Wrapping your head around it…

As we live in a house full of internationally minded individuals (mostly women, woot!) we often find ourselves in the midst of all-night discussions about being somewhere with such a vibrant but tragic past. We often find ourselves discussing with our Jewish roommates the differences and similarities between the ’94 genocide and the Holocaust. And sometimes we find ourselves stumbling over our very expensive, very elite educations on the question of : How do Rwandans do it? How do they forgive?

It’s interesting living somewhere that is post-conflict, but that so badly wants to move forward from their past. I struggle with their motives, but understand their intentions of not wanting to be referred to as 'post-conflict.' If you call your country post-conflict for so long does that impede your ability to move forward in the international arena and does it make you look vulnerable? To be honest, I think Paul Kagame wants his country to no longer be the charity case of Africa and wants to do things like ban the omnipresent primitive wall security barriers (Broken glass bottles cemented to the top of houses' security walls to keep intruders out) because his country is safe now. Again, I understand his intentions, but I still struggle with the motives behind trying to move forward in a rapid pace. This country is peaceful and this country has made leaps and bounds in progress. But I still find it too soon to declare that they’ve officially moved on from the effects of the genocide. RA2 has suggested that for them to be post-conflict they will have to peaceably make it into a time where all the children/young people that survived the Genocide are adults or when there are no longer any survivors.

When we think on the progress being made, RA2 and I often find ourselves comparing it to the Civil Rights movement. The United States continues to be plagued by the remnants of the Civil Rights movement, as well as extremely racist events, commentary and associations. I’m not sure we can even say our country is “post-civil rights movement” as we still fight daily to protect the things our elders fought for in the Civil Rights movement. Let’s not even start on the way we’ve moved backwards (and yes, sometimes, forwards) in rights for women. But somehow, Rwanda has managed to skip a lot of the strife and growing pains that come along with progress after a tragedy. Genocide victims are living next to genocidaires in every village, slum and neighborhood in this country and you don’t hear everyday about violence between the two groups. Some of the Rwandan Genocidaires were responsible for some of the most brutal and senseless killings (more to come on that in our entry about Nyamata), and although many of them have been brought to justice through local gacaca courts – a lot of the ‘lower ranking’ individuals live daily with victims and victims’ family members on a day to day basis. How does that work? Are Rwandans just hardwired differently? Are Rwandans just more able to let go of their grudges and forgive? I know they don’t forget, but are they able to simply forgive and move forward in the name of a peaceful Rwanda?

There are so many things we think about since we’ve gotten to this country; but this is one that we often come back to : How do they do it? Where did they find this capacity to forgive? On this teeny-dot-on-the-map country in the middle of East Africa, how have these people figured out how to move forward? Is it because in a country where some people had the capacity to commit brutal acts of violence against their countrymen, other people have the capacity to forgive on some of the most grand scales imaginable?

We don’t know, but we’re working on figuring it out.