17 years ago marks the start of the genocide that took 800,000 lives here in Rwanda. Sitting on our balcony I am looking over Kigali (the capital), I hear President Kagame speaking at the stadium but the streets are empty. I look at the hill across from us knowing that Hutu men stormed that hill killing the Tutsi. It is weird knowing that I have a friend who lived on that hill during the genocide and for only reasons God knows, he some how escaped the mass killing… It is so beautiful here and I consider it one of the most beautiful places I have ever witnessed. Knowing that 17 years ago bodies piled the streets and women and children were being raped, it is hard to think that such a beautiful place could host such hostility. The genocide still causes the whole nation to mourn during the month of April and today I can especially feel the tension within the city. Soldiers line the streets in order to prepare for the worst and businesses shut down early. Walking the street I know that anyone my age was in someway affected by the genocide. 800,000 people… So many lives lost because of a hatred that ran and still runs so deep. What is scary is that any country is capable of doing this. Rwanda when the genocide began had a population who was 98% Christian… A much higher percentage than that of America. I think that the world needs to look to Rwanda and learn from the pain that they experienced. No one can predict genocide. The people two weeks before the genocide had Hutu and Tutsi children playing together, men and women talked freely on the streets, and yet, the killing began on April 7th… Hate can be so incredibly strong. Strong enough to kill, rape, beat those who were Tutsi, regardless of them being a friend, family member, child, elder, or stranger. I can’t imagine watching my family be killed, being raped, or considered one of the “lucky survivors” and having to walk the streets, searching the dead bodies for my loved ones. April serves as an awakening reminder each year to the people of Rwanda but I think it also should serve as a reminder to the world. A reminder of the cost of hating something or someone, whether small or large, is dangerous and in Rwanda it cost 800,000 people their lives. Let us be reminded.
This is something so sad, and yet your right it should be an awakening to the world. We should take after this, and realize what has happened. So horrible, devastating, but like you said Rwanda was at that time 98% Christian, the U.S. isn't even close to that, something like the genocide could happy at any moment in the U.S. It serves as a good reminder to us. It is very hard to comment this after such horrid, but it is true, the world is full of things like this and we can't be naive from them, we must just take them and learn from them. Find the importance of them, and see of there is a way we can make anything better.
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