genocide

Rwanda, Part 6: Carved In Stone

Rwanda, Part 6: Carved In Stone

I don’t notice the scars.

I don’t notice the scars because I never notice things like that. This woman has been showing us the country all week, bumping along dirt roads in sweaty buses, and I never see them until someone else mentions it to me. But there they are, sharp lines that could only be from a dull machete, marked on this woman’s neck. Remnants of a time I don’t dare bring up. Maybe she doesn’t even see them anymore when she looks in the mirror. Maybe she’s forgotten they’re there.

She can’t have forgotten. But maybe she’s trying to forget.

Rwanda, Part 5: The Light At The Top Of The Stairs

Rwanda, Part 5: The Light At The Top Of The Stairs

The information, at first, is clinical. The first few panels are essentially a sketch of a history lesson, a bare framework on which to hang the rest of the tragedy. There are tiny bits about tribes and population, but the story doesn't really begin until the arrival of Dutch settlers in the late 19th century.

Of course it does, I immediately think. When you hear about a tribal battle based on insignificant racial distinctions, the odds that the conflict sourced from vaguely well-meaning European colonists are astronomically high. This is what we have always done. John Oliver had a good bit the other week about how being British is a little like being an alcoholic. "When someone says you did something awful, you find yourself going, 'honestly, I don't even remember doing that but, yeah, probably, probably!'"

Rwanda, Part Four: Our National Heroes...

Rwanda, Part Four: Our National Heroes...

We can’t get away from it. Even in the most remote villages, even in the furthest reaches of the country, the bus jolts and rocks past another reminder – usually, another mass grave, encircled by a spiked iron fence, a wobbling arch above the entrance. On each arch, the same bold letters: “Never Again.”

Around seemingly every corner, we pass another, a mirage of ribbons and close-cropped grass in the midst of scraggly banana plantations. Never again. Never again. Never again.