Another thought on Rwanda: Just think of the children

Alex and I came to the same conclusion that children are the same, no matter where you go.

They will always find something to make into a game, something that will invoke easy giggles and playful glee. They will always be mischievous, reaching for the forbidden extra cookie or “bon bon” when they think they can get away with it. And like my mom once wrote to me, will always react to the universal language of laughter, running and play, even when that is the only language at hand to be shared. For me, this is one of the most reassuring and one of the most depressing aspects of coming to this country. Reassuring because this shows that, despite the horrific history of genocide, the children truly embody a new generation of humanity and innocence, vital factors that echo on in national reparation. Depressing because at the same time that innocence is so fragile, and humanity so easily manipulated. The children we worked with this week were so reminiscent of the children at any type of day-camp back home. You had that token young little boy, seven years old, who had more energy then the rest of them who immediately blacklisted himself as the “trouble maker”. You had the group of older girls, around 9 and 10, who glued themselves to the female leaders under various forms of adoration. You had the young girl who you noticed later was the outcast of her peer group. You had the older “cool boys” who were surprisingly mature and kind. There were young leaders, artists, athletes (mostly soccer stars! ask Alex…), singers, fighters, and those who were just content to sit on your lap all day.

In my amature opinion, this country the children are in is like a phoenix being reborn from the ashes, although the rebirth is proving to be far from easy. It is going through its growing pains where I discovered that people declare there is no such thing as Hutu and Tutsi, only “Rwandan”, all while there are still whispers of patriotism towards those past so called ethnic groups. While this country appears to be the most stable of all Africa, there are still wisps of mistrust in the air.

Which, considering what happened 14 years ago, makes logical sense.

All around as you travel throughout Rwanda you see the same professional framed portrait of President Paul Kagame, signifying the new age of this country, while all throughout the same country you see men in pink and orange, stark reminders of a not so distant dark past. Digging ditches, planting grass blade by blade (there are no sod farms around here), building new homes for those in poverty and cleaning the streets, these are the Rwandan inmates, most arrested for various acts of terror during the genocide. You can’t easily escape a past where murderers once consisted of almost half the entire country’s adult population… Apparently the government was once criticized for taking advantage of their inmates, by using them as free laborers, but the government’s response was by saying “it was by the hands of these men that this country has fallen, and it will be by the help of their hands that it will be rebuilt”.

Touché.

That makes logical sense too. Despite the whispers, this country appears to be on a positive track.

Then we happened upon a Belgian man, one of the past historical colonizers of this country (and as such we were told not to respect much of what he had to say), and he told me things that the rational mind still had to consider. Take for example, the genocide inmates themselves. Their time in the prison is dictated by a trial known as “gacaca” (pronounced ga-cha-cha) during which they give testimony to all their genocidal crimes and are judged accordingly. The men are supposed to be kept separate post trial so they are not given a chance to plan any false stories together, thus making their testimonies genuine. When I talked with the Belgian man he told me a broken story about how one of his coworkers who had been a refugee of the genocide was recently arrested and sent to prison because one of the prisoners had a grudge on his family and falsely accused him of various atrocities during his turn at the gacaca. The man is still currently incarcerated under these untrue pretenses. The Belgian man also said that in all three years of his stay in Rwanda, the speech that the President gave during the victory day celebration [commemorating the end of the genocide] has changed. At first the speech honored the massacred Tutsi and moderate Hutus, which is indeed politically correct, but has evolved today into a speech solely honoring the Tutsi from the Hutu predators. The man told us that he fears that the government has some sort of hero complex, taking the honor and glory they achieved freeing this country and using it to stay in parliamentary power. Even the upcoming elections he said are not entirely democratic, because each of the running parties came from the original RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) Party, the same as the current government.

This could be absolute hearsay.

This is after all, coming from a Belgian.

But it still makes one ponder. Paul Kagame has done some amazing things for this country, making it a true modern day spectacle. The country is still after all going through its growing pains. And let’s face it, no place, no justice system, is perfect, right?

Now again I think about the children, caught up and born into this modern day intrigue of identity reform. I think about the smiling faces at day-camp, and about how the children are so quick to draw their new Rwandan flag on any available piece of paper, and colour everything from the flag to zebras and giraffes in their national Rwandan colours of blue, yellow and green. We sang their national anthem every morning of day-camp, it was long and intricate, and they knew every word of it. And we have adult volunteers from Canada with us who don’t know how to sing O’ Canada. What is to happen to these children in the next coming years? What is to happen in this country? I think of the prospects for children back home… of course not every child back home has it perfect there. For example issues that rise out of things such as divorce, neglect and low incomes could easily make the lives of Canadian and Rwandan children equally comparable in terms of the quality of childhood life. Yet the government’s invisible hand isn’t something that can be so easily ignored. Canadian children, while not always given the most privileged home lives, still live in a politically stable country. There is no overhanging history of mass death and complete evil, no potential to inherit fears of what your countrymen are capable of or what your relatives have done or endured. No knowledge that your widowed mother is ill a lot of the time because she was raped purposely by a man who had AIDS and now she was infected. No knowledge that your widowed mother’s friend had scars on back because she was attacked with a knives while defending her family and had to play dead for days, only to wake later find her family dead around her. No knowledge on what it would have been like to have a father, or brothers and sisters, because they were brutally slaughtered with machetes. No knowledge of what it would be like growing up an orphan because your parents were killers and disappeared after the war.

I don’t know what’s up next for this generation. But I have grown to love them. Their smiling and laughing young faces will be forever be imbedded into my mind. Their unshed tears ingrained in my memory (the children here rarely cry, even after the most bloody gash is received during day-camp and then painfully cleaned with hydrogen peroxide). Pray for the children and orphans of Rwanda! Pray for the widows who bare scars both physically and mentally. And pray for a country trying to be reborn and find its identity in today’s world. For all intents and purposes, the country seems like it’s on the right track, pray with me that it does not get de-railed and that these children can grow up with endless opportunity and peace on the horizon.

.
.
.
.

In the meantime this week marks our last FULL week in Rwanda, and Alex and I are still loving every moment of it. Again, thanks for the e-mails and comments! We love you guys and can't wait to see you and share these experiences in person.