earlier. We didn't know why. And my father didn't give any explanation. If my father had been in another profession we would probably have gotten out already. My mother had been against my father entering into the public sector politics in the first place.

"All this is doing is replacing our old masters with new ones. Are we so stupid we can't see?"

I shook my head. "They're just too angry to care".

He looked at me incredulously. "You're still talking in the third person. Like you're looking at this from somewhere far off".

I shrugged. "Besides, the UN will have to move soon. They are afraid of the rebels attacking them", I said.

My brother sighed. He normally did this when he was about to go into a very lengthy explanation. I knew this because that's what he did whenever he had to explain some complicated computer stuff.

"Well, they won't be for long".

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I heard from a friend of mine that they've already managed to sneak in. If they have, there will be body's dropping just like that. Then there will be retaliation. Not to mention tightening of their border security".

"No way. What about us? How will we…?"

James simply stared blankly at me.

I grabbed his shirt. One could hardly believe this brown shirt had once been clear white except for the faint specks of white.

"How long? How long have you known this? Did you know when you almost smashed the radio?"

He slapped my hand away. "Are you crazy? Grabbing my shirt like that? Do you want to get hit?''

Instead of apologizing, I asked again. "Is it true? How long have you known this?"

"Long enough".

I crashed to the ground. My father and mother came out of the shack. They took one look at me and my brother. My father almost slapped James.

"Are you two fighting again?" he asked.

My mother immediately grasped that it was something else. She knelt down. "What is it? What's wrong?"

James sighed. He knew he was bound for an even longer explanation. 

Reviews

[David Marsden]

This is powerful stuff and it looks like you have done lots of research to put this together. I find it hard to write in the first person without compromising on content. This writing has good content. It has good descriptive narative and the dialogue is convincing also. I think more should be added regarding the characters description, manerisms etc so the reader can picture them in their mind. Apart from that technically it is really well written. The detail is plentiful and this kept me reading.
keep on writing.