I found this article on the front page of CNN.com this morning, and I wanted to share it with all of you. I hope it helps you understand the events of 1994, and the hope Rwanda has now!
Blessings,
Emily
Editor's note: Suzanne Malveaux
anchors the noon to 2 p.m. edition of CNN Newsroom and has worked as a CNN White
House correspondent for nearly a decade.
(CNN) -- The people in Rwanda do not want the world to
forget what happened there 18 years ago. They certainly haven't.
This week, Rwandans mark the 18th
anniversary of the April 6, 1994, genocide that took place in their country. For
many, this is a somber but very necessary exercise, and many will visit sites
where their families and friends were killed.
But on a recent visit there, I
took away that although people want to remember what happened, they also want to
show the world how they have moved on.
It was 14 years ago when I last
visited Rwanda. I was covering President Bill Clinton as a White House
correspondent when Air Force One touched down March 26, 1998. I remember
thinking how absolutely beautiful and lush the countryside was flying in. It was
hard to believe this was the same place where such atrocities occurred.
We stayed on the tarmac for three
hours because the Secret Service deemed it was too dangerous for the president
to leave the airport. During our short stay in 1998, Clinton apologized on
behalf of the American people to the Rwandans for not doing enough to stop the
1994 genocide. During that period, Rwanda's Hutu majority targeted and
slaughtered the Tutsi minority and Hutu moderates, killing 800,000 people in 100
days.
Rwandan genocide orphan builds
new life
Rwandan reconciliation village
Film tells story of Rwandan
genocide
After his speech was over, I
interviewed a genocide survivor.
She was a young woman who had
been gang raped and carried scars across her head from a huge machete. We sat
across from each other in metal folding chairs in the airport hanger. I asked
her the only thing that was on my mind: "What gives you the strength to go on?"
And she responded "faith."
Fourteen years later to the day,
I would be invited to participate in a service project that would bring me back
to Rwanda.
Last week, I traveled with a
small group of female journalists. We were asked to help teach young Rwandan
women how to tell their own stories through journalism. They call it "the girl
effect" -- investing in young women early in their lives so that it will pay off
later in curbing poverty, disease and despair. In Rwanda, the concept is "ni
nyampinga." In their local language, it means striving to be a beautiful woman
inside and out.
One of those women I met was
23-year-old Didacienne "Dida" Nibagwire. She is a young actress who has been in
a number of films and TV shows in Rwanda. Kids go crazy seeing her on the street
because they recognize her from a series she did on children's rights. As in the
U.S., making a living as an actor is tough, so she does electronics repair and
translations on the side. Like many Rwandans, she speaks at least three
languages -- Kinyarwanda, English and French.
Dida is part of the new
generation of Rwandans that has hope and the opportunities to pursue their
dreams. When I first met her, she smiled easily and exuded a kind of calm that
felt maternal. But Dida's path to this point has been difficult, and she was
very open about her struggle.
When Dida was 7, her parents and
six of her 10 siblings were killed in the genocide. Her earliest memory is of
running -- running with her sister, her mother and many others for reasons she
says she didn't understand. Dida says she remembers first her father being shot,
then her mother attacked.
"They put a spear in her back.
... Then they shot my younger sister and cut the leg off one of my other
sisters. Then after that, that's when they killed my mom, but she did not die.
She was talking to my sister, asking for water, but she could not go out to
search for water. Then she died," Dida says.
Dida and her older sister,
Claire, survived after the killers launched a grenade. "She was sleeping in
front of me, and her blood was all over over me, and they thought we were both
dead. That night she took me to walk," Dida says.
Days later on the dangerous
journey, Dida and Claire were apprehended by a group and thrown into a pit of
dead bodies.
"A certain day many killers came
and the leaders took me and my sister and then they opened a big hole and threw
us in. I was asking please forgive us." Dida says she asked Claire whether they
were actually dead.
The two survived because a
friend of Dida's sister paid someone to pull them out.
"Someone came and opened up and
removed my sister and tried to remove me but because there were many dead they
said, 'We leave her here.' "
Dida's sister saved her life
when she offered to take her place. But they could not save everyone. "The sad
thing is that they closed the pit, and they left the other man inside, and he
was still alive," Dida says.
This is just a small part of
Dida's complicated story.
When I asked her how she endured
such tragedy and is able to cope today, she says, "I think it's an obligation. I
have to do something good for my country. ... I ask myself why did I stay, why
not my younger sister, why not my brother, and I say maybe God has something
that he wants me to do."
Dida is doing plenty these days,
including theater, teaching and voice-over work. She is most proud of her
performances that draw attention to the problem of violence against girls and
says it contributes to her healing.
"There is no paradise on Earth.
What happened in Rwanda can happen anywhere," Dida says.
But Dida also is somewhat of an
ambassador for her country.
"Rwanda is not only about
genocide. I think Rwanda is about something else," she says. "I think many
people when they hear Rwanda they link it with genocide, but after 18 years,
Rwanda is at a certain point. ... We have our culture, we have our history, we
have many things.
"We have a developing country.
It's a tourist country. ... It is our history but we also want people to know
that Rwanda is not all about genocide; Rwanda is something else."
.JPG)
