Unity in Diversity

Before going to Africa, all I knew about Rwanda related to Dian Fossey and her work with gorillas.   It was not until April,1994 that I'd learned about Hutus or Tutsis.

After President Habyarimana’s plane went down on April 6, I saw small groups of students gather as I walked about campus.  In Africa, if one has not lived through a time of strife among tribes, there is history that speaks of heated disagreements.  So at the very least these small group discussions were a way of handling very personal fears.   

Daily our Rwandan students heard of more and more deaths and disappearances of family members and friends.   One day, Johnny came to my office.  He had just gotten word that his mother, brother, sister and an uncle had been killed.  Only his father and grandmother were spared because they were in Zaire attending a funeral.   Three months later he heard that his sister had escaped death because friends had hidden her in the filth of an outhouse for days until the family could get her into hiding.

Nathan was another student who lost his family.  He considered himself fortunate that he had a brother-in-law in Nairobi.  After the killing stopped, he told me he planned to return to Rwanda.  When I expressed concern because he is a Tutsi, he explained that he had to see for himself--I just can’t believe it all until I see it with my own eyes. When Nathan returned to campus, he told me about walking the roads and paths through the forests and finding rotting skeletons with body parts hacked to pieces by machetes.  Yes, he now knew it had all really happened.

While none of the Rwandan students were involved in the violence, there was a natural suspicion between the Tutsis and Hutus on campus.   I asked them if we could meet together to talk, but the Hutus were reticent.   That was understandable.

            A year later, 1995, as part of my responsibility on campus, I suggested that we carry out a theme—Unity in Diversity—during 4th quarter--the University had students from many countries.   The student committee with whom I worked became enthusiastic immediately.   At once they organized a Unity in Diversity Week when students from each country and/or tribe put together short programs to inform the audience about their cultural origins and practices.  The first night the amphitheatre was packed--the students were so enthusiastic, so positively responsive to the history, the dances, and the customs each group presented. 
   

The next day, a student ran up to me--You won’t believe it!   Last night after the program, two Rwandans asked me if they could still be a part of the program!  Previously they had declined to participate. 

As the Rwandan students came forward, the amphitheater grew very quiet—the audience was aware of the losses they had all suffered.   As they walked onto the stage I saw they were both Hutu and Tutsi students.  The music began.  The Tutsi men and the Hutu women danced the Rwandan wedding dance.   

Tears streamed down my face.   Having heard the stories of grief from both tribes expressed in the privacy of my office—knowing the number of family members who had been brutally murdered, and also seeing with my own eyes how much they believed that healing must come—I knew it would be these students who could make it happen.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. 

                                                                                                  -- Helen Keller