A Memorial

September 25^th, 2007

Today was a rather difficult day emotionally. We went to a Rwandan genocide memorial here in town. Not many people know about the genocide or even realize that it was genocide. They like to call it a civil war. In reality, the Hutus were wiping out the Tutsis. The two ethnicities lived side by side peacefully, even intermarrying, before they were colonized.

This is how it started out. The Germans first entered Rwanda, but years later the Belgians colonized it. The Belgians gave the people ID cards that categorized the people as Hutu or Tutsi. Unfortunately, they made race more of a class thing than an ethnic thing. Those who had less than 10 cows were classified as Hutus and those with 10 or more were classified as Tutsis. The Belgians gave the Tutsis more privileges than the Hutus and they were also the minority. As a result, the majority became jealous and bitter against the privileged minority.

Over many instances and many years, the Hutus would gang up on the Tutsis and kill some of them off. Rwanda finally gained its independence around 1962 (I believe, though I’m not sure if I remember correctly), but the wounds were too deep. In 1994 was when the true, all-out genocide happened. It wasn’t a spur of the moment genocide. It was planned by national leaders and carried out with much strategy. There were years of indoctrination of hatred toward Tutsis that made is possible. They wanted to rid Rwanda of the Tutsis. So they reduced them to less than human and made a list of ‘ten commandments’ which prohibited Hutus from carrying out business with Tutsis or marrying them or anything of that sort. Propaganda was used against the Tutsis. They chopped Tutsis up, threw them into latrines and graves while they were still alive, shot them, raped them, burned them, and bombed them. No one was spared; women, children, men, and even the elderly, who were so highly respected, were killed. Even the Catholic Church had a huge part in the genocide. Some reverends and pastors gave up their congregations to the killers. When I heard that, I could not understand how they justified that. Where in the Bible did they come up with justifications for those actions?

My favorite part of the memorial was the stories of mercy within all the hatred and killing. There were those who risked their lives to save others. They hid people and fed people. I wondered if I would have been merciful enough, brave enough to do the same for my fellow people, whether they were the ‘other’ ethnicity or not. I hoped that I would be that good. But then I realized that no one is good. We are all capable of doing horrible things. Then I also realized that we have to forgive those who took part in the killings of the thousands of people that died in the genocide. There should be justice, yes, but there should also be forgiveness. A really cool quote from the genocide memorial said, “There is no forgiveness without justice, there is not justice without humanity, and there is no humanity without forgiveness.” I’m not sure if I am remembering this quote correctly and I can’t remember who said it, but it’s something like that. But this also applies to us in the USA. When people terrorize our nation, we should be praying for them and for their families, that they will have a change of heart.

After we read all of the information about the genocide, there was a memorial to the children of Rwanda who died in the genocide. It was heartbreaking because there were pictures of the children and they wrote the children’s’ ages, what kind of food they liked, what their character was like, what they wanted to be when they grew up, their last words, and how they died. The first one was of a little girl of about 8 months who was hacked with a machete while she was lying in her mother’s arms.

Then there was a section that talked about the major genocides that have happened in the world, such as the Jews, the Armenians, the Cambodians, the Namibians, and many more. It reminded me of how fallen our world is and how none of us can have all the blame put on us. While we would like to blame the Germans and Hitler for so many problems and for genocide, he is not the only person and Germany is not the only nation that has been involved in genocide. Even the USA has been involved in genocide. We killed most of the Native Americans and totally displaced them. We had decided that it was our ‘manifest destiny’ that God would want us to have this land that was not even ours. I was surprised that that genocide was not mentioned in the memorial. But when I thought about it, I don’t think that most Americans admit that it was genocide.

After all of that, we were free to wander the grounds and look at the burial sites. There were platforms of cement covering the graves, so we could not see any bodies. One of the graves had a portion of it uncovered, but there were coffins inside. As I walked the beautiful grounds, I wondered if there was even a rock or a tree that remained from the time of the genocide that could tell the story of that horrific time. There was not a dry eye in that place when we were through.

I can tell you that this course in peace building is going to have a huge impact on my life and how I view the world. I will definitely become more aware of events that are happening in the world. One of the things that we mentioned to the professor beforehand was that we had never really heard much about the Rwandan genocide before. And our professor said, “Well, you have to separate society’s responsibility for informing you and your own responsibility to seek out information about the world.” He said something to that degree. They are not his exact words. But I realized how wrapped up I become in my own American life and my own little American world that I forget about what is happening in this big world. I don’t take the time to read the news or watch the news in order to keep up on the events of the world.

Now I am at home and I look out on our beautiful view of the city and imagine what it might have been like. I imagine gunshots firing all around, people yelling and screaming, bombs going off, and people being betrayed by their good friends right and left. But this concept is so foreign to me. I have never been in such a situation, so I cannot fathom it. I cannot imagine my own friends turning me in to my enemies or killing me.

We will be visiting many more sites about the genocide and we will be doing a presentation on the causes and effects of the genocide. My group is doing ours on the impact of the church. I am especially interested in this aspect. We would like to go to a prison and interview people about their part in the genocide, but we’ll see if that’s possible. The other aspects that groups are doing are the international community and the government. I look forward to seeing those presentations and learning more.

Tonight I will be telling my life story to the girls, so that oughta be real interesting. Right. Anyway, I’m sorry if I depressed you. Kinda. Thanks again for reading. It’s fun writing, knowing that people are reading.