Many of us will hear the word genocide and link it to
Rwanda and actually don’t give it much thought. Some will read about it and
leave the read pages to that, “read pages” some will watch the Hotel Rwanda or other
related genocide movies and shade a tear and in no time forget about what they
watched. Some who actually don’t think such atrocities happen will simply tell
you “it’s just a movie and we are living in modern times where these things
don’t happen. Well these things that you may think don’t happen happened to not
very far from us, it happened right here in our neighboring country Rwanda.
I should say hadn’t his devilish act happened, Rwanda
would have been one of the great and most developed countries we got in East
Africa. Looking at Rwanda now and looking at it 20 years ago? The country is
doing great, in terms of infrastructure, it’s the cleanest city African country
and people here are great.
Well Back to the Genocide, it may have happened 20 years ago
but believe me it still feels like yesterday, to you it may feel like they
should move on already but we all know you don’t wake up one morning and say
“am going to forget the loss of a loved one” Same thing for these people. The
death of a loved one hurts so much when you have spent sleepless nights in
hospitals hoping and praying they will get well but it’s very and once again
very painful if you wake up every night for twenty years thinking and having
images of how your loved one perished, it’s traumatic to have images of your
Tutsi mother being slashed to death, it’s traumatizing to be in hiding and
hearing someone screaming for help because they are about to be slashed to
death. Now that’s Trauma. I understand the break down the victims of the Rwanda
genocide go through every 7th day of April. Everyone has their eyes
on that day, everyone knows what day it is and every person who was present
during the 1994 Rwandan genocide knows what happened so it’s natural to break
down. People were killed in churches, people were warned that wherever they went they will be killed, there was no escape.
Children as young as these could have seen what happened and they may forever be haunted by what they saw.
We need to help the Rwandan especially the Tutsi to
overcome the pain and traumatic experience they went through. There are various
ways of helping them, psycho social support is the main help for them to get
well, teach them of what happened, it wasn’t OK for the Hutu to do that but
they did it anyway and they need to forgive them. Not talking about it makes
them build something inside them which is not good. Under the East African
community “One people one Destiny” lets join hands on 7th April and
send our love to the Tutsi in Rwanda and encourage them about talking about the
manslaughter that befell them. Advocating for peace and love among all east
Africans should be one thing that drives us. I light a candle for the departed
during the genocide and I say a prayer for all the affected, the victims and
the victimized.
