The land of 1000 hills

Wednesday and Thursday were spent in Rwanda, which is beautiful. To my surprise, it is much nicer than Uganda. This actually makes sense though due to the influx of foreign aid and focus on development that the country has experienced since the genocide in 1994.

If you don't know what the genocide was (as many of you were 5 years old in 1994) it's pretty important to at least know a little about, so google/wiki it. The main idea though is that the Tutsis (wealthy minority) oppressed the Hutus (majority) during colonial times. Then when the country gained independence and the Hutus took control, there was animosity towards the Tutsis which climaxed in 1994 when the government organized a mass killing of the Tutsis by the majority of the Hutu population. Over 1 million Tutsis were brutally murdered, often by their neighbors and colleagues. This is not a hard fact, but one speaker guessed that around 90% of the Hutu population was somehow involved in perpetrating the genocide.

The real purpose of our trip was to look at reconciliation between the Tutsis and the Hutus, but most of what we did was more towards the historical side. On the first day, we went to the genocide museum, which was incredibly intense. It is fairly small, but much more graphic than anything would be in the US without about 50 warning/ disclaimer signs outside the museum. I won't go into the details, but there were countless stories about torturing and brutal murders by bludgeoning, machetes, being buried alive, among others.

Then, we went to the prison where many genocide prisoners are held. They've almost finished holding all of the trials, and since over 120k people were tried, the only ones that actually have remained in prison (instead of being sentenced to community service) are the ones who had a crucial part in organizing the genocide. We thought we were going to end up just talking to a few of the prisoners about their stories. What happened was a little bit more... Bizarre? We entered the prison and were led some way down to a building. As we filed in, we entered a large room filled with about 300 prisoners and 32 empty chairs for us on a stage at the front of the room. After we were introduced, a few men came up to give their testimonies, which were basically just short speeches about how now they thought everybody was equal and that we should go home and tell everybody that they are not bad people. One of them invited us to stay with them until the evening- an offer which we politely declined. Then, the prison traditional dance troupe came in and performed. At the end they pulled us up to join them. Soon a few of the other prisoners joined in and I found myself dancing with one of the men who minutes before had told us he had a high government position in organizing the genocide. I had a pretty strong moral dilemma in whether to insult the people who had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to organize this event or to dance and act friendly towards a person who was personally responsible for the brutal murder of probably thousands of innocent people. I decided to avoid insulting anyone and just take the situation as a learning experience while insulting the man in my head.

After the show, we went to a smaller room and spoke with the Tutsi prison director who (like almost all of the other people we spoke to) denied any current conflict or animosity between the Tutsis or Hutus. I'm no expert, and it really isn't even my place to say, but I just don't buy that. What I buy is that so many people committed crimes, and much of it was through propaganda and mob mentality, that it is overwhelming and impossible to get adequate retribution for everybody as if each murder was an isolated incident. People's experiences are so horrible that 16 years later they just want to move on. Not forget about it, but put it in the past. I also just don't buy that if these men truly understood and regretted that they had done they would not have such an easy time living with themselves. Not saying they should die, but that they should never be in a place where they can coolly stand up in front of hundreds of people and pretend like everything is now ok because they have apologized.

On the opposite side of the spectrum from moving on, on the second day we visited two churches that are among the main genocide memorials. In the first church, around 5000 people were surrounded and attacked as they sought shelter. From that attack, something like 10 people survived. The church has been preserved in a similar condition to the way it was after the attack. There are clothes, pots, books, etc on the pews, the doors are hanging off their hinges, and there is still a blood stain on the wall of the sunday school from a child being thrown against it. Then, along one of the walls of the main hall are shelves and shelves of skulls and other bones that were collected from around the compound.

In the second church, where 10000 people died in one day, the main hall again had the clothes and other personal items. Then, a sunken in area had a few shelves of bones, but not nearly as many as the first church. As I ventured outside I discovered why. I went down a staircase into the ground behind the church and found myself in a series of hallways flanked on each side by coffins stacked from floor the ceiling: the mass graves. They were incredibly creepy and I honestly couldn't get myself to even step down off the bottom step of the staircase. In addition to the 10000 people buried there that died in the church, there were 40000 that had been murdered in the surrounding area.

So maybe this description makes it clearer why I am so angry at the perpetrators of the genocide, despite their apologies and public forgiveness.

Before I conclude though, I want to give a quick nod to Clive Owen, who we ran into twice, who has helped fund the preservation of the genocide memorial sites.

Outside of both of the churches is a banner that changes occasionally and currently (in the local language) says something that roughly translates to "if you had known yourself and known me, you would not have killed me."

Ya know. That's a good point to end on. Much happier things in the next post.
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