Kigali smiles generously. There is intrigue, amusement or a smile on most faces that a visitor crosses on the streets here. and kind to each other in numerous small ways. Elsewhere, we spent time discussing conflict, peace and post-conflict societies. This elsewhere was a classroom several years back, in Bangalore. We were high on ideas of justice. Violence wasn’t quite unknown, but neither known in the severity that Rwanda experienced. To most visitors for the brief time they spend in Kigali and one imagines even to Rwandans the traumatic experience of violence and genocide sits in the daily consciousness. Although, in different ways.
Visiting the Genocide Memorial in Kigali has been an intense experience. The time here completes an arc of the quest to understand what forgiveness means. And if indeed one can truly forgive. I have been gripped by it since the time I read about the details of violent acts and the community justice approach through Gacaca system that Rwanda practiced in its efforts towards justice and achieve a kind of closure on the trauma that the country lived. The need to know forgiveness emerged in a personal experience. After time here, it appears as though individual and collective are deeply enmeshed. I observe an extreme level of forgiveness that the Rwandan people have demonstrated, lived and continue to practice. It is extraordinary in its quality because this exhibits a possibility of human capacity that is hard to even touch within oneself, leave alone the ability to tap it as a vital source.
The hours spent at Genocide Memorial can be intense and unsettling. The memorial and the museum are a great asset to the world. Walking through one gets as gentle introduction to a political, social, personal and a human horror story as can be possible. It isn’t easy. And the museum curators have done a great job of it. As I walked through the space, I noted a few quotes which hit a personal note. Felicien Ntagengwa survived the genocide. Her words, “if you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me” appear at the beginning of the gallery spaces. It is stirring to dwell upon the import of it. Will man ever get to know oneself well enough to act reasonably at all times? How do these ruptures in human behaviour happen? There is another gripping instance, in Father Seromba, who, to quote the exhibition, “murdered his own congregants in his own church”. He led the Nyange parish.
The exhibition depicts development of differences among social groups in Rwanda since colonial years, post-colonial intensification of the differences, the horrid inclusion of social group on citizens’ identification cards and the post-colonial political trajectory that precipitated into the genocide.
Looking at the pictures of today’s Kigali, a friend writes back saying, ‘sounds like heaven’. This heaven, or ‘Singapore of Africa’ that Rwanda’s government aspires the country to be, has been a walk through untold pain and nurturing hope even when every reason to hope has been brutally taken away. A sliver of this hope is seen when students who are taught about Rwanda’s past, share their opinion. One of them, which to my school-teacher eye seems revealing is from a participant of Peace Dialogue Club. Callixte from Ecole Secondaire Magi, Gisagara district says “I used to hear that Tutsi were the cause of the genocide. but after learning and discussing, I decided that what I heard was not true . Now I look for my own truth.” For a student to suggest that she looks for her own truth, is a sure sign of efforts beginning right.
Along the walls, I pick up another quote. This time from the Rwandan writer, Yolande Mukagasana. With Greek-Belgian photographer Alain Kazinierakis she produced the travelling exhibition Les Blessures du silence, witness accounts of the genocide. She writes, “There will be no humanity without forgiveness. There will be no forgiveness without justice. But justice will be impossible without humanity.”
What is remarkable about this memorial is that this is arguably the only place in the world that gathers together, in a small way, all the genocides of the world until recent years. From Herero people of Namib desert, to Holocaust, Bosnia, Cambodia and their own country’s. This is tremendously effective in understanding humanity, peace, conflict and violence. For it to ‘hit’ home, this exhibition proves useful.
On law and indigenous people, I take home this extraordinary and simple message that Nama chief Hendrik Witbooi sends to Major Leutwein to inform him that the local people would no longer tolerate the behaviour of invading German forces and settlers:
“he (the colonist) introduced laws… which are entirely impossible, untenable, unbelievable , unbearable, unmerciful and unfeeling. he punishes our people… and has already beaten people to death for debt. he thinks we are stupid and unintelligent people, but we have never yet punished people in the cruel and improper way that he does”
As a prelude to the exhibition, visitors are advised to watch a 10 minute clip with genocide survivors speaking of their experience. After one walks through the gallery spaces, they are led to another room to watch a video, which the visitor learns is a sequel or an afterword, on the exhibition. “We are here and we are at peace” says one of the survivors in the afterword video. It ends with these two short sentences from another survivor. These were stirring and show the possibility of hope, in real, perceivable form – “You felt the cost at all times.” It closes with “I am still here standing strong.”
For other times in the city, I play Kigali’s favourite, Kiss FM and in the cheerful songs, I think of human beings making that necessary effort to forgive, hope and move on, when necessary.
Contested Realities 