Never Again

What do I tell you about the Rwandan genocide? It seems that the more I learn about it myself, the further muddled it becomes. It wasn't just 100 days in 1994; the groundwork had been laid for decades, and the repercussions continued to claim lives for years after. The story is far more complicated than just Hutu vs. Tutsi. There were extremists and moderates on both sides, and killing bloodied the hands of government forces and a rebel army and organized militias and ordinary citizens (not to mention the various foreign abettors allegedly involved).

The single event that sparked the inferno of death was the fatal shooting-down of a plane carrying the Rwandan president on the night of April 6, 1994 -- the exact circumstances of which have remained a mystery even to this day. What is certain, though, is that widespread slaughter began immediately, methodically and earnestly: one author reports, "The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. It was the most efficient mass killings since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Husbands killed their wives; priests, their parishioners. Children killed children, and mothers with babies on their backs killed mothers with babies on their backs.

Rwandan survivors are committed to remembering these atrocities. They've dedicated memorial sites all over the country, in almost every little town. And from April 7-13 each year, they observe a week of mourning for the dead (between 500,000 and 1,000,000, depending who's counting). There is no school during this time, and businesses are required to be closed all day on the 7th and in the subsequent afternoons.

I'd had simultaneous dread and curiosity about what it would be like to be here during these days. Truthfully, I felt a little awkward about being here at all, like I would be intruding on a private time that I couldn't possibly understand. How would people act? We have a Memorial Day, too, I mused. What do we do? Oh, yeah -- Have a picnic. Go to the beach. Somehow I doubted that's what would be going on in Rwanda.

I opted to lay pretty low. I listened to President Kagame's speech on the radio. He grew up in anglophone Uganda, and he tends to slip in and out of English without a second thought (helpful for me, though I'm guessing it might be frustrating to many Rwandans who listen to him). Throughout the week the radio played various pop tunes decrying the genocide. Some were catchy, upbeat; for the songs in Kinyarwanda, you'd never even guess the ghastly things they were referencing... until your ears happen upon those unmistakable syllables, jen-o-seed. But it's great to know the radio is being used now as a constructive medium for solidarity, as opposed to the horrific role it played 16 years ago in enjoining Hutus to kill the "cockroaches."

I spent a good part of the week reading Shake Hands with the Devil, the two-inch opus written by Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander of UNAMIR, the UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda. (Aside: He declares his most beloved spot in the country to be Kinihira, which I could literally see out my front window as I read. A little surreal.) Dallaire was on the ground from August '93 to August '94, and he saw the worst of the worst. A million dead is a whole lot of bodies -- he tells of rotting bodies piled into dump trucks, dismembered bodies stacked on the side of the road, bloated bodies clogging up the rivers. Rats actually grew to the size of small dogs as they feasted on the endless supply of decomposing flesh.

The book is subtitled "The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda," and that is the message Dallaire drives home: yes, by all means, the machete-wielders and gun-toters are the ones ultimately responsible -- but we the international community could have done something to stop them and chose not to. It's heartbreaking as he details the support he repeatedly begged for from UN member states, with little response. Mid-bloodbath, one U.S. government rep asked for an accurate count of the death toll so far, because "estimates indicated it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier." But how many U.S. soldiers were risked in Yugoslavia? How many so far in Iraq? Is it worth it now? When it comes to human rights, Dallaire raises the question: are some humans "more human" than others?

The crazy thing is, looking around this place, you'd never IMAGINE the horrors that happened only 16 years ago. Kigali is modern, clean, organized, and above all safe. As I learn disturbing stories about now-familiar landmarks there and elsewhere in the country, I have so much trouble reconciling the past with the present. I try, really try, to picture these terrifying scenes that I read about. How is it possible?

I was thinking: I wonder what Germany felt like in 1961, 16 years on. Well, guess what? That's the year the Berlin Wall was built. But here, killers and victims now live side by side. In peace. Sound idealistic? It's somehow the astounding, unprecedented reality here.

Over 42% of Rwanda's population today were born after 1994. They will build the better tomorrow. Turns out maybe, eventually, unbelievably, there is a happy ending after all.

* * * * *
We bear witness today not just to Rwanda's suffering but also to its renewal -- to survivors who have rebuilt shattered homes and restored battered lives -- to parents who have taken orphans into their arms and their hearts -- to refugees who have found the courage to go home and start anew -- to soldiers who have laid down weapons and taken up tools that build -- to men and women who have won fresh prosperity and brought new comfort to their neighbors and their region -- to leaders and public servants who have strengthened the institutions that enshrine the rule of law and ward off the temptation of turmoil -- to ordinary citizens who have searched their wounded souls and chosen healing over strife, forgiveness over grievance, and reconciliation over revenge. Just as genocide cannot happen without thousands of individual decisions to destroy, recovery happens only with thousands of individual decisions to create.
- Ambassador Susan E. Rice
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
April 7, 2010

Home sick

This is the Blender Bottle® :

It's awesome. That little whisk ball goes inside. Then you unscrew the lid, pour in your ingredients, shake shake shake, and dispense out the handy flip-spout. I use it all the time to whip up salad dressing, stir-fry sauce, milkshakes, or just powdered drink mix with water. I love it. (I admit, I guess it wouldn't find it as cool living in the Western world, where you probably just use, you know, an actual blender.)

The other night I was thirsty and thought I'd fix some lemonade. I went to my little pantry cabinet to get the drink mix, and there I spotted these apple cider packets that my mom just sent. Mmm, sounds yummy. I changed my plan and set some water on to boil. I emptied the cider mix into my faithful Blender Bottle and waited.

Now, honestly: are there red flags screaming out to any of you at this point? Through a loophole at my high school, I was the only member of my graduating class never to take a physics course. Maybe this is where it's doomed me. *Apparently* (as corroborated on Blender Bottle's website), you are at no point to put hot liquid in this container. Nor baking powder, nor carbonated drinks. Because it's possible that if you do...

The thing will explode in your face.

And it turns out boiling water to the face really kills! Who knew?

For a brief moment, I was frozen in shock, my eyes still squeezed tightly shut. Slowly I blinked them open and was immediately very relieved that my vision was normal -- but instant pain started stinging at my face. Confused, I managed to grab a bandana and run to my water filter. I got the bandana wet and started dabbing frantically at my face, but pain was increasing by the minute and I realized I was shaking. Not knowing what to do, I dashed for my phone and weakly dialed the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO) in Kigali. She authorized me to go to the little village clinic, which happens to be right by my house. My very sweet neighbor escorted me and translated for me, since I sure wasn't up to fending for myself in Kinyarwanda. This was about 7 p.m.

A receptionist or nurse seemed quite unhurried and unconcerned as she wrote my name in a book and then disappeared. I kept blotting at my face and tried to concentrate on breathing normally, because I kept gasping and I felt like a child. The woman came back accompanied by a man, who wanted to give me an injection of some kind but I refused because the PCMO had advised against it -- can you imagine what could go wrong with that? So they put some zinc oxide ointment on me (it's worth noting, actually, that they did not personally apply it but just gave the tub to my neighbor, who then smeared it on for me) and gave me two little ziplock baggies of pills and sent me on my way. No paperwork and no payment.

Fortunately, I thought to ask what the pills were. The first were just ibuprofen, but the others were amoxicillin -- good to know, because I'm allergic to penicillin. Later, I thought about how often average Rwandan citizens must be administered drugs they might be allergic to, maybe even dangerously so. I'm sure meds are abused all the time, since the clinic staff didn't exactly give me clear instructions about how long to continue medicating, and the supply I received was excessive to say the least.

So, I didn't take the amoxicillin, but the PCMO said ibuprofen and Tylenol should be enough. The pain was really bad that first night, although the zinc oxide helped some, and it subsided considerably the next day. The water hit me the worst around my mouth and under/inside my nose, so they were very sore and numb. My eyelids also were quite tender.

The pain seemed to decrease in inverse proportion to the ridiculousness of my appearance. At first I was just kind of pink and swollen, although suffering greatly. Two days after the fact, I thought I'd return to school because I was feeling basically fine. I got dressed and ready, but upon stepping back from the mirror I realized I actually just looked like a clown. So I resorted to staying home a while longer, following a strict thrice-daily routine: cleaning my face with a baby wipe and carefully removing all the dead skin, lathering up almost my whole face with antibiotic ointment, then covering it all up with gauze.

For roughly 84 hours straight I was locked up inside my house. But the human body is an amazingly resilient thing, and I'm pretty much all better now. Because I guess I'm a masochist, I leave you with some brief photo documentation of my fun-filled week. I don't know how well you can see all the gory details, but enjoy.

Oh, and for the record: I still love you, Blender Bottle.