The Geno-Sidetrip: Part 1 (Rwanda)

The Geno-Sidetrip: Mixing Triumph and Tragedy on the Road

On holiday we often seek the easy. Whether a quiet place to relax or a raucous place to cut loose, we hope for an opportunity to turn off our minds and escape for a moment from reality. Mix in a dose of inspiration and you can count on returning refreshed with a new perspective. I too find bliss in this, however, some of the most important trips I have undertaken have been just the opposite. I find that sometimes escaping reality instead leads me face to face with it. As happenstance allows, humanitys’ most tragic events often take place in the periphery of earth’s most inspiring places. Its misguided to go on a trip with the sole focus of witnessing tragedy. But consider that Europe’s largest square, Asia’s most vast ruins and the last of Africa’s most magnificent species are all on the edge of the 20^th centuries’ saddest moments. To miss them is to miss a glimpse into the human experience. One that is more real and confounding than 100 of the worst work weeks stuffed into a single minute. They will leave you not saddened but instead with a sense of fortune, a depth of appreciation for life you may have previously thought impossible. Hardly is there a better place to learn about cultures than to witness the memorials of the world’s genocides. Not because of the novelty or the persistent question that inevitably rises; “How could anyone do this?”, but because you learn that these people were not born barbarians, not heathens or serial killers. They were people just like you.

Rwanda
On earth there are places so green and so alive that you think vines will grow around your boots if you don’t keep walking. The beauty of central Africa is anything but subtle and the ardent traveler will find that it does not come without a price. Where there are monkey’s, there are mosquito’s and where there is green, there is rain. Here, tiny epiphytic plants climb and weave up mossy trunks. Hanging ferns and bamboo are in contest for what little light penetrates the canopy. Life crowds everywhere. The forest's sounds are astonishing: waves of chirping insects, a thousand bird calls, a crash in the limbs and leaves above. Though you may have to stomach humidity and a bus-beaten sore butt, you are guaranteed to find inspiration in the beauty of a place so full of life.

In Spring of 1994, Mt. Gorillas were foraging these same forests on the eastern slopes of the Virunga volcanoes and the country of Rwanda just below was on the verge of implosion. Deep rooted tensions had pushed Rwandan’s over the tipping point of ration, resulting in the unthinkable. Fear bred more fear and a population was locked in chaos. By the end of April, Rwanda’s population was reduced by nearly one million people and yet another genocide had taken place. To lose such a number in the US would touch us all, most Americans would likely know a victim. Rwanda was a country of only nine million. Every Rwandan lost family members, friends, enemies. All were either guilty or afflicted. Neighbors were forced to kill neighbors.

Now, only fifteen years later, the uninformed could easily travel through Rwanda without seeing obvious signs of the genocide. Rwanda may be the safest East African nation, Kigali is as safe as any city in the USA and its people are some of the kindest on earth. Rwanda is roughly the size of Maryland and has Africa’s highest population density. You need not travel far to see a memorial to the genocide. Rwanda’s capital of Kigali is home to the country’s largest and most accessible, the Kigali Genocide Memorial. To visit here is to come as close to understanding this tragedy as one can having not lived it. Interpretive displays explain the lead up to the tragedy from its roots in Belgium colonialism to the Hutu/Tutsi conflict, the propaganda, the genocide itself as well as liberation of Rwanda by now President Kagame. To say that the photo’s are graphic is the deepest of understatements, but they are fitting once you learn that nearly all of the victims were not shot or gassed, but bludgeoned to death by farmers’ tools such as hoes, machetes and hammers. Rooms throughout the memorial carry articles of clothing, belongings and even remains of the dead. A superman blanket stands out among the clothing, likely sent over from the US. When I stood there staring, I thought that the little boy who grew up with that blanket at home didn't have to worry about his neighbors coming over to kill him with a machete. I had a superman blanket. As you explore the memorial, you are drawn to a circular wall. Hanging on this wall are Polaroids and sun faded photos of victims dangling from threads, fluttering as you slowly walk by. Feelings of empathy morph into confusion and anger. The most moving display is upstairs, the Children’s hall. There for I first felt both the sadness of their devastation and the fortune of my life. I had not lived this horror, instead these children had. On the walls of a narrow corridor hang a series of enlarged photo’s of children. Below each photo is a placard explaining the child's name and simple details about them including their favorite things in life and finally how they died. The presentation is simple, non graphic and devastatingly moving. The simple beauty of a child greets you. The picture captures your imagination as you wander about the sound of their voice knowing all along that that voice is now silent. As learn the brief story of their life and subsequent death, the sense of waste and loss is monumental. The stories are not altogether different from one another: they like Fanta and chips, they love to play soccer or read. But their faces make them individuals and to see one after the next is to feel that their lives someone live on, if only a little, through you. One photo stands in the back of my mind. Two sisters killed at their grandparents home. The photo was taken by their mother who likely discovered them. Her daughters and parents were hacked to death by a machete. It was not until I witnessed these displays that I felt a part of it somehow. That this was not a Rwandan problem but a problem of humanity.

We finished our tour of the facility by walking through the gardens and mass graves outside. Afternoon rains pushed us on and we spent the afternoon not quietly depressed but informed and in conversation. There are many memorials throughout Rwanda. Possibly Rwanda’s most poignant display of the genocide is called the Murambi memorial. This former school is Rwanda's clearest display of the genocide where hundreds of victims lay in their dying states, their bodies' preserved with lime. I imagine this memorial is worth a visit. However, after seeing the Kigali memorial, we were more interested in learning how Rwandans cope today, 15 years later. Of course one cannot bring up surviving Rwandan or simply mention the genocide casually in conversation. We observed the people as they were, happy and forward looking with a strong hint of shock and even exhaustion behind their eyes. If a new friend brought it up, we would listen with a compassionate ear.

Witnessing the raw beauty of the mountain gorilla's provides a fitting lead up to the genocide memorial. Kindhearted trackers lead your through villages and up mountain slopes to the nests of the gorilla families. One must surely wonder how such amazing people could be drawn into such despair. Even more, how they have began to recover so quickly? Experiencing this nation so quickly after the genocide is to witness a near miracle happening before your eyes. Rwandan leaders have engaged their country into a rapid but tempered national reconciliation, largely changing the face of their nation from one of desperate tribes to one Rwandan people. They have even changed their flag. The more one explores the country, the more you feel a sense of trauma that lies quietly beneath its population but that trauma is fully eclipsed by their driving hope. To visit Rwanda is peer safely into central Africa, into the eyes of a silverback and into a book of unforgettable lessons. The memorial's lessons are many, but mainly they teach that the genocidaires and their victims were not Rwandans, but people. People who have fears, loves and hates. Who had governments and social order and long rich history’s. People not unlike us.

end of part 1
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