We Are Now One People

Guide

IGALI, RWANDA: “I was ten when my family escaped to Uganda. Back then everyone was issued an ID card that indicated whether one was a Tutsi or a Hutu. With the ID cards they knew where Tutsis lived and how many were in their household. They would set up roadblocks and ask for identification. If you were a Tutsi, they would hack you to death. They also told people to gather in certain locations where they said they would be protected. Once there, they would kill them. [According to the Genocide Museum in Igali, churches were often designated as safe gathering places, where the clergy themselves then carried out the killings]. Over a million Rwandans were slaughtered in this way; orchestrated by the government then. Those people are now on the run, some in Canada, in Europe, and especially in France. Efforts are underway to capture them and bring them back to justice. They can receive anywhere from five years to life in prison. [According to the Genocide Museum only seventeen people out of eighty-eight indicted have been sentenced so far.] What’s important though is that we are all one people now. Those ID card are gone. No way to tell us apart. The only reason there was any distinction in the first place is because the Belgium colonists wanted to distinguish between those who had cows and those who didn’t. The Tutsis were those who had cows and the Hutu did not. If a Tutsi lost his cow, he became a Hutu. That’s how silly the system was. Otherwise, there was nothing like religion or tribal affiliation to distinguish between us [According to the Genocide Museum, you were a Tutsi if you had ten cows]. The above is what my guide told me on the way to the gorilla safari lodge.

A Museum Plaque

Later, another guide told me: “I was nine when my family and I escaped to Uganda. Uganda is only twenty miles from here, but it was still difficult to get to because the Hutu were everywhere, and everywhere I saw killings, women raped and battered to death with hammers and hatches. Children and babies cut to pieces. No one was spared. We now, looking back, don’t understand how this could have happened. How neighbors who worked together and played together, could kill each other? The only explanation was that Hutus were told to do this by the government, who said the Tutsis’ cows would then be theirs. [According to the Genocide Museum, the genocidal propaganda implemented by the Hutu government had been building for years before April 7, 1994, when all hell broke loose]. But now all this is over. Everyone was given a cow. We are now one people. Some still suffer from the trauma. My older sister has nightmares, but I don’t. I’m strong. The Rwandan people are strong. We are now all working together for a better Rwanda. [According to the Genocide Museum, many people continue to suffer from the trauma, but there are scant resources to do anything about it]. That trauma was apparent in the tears and gasps of the many of the Rwandans visiting the museum.