PUBLISHED AUG. 4, 2008, THE HILL TIMES

KIGALI, RWANDA—Rwanda is a beautiful country. It’s literally the land of a thousand hills, filled with all types of greenery that you can see as far as the eye can see into the distance when the hot sun is shining. Here in Kigali, although dusty, the streets are clean and paved and lined with flowers and avocado trees. People smile all the time and ask us muzungus (foreigners) amukuru? (How are you? Or, literally, what’s your news?) If you happen to slide accidentally down a hill because you’re wearing flip flops, trip going down a bumpy dirt road, or have a cold, they say “Sorry, sorry” and try to help you as if it were their fault.

Rwanda Initiative coordinator Shelley Robinson told me when I first arrived in Kigali earlier last month, Rwandans have the “nice” factor of Canadians times two. And she’s right.

Which is why it is still unbelievable today to visit the Gisozi Genocide Memorial and understand the Rwandan genocide. Before I arrived in Rwanda, I had read about the 1994 genocide of more than 800,000 Tutsis, I had also seen the Hollywood movies, and I had read the news coverage of the Arusha trials. It all seemed so far away from the safe comfort of my Ottawa home. Walking through the memorial permanent exhibits made this history real, and I tried to understand how something so terrible could happen in such a beautiful country with such beautiful people.

The memorial contains pieces that any normal historical exhibit would have—”Before the Genocide,” “Propaganda,” “The Genocide,” “The Aftermath”—and includes graphic photographs and video of dead bodies piled in the middle of the street, dead bodies thrown in ditches, children with their heads split open because of a machete wounds. What made it hit home for me was a room at the end of all the “official” stuff, which was filled with pictures of the victims of the genocide, hanging from clips on the walls. The pictures, hundreds of them, were of people smiling, playing soccer (or football, as it’s called here), getting married, posing for their passports and enjoying life before they were raped, tortured and killed. All of the pictures were donated from surviving family members, which, as a plaque said, were probably one of the only pictures the survivors had left. There were rows of clips waiting for pictures to be hung, but not enough room for 800,000.

I had to hold back tears as I moved to the next room. This one had skulls and bones of some of the victims behind glass. A plaque, before entering, reminded tourists to respect “the final resting place” of these people. The next room displayed some of the clothing and artifacts found at mass grave sites, churches and people’s homes. I thought that was the end of the exhibit, but a security guard said there were two more rooms upstairs.

My sadness quickly turned to anger when I saw that one room was full of children’s pictures and short biographies of their lives before they died. The exhibit, called “Our Lost Future,” profiled about 20 or so children ranging from the age of eight months to 12 years, and whose favourite drink was their mother’s milk, or their favourite thing to do was sing songs with their dad, or their best friend was their sister. The category of “cause of death”: hacked by machete, bludgeoned to death, or grenade. Again I thought of the people I had met here, and again I wondered, how?

The second room upstairs made me question my faith in humanity. It displayed some of the well-known genocides that have happened throughout the 20th century—the Hereros, the Armenians, the Jews, the Cambodians, the Yugoslavians. I like to think of myself as a positive person who believes that humans can learn from their mistakes, but when it comes to eliminating people who aren’t like you, we never learn from the past. “Never again,” has meant nothing in an age of globalization and at a time when human rights and equality are supposed to be universal.

In the case of the Rwandan genocide, the international community is rightly criticized for standing by and doing very little while the international media ignored the story of hundreds of thousands of people getting massacred until it was too late. But the question is: can we do something now? One of the videos shown at the memorial is of a man telling his story of loss and survival. The interviewer asks if he could ever forgive the people who killed his wife. He replies if he were to take revenge and kill them, he would be a killer too so he wouldn’t do it; but, if they were truly sorry for what they did, he would forgive them. Surely with a statement like that, there is still hope for humanity—and hope that governments, journalists, and individuals will learn from the past to ensure that “never again” really is never again.

Hill Times assistant deputy editor Bea Vongdouangchanh is currently in Rwanda as part of the internship program of the Rwanda Initiative, a media capacity building program between the journalism schools of Carleton University and the National University of Rwanda. She will be working at The New Times in Kigali for July and August.