I've been wanting to write a post about spending the month of April in my village for a while now. It's about a week into May and I've had some time to really reflect on my experience, the experiences I've heard from other Peace Corps Volunteers, and what I have heard from Rwandas both in my community and Peace Corps Staff.
As many of you msy know this year marked 22 years since the start of the genocide that occured in 1994 here in Rwanda. I'm not going to try to be a history teacher and talk about that aspect of things today but I encourage you all to educate yourselves from many different sources on not only to topic the genocide but all of Rwandan history. What I plan to share with you is what I witnesses personally in my community and how my thoughts have bee ninfluenced by me own experiences.
Starting on April 7th is the week of Remembrance. I was invited to the opening ceremony where I sat and listened to many prayers, accounts, and instruction as to how the rest of the week would take place. It was a little difficult understanding a lot of what was said but with the help of my counterpart, I got the main point of everything. When I first was asked to sit in front with the local leaders and officials I was very uncomfortable. I felt like I didn't have a right to be sitting in front of all of them as an outsider with no way of understanding, knowing how they felt, or what they went through. However, after the ceremony the Sector Social Affairs Officer, who has always been so supportive of me being there and the work I plan to do, personal came and genuinely thanked me for attending and told me how much it meant to him that I was there. This started to erase that idea that I had no right to be there and instead started letting in the thought that they really wanted me to be a part of their community.
As I walked home from where the ceremony had taken place with my counterpart he kept stopping to greet almost everyone we passed which meant I would then greet them all too. What the most amazing thing that happened was the majority of the people actually knew my name! I think I had to tell maybe one or two people but other than that I was "Erika" to them. I wasn't just another white person or another American, I was Erika, a member of the Muyongwe community. After this realization and talking with other people I realized that, yes, in this particular situation I was the ultimate outsider. There is no integration strategy to be a part of or even start understanding the community in relation to the genocide. However, they invited me to be a part of this and they saw me as a community member and it really made me feel lucky to be there and happy to be there to support them even if it was simply by just being.
Moving forward through this week and the entire month of April, I really noticed one big theme in my community, and again this is just my account of what iwitnessed, but it was Unity. In general my community is pretty quiet, and has their routine each day. During this time as they had village meetings each day to dialogue about the past, present, and future and other memorial events I saw groups of people coming together that I didn't normally see, I saw the girl who helps me take care of my yard, my landlord and his son coming together to help fix up the outside of my house and build a garden after some heavy rains, I saw more people in the market during the week than I normally did as they passed there on their way home. It was just an incredible thing to see.
Now, I want you all to know that all parts of Rwanda were affected differently by the genocide and have different ways of remembering during this time. Also, I did not attend the daily village dialogues out of personal preference but some volunteers do. There are so many different perspectives and lenses to look at 1994 and this present process of moving forward through. I am looking at both with the perspective of an outisder and as someone new to the community who is open and striving to learn more everyday. It is inspiring to me to see the progress made here in these past 22 years not only in a development sense but in a sense of growing together as a community and a nation.
We had a pannel of Rwandan PEace Corps staff talk about their experiences before, during, and after 1994 at the conference I attended this past week and I realized that the best way to learn about history is to hear the experiences of someone who has lived it. I know it's not possible to do all of the time but I am so thankful to have this opportunity, to have this new lense to look at not only the people of Rwanda through but people throughout the world through. This lense is the desire to learn about world through multiple perspectives.
Thank you for reading this reflection, I know it's a bit long but I truly believe it's important to take the time and think about all of this. I really encourage you all to join me in reading more about what happened here in 1994 and to support Rwanda as they remember and move forward.
Here is a video we watched at this past conference I attended and I think it fits well into this post. Please watch it and think about what she's saying. Feel free to comment your thoughts I fixed the comment settings finally.
