For years, Michelle and John Sharp had collected mementos of the peripatetic life of their son Michael and hung them on their kitchen wall, including a map of Africa, a photograph of his visit to the United Nations, and a picture from his hundred-mile hike along the shores of Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Michael Sharp, an expert on armed groups, had lived in Africa for years and worked for the U.N. To his parents, he was doing his part to make the world a better place. Their kitchen wall in Hesston, Kansas, served as a kind of homage to his missions.
But the wall has become more akin to a shrine since Sharp and his Swedish colleague Zaida Catalán were brutally killed in a remote village in the central Congolese province of Kasai on March 12, 2017. The map now highlights the area where the two were investigating atrocities against Congolese civilians in the final weeks of their life. A small dot denotes the regional capital, Kananga, where Sharp and Catalán spent their last night. Though nearly 20 months have passed since the killings, many of the details remain unclear to the Sharps, and not a single person has been brought to justice. Three Congolese drivers and an interpreter who accompanied Sharp and Catalán on their last trip are still missing.
