Rwandering

Our day on Monday started out with a "first day of school" picture. We headed over to the Procom office, a non-profit working mainly for self-sustaining agricultural development. This is where our professor Dwight Jackson, the founder of GoED Africa, lives and works. Our class is here at the office for the first week. Starting next week we will be staying here at our house to have class in the garage-turned-classroom. The class Dwight teaches is called Social Context for Community Development. Although our class is not in a traditional classroom and environment, it is very interesting hearing Dwight's perspective on development, poverty, growth, progression and community. He has been living in Rwanda for about 30 years so he really knows the needs of the community here in Rwanda. It takes a long time of someone living in a community in order to know the needs and understand the culture. I am solely in Rwanda to learn, not to try and "help". This is something i hope people will know about my semester here.

Our second class is taught by a Pastor Anastase who is a local Rwandan who pastors a church in Kibuye - a church we will be visiting later on this semester. He seems like a very wise, caring, fatherly man. This class is called Issues in Peace Building. We will be learning about Rwandan culture, the genocide, and peace building in Rwanda. Tomorrow we will be visiting one of the biggest genocide memorials in Rwanda. I think this experience will make the evidences of the genocide that much more of a reality for me.

On Tuesday night our group watched a movie called "Sometimes in April". This movie is a very clear depiction of the reality of the genocide. Rwandans appreciate this movie more than a movie such as Hotel Rwanda. Hotel Rwanda is such a hollywood-dramatized version of the genocide, they don't believe it is accurate at all. The movie is not even filmed on Rwandan ground. This movie, "Sometimes in April" was an eye opening, thought provoking, and extremely emotional movie. I think one of the hardest things for me watching this movie is the fact that i am here on Rwandan soil. I am standing on ground that was once flooded with dead bodies and murderous men. I have watched "Hotel Rwanda" and "Ghosts of Rwanda"; i have studied the genocide and written papers. None of this has made me cry like being here does. Knowing that as I walk down the streets of Kigali, as I walk down my own driveway and street, I am walking where these people were ruthlessly slaughtered. I am walking by hundreds of people each day that are survivors, that are killers, or people who stood by and witnessed - such a gut wrenching feeling.

What amazes me about Rwandans is that despite this history, they live with each other every day. Tutsis and Hutus walk by each other, work with each other, and live together knowing their families and friends have been killed by each other. How do they do it? How do they store up these feelings and move on? The Rwandan government is promoting peace and reconciliation by erasing the "Hutu" and "Tutsi" identities and allowing everyone to call themselves simply "Rwandan". In this movie, this man's entire family is killed. After being raped by her son's murderers, his wife is killed. His two sons are gunned down, his daughter is murdered and his best friend shot. How can he keep on living? How heroic of each and every person here. What amazing people.