Life came to a standstill this week in Kigali, if it’s anything this year like it was last year. And I’m sure it was. The week of mourning for the victims of the 1994 genocide is all-consuming. It doesn’t change in just a year.
Last year, I was in Kigali, attended a memorial ceremony at the Kigali Memorial Center, spent the week wondering how my friends came to work every day, tapping out yet another transcript from an interview with genocide survivors…
This year, I’m in New York, and there’s nary a sign anyone here knows it’s That Time of Year. Nothing in New York comes to a standstill ever (practically)…and this week is no different, no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world.
So it’s been me, remembering a year’s worth of experiences in a country that lost so many of its people, remembering with friends who are far away and don’t know I’m thinking about them and their missing mothers, fathers, siblings… It’s a little dissonant.
Here’s another story of mine, this one in the Christian Science Monitor, about Rwanda today.
