Never Again

At first glance in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, one would never suspect that just 15 years prior the city and country were blanketed in bloodshed. The city was the cleanest and most beautiful city I've visited in Africa to date. The haunting genocide of 1994 that gripped the nation and seized the lives of 800,000 Rwandans was accompanied by an infamously disappointing lack of international intervention. Tribe against tribe, the Hutu tribe set out to wipe out the Tutsi tribe and finally the Tutsis fought back and ended the battle. For three months the rest of the world stood by and watched. The international aid that flooded in, postwar, to help rebuild the war torn country was perhaps an effort to redeem the initial failure to interceed? Outward renovation aside, the people still bear the scars. I spoke with a waiter at a restaurant who paused mid sentence as he began to describe the scene around him in the months from April to June of '94. He let his comments fade as if the recollection hit too painfully close to home, and we led the conversation elsewhere. I met a teenage boy sitting at the bus station who was orphaned as a result of his parents' brutal murder. If time heals all wounds, every day Rwanda is on it's way. The people seem to be heartily embracing the breakdown of a tribal divide and working towards a unity of the people. I asked several people which tribe they belonged to, the Hutu, the Tutsi, or the Twa and always received the same response. "I am Rwandan". A sign of progress. The words, "Never Again" repeated themselves at several points during my visit to the genocide memorial in the center of town. They were displayed in the historical exhibit along with a question of why these words were not lived up to after the holocaust? Why did the international community claim, "Never Again....will genocide live in our world" and then stand by as the killing fields ensued once again. Analysts agree that the troops that were used to evacuate diplomats and foreign workers in the country were enough, had they returned to defend and fight, to stop the violence. The memorial and museum told the stories of all acts of genocide in the 20th century from Cambodia to Germany, Namibia to Rwanda. When I finished the exhibit, I walked outside to the mass graves in which 250,000 Rwandan genocide victims are buried. There were a group of Europeans (I could not quite pin their accent) chanting prayers over the graves. There were fresh floral arrangements laid out across the top of the graves draped with sashes that read, "Never Again". Pledges once again.