There is a spectacular dichotomy about life in Rwanda. In 1994, at a time when the rest of the world was grappling with a new fangled invention called the internet and learning how to send e-mails, the people of Rwanda were embroiled in a 3-month period of genocide where an estimated 80,000 people lost their lives – often hacked to death by their neighbors. And yet as Christi and I begin our exploration of the capital, Kigali, you would not believe – at least at a superficial level – that the country had only recently embarked upon this self-destructive genocide. The streets of Kigali are the cleanest in Africa, probably cleaner than most European cities. The median age in Rwanda is only 18 (for obvious and appalling reasons), which means the people are young, energetic, and there is sense that the future is bright and full of possibilities. Let’s hope Rwanda’s recovery continues and its ugly past does not surface again, although quite how you forgive your neighbor for murdering your father or raping your mother is beyond me.
The roots of this tragedy lie, of course, with the European colonization of Africa in the 19th century. The continent was carved up and countries created without regard for the existing territories inhabited by the indigenous Peoples. Time and again the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Germans, and Spanish exploited Africa to their own ends. And yet none of these countries were directly to blame for the events that transpired in Rwanda. On this occasion it was a European minnow, Belgium, that set in place events that a hundred simmering years later exploded into grotesque violence. There are two major ethnic groups in Rwanda, the majority Hutu (84% of the population) and the minority Tutsi (15%). However, the Belgians concentrated power among the Tutsi and effectively disenfranchised the Hutu. By the early 1990’s, and despite the President’s of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi both being moderate Hutu leaders, extremist Hutu were planning their ‘Final Solution’ – the elimination of all Tutsi from Rwanda. On April 6th 1994 a plane carrying both Hutu presidents was shot down on its approach to Kigali airport (most likely by Hutu extremists, but the attack was conveniently blamed on the Tutsi), providing an excuse to begin the genocide.
Out of a population of 7.3 million people, it has been estimated that 1,174,000 people were killed in the 100 days of the genocide (that’s 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute). It is further estimated that only 300,000 (out of an original population of 1.1 million) Tutsi survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to rape, are now HIV-positive. There were about 400,000 orphans and nearly 85,000 of them were forced to become heads of families, like our driver-guide, Patrick.
We learn this and more at the Kigali Memorial Centre, which is built on mass graves containing an estimated 250,000 bodies. Everything in Rwanda at this time is estimated because no one knows for sure exactly how many people were killed, who was guilty and who was innocent. And if the Rwandan genocide is not a sufficiently sobering event, then the museum has information on other equally grim examples of the evil that men do including the Jewish Holocaust, the Balkans conflict, Armenia, and Cambodia to name but a few. It is a very disturbing day and for me at least difficult it is difficult to comprehend even a single murder, let alone death on such a massive scale. One sliver of light on such a grim day is a visit to the hotel made famous in the movie Hotel Rwanda, the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Here, Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager played by Don Cheadle in the movie hid and protected 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees during the genocide. He is Hutu; his wife is Tutsi. Now that is inspiring.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching tale of love and test tubes.
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