Ex Post Facto Prelude

It is often said that the more you experience different things, the more you realize who you are...On the day of our departure, I had written about the hopes I had for this trip and the expectation of transformation...I write this three weeks after our return from our trip and little can be said of how it has changed me, not because it has not changed my perspective and enhanced my understanding, but because the true impact of a once-in-a-lifetime experience such as this will have its true realization not in the moment of the event, but in the days that lay before me and I am challenged to make choices and allow the true brunt of an experience such as this impact me in my daily life.

For now, each day I experience here is a day of heightened senses - an osmosis of my environment into my very physical being - and the instantaneous synapses firing in my brain. My emotional memory is reminding me of how I felt a short three weeks ago...I walk down the street on 12th Street in front of Cardozo and just as easily as I allow myself, I am transported back to Kigali, Rwanda and could easily be walking down the road from our Hotel Gorillas to the city centre. How easily I am transported, yet how stark the contrast, how tangible the difference.

For the sake of posterity, as they say, the next few weeks will be filled with recollections of the two weeks we spent in Rwanda and Tanzania.

Rwanda 'still teaching genocide'

Rwanda 'still teaching genocide'

More than 800,000 people died in the 1994 genocide

Rwanda's education minister is under strong pressure from MPs, over what they call "genocide ideology" present in some schools in the country.

A parliamentary investigation found cases where students were made to wear different uniforms according to their ethnic group and books inciting hatred.

Minister Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, who MPs could sack, says those behind such incidents have been punished.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in 100 days in the 1994 genocide.

Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Joseph Murekeraho has also been questioned by law makers.

Poems of hatred

Ms Mujawamariya says that the teachers responsible have been taken to court and those found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred sacked.

But the MPs say she has still not adequately answered their questions and have summoned her to appear before a commission for a third time.

Last month's parliamentary report said old books "distorting history" had been found in libraries.

Some claimed, for instance, that Tutsis should not be considered Rwandan.

The Hutu extremists behind the genocide said the Tutsis had come to Rwanda from Ethiopia.

Poems promoting hatred and division were also found in school libraries.

After the report was presented to parliament, a special commission was set up to deal with the matter as it was felt the education ministry had not done enough to resolve the problems - five years after they first surfaced.

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in the capital, Kigali, says the issue has shown the problems prevailing in Rwandan society 13 years after the genocide.

Many believe that if ethnic division is visible in schools, then the situation might be even worse at home, he says.

The present Tutsi-dominated government seized power in 1994, ending the genocide.

Retrospective

So it turns out that the internet access in both Rwanda and Tanzania was limited and slow, so if you have been checking daily for developments, I apologize for the lack of posting. We have only just arrived back in New York and I will do my best to recap the events of our trip. Please check back soon! But for now, here is an article with one perspective on reconciliation:

RWANDA: Living side by side – genocide victims and perpetrators reconcile the past

Photo: Noel King/IRIN

Genocide survivors and perpetrators live together peacefully in Rwanda's reconciliation village

KIGALI, 11 January 2008 (IRIN) - Before the Rwandan genocide, Mutiribambi Aziri and Jaqueline Mukamana were neighbours in the town of Nyamata, south of the capital Kigali. When the 100-day slaughter began in April 1994, Mukamana, a teenage Tutsi student, and Aziri, a Hutu farmer, found themselves on opposite sides as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, and ordinary Rwandans.

Mukamana went to fetch water from the community well and returned to find her entire family hacked to death by neighbours. She hid in the fields and then fled on foot to neighbouring Burundi.

Aziri was one of those whipped up into a killing spree by Rwanda’s hard-line Hutu administration. He did not murder Mukamana’s family but he admits to killing some of her neighbours with a machete.

Thirteen years later, they are neighbours again, chatting on the dusty roads and attending church services together.

“We help each other,” Aziri told IRIN. “When a member of one family is sick, we drop by.” Most importantly, he says, “our kids are friends”.

The 40 families living in Imidugudo, which translates as “reconciliation village”, in Nyamata, 30km south of the capital, Kigali, are part of an experiment whereby genocide survivors and confessed perpetrators live in the same community, in small tin-roofed houses they built themselves.

The village is the brainchild of Pastor Steven Gahigi, an Anglican clergyman who survived the genocide by fleeing to Burundi with his wife and two children. His mother, father and siblings all died and Gahigi thought he had lost his ability to forgive.

“I prayed until one night I saw an image of Jesus Christ on the cross,” Gahigi says. “I thought of how he forgave and I knew that I and others could also do it.”

Inspired by the vision, Gahigi began preaching forgiveness not only in Nyamata parish, but in the cramped prisons where hundreds of thousands of perpetrators were awaiting trial.

Seeking forgiveness

In 2003, faced with crowded prisons and a shortage of qualified judges, the Rwandan government began offering a provisional release to low-level perpetrators, including the sick, elderly and those who were children at the time of the genocide.

People tried by Rwanda’s traditional “gacaca” courts, in which members of the community act as judges, had their sentences halved if they confessed their involvement in the genocide.

Today, Gahigi provides spiritual council to both perpetrators and victims, most of whom work as small farmers, just as they did before the genocide.

The path to forgiveness was not easy, residents say.

Photo: IRIN

Skulls of genocides victims at the Murambi Genocide Memorial site in Gikongoro Province, southeastern Rwanda

“I did not think I could forgive,” Mukamana says, “until I heard the pastor’s message.” Now, she is fond of elderly Aziri, who often stops by her house to chat.

Residents say their ability to forgive is rooted in Christian beliefs.

“These people killed my parents,” Janet Mukabyagaju told IRIN. “It is not easy for me to forgive them. But God forgave. I must do the same.”

With funding from non-profit Christian organisation Prison Fellowship International, survivors and perpetrators agreed to live together harmoniously. The founding members of the community voted on who could live at Imidugudo - a practice that continues today.

Gahigi said they generally choose families who are most vulnerable due to poverty or illness.

Reconciliation

While Rwanda’s current administration has renounced the use of ethnic terminology and instead promotes reconciliation, many Rwandans say there is still a raging undercurrent of mistrust among those who survived the genocide and those who committed it.

Residents in Imidugudo say although the terms Hutu and Tutsi should no longer be a part of Rwandan society, they do not believe in painting over the past. They speak to their children about their roles in the genocide.

“Genocide has enormous consequences for those who did it and for those who survived,” Xavier Namay, an admitted perpetrator, told IRIN. “My children must know what I did so they can rebuild this country positively.”

nk/sr/mw

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Human Rights

[ENDS]