Please note that this post is just my thoughts. If you would like to confirm the facts, please do your research. These are my feelings and how I interpreted what I saw.
I woke up at 8:30am after getting 4.5 hours of sleep. It was already warm out (actually it never quite got cool) and there was some humidity in the air. I headed down to breakfast and met up with two of my colleagues who were also already here. The three of us were the first of the group to arrive.
After breakfast, we got out of the hotel for the early part of the day to explore the city a bit. We started our day at the National Museum of the genocide that occurred in 1994. This is when the Hutu tried to exterminate the Tutsi from the country of Rwanda. The museum was really well done, informative, but not too gory (it’s always a fine line of how much the public can actually handle). Two sections of the museum stood out to me, in particular.
The first was a video of one of the Hutu perpetrators who had been a ‘genocidaire’ in the massacre. It was a video of his trial. He was explaining all of the murders that he had been involved in, including the names of the individuals. He was so matter of fact, and even continued to crack jokes as the judge tried to get information from him. As far as I could tell (and I have about 2 hours of training on this…just what I saw and read in the museum) the way they dealt with the ‘genocidaires’ was in the culturally appropriate method of public confession and forgiveness. This means that the Hutu who were involved in the killings are still in the same cities and towns where they committed the murders…living right next to the family members of those they had killed.
The second section that hit me hard was a room that was dedicated to the children who were killed in the genocide. The information provided was given by the living family members of these children, mothers, fathers, sisters and grandparents. There was a picture, the age of the child, some small facts, and the way they died. For instance:
**Age: 4
Favorite food: Chips and soda
Favorite activity: singing and dancing
Best friend: His mum
Death: Hacked by a machete
This made it so real to me. This little kid sounds just like my niece or nephew! How awful to watch someone you love killed right in front of you. And the reason? They were born into the ‘wrong tribe’?!?!?!
Some other things that I learned, which I had not known are:
· These groups were one people until Rwanda was colonized. The Europeans were obsessed with differentiating social classes and therefore separated these groups into tribes that they created, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa.
· Many of the people killed knew their killers personally. They were neighbors, priests and ‘friends’.
· This only happened 16 years ago! Meaning that people my age were teenagers when they witnessed their families being murdered!
After our time at the museum we headed over to have lunch at the Hotel des Milles Collines. We know this as the ‘Hotel Rwanda’, where Paul Rusesabagina boldly saved many from the genocide.
We were sitting at the ‘Hotel Rwanda’ in the beautiful sunshine. All of a sudden the dark clouds rolled in and the downpour began. There we sat, under the bar with a grass roof eating our lunch and watching the massive drops fall into the nice clean pool. The rain comes and goes.
While eating lunch our colleague told us of his experience in Rwanda just after the genocide. He was here in 1995 to help put organizations back together after the tragedy. I heard stories from him of colleagues who hid in the ceiling of their building for weeks, waiting for a chance to escape.
It’s amazing to think that it was only 16 years ago that this country was torn apart by the genocide of the Tutsi. Today the streets are so clean and crisp, all motorcyclists wear helmets (which is unheard of in Africa). The rain comes and goes.
**This is a fictional child. I did not write down the information of one particular child, but I did see all of these entries on at least one plaque…these are just jumbled.
No comments:
Post a Comment