Two Faced

I can't help but write a bit more after talking with another intern, Margot. We talked about how beautiful the country is, how surprisingly normal, how seemingly ordinary. The Rwanda I see when I close my eyes involves screaming, explosions, gun fire, blood soaked machetes. I can hear the scenes from Hotel Rwanda in my head. When I open my eyes, the genocide is gone. I cannot tell a Hutu from a Tutsi, I cannot tell who killed, I cannot tell who fled. I can't even see a reflection of the genocide in the population numbers. The destruction of the poor areas in Kigali looks like the social consequences of being poor, not a result of genocide.
This is what really seeing is all about. The amputees on crutches got their limbs hacked off by machetes. The people with scars across the backs of their ankles, they had their Achilles Tendon slashed to prevent them from fleeing. The Hutus would cut this tendon and then try to get back to kill the wounded later. The wounded Tutsi can only flee as fast as his arms can drag his own bloody body. Many people here have large, disfiguring scars all over their limbs--again, machetes. Where are the people who caused this? The people who killed? Who aided the killers? They're in the big black flat bed trucks wearing the bright pink uniforms. Prisoners who were found guilty for having a role in the genocide. There they are in a truck going down the street. The punishment for these people reflects a desire for the country to heal: the Hutu killers must do volunteer work to build houses for the remaining Tutsis. The pink jumpsuit is their work uniform.
I listened to an excellent PRI (see NPR) special podcast on Rwanda before coming here in which the killers were interviewed about their current thoughts on their deeds and Rwandan officials discussed the punishments chosen for them. Are the Hutu Power individuals truly sorry? Some claim the killers are simply admitting their roles and apologizing because they know they will be given volunteer sentences and pardoned. Rwandan officials are juggling between punishment and forgiveness, hatred and love, justice and revenge. This country craves peace, but how do you reach that goal when no punishment is equal to the taking of all those lives? How do you love your enemy? How do you simply forgive? Tutsis are mixed about this as, many would expect. Some feel a life for a life, others feel there was no sense in the genocide, so there will be no perfect punishment. There will not be peace here until there is forgiveness. There will not be forgiveness until the victims can finally find peace in their own hearts, not until the victims can lay down their anger. I don't know how someone goes about doing that.