[Music]
I’m sitting at the bar of the Hotel
Rwanda a place that I studied
extensively in graduate school when I
was a master student focused on trauma
theory and the atrocities of the Rwandan
genocide and I’m wondering how is it
that this place which sheltered more
than a thousand Tutsi refugees during
its nation’s darkest hour how has it
become a hot spot for cocktails
highlighted by the New York Times and
even weirder how am I the writer who
decided it deserves that honor it’s been
more than two decades since the Rwandan
genocide when nearly 1 million Tutsi
civilians were brutally slaughtered in
an uprising that lasted 100 days by the
country’s Hutu majority two decades Bill
Clinton was president during the
genocide the world wide web it was
barely a thing and yet ask anyone in
this room what they think of right now
when you hear the word Rwanda and I
guarantee you for most of you the answer
will be genocide so in May 2017 when a
friend told me I should check out Rwanda
as an upcoming tourist destination I was
intrigued I’m a journalist and while I
did study the genocide extensively I’ve
also been hearing a lot at the time
about the new Kigali with its clean
streets and it’s hip new bars Rwanda is
an African success story and journalists
like me
we like success stories they’re easy to
sell to editors and they give readers
hope which makes them powerful Rwanda
has more women in government than any
other nation in the world it has the
lowest crime rate in Africa it’s
progressive and friendly so I bought a
ticket and I went there and while I did
find a number of great stories about
Rwanda as a tourist destination what
amazed me about the country was not it’s
great new food scene or its
environmental gains like a nationwide
ban on plastic bags what amazed me about
Rwanda was how open everyone was about
the genocide
and how honest they were regardless of
what side they were on what amazed me
was how clearly Rwanda has realized that
it will only triumph over its Chama if
it keeps on talking on my first full day
in Kigali
I hired a driver named Charles to take
me around Charles is tall and slender
and elegant looking
the typical physical traits of a Rwandan
Tutsi Charles is also 28 which means
that he was born in 1990 which means
that he was four years old during the
genocide and he survived a childhood
trauma more horrific than anything I
could ever possibly understand but I
wasn’t thinking about any of this when
he opened the door of his car and he
asked me where I wanted to go I’m
primarily a travel journalist and I was
focused on seeing the sights after a
full day of touring we stopped at a chic
Kigali coffee shop and Charles waited in
the car while I went inside to get some
caffeine I wanted to be friendly so I
ordered him a coffee to go I didn’t know
how Charles took his coffee so I ordered
a plain cappuccino and when I came back
to the car I said here I got you a
coffee I hope you might don’t mind I
didn’t add any sugar what he said next
it floored me I usually take sugar in my
coffee said Charles but during the
genocide I walked with my family all the
way to Uganda so I can handle drinking a
coffee unsweetened it was at this moment
that I realized I was foolish to think I
could parachute into Rwanda and write
about it’s bright future without
properly understanding its past if you
want to understand the Rwandan genocide
it’s important to know it didn’t happen
overnight Rwanda has always had two
distinct ethnic groups the Hutu who are
the majority and the Tutsi who are the
minority but long ruled over the WHO two
centuries of European colonizers
favoured the Tutsi and they furthered
the rift between the two
in 1994 the airplane carrying the Hutu
president was shot down and it was
blamed on a group of Tutsi rebels and it
was bad act
took this simmering pot of hatred that
had been boiling for centuries and
caused it to bubble over that’s when the
murders began what happened in Rwanda
was an entire nation began killing
itself Hutu men picked up machetes and
they murdered women and children next
door
husbands turned on the families of their
own wives after 100 days when the
killing finally stopped the bloodshed
was so widespread and the devastation so
horrific that there was no precedent on
earth that could be applied to recovery
how do you bring criminals to justice
when there are more killers than courts
how do you heal from trauma and get
better when the very people who are
supposed to help you do that work the
doctors the nurses the trauma
specialists the social workers they are
as shell-shocked as everyone else it
seemed too big to solve indeed in the
days and months following the genocide
journalists who went to Rwanda sent back
the bleakest possible reports Rwanda is
finished they wrote the international
community all but resigned itself to
Rwanda being yet another anonymous
African failure one whose scars would
always define it but Rwanda had
different ideas the transformation of
that country from a battered series of
killing fields into Africa’s most
progressive nation is something that all
countries can learn from a decade after
the genocide the very idea of ethnicity
in Rwanda was outlawed identity cards
that listed people as either Hutu or
Tutsi they were torn up and they were
replaced by new cards with only one word
in the line for ethnicity Rwandan the
schoolbooks which for centuries had been
teaching students about all these
differences between the two groups those
were thrown out and new books were
written and while it’s true that 20
years after the genocide it’s still
relatively easy to tell from the way
someone looks if they’re likely Hutu or
Tutsi remember I could tell Charles was
probably Tutsi before he told me
anything about his own story I was
warned before I went to Rwanda not to
ask people about their ethnic back
and not to expect people to share it
either the entire country has banded
behind an idea of we are all Rwandan now
and it was a critical first step to
moving forward and putting centuries of
hate behind it
following the genocide Rwanda was facing
a legal tsunami so many people had
participated in the killing that if they
had tried all the cases in traditional
courts it would have taken Rwanda 200
years to hear them all so instead the
country turned to a form of community
justice called gotcha in which village
elders her testimony both from survivors
and killers and they decided sentencing
on their own the key difference between
traditional courts and gotcha courts is
that while traditional courts are
focused on punishment catracha courts
are focused on reconciliation and the
uncovering of truth yes many killers
were sentenced to prison through gotcha
courts but more importantly many others
were offered forgiveness in exchange for
confession it was not a perfect system
by any means but what it did was it
offered an entire country a chance for
catharsis and a way to move forward and
as a direct result of the Gotcha court
system today in the Rwandan countryside
there are reconciliation villages in
which Tutsi survivors and Hutu
perpetrators live side-by-side they
share water they share land they share
painful memories and these villages are
doing the impossible they’re working and
then you have Paul Kagame Kagame has
been the de facto leader of Rwanda since
1994 and he is both complicated and
controversial under his guidance Rwanda
has never been cleaner or stronger it’s
ever had a higher economic standing or
better place in the international world
but he has also been accused of being
authoritarian of censoring the press and
of cropping up of sham democracy but
even Kagame once a year leaves his
workplace and goes into the streets for
a National Day of Service where every
single Rwandan works together cleaning
sweeping building digging ditches
doing the physical work of building in
the country the day is called uma gunda
and it translates to coming together for
a common purpose and uma Gunda is
perhaps the most poignant example today
of how strongly all Rwandan from the
President to the people who collect
trash believe that their future will
only be bright if they all play an equal
part in it I went back to Rwanda a few
months later this time on assignment to
write that travel story for the New York
Times and I realized as I once again
flew in two key galleys bright and
shining Airport and I was greeted by a
smiling customs agent I realized that
what Rwanda has done it isn’t natural
it’s not natural to respond to extreme
hatred by tearing down the boundaries
between people it’s not natural to face
extreme trauma and react with compassion
and community and this has been the
secret to Rwanda success it has held
onto its history while letting go of
hate it has faced extreme trauma and
moved on but refused to forget a single
terrifying detail it has triumphed
against the odds of human emotion in
graduate school I studied trauma theory
and the ways in which the human brain
processes horrifying events you see a
trauma is an event that is so massive in
scope but the brain can’t process it all
at once so it continues to reprocess it
over and over until it’s fully worked
through this is where the flashbacks
from PTSD come from and this is why
collective trauma in which an entire
group or an entire country is all
shell-shocked
together this is why it can be so
difficult to overcome I am fascinated by
how openly Rwandan speak about the
genocide on my second visit there I
hired a fixer named Annie to do
translation for me and she told me
quietly over dinner just a few hours
after we met that she was abandoned by
her mother which at birth and she didn’t
meet her until she was 18 you see Annie
is Tutsi and when her mother was
pregnant she knew the genocide was
coming so she went to the countryside
and gave birth to her and left her with
a relative hoping she’d be safer there
it took both mother and daughter nearly
20 years to realize they were both
live and to find each other my friend
hippo who has dedicated his life to a
mission he calls be the peace he was 7
years old when he watched his own father
be brutally murdered and fed to dogs he
told me this calmly and with clarity at
a steak restaurant before adding that he
is insistent that his generation be the
last one in Rwanda to be transmitted
hate from its parents down to its
children so while yes today in Rwanda it
is taboo to ask someone about their
ethnic background the reality is it’s
also taboo to keep silent and so as I
sat there at the Hotel Rwanda marveling
at how this building which has seen so
many painful things is now once again
just a lovely hotel I realized if
there’s something you and I can learn
from Rwanda it’s this the truth may not
set you free but it will absolutely help
you rebuild and if other nations want to
learn from Rwanda the simplest path to
beginning is to find their truth and speak it thank you
I’m sitting at the bar of the Hotel
Rwanda a place that I studied
extensively in graduate school when I
was a master student focused on trauma
theory and the atrocities of the Rwandan
genocide and I’m wondering how is it
that this place which sheltered more
than a thousand Tutsi refugees during
its nation’s darkest hour how has it
become a hot spot for cocktails
highlighted by the New York Times and
even weirder how am I the writer who
decided it deserves that honor it’s been
more than two decades since the Rwandan
genocide when nearly 1 million Tutsi
civilians were brutally slaughtered in
an uprising that lasted 100 days by the
country’s Hutu majority two decades Bill
Clinton was president during the
genocide the world wide web it was
barely a thing and yet ask anyone in
this room what they think of right now
when you hear the word Rwanda and I
guarantee you for most of you the answer
will be genocide so in May 2017 when a
friend told me I should check out Rwanda
as an upcoming tourist destination I was
intrigued I’m a journalist and while I
did study the genocide extensively I’ve
also been hearing a lot at the time
about the new Kigali with its clean
streets and it’s hip new bars Rwanda is
an African success story and journalists
like me
we like success stories they’re easy to
sell to editors and they give readers
hope which makes them powerful Rwanda
has more women in government than any
other nation in the world it has the
lowest crime rate in Africa it’s
progressive and friendly so I bought a
ticket and I went there and while I did
find a number of great stories about
Rwanda as a tourist destination what
amazed me about the country was not it’s
great new food scene or its
environmental gains like a nationwide
ban on plastic bags what amazed me about
Rwanda was how open everyone was about
the genocide
and how honest they were regardless of
what side they were on what amazed me
was how clearly Rwanda has realized that
it will only triumph over its Chama if
it keeps on talking on my first full day
in Kigali
I hired a driver named Charles to take
me around Charles is tall and slender
and elegant looking
the typical physical traits of a Rwandan
Tutsi Charles is also 28 which means
that he was born in 1990 which means
that he was four years old during the
genocide and he survived a childhood
trauma more horrific than anything I
could ever possibly understand but I
wasn’t thinking about any of this when
he opened the door of his car and he
asked me where I wanted to go I’m
primarily a travel journalist and I was
focused on seeing the sights after a
full day of touring we stopped at a chic
Kigali coffee shop and Charles waited in
the car while I went inside to get some
caffeine I wanted to be friendly so I
ordered him a coffee to go I didn’t know
how Charles took his coffee so I ordered
a plain cappuccino and when I came back
to the car I said here I got you a
coffee I hope you might don’t mind I
didn’t add any sugar what he said next
it floored me I usually take sugar in my
coffee said Charles but during the
genocide I walked with my family all the
way to Uganda so I can handle drinking a
coffee unsweetened it was at this moment
that I realized I was foolish to think I
could parachute into Rwanda and write
about it’s bright future without
properly understanding its past if you
want to understand the Rwandan genocide
it’s important to know it didn’t happen
overnight Rwanda has always had two
distinct ethnic groups the Hutu who are
the majority and the Tutsi who are the
minority but long ruled over the WHO two
centuries of European colonizers
favoured the Tutsi and they furthered
the rift between the two
in 1994 the airplane carrying the Hutu
president was shot down and it was
blamed on a group of Tutsi rebels and it
was bad act
took this simmering pot of hatred that
had been boiling for centuries and
caused it to bubble over that’s when the
murders began what happened in Rwanda
was an entire nation began killing
itself Hutu men picked up machetes and
they murdered women and children next
door
husbands turned on the families of their
own wives after 100 days when the
killing finally stopped the bloodshed
was so widespread and the devastation so
horrific that there was no precedent on
earth that could be applied to recovery
how do you bring criminals to justice
when there are more killers than courts
how do you heal from trauma and get
better when the very people who are
supposed to help you do that work the
doctors the nurses the trauma
specialists the social workers they are
as shell-shocked as everyone else it
seemed too big to solve indeed in the
days and months following the genocide
journalists who went to Rwanda sent back
the bleakest possible reports Rwanda is
finished they wrote the international
community all but resigned itself to
Rwanda being yet another anonymous
African failure one whose scars would
always define it but Rwanda had
different ideas the transformation of
that country from a battered series of
killing fields into Africa’s most
progressive nation is something that all
countries can learn from a decade after
the genocide the very idea of ethnicity
in Rwanda was outlawed identity cards
that listed people as either Hutu or
Tutsi they were torn up and they were
replaced by new cards with only one word
in the line for ethnicity Rwandan the
schoolbooks which for centuries had been
teaching students about all these
differences between the two groups those
were thrown out and new books were
written and while it’s true that 20
years after the genocide it’s still
relatively easy to tell from the way
someone looks if they’re likely Hutu or
Tutsi remember I could tell Charles was
probably Tutsi before he told me
anything about his own story I was
warned before I went to Rwanda not to
ask people about their ethnic back
and not to expect people to share it
either the entire country has banded
behind an idea of we are all Rwandan now
and it was a critical first step to
moving forward and putting centuries of
hate behind it
following the genocide Rwanda was facing
a legal tsunami so many people had
participated in the killing that if they
had tried all the cases in traditional
courts it would have taken Rwanda 200
years to hear them all so instead the
country turned to a form of community
justice called gotcha in which village
elders her testimony both from survivors
and killers and they decided sentencing
on their own the key difference between
traditional courts and gotcha courts is
that while traditional courts are
focused on punishment catracha courts
are focused on reconciliation and the
uncovering of truth yes many killers
were sentenced to prison through gotcha
courts but more importantly many others
were offered forgiveness in exchange for
confession it was not a perfect system
by any means but what it did was it
offered an entire country a chance for
catharsis and a way to move forward and
as a direct result of the Gotcha court
system today in the Rwandan countryside
there are reconciliation villages in
which Tutsi survivors and Hutu
perpetrators live side-by-side they
share water they share land they share
painful memories and these villages are
doing the impossible they’re working and
then you have Paul Kagame Kagame has
been the de facto leader of Rwanda since
1994 and he is both complicated and
controversial under his guidance Rwanda
has never been cleaner or stronger it’s
ever had a higher economic standing or
better place in the international world
but he has also been accused of being
authoritarian of censoring the press and
of cropping up of sham democracy but
even Kagame once a year leaves his
workplace and goes into the streets for
a National Day of Service where every
single Rwandan works together cleaning
sweeping building digging ditches
doing the physical work of building in
the country the day is called uma gunda
and it translates to coming together for
a common purpose and uma Gunda is
perhaps the most poignant example today
of how strongly all Rwandan from the
President to the people who collect
trash believe that their future will
only be bright if they all play an equal
part in it I went back to Rwanda a few
months later this time on assignment to
write that travel story for the New York
Times and I realized as I once again
flew in two key galleys bright and
shining Airport and I was greeted by a
smiling customs agent I realized that
what Rwanda has done it isn’t natural
it’s not natural to respond to extreme
hatred by tearing down the boundaries
between people it’s not natural to face
extreme trauma and react with compassion
and community and this has been the
secret to Rwanda success it has held
onto its history while letting go of
hate it has faced extreme trauma and
moved on but refused to forget a single
terrifying detail it has triumphed
against the odds of human emotion in
graduate school I studied trauma theory
and the ways in which the human brain
processes horrifying events you see a
trauma is an event that is so massive in
scope but the brain can’t process it all
at once so it continues to reprocess it
over and over until it’s fully worked
through this is where the flashbacks
from PTSD come from and this is why
collective trauma in which an entire
group or an entire country is all
shell-shocked
together this is why it can be so
difficult to overcome I am fascinated by
how openly Rwandan speak about the
genocide on my second visit there I
hired a fixer named Annie to do
translation for me and she told me
quietly over dinner just a few hours
after we met that she was abandoned by
her mother which at birth and she didn’t
meet her until she was 18 you see Annie
is Tutsi and when her mother was
pregnant she knew the genocide was
coming so she went to the countryside
and gave birth to her and left her with
a relative hoping she’d be safer there
it took both mother and daughter nearly
20 years to realize they were both
live and to find each other my friend
hippo who has dedicated his life to a
mission he calls be the peace he was 7
years old when he watched his own father
be brutally murdered and fed to dogs he
told me this calmly and with clarity at
a steak restaurant before adding that he
is insistent that his generation be the
last one in Rwanda to be transmitted
hate from its parents down to its
children so while yes today in Rwanda it
is taboo to ask someone about their
ethnic background the reality is it’s
also taboo to keep silent and so as I
sat there at the Hotel Rwanda marveling
at how this building which has seen so
many painful things is now once again
just a lovely hotel I realized if
there’s something you and I can learn
from Rwanda it’s this the truth may not
set you free but it will absolutely help
you rebuild and if other nations want to
learn from Rwanda the simplest path to
beginning is to find their truth and speak it thank you
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