A World in Pictures- Samantha McGehee

This photograph is part of a Pulitzer Prize winning series titled Trek of Tears. It records the ethnic genocide that characterized Hutu and Tutsi enmity in Central Africa in the mid-1990s. These people are fleeing their homes and villages for safety elsewhere. Many of the women have been raped or brutally beaten, or both. Many of the children are orphaned because their parents were murdered in their village. This scene of exile is not uncommon in human history. It is not rare that we have seen or heard of people being violently forced to make the long and excruciating journey away from their homes and all they have known. This picture is impactful when you think about all of these people having to pack up all their possessions that they could carry, all of their family and leave everything they know to go into uncertainty. Uncertainty because they don't know where they are going, just that they can't stay. Uncertainty because they don't know if they will survive the journey or if their family will survive. But despite this uncertainty, they preserve, because they have to. It is either preserve into uncertainty or don't and die. And if that isn't the essence of the human spirit, I am not sure what is. They were so incredibly brave.