Since I'm about to move back to the US, I wanted to visit Rwanda before I left the East Africa region. My friends Wendy and Phil have been living in Kigali for the past year, and I thought it was about time that I made my way down there.
Kigali is a pretty incredible city.... but you would probably only think so if you've frequented other large African cities. The roads are pothole free. The streets are clean and trash-less. There seems to be organization and security- people following the rules. Which is most shocking when you know where the country has come from...
Which brings me back to the genocide memorial...
I knew a bit about what happened in Rwanda in the 90's just from general knowledge, from living in Uganda and hearing the events of our neighboring country referenced, and (mostly) from watching Hotel Rwanda. But still the memorial was really educational and helped me understand the conflict even further.... For example, I didn't realize that the genocide took place almost 30 years after independence- when the whole Tutsi/Hutu divide really emerged. The hate and tribalism had been brewing in Rwanda for three decades. It wasn't just an automatic switch over to the dehumanization of the opposing tribe. It takes time for that kind of view to develop, and it shed light on why the killing of almost a million people had taken place so quickly- it honestly seems like it had been a long time coming with all the hate that had been building up.
There were a lot of graphic images and descriptions in the memorial that gives you a really negative sentiment about mankind after going through the exhibits. And not just being appalled that my fellow man could be capable of such atrocities, but I actually found myself thinking that it was "those people" who were so monstrous. Making that mental separation.... thinking of Rwandans as "those people"... it directed my distaste towards a specific people group and made me feel like I wasn't part of it. I just kept thinking "I can't believe they did this to each other.."
But then, after you leave the exhibit, there is a second one upstairs that is dedicated to instances of genocide that have happened over the past hundred years all over the world. And even though it was hard to see, it was honestly good to be reminded that tragic events of this magnitude are not limited to Rwanda or even Africa. The exhibit had pictures of the genocide that took place in Germany, Kosovo, Armenia, Cambodia.... Mass murders that I had no knowledge of before going through that exhibit. And it seems like the extinction of people groups has happened on every continent that people live in... Even on our own (lest we forget how our American ancestors whipped out the Native Americans and took their land).
So I ended up walking away from that memorial with a fresh view of the evils that humans are capable of committing towards each other.... all humans. And the common thread I saw in all the different cases of genocide was dehumanization. Whether the dominant group called the persecuted ones cockroaches, or savages, or vermin.... They took steps to make them seem less human, which makes committing such crimes against them feel less wrong. If you don't view someone as being human like you, it becomes easier to hack them with a machete or escort them into a gas chamber. The results of taking a group's humanity away are terrifying.
I know this post has been far more dark and twisty than my usual blogs.... but it was an experience that impacted me in a way that brought about some dark and twisty thoughts about our situation as humans and what happens when we forget that we are all the same. All created in God's image. All people with feelings and souls and life stories. So let us not forget.
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