Unhindered to believe

Stoic faces hide once again the agonizing pain burining within the facade of normalcy. A country ripped by terror of the basest kind - this time without Pol Pot's sticks and carrots, or Hitler's resources for calm, planned executions. This time, instead, the exploitation of burning hatred of humans turned to animals, foraging for vengeance against unwitting neighbors. An ethnic divide manufactured by Belgian and German colonialists decades past was somehow etched to permanence on the minds of the 'natives' in my latest discover of the sheer power with which colonialism dominated existences. Choice became, as always, the greatest weapon.

We watch the films of brutality, and of bravery in the Kigali Memorial deemed "false" by the caretaker at the church site a hundred kilometers away as he stands atop the graves of 50,000 men, women, children killed within the walls of supposed sanctuary; invited there by the bigotry of murderous priests. Brothers killed brothers, husbands wives, children friends as this country spiraled into foreseen, acknowledged chaos. The human spirit burns with easy passion for love only so long as it is not taunted with fear. An other. A problem to be solved. A path to a better life must always be cut from the wrongs of a foe. And here, in Rwanda, 12 years past the foe was 15% of the population of all ages; and the final solution was extermination.

We watch the 20 pink clad prisoners strolling through main street of Butare afront a solitary armed guard, while onlookers barely look - and surely afford them a mere sliver of the attention hollered, screamed, yelled, begged as a white man happens past. We double-take, as our minds slowly recognize the pink innocence as facade for ruthless murderers. These nonchalant strollers jaunt through public service obligations amongst the very brothers, sisters, wives, husbands from whom they deprived the closest kin. The entire Rwandan nation, under its new flag and ethnically-undivided government, attempts to undo the damage of false divisions as it erases identities and clans. Three peoples (the under-publicized Twa 1%) merge to one under endless seas of purple flags mourning hatred, in the name of future hope. "Rwanda: Dark Past, Bright Future"

But power returns forefront, and manipulated impressions alongside as in the idealistic goal of future a requisite is mild forgiveness sans ambitions of retribution. So the spectacle feels from my observing, uncommitted standpoint to be considered by the experienced to be a disturbingly banal blip. A whoops. A three month interval of chaos where genuinely good souls simply lost direction of truth, or at least of love, and machetes in hand became replacement for shared humanity. Righteousness became hate as it dominated the unwitting soul. A forgivable offense, it seems, for even as children's skulls are severed, as infants are slung into brick walls, as women are raped and murdered in manners we would like to be limited to the most sadistic mind - all is done below the cloud of dark manipulation. And under such shadows, how can mere individuals be deemed responsible?

Radio Milles-Collines propagandizes hatred and convinces of bright futures through elimination of love, and a priest orders the demolition of his own church to bring perceived benefit to nation through the death of his thousands of congregants inside. Grenades plow into other divine sanctuaries in the lucifer v. Michael rematch. Identity cards are checked at roadblocks and Tutsis morph from human to animal in impressioned eyes. The rebels fall like a rain of fire, replacing the cowardice of the useless figurehead UN "peacekeepers" and the futility of French infantrymen arrived too late, and with faulty goals. The Interhamway flees, and a new domain of peace is instilled. 12 years later, a nation Hutu-less and Tutsi-less joins together in an eerie agreement to remember and forget the past. To believe that such hatred can be quelled overnight, redemption sought instantly as hell's ambassadors fall to the new bright vision of RPF victors scrambles the mind. A new paradigm accepted overnight on July 4, 1994. An instantaneous end to blows of infuriated blame?

The end as incomprehensible as the act, though that sudden mandated swing toward hope is how I, the uninitiated observer neither really understanding nor blind, truly perceive the event. The result of a new manipulation, this time toward my own conscience's rightful peace, in this culture so willing to bend to authority perhaps. Yet as Gilbert points at the pile of human skulls, femurs, skeletons thrown together in disarray below rafters streaming with torn, bloody clothing in a shed outside the very church where hoards met their undeserved demise; as he neither yells nor whispers "This is my brother, my grandfather, my sister" and releases though fights the tears he has endured and embraced for more than a decade, I find hope in his smile, and his borderline mockery that I might want to cry on this site.

So by the time I reached the last of the most "famous," which is to say most shocking, genocide memorials in this land once remembered mostly for its unique gorillas, I found myself mildly numb to the presented intent to disturb. The mangled bodies turned pale white in quick-lime; the shriveled genitalia of peasants; the collapsed skulls of infants; the twisted joints testifying to their hasty burial in ruthless heaps; and the intrusively overwhelming smell of dank, dark death did not drive me to overwhelming emotion. Perhaps I had drained myself in previous days. Perhaps I had simply lost capacity for empathy. Or perhaps, as I like to believe, I reverted simply to previous admissions that dark moments do not always define lives. In Rwanda, people have moved forward - and while acquiescence to government authority demonstrated in so banal a conversation as the outrageous entrance fees to Nyaungwe forest to view chimps defended only by "the government set the rules, I have to comply" should perhaps cause ongoing concern; I find hope in people here. I find hope in the caretaker at Murambi who ran up to re-open his exhibition of doom to display those bodies that may have been members of his completely destroyed family, but who seemed more interested in our own education for future than in his own bereaved pain.

And then I was free to return to the obtuse intellectual for a while, and analyze just how ridiculous the "never again"s repeated consistently alongside names in guestbooks from Cambodia to Rwanda truly are. "Never again" after Turkish ravage of Armenia, after Hitler's heinous acts against Jews, after Germany's savagery in Namibia, after Angkar's year zero, after Milosevic's eterminations, and after Rwanda's repetitions of the never agains of the past. Never again, perhaps, only to fill the writer with a cheap buzz of warmth in open ignorance to the hard light of truth. Perhaps an intention simply to say "I won't ever be so manipulated to hate," even as bombs fall in Baghdad and Kabul, the world seems to celebrate in hypocrisy as a terrorist evil - we are told, an enemy - is murdered at our hands in lands far away. We scribble "never again" as it is the easiest option - to hope in love, that is, and to deny our own complacency as we, too, are manipulated into thinking that taking lives will perpetuate good. We are manipulated, that is, by others and by ourselves, to believe, welcome, accept, and live the idea: to hack a perceived enemy to death with a machete is far more evil than to drop a precision bomb plastered with our unified name on him from miles above. Subconsciously, we silently erase the "never again" from our minds, because our enemy is real...right?

The guestbooks fill with contributions of $5 and FRW 10,000 in a land where the common man earns perhaps a dollar a day. And in those books behind the glassy clean doors, and aside sparkling displays of hate, the Rwandan names continue to be disproportionately absent - for even a free entry cannot pay for the extravagance of transport to the site. So travelers and tourists line up, intent on being moved. Intent on mourning another's loss while turning the same into a revenue earner. While turning travesty to tourist attraction - partly, at least, so we can ignore the truth of our own roles in hate.