14 Years Later

April 7th is the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. The date marks the beginning of the massacres of Rwanda's Tutsi population--100 days of horror in 1994 that saw the loss of around 800,000 lives.

I'm still learning about the role the genocide plays in the daily lives of the Rwandans I encounter in my newly-established routine. Because its legacy provides the main context for ORI's mission, I've likely engaged with it a little more directly than most would in their first 10 days in the country. Knowing the anniversary was approaching, I was curious to see how, if at all, the general atmosphere of Kigali would change, and was uncertain what the best way would be for me, as an outsider, to recognize the day's significance. I tried to give myself work background understanding by delving into Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell earlier this weekend, but because information on city events is sometimes hard to come by, until this morning I wasn't certain how or if I would get the chance to commemorate it in person.

The city held its official remembrance ceremony at the permanent memorial grounds in Gisozi. When my housemate Gina and I arrived, many people were already lined up to enter the grounds, while others were gathered around a group of pick-up trucks that were parked near the gate. Soon I learned that the trucks were carrying coffins, draped in regal purple, of the remains of victims whose graves were discovered this past year (either by chance or by a tip from imprisoned genocidaires) and who were being transferred to the mass grave located at the memorial site.

My housemate and I were two of a handful of foreigners at the event, and from the outset it was hard to escape the feeling that we were intruding on something that wasn’t ours. The long stares I have come to expect on the street (always persistent but never hostile) seemed to linger even longer as we filed in to take our seats. The ceremony, conducted entirely in Kinyarwanda, began as one might expect: introductory remarks, a prayer, and a choral performance. The language barrier was frustrating, though, because words and images are what facilitate one’s ability to empathize with the story of someone else’s tragedy. With neither at my disposal, I was having a hard time generating the emotional connection that the event deserved. That changed quickly.

After a woman stepped up to the lectern and began to speak, I noticed that a number of people were starting to weep. It was clear that we were listening to a survivor’s story. The weeping gradually began to crescendo, and soon one woman began wailing uncontrollably. As she was helped from her seat by a Red Cross volunteer, others also started to shriek. Soon the most gut-wrenching, painful screams I’ve ever heard arose from every area of the crowd. This continued as speaker after speaker came up to share his or her story. Some people fainted, and some were so overcome with grief that they had to be carried, writhing and kicking, from their seats to a designated area staffed with volunteers. In the face of such visceral anguish, intense empathy was unavoidable. I was overcome with emotion. As I worked to hold back tears of my own, I came to what will likely be the most important realization of my time here: while the experience of this genocide and the subsequent healing process are both uniquely Rwandan, the pain they produce is universally human. For a couple moments, I felt like less of an outsider.

When I came home this afternoon and returned to A Problem From Hell, I was struck by a quote from Raphael Lemkin, the 20^th century’s first human rights lawyer and inventor of the word ‘genocide.’ As he prepared to flee Poland to escape the Nazis, Lemkin found that he could not convince his family to leave with him. Confident his family had condemned themselves to death, Lemkin wrote that “The best of me was dying with the full cruelty of consciousness.” In a way, I think that cruelty is what I witnessed today. The genocidaires of 1994 have forced Rwandans to confront evil, year after year, and to keep it in the forefront of their individual and national conscience. It is an injury entirely different from the one exacted upon those who lost their lives, but it is inextricably linked to the physical suffering of the genocide, and on days like today, it seems equally cruel.

One evening last week, I was sitting on the porch reading when I noticed the sound of dogs barking up and down my street. It reminded me of a story that Phillip Gourevitch tells in his book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families. As he traveled the country in 1995 to report on the genocide, Gourevitch realized that, aside from a couple lap dogs being toted around by foreigners, he had not seen or heard a single dog during his time in Rwanda. They had all been shot; many, in a case of utterly tragic irony, by the very UN peacekeepers whose "mission" kept them from using force to protect Tutsis, but left them free to kill the stray dogs who scavenged among the corpses. At the time, hearing the dogs bark on my street, and seeing our dog Beaubie laying next me, seemed symbolic of some measure of progress in Rwanda’s healing process. My experience today literally screamed the message that there is a tremendous amount of healing still left to be done.

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Here's a picture of the memorial site, with people walking to visit the mass grave below and the rest of the ceremony going on above.