I Guess I Have to Get to Bed Now

I was the first to arrive at the YAG meeting tonight, explained that I had just come from the gym, people trickled in, pleasantries were exchanged, foody items brought, and Facebook etiquette discussed. Then we started up the movie where we had left off, with all of the non-Rwandan people leaving The Mille Colines. Hotel Rwanda is one of those movies, like Schindler's List that could never be MST'ed. It is suspenseful and horrifying and real. Had I been alone, I would have started crying at the end.

We discussed the movie afterwards, with questions from a book. They were questions asking people to draw parallels in our lives to what had happened on the screen. When I heard the first question, I said that nothing in my life has any possible comparison to what those people went through. I mean, I've stood up for myself a number of times, but nothing in my life - nothing in the lives of anyone I actually know - compares to what happened in Rwanda back then. And we decided not to compare, just discuss the movie.

As I watched the movie, I thought about how the settings looked familiar. I remembered late nights in restaurants, those plaid bags, walking through that town after dark to the hostel. I also remembered hearing gun shots in my hostel in Paraguay during the failed coup in 2000, but it was nothing compared to this. It was easy to see myself in those white and Asian people that left - relieved that they were leaving, but horrified to leave people to die. I don't know if could have left - I would have, but I don't know if I could have left. How do you cope with that? How do you cope with a world that didn't care after what you saw? How do I cope with the memory of this as a non-event - just more Africans killing themselves - in my own lifetime? How do we stop this? At least it is over, right? Is it over? What about Iraq? What about Sudan?

And after the white people left, after the UN left, there was just the corrupt General to be fed bribes. Bribes handed out with supplies obtained by a visit to hell. Bribes fed with a visit to the diplomat's office while the hotel was left unguarded. Bribes to keep 1200 people alive, to keep them from the machetes, to keep them from the frenzy of the men whipped into a rage by a radio announcer, calling them to kill all of the Tutsi's and eventually any Hutu that helped them. Bribes and calls to family outside of Rwanda, a refugee camp with the appearance of a 4-star hotel all to keep a few people from lying dead on the road with everyone else.

Watch this movie.