October 6 - Sadie

Disclaimer: This post is dedicated to Sadie Gettings, a great friend who never ceases to amaze me with her comical talents and ability to dance in the rain no matter the circumstance.

The rain offers a comfortable yet never too simple gesture during the day. As I sit here thinking about what has happened thus far and all the challenges ahead, I am reminded that there’s nothing a good rainfall can’t fix. Today, the rain was particularly aggressive, inciting minor flooding around my homestay. As the rain fell heavily, inundating the patches of flowers outside and the tin roof above felt like it was about to collapse under the hail, I thought about some of the great cleansing and eye-opening things I’ve discovered while being here:

•  While the U.S. may want to impose Western ideals of democracy, there are just certain concepts that just won’t work given the context of the post-genocide era. For example, freedom of speech may be an unabated right within the U.S. Constitution that will not function in Rwandan society given the Genocide Ideology Law, which punishes anyone for labeling or advertising certain divisionism between Hutu and Tutsis. While the Constitution may uphold a tenable First Amendment, Rwanda still has an unforgiving “cast” of fear which maintains stability and security as the two most important objectives of the government. With freedom of speech running rampant, citizens might become scared of a potential second genocide.

• While the Rwandan government has deferred the onset of the Cessation Clause for refugees, there is still a push to solve the repatriation problem.  In order to push refugees back to Rwanda, UNHCR has supported a voluntary movement of refugees, local integration, or relocation/resettlement. Rwandan refugees live all around the world and don’t return based on fear of ethnic or criminal persecution.

• The “Ndi umunyarwanda” (meaning “I am Rwandan”) program promoted by the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, the main organ of post-genocide restoration in Rwanda, is meant to help Rwandans rediscover their ancestral roots which ultimately got distorted during colonialism and during the genocide which pitted one ethnicity against another. However, with a critical eye, this program could essentially be “cleansing” the Rwandan population of ingrained ethnic lines which greatly matter (i.e. intermarriage is still recognizable and debated). From a completely oppositional voice, the program could help the Ruling Party convince people that they should not question the government, representation, or development—a guise for the fact that the same party has been in hierarchical and centralized power for the last twenty years.

• Traumatic memory may not be the most accurate of memories, and collective apologies only pass the buck to future generations to make up for parental wrongs. In a post-genocide or post-conflict environment, the past needs to evade the present. Transmission, in its most positive sense, is about offering well-being to the next generation rather than relying on familial and ethnic relations to punish and guilt individuals for the transgressions they have not committed. There needs to be a notion of resilient distance when telling a genocide narrative so that one is truly eliminating ethnic ties rather than supporting them for innocents to be culpable or for only one history to be told.

• Since Rwanda is no longer in an emergency situation now, the classic question remains whether its form of democracy will lead to sustainable peace and development. With this economic reconstruction, there is often avoidance and a complete inconsideration of mental health. Upholding posterity, there needs to be a greater cleavage of mental institutions such that mental health is separated from trauma, since the two are not related. Since safety has been restored, there needs to be greater attention offered to mental resources so that society can psychosocially reach its full potential.

Overall, I have learned a ton, but my academic knowledge has in no way superseded the knowledge I have gained outside of the classroom by talking with people at a grassroots level with the little Kinyarwanda that I do know. I am so thankful to be studying abroad to be able to have a first-hand account on many of these foregrounded issues rather than just blindly accepting my textbook iterations.