Genocide Memorial & Wiboye Peace Village

Today was... wow. Challenging, uncomfortable, eye-opening, striking in reality... just damn. I'm starting to realize that this organization has given me an awesome opportunity to gain access to things that I wouldn't have accessed if I were to just come here on my own. In the next few weeks, I'm going to be able to interact with young Rwandan activists, students, street children, orphans, academics... so many people who are struggling with human rights issues and seeking to make social change.

In the morning the group went to visit the Genocide Memorial, a dedication to the 1994 genocide that gets TONS of visitors all the time. It was a very clean, nice, moderately sized compound. We got a tour of the outside, which had several mass graves that just looked like cement blocks lying on the ground. These cement blocks, which don't look like they go that deep into the ground, hold 10-15,000 people's remains EACH. I think I remember the guide saying there were a total of 300,000 people buried at the memorial. Damn. The remains are placed into coffins (usually more than one person's body to a coffin because their remains are usually not whole). It was hard to visualize considering we didn't see how deep the graves went, but it was momentous to be standing there next to them.

We had a moment of silence in front of one that displayed a few coffins. I don't pray regularly like I used to, and my faith has definitely gone down in the last few years, so I didn't turn to prayer during the moment of silence. All that kept running through my mind was, "I'm really sorry." There were just no other thoughts going through my mind as I stood there crying over this mass grave. Before heading to the memorial, we had asked ourselves whether we felt personally responsible for the genocide. I don't, but I think my apology was moreso an acknowledgement that people, all people, failed to protect these people and save them... and acknowledgement that they died for the worst reason - for their identity.

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The museum was very well put together! I must note though, on a more cynical note, that there was absolutely NOTHING about the United States' [lack of] involvement in the genocide. Wanna know why? On the big "We would like to thank" board of big donors, guess who was listed? The William J. Clinton Foundation. Mm hmm. All makes sense now.

One problem about Rwanda's history is that it isn't agreed upon. People don't agree on how the Hutus and Tutsis came to be, or how they came to hate each other. The exhibit started off with Rwanda's past, but it omitted most of the precolonial history. This is sad to me... Rwanda's published past begins with its colonization by Germany. Apparently there is no set curriculum for history that the government has been able to agree on, so history is just NOT taught in Rwanda's schools. That's crazy to me. I personally think teaching all versions of the debated history is better than not teaching any history at all (kind of like how teaching several explanations of creation is better than teaching just one or none at all).

One really interesting tidbit I read about in the account of the genocide was about what happened at St. Paul's. St. Paul's is where we are staying for the majority of our trip. Turns out that St. Paul's was used by Father Celestin Hakizimana to provide refuge to over 2000 people. In the same rooms where we're staying in right now... where I'm snoozing tonight...

The exhibit had survivor testimonies that were very moving and powerful. I cried while listening to one man talk about his mother during the last moments of her life when they were trying to escape from the genocidaires. She was trying to find food for her starving son, but was only able to find peas which he didn't like. She apologized for not being able to find anything else... and that's when I cried, because her maternal attitude reminded me of my mom. I can totally see my mom being like that, and then that made me start to think: These victims suffered from the worst bad luck. They didn't do anything. All it was was that fate/chance/whatever made them born the way they were, and they were punished for it. My mom and I were lucky that we weren't born in Rwanda... but there's nothing else special about us that would save us from the kind of fate Rwandans faced. And THAT really makes me angry and sad.

After that, I entered a dark, seemingly empty room which turned out to hold some of the skulls and limbs of the victims. That's when I broke down. I couldn't help it. I cried because it hurt so bad to see the actual remains and proof of the genocide right there in the display before me. It breaks my heart that people could actually do that to their own people. In some cases, former friends turned into killers. That's outrageous to me. Just shows you how what a powerful force an authority figure can have in mobilizing one group over another... one fabricated, made-up category of "race" over another.

This visit also gave me a reality check that I have been spending WAY too much energy worrying about unnecessary things in my life. I feel like I keep getting these reality checks. Hopefully they'll continue to affect me when I get back :)

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Later that afternoon, we took a bus taxi to the Wiboye Peace Village, a village comprised of orphans (their parents killed during the genocide), many of which are victims of rape and sexual assault. The last segment of the ride was on a rough dirt road and I felt like I was on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland because of how bumpy it was. Not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous about that taxi being able to make it intact... and us making it intact haha. But we did!

When we got there, some of the kids had a soccer ball and a couple girls started to kick the ball with them. More people joined in and eventually we had a big circle of all of us - the GYC delegates and the village kids - kicking around the ball. It was great! Good icebreaker.

But when we actually sat down to have a dialogue between the two groups, it got really uncomfortable and awkward. It's very uncomfortable to sit with a group you want to learn from but not be sure how to approach the sensitive topics you want to learn about, or if you should approach them at all. We introduced ourselves and told them that we were here in Rwanda to learn about human rights issues and that we came to learn about their community. When it came time to start asking each other questions, there was an awkward silence. I had plenty of things I wanted to know, but I feel like the questions I had weren't appropriate for a large group setting. I asked the first one and tried to pick an innocent, light question: "Do you grow any crops here?" It was so lame. I was just curious if their community was somewhat sustainable, but putting the question into words made it seem like I thought they were primitive or something. They laughed when I asked... =/

I also asked them what their reaction to our latest elections was, and if it made them think about the U.S. differently. The eldest guy (looked like he was in his mid-20s) answered most of the questions. He was clearly the leader of the group. He said that it made them very happy, and gave them a lot of hope to see that a Black man went from being unfairly treated to be the leader of the country.

After these initial lighter questions, the guy said that we could ask them about anything and that they would share whatever with us. So then we started talking about the pursuit of justice in Rwanda, and it was so interesting to listen to his answers. Academics have their opinions about what "justice" is - whether it is being tried by the ICTR, or being tried in the gacaca system. (the gacaca system is a local courts system where perpetrators go before their communities, confess their crime, and then the people forgive them.) After reading about the different opinions of justice in Rwanda, it was refreshing to hear what some Rwandans thought about it. It seems to me that Rwandans favor the gacaca system. The guy shed new light on it when he said that a killer won't accept the judgment of a foreign body, but he will accept judgment from his own friends and family. He won't really repent when it's in a foreign setting, but when he must confess on his own volition to people from his community, he has a greater sense of accountability. Makes sense. Critics of the gacaca system don't like how killers get off with such "lenient" punishments and prefer that they get jailtime... but in the minds of the community members, the confession seems to be enough. Everyone I've heard from has said something along the lines of: "It's more important for us to be united so that we can move forward and rebuild Rwanda." That attitude has certainly paid off considering how rapidly Rwanda has developed in the last 15 years.

I'm so glad GYC gave me the opportunity to go to the village. The talk was tense at times, but we ended our visit with refreshments, a tour of one of the houses, and pictures. One of the older guys asked me for my email, so looks like I got myself a penpal!

We also got invited to a woman's wedding coming up. Her invitation said something like: "I have found someone who has taken my heart, and will do anything I want him to do." It was so cute and funny. I hope we can make it to the wedding. It's the same day as our scheduled time to sit in on a gacaca hearing...