Day 6

I haven’t explained what I’m actually doing in Kigali… besides riding motos and eating ridiculous amounts of pineapple. So here goes…

I am interning with the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG) in the Research, Documentation and Dissemination Center on Genocide (RDCG). RDCG was started about one year ago with the primary function to gather evidence of the 1994 genocide and begin to analyze and provide information to the public (domestic and international). My first task was to draft a proposal for the future of RDCG.  

As part of the proposal I had meetings with specialists in Conservation and Documentation and the Gacaca cases. Conservation and Documentation records testimonials of survivors and perpetrators, gathers evidence such as human remains and artifacts as well as photographic documentation of individual and mass graves. The Gacaca cases are the trials of perpetrators. The trials officially finished in 2012 and now all of the documentation (well over 1 million trials and at least 60 million documents) must be organized, filed and scanned into a database. 

My mindset coming in this morning was mostly annoyed with the “East African Work Ethic” which is basically considered inefficient and an enormous frustration for anyone socialized in any other part of the world. I figured the meetings would consist of me waiting several hours for them to arrive and not being particularly productive. I did indeed wait an hour and a half before my first meeting came but it was well worth the wait. The first meeting was with a Gacaca documentation professional who was incredibly insightful and knowledgeable. He was patient in explaining the Gacaca proceedings, the challenges the unit is facing and what needs to be done to save the documents from deteriorating in damp cardboard boxes and lost forever. His job, along with nine other professionals, entails reading every single Gacaca case file. Which means reading 60 million pages of mass violence. When we finished I asked him how he found the courage to go to work every morning.

His words of advice were:

 “You have to write the story before you cry.” 

“So I go run amok. Maybe that is exactly what that man wants. For me to give up. For it to be too much.”

 [In regards to a survivor who was raped during the genocide] “She survived. She is here and we can help her.”

 “Maybe I quit because it is hard. And then my friend quits because I quit. Who will be left to do this important work?”

We exchanged emails and he has offered to meet again while I’m here to discuss his work and show me the original Gacaca files.

If that wasn’t enough before lunch, I met with a man who specializes in forensic conservation of human remains. He showed me pictures of the mobile lab they set up to preserve and study evidence. I’m not sure I’m ready to write about that experience quite yet. The meeting was very informative. 

A productive day.