Rwanda

Two days ago we drove to Rwanda after spending some time in Mbarra, a city in Western Uganda. There we visited a Millenium Development Project Village sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and also visited a refugee camp. This was very interesting and I hope to blog about it later, but right now I want to talk about my experience in Rwanda so far.

The minute we walked accross the Rwandan border, we noticed a difference. The roads were smoother, potholes were filled in. The streets were clean and brick side-walks lined the streets. Shockingly, the city wasn't dusty like Kampala is. The roads had white lines to divide lanes, the main roads had 4 lanes, and the medians were wide and fillled with flowers, bushes, and trees. Granted, this sounds like a typical city by Western standanrds, but after two weeks in Kampala where lanes don't exist and potholes are called "lakes," the sight of a traffic light and lane dividers was shocking.

The buildings were nicely designed with elegant architecture and paint. The round-abouts had artwork and fountains in the center and we passed by several gorgeous parks. The city was just so clean. We kept repeating this over and over in the car, it seemed so strange not to see trash lining the streets and to have anarchic traffic. Instead of the smog and dust of Uganda, there were brick sidewalks and clean cool air with lots of pretty trees.

From the vans we oohed and ahhed at how "nice" the city was. Gone was our appreciation of the hospitality of Ugandans and our gratitude for their survival spirit. Our only gauge now for the merits of the two cities was based on Western conceptions of  modernity and wealth. Several peers stated that they hoped there would be riots after the elections in Uganda so that we could "stay in Rwanda forever." While these benchmarks of the merits of a city frustrated me, I must admit the Western influenc visible in the city (organization, cleanliness, order) comforted me and I felt relieved to be out of the anarchy of Kampala.

This excitement at the cleanliness of Rwanda changed yesterday, however. Yesterday the group visited three genocide memmorials. First, we visited the national genocide memmorial which has been built largely by foreign aid. It's in four parts: the children's memmorial, an exhibit on the history of genocide in the 20th century, a Rwandan genocide exhibit, and then mass graves.

The exhibit on genocide in general was more interesting and informative than moving, but it was good to learn how marked the 20th century was by genocid.

Then, we saw the exhibit on the Rwandan genocide. It first showed the background to the events--from the colonization of Rwanda, to Rwanda's independance, to the first tensions between Hutus and Tutsis, the genocide itself, and finally the aftermath. One of the most powerful parts of the exhibit were the videos playing. They had raw footage of the massacres, pictures of churches filled with bodies upon bodies that had been left to rot. Photos of bloodied machetes and the wounds they caused. A little boys machete wound deep in his skull. And a baby being chopped by a man's machete.

We heard testimonies of women who had been raped by 15 men, mothers who watched their children be murdered, children who whitenessed their parents be burned alive. It was chilling.

The pictures of schools filled with the bodies of girls in their school uniforms was haunting. They were so young.

The children's memmorial was also difficult to see. There were about 15-20 profiles of children with their picture and information. Their favorite food, favorite thing to do, last words, and how they were killed. Another room had thousands of thousands of pictures of children who had been killed. It was overwhelming.

The mass graves were endless. 250,000 people are buried at the memmorial.

Then, we visited two churches where people had been killed. This was the hardest part. There were just shelves and shelves of skulls, hip bones, femurs, and the bones of peoples arms just stacked on shelves. In one mass grave that we went into, the bones of 50,000 people were piled 15 feet high, just laying there inches from me. The combined grief and clausterphobia was almost unbearable. The stench of death permeated the grave. It was the most morbid thing I have experienced.

A lot of the skulls were crushed or had machate marks on them. One still had a spearhead through it. 50,000 skulls stacked staring at me with their empty eye sockets.

Then, there were the clothes. Piles and piles of clothes of some 15,000 people who had been killed on the grounds of the church stacked 3 feet high covering the floor. You could see the bullet holes and blood stains on the clothing. It made it all feel so real. To see the clothing ripped from machate cuts just lying there in heaping piles.

Blood stains on the wall, splattered as high as 30 feet.

I held a Tutsi and Hutu ID card.I saw the rosaries they had been wearing when victims died. The ball point pens they had been carrying.

I saw their bones, I smelt their death, I saw their blood, their clothing, the machetes still stained with blood, the bullet holes, and I walked in their grave among the bones of 50,000 people.

How am I suppossed to proccess this? I don't really know what to do with these emotions. Pitying the Rwandans does nothing. Grieving is appropriate, but grief, confusion, anger, regret, sorrow need to transform into some sort of comprehension that I can't arrive at. I cry out at the injustice, but how does that pain alter my life and my future?

I think, the West should have solved this, we had the resources. But it's also arrogant to think that the West (the nations responsible for colonization and diving Rwandans into Hutus and Tutsis in the first place) could have fixed it all. To say, there's major ethnic conflict going on and of course the West can make it all better, it's just arrogant. Yes, let us violate their soverighnty and save the day.

This is a deep tension for me--how do you prevent injustices and genocide or aid a situation without striking a "west is best" colonial tone? I need more academic experienc to answer this question.

Let me leave with this: it was a very, very difficult day. While I started at marveling at the cleanliness of the streets of Rwanda, I ended with imaging the bodies that had once filled the streets and am still haunted by the smell and image of those 50,000 skulls surrouding me.