Genocide really did happen here...

Even though we came here to experience life in a post-conflict, post-genocide society, it's really easy to forget about what happened. Before we came, we had visions of bodies lying in pieces along the road and in the gutters; what we see are some of the cleanest streets in the world. We imagined animosity and tension among neighbors, whose families killed and were killed by each other; we see people holding hands, laughing, rarely looking angry. I've been reading the memoirs of L.Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the UN Force Commander for the mission for Rwanda during the genocide, but it all seems surreal because Rwanda is so different, so much more peaceful now than it was then. But the past few days have really brought to life Rwanda's history...

Two nights ago we decided to watch the PBS Frontline special, "Ghosts of Rwanda." If you're interested in learning more about the genocide here, it was an amazing documentary. But warning: it was extremely graphic. There is actual footage of people machete-ing each other, just hacking away. You see corpses piled on the streets, including those of babies. You see churches full of bodies, so much so that you can't even see the floor. It's all evidence recorded by journalists, which was constantly being sent back to the United Nations and the United States, both of whom chose to ignore or not believe the severity of what was occurring. Here was the lowest possible form of human behavior, and these politicians who are supposed to protect the lives and human rights of all people ofthe world are choosing to turn away. It's absoutely disgusting how we, as Americans and westerners, prioritize some lives over others. Apparently 800,000-1,000,000 innocent Rwandans (a large part of them completely innocent and defenseless children) was not worth sending as few as 5,000 well-armed soldiers. That was all it would have taken to stop the massacre. I was nauseous the whole time watching the movie, and for the rest of the night. Needless to say, neither Mike nor I got a good night's sleep.

The weirdest part of watching the film was being able to point to different scenes and say, "That's right up the road from here," or, "We pass that every day to work." Kigali was the center of all of the planning and the majority of the killing, which includes our small neighborhood of predominantly low-income civilians. We can't help but wonder what crimes occurred in our neighborhood, on our street, and even in our home. If walls could talk...

We decided to go to the Kigali Genocide Memorial the next morning before work, which we shamefully hadn't done in our first two months of being here. It ominously rained all morning, too (it's not even rainy season). Anyway, the museum took us a few hours to get through, but it is an unbelievable place. There's footage of survivors talking, most of them around our age. There's lots of history, explaining what led to the genocide, going as far back as the first German colonisers in the 1800's. I still blame all of Africa's problems entirely on colonization. Then you get to the graphic pictures of the slaughters, which provoked a few tears but I was surprisingly able to hold it togetherthe whole time. You see the perpetrators, who are now being tried at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. There's a section displaying the skulls of many victims, many of which have holes in them, some of which are completely in half. There's an entire section devoted to some children who were killed, describing their personalities, likes and dislikes, and then explaining their gruesome deaths. Outside of the museum, there are amazing gardens surrounding mass graves. I'm not sure how many bodies are buried there, but there are easily hundreds of thousands. We came upon a family laying flowers on one of the graves and crying, and politely turned away so as not to intrude on their private moment, but wow. These people problem have family members who are buried right there.

As depressing as those days were, I think we needed that experience to humble us. It really brought us back to why we are here, doing the work that we are doing. And it really makes you admire the people here, who are able to present themselves so strongly.