Rwandan children

I neglected to feature the part of the Red Cross museum that was the most moving for me in my previous post. Near the end of the museum, after the historical background in displays and media presentations, they have a number of rooms that illustrate an important contemporary aspect of the Red Cross. For example, one room dimly lit room has the precise dimensions of a prison cell where 18 prisoners where held for months. It's probably slightly smaller than my kitchen. I doubt more than 3 people could ever lie down at once. Now try to figure out how much time that leaves for each to sleep laying down.... Another raises awareness about the horrendous effects of abandoned landmines by exhibiting a number of prothsetic legs for children. Not the most cheery stuff, by any means.

And so I wandered into the next one, entitled "Restoring Family Links" The black and white footage from WWII of an inconsolable Chinese toddler crying, which I had seen at a previous presentation, already put me in a rather subdued mood. Facing the horrid realities of man's inhumanity against man is never an easy thing to do. But a recognition of things as they are is a prerequisite to effectuating any positive change. And aside from that rather vague and obstinately optimistic statement, I am convinced that to see the suffering of others and feel deeply for them somehow makes me a much kinder, thoughtful person.

The only appropriate and immediate reaction for me is to affirm

An explanation of the IRC's effort to reunite families.

Isn't this kid cute?!

Some of the younger ones....

These children are so young that they get to sit in a volunteer's lap. I wonder how I would feel if I were one of those volunteers....

8 more children separated from their families. I love the one in top right corner.

"joy"

A mother and daughter finally together again.

A father reunited with his son. I almost feel like it is sacrilege for me to exploit such a sacred and intensely personal moment. But I feel compelled to share the joy of homecoming, since that is indeed what the Red Cross was able to accomplish through this program.

How many people do you think you saved?

I think it's something between 60,000 and 70,000 people. Ten thousand people were taken care of in our hospital. Hundreds if not thousands of orphans were saved by us or because of our initiative. ...We had a makeshift hospital also in [a town] close to Gitarama, and there were altogether 35,000 people there.... We knew that they took wounded people out of the hospital and killed them. I think hundreds of them were killed, but still it's 35,000, less some hundreds....

In [Gisuma] close to Cyangugu, they took all the Tutsis, brought them to the football stadium and started to kill them. We entered Cyangugu from Zaire with a lot of difficulties; it took us four or five days to be able to cross the border and talk to the local authorities. Most of the killings had already been done, but 9,000 people survived. ...In the north in the region under RPF control, 20,000 displaced persons went back, and they were fed by us. ...I don't know, [in total] I think 60,000 or 70,000.

That you think you've saved?
Yeah. I don't know if this means something, 60,000 or 70,000, after half a million [were killed]. ...But [there were] tens of thousands of people that would have been killed without our presence there, and this helps....

Can you talk about how your experience in Rwanda has affected you?
There's something which definitely has changed in my perception of things. I'm not affected any more by horrors. Horrors are meaningless, nonsense. But beautiful things are miracles.... When you see, just very simple, children playing happily, it's wonderful.... "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Keats wrote that.... Beauty gives sense to everything....

And even in the horror, you found beauty saving people, or seeing other people help you save people.

Yes, this is our job, to find beauty, create beauty in the very core of horror.
I don't participate anymore in family reunions. Because of war, sometimes you have children separated from their fathers or husband and wife or whatever and sometimes people meet again. We have been able, after the genocide, to reunite thousands of children with their families. And this is to create beauty within the horror.... [But] I cannot go [anymore]. It's too beautiful.


Once you met somebody at a conference in Britain who said that you had saved their life. Do you want to talk about that?

I met this lady in Great Britain in 2001. I didn't recognize her but she recognized me. ...It was emotionally so strong for her and for me to meet again that after two seconds, we started to cry. But it was a cry of happiness of pure happiness. … But it's not very healthy. We should not experience these kind of things. It's just too strong. I will never in my life go back to Rwanda. Not at all because this would remind me of awful things. I don't want to meet again with people we have saved, because it's too strong. It's unbearable. It's too beautiful.

In 1998 a colleague of mine who was just coming back from Rwanda told me, "Philippe, you should know something. I spent six or eight months there, and I've been amazed by the quantity of children whose first name is Gaillard. 'Gaillard Habyarimana,' or whatever." Okay, thank you very much, thank you. [But] I don't want to see these children. It's not necessary.

...When we came back from Rwanda, my wife and I had been married for seven years. We had deliberately had no children. It was so evident for her, for me, that after this experience we both wanted to create life. And it is so beautiful. [My children] will know it, they will discover it, [but] I would never explain to my son that he was a product of a genocide. That's not easy to explain.

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