Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Ghosts of Rawanda

Rwanda’s Ghosts 090218
Jake Warga

[Host Intro] Rwanda has come a long way in healing since the Genocide in 1994…but as independent producer Jake Warga (War-Guh) tells us, you can’t ignore ghosts. He visited the East African country recently and brings us this story.

[Harriett] (Can you describe, for the tape, what you’re seeing?) What I’m seeing, these are skulls,

[JW] This is my translator, Harriett, it’s just her and I in a crypt under the Nyamata church near the capital Kigali, where in 1994, 10,000 people took refuge from the genocide. They were all killed above us in a single day and now we’re looking at their skulls, or they’re looking at us.
[music]
[Harriett] and um, Oh My God, this is unspeakable, I don’t know what to say now. this should have never been for heaven sakes

[JW] You can’t miss the ghosts in modern-day Rwanda—they line every road, wander through every village, and speak to anyone willing to listen. And the Rwandese work extremely hard to listen to their ghosts, so that the past does not repeat itself.

[Raffiki] …when I remember Genocide, I pray that genocide could never never never again be happening

[JW] Raffiki runs an orphanage for former street children just outside of Kigali. In 94, he was shot, thrown into a hole, and waited among the dead for two days till help came. I’m talking with him on the school’s soccer pitch, and behind us, in the distance, are men working on building a garden for the children so they can grow their own food. All the men are wearing pink shirts and pants.

[Raffiki] That is a uniform for prisoners in Rwanda. Those people are in Jail.

[JW] After Genocide, the country faced a problem of having too many people in prison. So instead of building more prisons, low-level offenders might serve some time, but then, as part of reconciliation, given the pink uniforms and sent back to work in the community till their debt is paid.

[Raffiki] (Is that kind of an uncomfortable feeling to see these are the prisoners responsible or part of genocide working right next to children that might be a product of Genocide?) it’s a kind of facilitating unity and reconciliation, yes they have participated on genocide but they are also Rwandese, we have to share the same Rwanda, we have to live together, we have to stay together forever, then we can start learning how to share life.

[millennium village singing]
[JW] Another experiment in dealing with the ghosts of the past is to live together, sometimes under the same roof. We were not greeted by sorrow, but song and food. The Millennium village project is one experiment to bring the past and present together. Victims and perpetrators live together in the same village in hopes that as well as exchanging the occasional cup of flower, they also trade forgiveness. Traditional dancers put on a dizzying show before one woman steps up to tell us her story, Harriett translates,
[woman] my family was killed…
[JW] She’s the victim of genocide, and after telling us her story, a quiet man stands to tell us his.
[man talking]
[JW] He’s a perpetrator, responsible, in part, for her losses, now they’re neighbors. Their children play together, and when he’s sick, they bring him food.
[Man talking]
[Harriett] Like there would be a big group and they would all participate in killing. Like if you have surrounded, ambushed the people and you start to participate in the killing, you can not say you’re not involved in the killing. Definitely you’re among the killers.
(Can it happen again?) That can never go back again, that if it happens, he will just decide to die, but he can never kill again.

[JW] He tells us he found god in prison, so I ask him if he’s going to heaven or hell
[Harriett] (Heaven or hell?) That one, will leave for God to decide. That if he did wrong, God will punish him.

[Music ends]

[Raiph] I had a moment in the memorial where I completely lost it, it was a complete breakdown for me. At that moment there was a moment of clarity, I think I understood my response to Rwanda.

[JW] We’re at the genocide museum above crypts that hold over 250 thousand bodies, where the ghosts go to sleep once they’ve been heard. Between 800,000 to 1million people were killed in just 100 days, that’s five and a half people killed per minute.

[JW] I’m traveling with People-2-People Ambassador program, Raiph Baard is our group organizer. When I first met Raiph, and heard his accent, I suspected there was a deeper reason he was here.

[Raiph] I grew-up in the apartheid era in south Africa. I wasn’t brave enough to take my own life at risk and do something about apartheid. So I chose to leave the country. And then in 94 the images of what was happening in Rwanda were on the television, and my response to it was “oh yes, it’s Africa, I know Africa, I’ve seen this all before” people in Africa kill each other, it’s just the way Africa is. I feel that this is my chance to make up for some of that, to do something here. The experience in Rwanda has taught me that you can’t just look at the images in Africa and say “there they go again”.

[Ambi from Goma]
[Raiph] And after Rwanda we were all so shocked and we all said we wouldn’t let it happen again. But we’re letting it happen again, and we should do something about it, we should take action.

[JW (till end)] Raiph is referring to our day-trip into Goma, just to the West of Rwanda, into the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwandan extremists fled in ’94 and are continuing their work. Once you cross the border, the desperation is choking. All the officials are after a bribe, special police are everywhere, it’s crowded and panicky. Reports of genocide haunt all the refugee camps among those who fled, and among those who can’t. I felt so relieved to get back into Rwanda. And not far away, there’s Darfur, Sudan. The problem with ghosts is that they get louder the more we ignore them, for they are acting on the past’s behalf, warning the living, teaching what they so painfully learned, and what we are in danger of forgetting.

Like a good soldier, Sam, wouldn’t talk to me on tape. We met at a café just outside Kigali, he sat deep in the corner, smoking. Sam just got back from Darfur, Sudan, as part of an African Union Peacekeeping observer troop. “Tell me about it” I said. Taking a huge drag, his first words to me came as smoke, “If you go there…you will cry” he sighed and sunk down into his plastic chair, like a weight had been taken off his shoulder, the smoke continued out of him, like his soul was still smoldering. Having survived a genocide, Rwanda was the first to volunteer troops into Darfur, eager that it should never happen again.
I can’t, I won’t, repeat the horrible and bloody crimes he described witnessing in Sudan. They’re acting under the same UN charter that was in place in Rwanda in ’94, which prevents them from using force, I point this out to him, “That’s why people died” he says, “What I’ve seen is enough…I’ve seen it before” says Sam who was part of the troops that came in to stop the genocide in 94’. He’s re-living a nightmare of clearing the streets of bodies, including children, and trying not to think of his own. “The world has not learned” his last words going up in smoke.

An ignored past is a failed past, and all monuments are cautions to that. Driving to the airport to go home, dodging well-manicured traffic circles, we pass a genocide memorial, a white concrete column with manicured garden around it, they’re scattered everywhere in the country. But I trust these monuments will always tower over their possible neglect. When all the survivor’s voices are gone, when grandma’s tears stop, these beacons to the collective memory of the country will tower above all else—the past watching over the future. I really hope that everyone I spoke with was right when they said genocide will never ever happen again. Ever.

[END]