Forgiveness

I owe everyone an update from the second half of Nana & Livi's visit with fun safari pictures.  I'll get to that in the next couple of days.

Today is the 29th commemoration of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which started on April 7, 1994.  It's a national holiday, and starts a commemoration period known as Kwibuka (which apparently roughly translates to "remember").  Schools are closed today through April 17.  Businesses were all closed today until after 12 pm.  For the next week, there are a set of rules about what people and organizations are allowed to do, including this list of prohibited activities:

Other commemoration events will continue for 100 days, ending on July 3 (which is about when the genocide ended once the Rwandan Patriotic Front took over control from the Interhamwe militia that was carrying out the genocide).

We've been grappling with how to participate in this commemoration in a way that is respectful of the country we're living in and authentic to our role as outsiders here.  I asked our friend Joseph, who works at USAID and has given us tours of the genocide memorial, if there were any particular events we should attend.  He explained that the main events were village-level meetings at 9 am on the 7th (this morning) where communities come together to share stories and younger generations can ask questions to learn about what happened.  He said we'd likely be welcome to attend our local meeting, but it would be long and in Kinyarwanda so we wouldn't be able to follow what was happening.  We also know that our presence draws a lot of attention and would likely distract from the purpose of the meeting.  So we stayed home and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood from here.  We could hear music and then talking a loudspeaker from somewhere nearby starting around 8:30 am until early afternoon.  Meanwhile, Mazie, Caleb, and I watched Hotel Rwanda - I hadn't seen it since probably around the time it came out in 2002.  It was interesting to re-watch with everything we've learned since we've been here, and given the recent news about the film's protagonist, Paul Rusesabagina.  (I've read up on his story and am still quite confused... like so much around this history, sorting out "good guys" and "bad guys" seems very difficult.)

With all of this reflection, I find myself coming back to questions I had before we came here around the concept and practice of forgiveness.  Those of you familiar with my family backstory may know that I owe a lot of how my childhood unfolded and who I am to an act of forgiveness, and it's a concept I've contemplated a lot.  I think I have a strong understanding and appreciation of the "why" behind forgiveness: it's not about putting something behind you or forgetting that you were wronged, but about letting go of anger and freeing yourself from that burden in order to move forward.  We often think of the benefits of forgiveness for those who are forgiven, but I think I understand how crucial and healing it is to forgive.  But it's the "how" that still puzzles me.  Even if I know that I should forgive, that it would be good for me and for all involved, how does someone actually get to that point?  How do you let the anger go?  It's a puzzling question at an individual, interpersonal level, let alone at the scale of an entire nation.  How is it that I'm sitting in a country that experienced this incomprehensible and atrocious event 29 years ago (when I, and the Rwandans I'm meeting around my age, were (was?) in high school), and people who were on both sides of this genocide are going about their business and living lives together as neighbors?  This is particularly hard to grasp given what Joseph has stressed about this being an incredibly intimate genocide: while the killing of Tutsis and moderate Hutus was carefully planned and organized by the centralized Interhamwe militia, their strategy was carried out through interpersonal acts of violence by ordinary people in villages around the country.  Testimonials of survivors are full of stories of betrayal by people they knew and trusted... neighbors, family members, church leaders, teachers.  How on earth do you forgive something like this?

I know that the answer here is complex and centers around the justice and reconciliation process that's happened here since the genocide ended, a key piece of which was the Gacaca system.  Basically, after the genocide, there were SO MANY cases to try that they estimated it would take 100 years to try all cases in the normal court system.  So they turned to a traditional community-based justice system that set up local-level courts across the country and tried cases at the community level.  Perpetrators who participated and confessed faced reduced sentences.  As this website explains, forgiveness and healing were also key aims of this system: "The Gacaca trials also served to promote reconciliation by providing a means for victims to learn the truth about the death of their family members and relatives. They also gave perpetrators the opportunity to confess their crimes, show remorse and ask for forgiveness in front of their community."  

Makes sense in theory, right?  But in practice... it's still tough to comprehend how I could get my heart to let go of anger at the human who took a machete to my husband, threw my child against a wall.  I'm sure many people didn't actually get there and weren't able to forgive.  But the fact that so many apparently were is both mind-boggling and deeply moving.  I've been similarly fascinated by stories of restorative justice in other contexts.  The model of acknowledging and repairing harms, with a focus on what victims need rather than simply how to "punish" perpetrators, has struck me as both deeply moving and logical.  (If "hurt people hurt people," a system that actually focuses on healing people seems to hold a lot of potential to prevent future harm.)  It gives me hope that even if it seems to be "human nature" to do terrible things to one another, it's also human nature to forgive.

So it all makes sense but in some ways I'm still where I started... I get the "why," but am still stuck on the "how."  To help with this, up next on our watchlist is this documentary about the Gacaca courts called My Neighbor, My Killer.  I'm hoping it will help me understand the how a little better.  I figured out how to rent it through Vimeo if you care to watch too.  

Here we are with Joseph back in Jan in front of the kwibuka statue at the Genocide Memorial.