The Genocide

     Of COURSE the first stop of our upcoming week's travels was the Genocide Center. Being only about 20 years ago, the Genocide is very much in the forefront of the Rwandan collective consciousness.  I was there in November, but I understand that the time from April to July, the anniversary of the actual 100 days of genocide, is a time when Rwandans are even more self-reflective and sad.
     There are two things in particular that made an impression on me regarding the Genocide.  The

first and most obvious is the sheer scale of the thing.  People were killed all over Rwanda, not just Kigali, and so many excavation sites and farm fields are even now turning up genocide victims.  At the Genocide Center, it is shocking enough to see that over a quarter million people are buried there now, but even more shocking that there is an open chamber to accommodate the more and more victims whose remains are being found.   And another somber reminder that the Genocide is a MODERN phenomenon, not something that happened in deep dark past, are the dozens of floral tributes brought by mourners who are grieving people who were lost in the mourners' 
lifetimes.
     But perhaps what touched me even more profoundly was how Rwanda has "moved on" from the bloody tragedy.  Right after the Genocide, thousands of "genocidaires" were arrested and charged with thousands of counts of murder.  Rwanda was committed to due process for all those charged and found that it took at least a year or two to get even one accused genocidaire to trial.  They had tens of thousands of prisoners awaiting trial, and it was estimated that they couldn't get the job of trying all the accused genocidaires done for at least 75 years.  
     And Rwanda was (and still is) a poor country.  How could they afford to imprison all these people for so long a time, especially when they had whole communities to re-build?

Ready for newly discovered victims

     How they resolved this issue simply blows me away.  They assigned every district of Kigali and every village in Rwanda to have their own local councils, which were directed to hear the cases against the accused and to arrive at a just method of reconciliation.  People confronted their former neighbors who killed their own family members and perhaps maimed them with their machetes.  Apologies were made.  Lots of tears were shed, and lots of property was exchanged.  And the genocidaires were released from prison and reintegrated into Rwandan society.  Can you IMAGINE????
     When I walked and drove around thousands of Rwandans, it was impossible for me not to think,  "Hmmm . . . .  were YOU a genocidaire?  Or how about you?"  Maybe that's an American way of thinking.  I simply cannot imagine Americans being able to foregive and forget on this scale. 

Grief expressed in flowers