Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Curiouser and Curiouser

Last Sunday I went to see A Sunday In Kigali.....and I can't get it out of my head...not a surprise really, it presents the Rwandan genocide in a terrifying manner...cold and common place and just next door....it mercilessly documents the casualness of violence, the clarity of hate...mostly within the confines of neighbourhoods and families.....Hutu fathers forced to choose between killing their Tutsi wives and children or being killed themselves and their families being left to their even more soul destroying fates....what would you do as a man...what would you want done as a woman...the mind has difficulty even broaching such ideas......

At one point at the beginning of the madness the sweet young voice of an announcer comes over the airwaves..."so when you see her slim hips and pretty nose, smash her face in". The chilling everyday approach to the killing, the workman like, assembly line attitude used in the rapes, not only humiliating and inseminating the girls and women but mutilating them and thus destroying any possibility of future sexual union when not simply killing them. The small meaness of it all is so clearly intoned...... A murderous prejudice based on bone structure!!!!! Not colour, not religion, not anything you can put a finger on......it should make us wonder, what is prejudice....what is hate....I always thought it was predominantly fear of the unknown, so can't we just get to know each other, but the Tutsis and Hutus had intermarried for generations. Jealousy..greed..is that prejudice.....

The miracle of it all lies in the fact that through even the most horrifying terrors human beings struggle on, trying to love and to live...and to die with as much dignity as they can muster....and we....we wonder if we could ever survive such trials...and pray we will never be tested.....we throw up our hands and say, "what is happening to the world....what is this all about....."

Okay, I know, power....it's about power.....God help us......