Half Mast

Last Sunday marked the end of Genocide Memorial Week in Rwanda, fourteen years after almost one million people lost their lives. The week began on Monday 7th April, the official start of one hundred days of mourning for those lost in the war. The mood has been unsurprisingly sombre, and of course for many this has been a very traumatic period with horrifying experiences being relived as memories are revived.

In Nyagatare, and across the country, the first act of commemoration took place on the Monday afternoon as the residents of the area processed through the town in silence ending with a meeting in the centre. Throughout the rest of the week the whole town shut down every afternoon and all the adults attended conferences on the Genocide, where survivors gave testimonies and films were shown. Children were not required to attend these conferences which meant that the whole place was eerily silent except for the sound of children’s voices.

I cant deny that the whole feeling behind this period left me a little uncomfortable, not that I do not believe remembrance is very important, of course it is, but because the revisiting of this horrific time is so thrust upon the population that there is no escape. Every afternoon not only are the conferences happening throughout the country, but televisions are only showing Genocide-related programmes and the radio playing Genocide-related broadcasts. It must be different for every individual and is undoubtedly a matter of personal perspective but one can’t help but wonder what effect this has on individuals.

Meanwhile, all primary and secondary school teachers have just come the end of a three week ‘political camp’ for solidarity training, which took up the whole of their holidays. As a result the President announced at their closing meeting, held (amidst great traffic chaos) at the national stadium, that they would get an extra week off. This will inevitably throw the school term out of whack and is bound to have repercussions for our programme as well as students’ timetables. But this is the way Rwanda works, and so I will work with it.