The Memorial

Today we visited the Genocide Memorial. It was indescribable to see what these people went through here.  There are mass graves there that hold 258,000 bodies and yet more are still being exhumed.  There are many graves still that have not even been discovered.  To see the bones, skulls, clothes, and weapons that are set up to be observed in the memorial in makes your stomach turn to realize how much evil is really in the world.  You see pictures of the dead when they were still alive and read stories about the babies and how they were killed.  Some by being smashed against a wall, others were macheted while in their mothers arms.   Still others were shot in the head.  The women were raped and tortured and the men were slashed and left to die, but alive enough that they suffer for days before they are then killed. 

 

All of this because of a socio-economic society falsely determined by the Belgium government many years before.   The Hutu people were told they were the superior race while the Tutsi people were looked upon as the lower class.  In an effort to wipe out the Tutsi, the Hutu made a 10 commandments for themselves stating things such as, if a Hutu marries a Tutsi then he is a traitor.  They used propaganda to create hate and build a silent killer.  When you think about it we have this in America.  The whites are the superior race while the blacks are not.  If you think about it we are all Americans.  Why are the whites Americans but the black are African Americans?  They are not from Africa.  Their ancestors are.  If they are from Africa then they are African.  But they are from America so they should be called Americans.  I do not walk around calling myself an Irish/German American.  I am an American.  Physical differences is what separated the Hutu and the Tutsi.  The Belgium government said the Hutu were better looking, had smaller noses, and heads, and were more intelligent.  This was not true though.  Do we not feel the same way about the blacks in America compared to the whites?  We are creating the same environment Rwanda had that lead to the genocide just 14 years ago.

 

After the memorial we went to Bourbon Coffee.  Rwanda’s version of Starbuck’s.  We had lunch, emailed, and I was able to spend a short time with Shawn.  We then went back to our church to visit two of the Church’s support groups.  I spilt my team in half, taking Jade, Cindy, and Robert with me and Caroline, Phil, and Darwin went with Augustine to the other group.  It was in this village that seemed pretty remote.  We had to drive down the dirt road that was not smooth at all.  It was surprising that we made it down and back.  The support group that we met meet together and make baskets and clothes to make money.  They are faced with such extreme poverty that it is their only way of brining in an income.  The women’s group makes the baskets and clothes and then men’s group grows and sells crops.  They use each other for emotional support working through their issues and learning to trust each other and depend upon each other.  They have a common fund of money that they have put together.  They use the money if one of their kids gets sick or if they have to help pay for one of the kids in the group to go to school. 

 

The problems that they have is that the women do not have a big enough market to make a great deal of money.  Sometimes they do not even make enough money to pay for the supplies to make their baskets.  The men do not have a building to store their crops.  Where other crop sellers charge more at first when the crops are ripe and then less as time passes by, they have to sell for less right away.  They said that they could build the building themselves, they just need money to buy the land and the roof.  When I asked them how much it would cost they said it is $2000 US.  Their issues is that they do not make enough money to save enough to buy the land and the roof.  So before we left them the four of us bought all their baskets and Cindy and I bought a skirt.  They were so excited! 

 

On the way back to the van we walked about a mile up the road and the kids were so excited to see us.  They kept asking me to take their picture and show them.  I had about 30 kids following me just cracking up and telling me to take pictures of everything!  For people that suffer from such extreme poverty and emotional hurts they are the most joyful people.  It sure puts us Americans and our fake happiness to shame.