I am currently reading a book called “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families”, by Philip Gourevitch, which tells stories from the Genocide. It is a hard book to read, but is very interesting and well written. It Really brought me back to my experiences in Kigali the first we week we were here.
Kigali: Finding guitar strings and a tuner in Kigali is no easy feat. Our tour guide Eddy took me to a busy toilet smelling double decker shopping mall, with sketchy open shops. On the top floor there was an old man sitting behind a counter with guitars hanging from the ceiling. Incredibly he did have the guitar supplies that I needed for the Village, although it was extremely expensive, (about 90$).
After accomplishing my mission, we headed to the Genocide Memorial, which took up most of our day, and was an important part of our trip here to Rwanda. The Memorial is located in the city of Kigali, at the site of a mass grave. On the way there we past the Des Mille Collines(A thousand hills) Hotel, which is the hotel that the movie “Hotel Rwanda” is based on. The owner of the hotel Paul Rosesabagina is said to have housed and saved Tutsis, but no one really knows what happened inside the Hotel’s walls. The movie “Hotel Rwanda” is an award wining film, but is also criticized heavily by Rwandan’s and critics for “telling a Hollywood-type” story.
The Genocide Memorial has many rooms, and doesn’t just cover the Rwandan Genocide, but exhibits Genocides from all over the world as well. It starts with the Rwandan Genocide, and goes through the timeline of what happened starting about thirty years before 1994. It explained that the Belgians colonized Rwanda just after WWII, making alliances with many political leaders and Tutsi kings, but also devided the country by assigning identity cards to Tutsis and Hutus. Before the arrival of the Belgians, there was little difference between Tutsis and Hutus. The term Tutsi means a person who owns many cows and is wealthy. Hutus were people who were mostly farmers. Although there was a social and economical difference between the two groups, Tutsis married Hutus and vise versa, and a Hutu could become a Tutsi. It was the Belgians that introduced this idea of having two separate peoples, with the Tutsis being genetically superior. Eventually the Belgians left in 1962, giving Rwanda it’s independence, but also left behind a social mess.
To skip ahead to just before the Genocide in April of 1994, there was already political struggles, violence, and killings in Rwandan between the government and Hutu extremists. Leading up to 1994 people speculated that Genocide would break out. The Hutu extremists known as the Interahamwe were training soldiers, plus there were rumors all over the radio. The spark that started the genocide was when the President’s plane was shot down over Kigali by Hutu extremists, who then blamed the assassination on the Tutsis. Mass extermination of the Tutsis then ensued.
In the next two months 800,000 people were killed in terrifying ways, mostly by machete.
As I walked through the exhibits, what shocked me was how accepted and well known the Genocide was, yet no one in the world really did anything. The Belgians did there part in starting it, and the French gave the Hutu extremists weapons to kill. I tried to understand why so many people could suddenly become murderers.
There was one action in the midst of the genocide that stood out to me. A young girl was running from her attacker, when a man poked his head out of his gate, and whispered to the girl “to save a life is to save the entire world”, and saved her. This is of course a Jewish quote from the Talmud, which is the oral torah. It amazed me that out of the little hope that I could find from the genocide, it was Judaism showed through.
When Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front defeated the Hutu Extremists and stopped the genocide, Kagame decided not to exile all of the Hutus, and instead allowed them to stay, setting up local trials for the accused killers. Currently, many people who committed atrocities during the genocide still live in Rwanda, possibly residing next to their victim’s remaining families. This is ludicrous to me that people have forgiven so quickly and easily. It is one thing to “say” you forgive your neighbor who killed your entire family, but it is another thing to actually believe it.
And so we are left with a very complicated modern Rwanda, with Paul Kagame as its president (AKA possible dictator). But things are progressing quickly. Rwanda is a safe, clean, and growing country, with a 2020 plan. People are friendly here. Everything seems fine on the surface, one would never believe that eighteen years ago it was hell here.
In the Village the kids seem to be happy and to be having a great time, but below the surface the genocide is there. Some people have physical scars, but all have emotional scars. This Youth Village is the way to heal those scars. The kids have friends here, a Mama to take care of them, a big brother, cousins (aka foreign volunteers), social workers, an education, extra curricular activities, and the closest possible to normalcy.
Here at the Village the philosophy is that a great way to help yourself it to help others also.
Building a house for a poor old Woman in the neighboring town of Rubona during Tikun Olam.
This is a mural on the side of the dinning hall that students drew. ASYV has an art therapy program which helps students cope with their emotions.
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