[Part 1, which hardly bears repeating, was written in an internet cafe in Ruhengeri, Rwanda, on a French keyboard with all the keys in different places than normal, and the electricity going out at regular intervals, and sent to those few people whose email address I could remember. This email (Part 2) is being sent to everyone I think might be interested, because we have returned with a strong feeling of the need to give testimony to what we have seen and experienced.]
Philip and I travelled to Kigali, Rwanda to visit our close friends, Laura and Matt Chico, who are living and working in Kigali. Laura is working with the Africa Great Lakes Initiative, a Quaker organization which runs a school and conducts workshops on children and youth, AIDS, and anti-violence initiatives, among other things. Laura's specialty is promoting peace and conciliation efforts, and she has been conducting anti-violence workshops for the gacaca judges (more on the meaning of that, later in this letter). Matt's field is public health, and he works with US AID in Rwanda.
Our first day: After being met and welcomed by Laura, Matt, and Jonathan Levering, who has stayed on in Kigali for a month to teach English at the Quaker school, we learned that the next day, Saturday, was to be very quiet -- everyone stay off the streets for the morning -- because the last morning of each month was devoted to community service, and only those taking part were permitted on the street. (In fact, when Laura and Charles, who drove his car as an unofficial taxi, went to the airport to pick up Molly -- our cousin, who is spending the month there doing a project on how the Africa Great Lakes Initiative work meshes with the government directives on anti-violence initiatives -- they were stopped twice and questioned about what they were doing out on the street, rather than participating in umaganda -- the community service -- and feared that Charles might be commandeered to work until noon or ticketed.)
Philip and I promptly said we wanted to participate in umaganda, so Laura called her friend Gaston to escort us down. Gaston showed up about 8:00 a.m., Matt and Laura handed us a machete and a weed-whacker, and we started out. Initially Philip carried both, until Gaston said that if I was going to be on the street I should have a tool in my hand. So there we are, walking down the side of a small mountain to the town center, along dirt roads (the roads in this part of Kigali are not paved, but are interestingly rutted), carrying machetes -- with everyone else on the street likewise carrying machetes...... Talk of surreal!
In a sense this may have been the tale of reborn Rwanda -- using the tools of death for a mission of hope and a sense of the future.
There were a few hundred people participating in the clearing of a huge field for a community center and playground and athletic fields; and clearing a road and a cemetery. Since I was distinctly unfit for lugging huge rocks from a field, we became part of the road and cemetery clearing crew. Someone handed me a long pole, to put tension on the grasses so I could cut through them. It soon became clear that the mission here was to show up, take a few whacks at the grass, and schmooze with your neighbors. However, since Philip had no neighbors he wished to schmooze with, he put in a day's work that was amazing! A couple of people felt they had to keep working with him, so one portions of our cemetery was cleared almost to the point that people could reach the gravesites. (Does anyone in my family feel we should meet on Staten Island and emulate this effort???). After we had been working a little while, the mayor of the area came to thank us and show us the plans for the community center. He introduced us to the mayor of the larger community, a woman, and together they laid out what they were doing. As well as contributing through work, each person was expected to give some money toward the project. The community had a machine to prepare the ground once the large rocks were removed, but the pile-driver operator was a Jehovah's Witness who could not work on Saturday, so he would do his job on Monday.
After about 1 1/2 hours of work, the we were informed that there would be a community meeting at the soccer field to discuss the impending prisoner release, and answer community concerns about it. It is estimated that 500,000 people participated in the genocide, which resulted in over 1 million deaths in a 100 day rampage. Approximately 100,000 have been in jail for the past 10 years, awaiting trial. That weekend, 40,000 were to be released to their home communities, to be tried in the gacaca courts. 1000 of those prisoners were to come to this community (which seems to have numbered about 8000 people, so you can imagine the impact this is going to have). Furthermore, if you follow the arithmetic, 100,000 people had been arrested and jailed. Many more of the genocaires had fled to the Congo, Uganda, and across other borders. However, this leaves a great many people living in the community for the past 10 years who have neither fled nor been jailed, and whose names may well surface in the forthcoming trials.
Gacaca literally translates as "on the grass". It is the traditional method by which
neighbors get together to discuss their differences and settle disputes. The high criminals and
masterminds of the genocide are being tried in Arusha, Tanzania, by international tribunal. In
Rwanda, there are four levels of trial: (1) Planners, organizers, media hate-mongers, inciters
(2) People who carried the
killings out with malice. This includes those accused of
murder and grievous personal injury.
These people are not eligible for gacaca hearings, and will be tried in the traditional court
system.
(3) People who
participated in the killings and were part of the mobs, but were not
clearly identified as having killed
anyone, although present and wielding weapons.
(4) Crimes against property: looting, theft, etc.
There had been 5
categories, but in the interest of expediting trials, the categories were reduced, and the
compositon of the gacaca tribunals reduced from 19 judges to 9 per tribunal. The gacaca judges are
elected "people of integrity", chosen by their neighbors to preside.
As we walked to the community meeting place, about half the workers took the opportunity to head for home.... The rest of us went and sat for about half an hour in the wrong soccer field. Philip and I were mildly concerned, because Gaston, our guide, was nowhere in sight, and we were not totally sure that we could find our way back. However, after a bit, someone came and directed us all from our lovely, shady seats on some large logs to the correct soccer field, which actually had a lean-to for shade which held about half the crowd of over 500 persons. We -- being mazungas (foreigners, and white ones at that) -- got seats in the shade. About 250 people remained standing in the midday sun for the1 1/2 hours of the meeting, yet none left. Occasional cell-phones rang and were turned off unanswered.
People are deeply concerned about the prisoner release. The prisoners have just been delivered to the neighborhoods. People can see them -- They are all dressed in bright pink (clearly chosen for maximum embarrassment) -- and many know them personally. The meeting is to discuss the need for their reintegration into society, if possible.
The first official gave reasons for not taking revenge; the need to be one community. Maintaining these people in jail is expensive. Better to have them in the community, where they will work for the community for three days each week and themselves three days, thus repaying the community, than to continue to maintain them at public expense in jail. Each time a hand went up, it was another public official adding additional thoughts on why prisoner release was of benefit to the society. Clearly these officials had an excellent grasp of bureaucracy in a public forum....
Ultimately, three persons from the community got questions in: The first voiced concerns of security. Laura explained to us later that there had been a prior release of 40,000 prisoners two years earlier, with many acts of revenge and violence. Murders were committed -- by the released prisoners on people who had turned them in, and by community members avenging murders allegedly done by those released. The answers to this question dealt with increased police awareness and training, and the need for the community to treat everyone as one community.
The second questioner turned to the mayor and said: "My question is for the mayor, and does not deal with the gacaca process. A paved road was promised our neighborhood four years ago, money was raised, and the road building has not begun. What are you doing about the road? Why do we have a shortage of water, and what are you doing about it? Why does our electricity constantly go out?" Everyone cheered.
The third question dealt with reintegrating people back into the community. The answer pointed out the personal problems of these people. Many have had their wives leave them, marry others, establish new lives. They have no jobs, no money, no status, and have guilt. They will need help and support. (The response mentioning wife remarriage resonated with the crowd).
The mayor then addressed the second question: "We had funding for 12 miles of road, but
inflation has occurred and there is now only enough for 8 miles. We have learned that the government
is going to build a road to Burundi that is scheduled to go through this neighborhood, so we have decided
to save our money and wait for the Burundi road." Is this a bureaucrat, or what! He then
suggested that the people concerned about water shortages get together, hire a dowse, and build a well.
Note: up at Matt and Laura's we have been running out of water. They have a
huge water tank from which they fill a smaller barrel outside the kitchen door, and have sizeable buckets
in the bathroom for sponge baths and flushing when the water doesn't run, as it hadn't for days. All
of these were drained, and we were almost down to the point of using water only for drinking.
The meeting came to a close on this note; and Gaston found us all a ride up the hill. At this meeting, as at all events throughout our stay in Rwanda, people showed up and translated for us. Translations were either in English or French, and it was surprising how much French came back to both Philip and I under the pressure of that or learn Kinya-Rwanda. Actually, Philip developed quite a good vocabulary in Kinya-Rwanda.
You may think that this is enough for one day, but we had barely begun..... When we arrived back at Matt and Laura's we learned that the work-campers (a youth group composed of students from the US, Congo, Kenya, and Rwanda) were going by van to two churches that were the sites of particularly brutal genocides, and that there was room for us. Molly had arrived, and she and Jonathan decided to come also -- but we couldn't all fit in the van, and they decided to stay behind since they would be there for a month, and probably have another opportunity, but we wouldn't. The van nominally held 18 people. Somehow 19 fit in, and then they stopped along the road to pick up a friend of the driver -- who got to sit, while the person formerly in that seat got to stand, leaning over, for the next two hours of rutted dirt road. The roads in Rwanda nominally have two sides, but the only way to drive them is to avoid the potholes by swerving in continual ess-shaped circles, aiming around the potholes and ruts, occasionally almost stopping if you can't avoid one and have to drive through it. If you meet another car, you pull back to your side and navigate the ruts til it passes, then go back to making it a one-lane road again.
When the genocides began, people fled to the churches for sanctuary. Whole communities fled together, but after they had arrived, word was passed to the Hutus to leave, and they began fading out, and all of a sudden the Tutsi's looked around and realized that their Hutu neighbors were no longer there, and that they were alone. At the first of these churches, a Catholic church named Ntarama, the genocaires broke in through the walls, attacked and massacred with long instruments with a nail in the head. The littleest children were hurled against the walls. We first walked into display cases showing skulls, rows and rows of skulls, some wearing scarfs, many with holes from the nails; and bones, all sizes, lined up. There were over 500 skulls (when truly upset, I tend to count things to numb my mind from thinking....). Each one represented at least 10 people. And then there was the church itself, with bones, skulls, etc covering every available piece of floor. I didn't immediately realize that the only way to negotiate the space was by walking from pew to pew on the benches, and set foot on the floor, to the crunching of bone. I can't begin to say how bad I felt, as if I'd participated in harming that person all over again. It was beyond awful. The man who was running the church and telling us about it had lost 11 family members there. He lived because the dead fell on him, covered him up. Some people escaped from the church and ran for the woods, and were hunted down, but a few survived to tell the tale.
There is a wall of remembrance at this church as at the other genocide sites. It is designed along the lines of the Viet Nam Memorial, as a wall of names -- but there are few names. No one knows exactly who the dead are, who died there. As names surface, they are being added to the wall. At the next church we visited, Nyamata, the wall has 39 last names engraved in block print --- A group of patients from the hospital had taken refuge here, and their id bracelets had their last names on them. But no one knew their first names, and as those are surfacing through the gacaca process, whereby people on trial admit exactly who and where they killed someone, the names are being added in a different script. This is one of the reasons why the gacaca process is so important to these communities. The need to know how and where one's loved ones died, and to achieve closure, is greater than the need for revenge. People are willing to forgive, if only they can learn and close the door.
Ntarama is being preserved by building a huge shed over the entire church, and keeping it intact. The second church, Nyamata, is almost more horrible, because it is a building of great beauty, nestled in a garden, exuding peace. 10,000 people took sanctuary and were slaughtered here. All of the trappings of religion are still in place. The vestments are hanging from the podium, showing a high water mark (or high blood mark) of how high the blood ran as the building was awash in gore. I was unable to go down into the crypts to see the victims. It was just too much to bear. Philip will be putting our pictures on the internet, and the set of pictures that are black with one light source, and show nothing are an audio that he made in the crypts of the guide telling about the massacres.
And, as they say in the Bible, this was the beginning and the end of the first day.......
Sent with love, and hopes for world peace,
Sarel and Philip