There are moments that will haunt you forever. Noises, decisions, split second images that are intricately linked to your being. That are always present or storm back in flashes that surprise and shock you every time. This week my family asked me why I didn’t take pictures at the genocide memorial. They were asking because they have never seen it and were hoping I had taken some for them too look at (which if I had known in advance I would have). My response was the obvious one, I didn’t need pictures; it wasn’t something I could forget. Today, however, a harder realer thing brought the genocide here to light. While listening to a speaker talk about the historical causes of the genocide and his own personal experiences one of our Kinyarwanda teacher’s who we’ve obviously grown to know and love in the last few weeks, very publicly broke down. We haven’t and don’t ask our teachers about their experiences in that time for obvious reasons. The answer will either be hard for them to give or hard for us to hear. There are people here who played a role in both sides of the conflict and it has been made clear to us that not all the people we live and work with fall on one side of the atrocity. We’ve taken the stance that it is better not to know to facilitate our jobs and our integration. But that moment of raw human emotion, of a person who we know and respect not being able to keep her composure was the reality of the situation. It made words fact and stories lives. I struggle to express the depth of a moment like that and the pain of knowing you will truthfully never understand. We’ve come to a country full of pain, and today we were graphically reminded of it. A scream that will haunt my nightmares for a lifetime was the truest reminder of what Peace Corps came here to do and how hard that will be to achieve.
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