Rwanda's Long Journey
by Swanee Hunt, Rocky Mountain News
May 26, 2024

My story takes place in Rwanda, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Thick white mist flows like a river in the creases of green velvet covering the "Land of a Thousand Hills." Rwanda is also one of the world's poorest countries, but it serves up a feast for the senses: wide-awake technicolor wraps of women -- head to toe layers of bright yellow, blue, and red -- against the green monochromatic landscape; pungent leaves from eucalyptus trees, cool moist breezes on the skin, and tangy fresh passion fruit. Everywhere scenes of daily subsistence -- a young boy transporting a large bag of potatoes balanced on a rough-hewn wood scooter; women and children who have walked miles to line up at a public faucet, their dozens of yellow canisters in a row on the ground like a giant plastic snake; men along the dusty road in dark business suits, returning from a Pentecostal church meeting; and women making their way to market toting large baskets on their heads and babies strapped to their backs.

The hillsides are terraced in small plots, farmed by mostly by women, with hoes. The men clearing the land wield machetes. Those tools turned deadly seven years ago, as extremists launched a fear-based campaign that claimed almost million lives--of a population of about eight million. I met with women whose destinies were forever marked by the violence. Among them was Solange, eight years old when the militia kidnapped her. She and four other girls were kept for three weeks and raped repeatedly, each day. At the end, only two were alive. Upon her return, she began to get sick. At the hospital, she received a death sentence: HIV.

Across from her sat Jeanette, probably in her late thirties, in blue bold-print cotton dress with traditional large puff sleeves. Jeanette said she felt safe when she gathered her 7 children with 5,000 others in a forest area as the violence began. Their stones and sticks were no match for the guns of the military that encircled them. When most of the 5,000 were dead -- including 5 of her children -- the soldiers seized the remaining women and girls. Jeanette lost consciousness when the 13th man was on top of her -- her infant at her side.

These days, in response to the taunts of schoolmates, Jeanette assures her older surviving child -- now 16 -- "I promise I won't die." To me privately she says, "People will not even take a cup of tea from my hands." She shows me arms and legs with lesions that will not lie. I promise I will tell her story.

"I don't like to hear those stories," says Paul Kagame, the general who brought an end to the bloodbath, now President of Rwanda. "They make me think the men who did those things do not deserve to live. But that kind of thinking does not lead us anywhere. I tell these women we must reconcile, I expect them to say 'Never.' But they are amazing. They smile. Can you believe that? 'Well, this is my life,' they say. 'I can't go back and change it -- just try now to do whatever I can with it.'"

Although controversial internationally, Kagame is considered by many at the US State Department one of Africa's most promising reformers. A former US Assistant Secretary for Human Rights calls him a hero. But the challenges he faces are enormous. In Kigali I addressed a summit of African First Ladies invited by Madame Kagame to strategize ways to address the AIDS crisis that has claimed 17 million African lives and resulted in an infection rate as high as 25% of some countries. The UN Secretary General has called for $7-10 billion to combat the crisis; the U.S., the richest country in the world, has pledged $200 million. How to put it all together, the soul-baffling disconnect? The atrocities to which Solange and Jeanette testified are relatively easy, in a way, to absorb. Evil aggrandized by the passion of war. But how to explain why Solange and Jeanette, infected by that evil, remain untreated? We use much more sophisticated vocabulary -- how about "profit margins," "compassion fatigue," "moral ambiguity" or "national interest" to explain why we, in turn, are content to leave them to die.

"I will be going on a journey soon," Jeanette says, wiping away tears. Then she adds, "I've told you only a very small part. Much, much more is unspeakable. But your coming to hear my story lets me know I am important." A smile flashes across her face. "Today I feel valuable."

more articles by Swanee Hunt

return to top