What does 16 years mean?

Yesterday marked the 16^th year anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda. Though the violence lasted a decade, we are specifically commemorating the 100 days of slaughter that began April 6^th, 1994 and led to the deaths of close to 1 million Rwandans. The theme for the commemoration this year is “Let’s remember the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi by uniting more in the fight against trauma.”

 

At least 2000 villagers crowded around our town’s small genocide memorial today for the five-hour ceremony of speeches and prayers. I was the only white person.  It’s more than taboo to mention ethnicities in Rwanda so it was shocking today to hear those names.  A group of widows placed flowers on the memorial and I continued to watch them throughout the ceremony. I wanted to monitor their sorrow and exhaustion so I could understand how much pain 16 years had erased. Their faces were the most expressive that I saw but we’re talking about a culture that is averse to showing emotion. As I watched people’s physical and emotional responses to the event, I began to question what 16 years means.

How much do you remember and how much can you forget in 16 years? What do you hold on to but what have you let go? Does it depend on how well you knew the killers? Or how large the massacre was? What’s 16 years when people lived in constant fear from 1990-1998, when the country only became “normal” in 2003 and when there is still intermittent ethnic violence? What does 17-year old Fabian think of the 16 years he’s been an orphan? How were those 16 years if you could not share them with your loved ones? What’s 16 years when the Parliament still bares battle scars?

I cannot gauge it. Is 16 years a long or short time? Seeing the rapid development in country, you would imagine it’d been a quarter century, at least. Hearing people’s monotone descriptions of killings makes it seem like they’re telling their grandparents’ stories. But if I think about losing half my family, unborn nieces and nephews, and schoolmates, I think those 16 years would have been too dark to do anything more than slowly crawl through the wreckage. 

After 16 years, where should the country be? Well, I think they’re ahead of schedule. They are full of forgiveness and I am full of admiration.

I cannot believe I am here.

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I am revisiting this blog post after the commemoration week ended. A fellow volunteer read my post and asked a colleague if 16 years was a short or long time. He said that 16 years is neither: when it’s something you’ll never forget, 16 years is just 16 years.