1/5 Before my mom retired and became a full-time environmentalist in Oromia she was a tri-lingual secretary at the OAU from 1980-2001.When the Shashamane massacre happened she told me something I never knew,that she was in Rwanda in 1985 for missions. She said, "most people don't

2/5 understand that genocide doesn't happen in one day. When we went to Rwanda in '85 they would tell us we can't go to some areas due to violence. There were signs that no one was paying attention to. That was 9 years before the genocide.

3/5 Everyone of us at the OAU no matter our status regretted it. We wondered was there something in those reports that could have indicated what would finally happen? Could I even as a secretary reading and translating those reports have done something? Could I have

4/5 pressured my bosses to do something? There is no reason Ethiopia can't be Rwanda. I saw Rwanda, it started with seemingly isolated identity-based attacks. The reports were there but we all just couldn't imagine hell." As her daughter I freak out because I obsessively studied

5/5 about Rwanda in Uni, it never occurred to me that my mother has been sounding the alarm about #Ethiopia to anyone who will listen cuz she experienced the Rwandan genocide 25 yrs ago as an employee of the OAU now the AU. She read the reports.
Rwanda didn't happen in a day.