15th anniversary

Most people know about the Rwandan genocide that occurred exactly 15 years ago. For some reason though, I can't seem to pinpoint the first time I heard about the massacre that dragged on, widely unnoticed by the international community, for 100 days. Nearly 1 million people were slaughtered and tossed to the side of the road in the days that followed the April 6 assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994. 

At the time, I was just seven years old and naturally, I cared more about how my friends were treating me than how the Rwandan people were treating each other. After doing a quick Wikipedia search on events from 1994, it appears that Kurt Cobain's infamous suicide occurred the day before President Habyarimana was killed. I definitely recall hearing about Cobain's death so it's not as if I was completely sheltered. But it makes me wonder what's wrong with us when a celebrity's death overshadows a murderous rampage that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

While most foreigners that were situated in Rwanda at the time began to flee the country, a cameraman named Nick Hughes stuck around. On April 11, he filmed the murder of two Rwandans. The video was widely distributed through various media outlets across the globe but still, no one cared to pay attention. 

After reading an incredible article in the Toronto Star, I watched the video for the first time today. In the article, Allan Thompson described his quest to identify the two people in the video. In a trip to Rwanda a couple years after the genocide, Thompson came across a pile of corpses.

In one of the camps abandoned by civilians who had gone back to Rwanda, we came across a massacre site, nearly 20 bodies hacked apart and dumped in a heap. Some had their heads cracked open and brain matter exposed, others their entrails spilling out of body cavities. These were the first human remains I had seen outside of a funeral home, and they will always be with me. The most difficult to look at were the children, one a baby in a green woollen jumper, lying on its back, arms splayed. As if by reflex, my response was to take out my camera and step gingerly through the bodies, regarding them through my camera lens.

We've all read graphic excerpts such as this, whether it's from the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the ongoing conflicts in Sudan and the DRC. It's not pleasant to read but I'm fascinated by these stories because they are so unknown. I don't know why women are raped. I don't know why young boys become child soldiers. I wish I knew why  people are driven to cause pain, but I just don't. 

In receiving the Investigative Journalism Grant at The Cord, I've promised to write an article on life after the Rwandan genocide. Because I can't turn back time and force my seven-year-old self to care about international news, the best I can do is discover the hurt that the survivors have incurred and how the genocide has affected their lives. 

As I learned from Charlote Nizeyimana, it's important not to dwell on the past - hers involving a bittersweet survival of the genocide. She did explain though, that it's important to share stories about ourselves if it helps other people to gain a better understanding of humanity. Hopefully I can be used as an instrument to deliver that understanding.