It's been three months since I returned from Rwanda. What, you mean I didn't tell you that I went to Rwanda? Yes, I realized that I have been pretty quiet about that. My life, as ever, is full of excuses. It was an incomplete experience while I was there. It was too raw right when I got back. Then I moved. Then I had a boyfriend. Then...
It was an intensely powerful, intensely personal experience. Part of the reason that I have not written about my experience in Rwanda so far is that I fear beginning to sound like one of those sappy people who talks about the pain and horrifying experiences that people have overcome, and the power of love and the healing that can occur if only we could all just get along.
I was working while we were there. If I had been in DC it is the kind of work that would have made me want to hide in a corner all day. It was making sure Very Important People were in the right place at the right time, that they all got on the right bus, that they had enough water, and air, and hand sanitizer. It was sitting in a room for eight hours on the off chance that one of the Very Important People might possibly need something. But I was doing it in Rwanda, and so it was amazing. Which is my way of saying that some people had time to read the newspaper when they got back to their room at the end of the day. I was lucky if I had the energy to open my computer and make a half assed attempt at holding up a conversation with the guy I liked (forget about flirting with him, or impressing him in any manner, I was hoping to form complete sentences) from across the world. Because really, what's hotter than a half-delirious with exhaustion woman chatting with you at seven am from East Africa about the lower gastrointestinal distress of her colleagues? Yeah, damn sexy, that.
ANYWAY. What I did get, from the brief digests of the news that I culled from my colleagues and the Very Important People, is that Rwanda, while it has made great strides since 1993 (and really, when 1 million people in a country are killed in 3 months, anything that ISN'T mass murder and genocide is a great stride...) they have not come all the way. The party line that I heard from our Very Important Speakers, was that people in Rwanda no longer make a distinction between Hutu and Tutsi. That the Arusha based court has been truly dispensing justice. And I'm an outsider I have no way of passing the judgment of truth or propoganda. The sense I got was that there is still a ways to go.
I did meet amazing people. I met women who are HIV/AIDS + and who have taken in two or three orphans in addition to their own children, who are working to improve not only their lives, but their communities as well. I met a woman my age whose family fled Rwanda in the late 70's and who was raised in Uganda, but came back "because this is my country".
I saw the reality on the ground of what my work in Washington has been allowing to happen, and it has kept me going for three months. And I have learned the conundrum of the traveler to the developing world. When people casually ask you "So, how was Rwanda?" they don't want to hear about the piles of bones, or bloody clothes, or the woman with AIDS whose only wish is to live to see her children finish with school. But am I being honest to my experience, do I honor the women who trusted me with their stories, if I don't tell them?
It's been about eight years since I was stupid enough to think I actually knew anything about anything. The more I learn, the more I understand that there are no easy answers to anything. The problems with easy answers aren't problems for long.
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