COLUMN: Lessons Learned in Rwanda
Under the Surface
Janae Lapp
Issue date: 3/11/10 Section: News
I'm in Kigali now, the capital city of Rwanda. It's quite possibly the cleanest city in East Africa, and certainly the safest. I am still trying to get over the fact that the gutters are swept out almost every day, that vehicles yield for pedestrians, and that the public transport system is fairly reliable. It feels like an oasis of modernity compared to Kampala.
This is all surface-level, though. There is a lot about Rwanda beneath the exterior of general peace and optimism. Today we went on a field trip to the Gisozi genocide memorial. Rwanda has many memorial sites for the atrocity of 1994. Almost 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were brutally slaughtered by their friends and neighbors within the span of a hundred days. This particular memorial serves as a mass burial ground for the bodies of the victims found in Kigali. It is also an educational site, a way to commemorate the victims, and a research center for genocide experts from around the world.
Rwandans don't talk about the genocide easily. Sixteen years later there are still horrible repercussions: orphans, women who were systematically raped by HIV positive men, perpetrators who have not yet been tried, and millions who need to forgive in order to move on with life. Victims are living side-by-side with the men who killed their families. No one in the entire country is untouched by the events of the genocide.
Vestine, our Rwandan friend, walked with us through the memorial. She softly explained parts of it to me as we looked at the displays. "Imagine, they [the Hutus] would look at your physique and determine whether or not to kill you. They would measure your nose to see how long it was. If you were tall and slender they said you were a Tutsi, and they killed you. They killed many of their own that way."
We stopped in front of a small plaque that talked about how violence continued to reoccur through 1997. "People were afraid that another genocide would happen. They were afraid of attacks from across the border in Congo," said Vestine.
This is all surface-level, though. There is a lot about Rwanda beneath the exterior of general peace and optimism. Today we went on a field trip to the Gisozi genocide memorial. Rwanda has many memorial sites for the atrocity of 1994. Almost 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were brutally slaughtered by their friends and neighbors within the span of a hundred days. This particular memorial serves as a mass burial ground for the bodies of the victims found in Kigali. It is also an educational site, a way to commemorate the victims, and a research center for genocide experts from around the world.
Rwandans don't talk about the genocide easily. Sixteen years later there are still horrible repercussions: orphans, women who were systematically raped by HIV positive men, perpetrators who have not yet been tried, and millions who need to forgive in order to move on with life. Victims are living side-by-side with the men who killed their families. No one in the entire country is untouched by the events of the genocide.
Vestine, our Rwandan friend, walked with us through the memorial. She softly explained parts of it to me as we looked at the displays. "Imagine, they [the Hutus] would look at your physique and determine whether or not to kill you. They would measure your nose to see how long it was. If you were tall and slender they said you were a Tutsi, and they killed you. They killed many of their own that way."
We stopped in front of a small plaque that talked about how violence continued to reoccur through 1997. "People were afraid that another genocide would happen. They were afraid of attacks from across the border in Congo," said Vestine.
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