Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda

Preface

xi Pref­ ace In April 1994 I was fin­ ish­ ing my last se­ mes­ ter as an under­ grad­ u­ ate at Bos­ ton Uni­ ver­ sity. Pre­ oc­ cu­ pied with a sen­ ior the­ sis, course­ work, and a job ­ search in the midst of a re­ ces­ sion, I ­ barely no­ ticed the hor­ rific ­ events going on in­ Rwanda. Then in June of the same year the Bos­ ton Globe head­ lines began grab­ bing my at­ ten­ tion each morn­ ing as I ­ bought my cof­fee and ­ boarded a com­ muter train bound for my new job. By July the im­ ages of des­ per­ ate moth­ ers and dying ba­ bies in ref­ u­ gee camps in east­ ern Zaire had made an im­ pres­ sion on me. I ­ wanted to know more about how the sit­ u­ a­ tion had­ evolved. Inter­ nal Am­ nesty Inter­ na­ tional brief­ing ­ papers on the gen­ o­ cide ex­ plained that “Hutus” had ­ killed “Tut­ sis” in ­ Rwanda be­ cause of “an­ cient tri­ bal ha­ tred.” The de­ scrip­ tions of the vi­ o­ lence fo­ cused on the ­ cutting off of­ Tutsis’ legs be­ cause the Hutu kill­ ers ­ wanted to “cut them down to size.” As a human ­ rights ac­ ti­ vist ­ deeply in­ volved with Am­ nesty Inter­ na­ tional, I was quite fa­ mil­ iar with the many ways that hu­ mans had de­ vised to tor­ ture and xii Preface kill each other; yet this ex­ pla­ na­ tion of the 1994 gen­ o­ cide in ­ Rwanda did not ring true for me. In my ac­ ti­ vism I met ref­ u­ gees from ­ Rwanda and the for­ mer Yu­ go­ sla­ via who were being re­ set­ tled in the Bos­ ton area. Al­ though many ref­ u­ gees also ex­ plained the wars in their home coun­ tries in terms of eth­ nic ha­ tred, my inter­ ac­ tions with them sug­ gested that peo­ ple in these far­ away ­ places were not much dif­fer­ ent from my neigh­ bors and co­ work­ ers in Bos­ ton. Know­ ing what I did about human mo­ ti­ va­ tions, such sim­ plis­ tic ex­ pla­ na­ tions left me in­ creas­ ingly dis­ satis­ fied. My de­ ter­ mi­ na­ tion to find bet­ ter an­ swers even­ tu­ ally led me into a doc­ to­ ral pro­ gram in anthro­ pol­ ogy, stud­ y­ ing war, gen­ o­ cide, and human ­ rights vi­ o­ la­ tions at the micro­ level. When I under­ took field­ work in ­ Rwanda be­ gin­ ning in April 1997, a very tense time due to the ­ forced re­ pa­ tri­ a­ tion of ­ nearly two mil­ lion ref­ u­ gees and the on­ go­ ing war in Zaire, I began to con­ front the stark re­ al­ ities of pov­ erty, im­ mis­ er­ a­ tion, and pow­ er­ less­ ness with which av­ er­ age Rwan­ dans lived on a daily basis. In col­ lab­ o­ ra­ tion with ­ AVEGA-Agahozo, an or­ gan­ iza­ tion for wid­ ows of the gen­ o­ cide, I met with grass­ roots ­ women’s ­ groups and inter­ viewed sur­ vi­ vors. From these in­ itial ex­ pe­ ri­ ences grew the re­ search pro­ ject that re­ sulted in this book, which ex­ am­ ines the chal­ lenges and com­ plex­ ities of life faced by women in the after­ math of war and gen­ o­ cide. While this book fo­ cuses pri­ mar­ ily on women in post­ gen­ o­ cide ­ Rwanda, its over­ arch­ ing story and les­ sons apply to the gen­ eral human con­ di­ tion.­ Rwanda’s story is also a story about how Eu­ ro­ peans and ­ Americans per­ ceive ­ Africans and ­ Africa’s prob­ lems. Stu­ dents often ar­ rive in my ­ courses think­ ing that gen­ o­ cide and eth­ nic/ra­ cial con­ flict are prob­ lems faced by other peo­ ple in dis­ tant times and ­ places. Par­ tic­ u­ larly when stu­ dents per­ ceive these ­ places as being pre­ mod­ ern and under­ de­ vel­ oped, stu­ dents im­ a­ gine that these far­ away prob­ lems have lit­ tle to do with their own lives in North Car­ o­ lina or Ken­ tucky. One of this ­ book’s im­ pli­ ca­ tions, how­ ever, is that gen­ o...