Wow.

Today was a big day. I feel like I’m still in the processing stages, so I’m not quite sure how to write about it all yet, but I will give it my best shot. Sorry it’s long, but I hope it’s worth your time.

I feel the need to take the day out of order, perhaps you will understand why at the end.

For lunch today we went to a great place called Shanga. Frida, our Arcadia mama has been trying to set us up with various places we can volunteer around the city. Shanga is high on my list. It’s very similar to Neema, but a little bit smaller. People with physical and developmental disabilities are employed to make beautiful jewelry and craft, which they sell in the shop. It was fun to get to use the little Tanzanian Sign Language that I picked up in Iringa to communicate with some of the workers… It was such a gift to see their faces light up even though all I could ask was habari za kazi? And say asante when we left.

Shanga has a wonderful gourmet restaurant and a partnership with a local safari company to bring their guests there, and we got to indulge in it on Arcadia's dime (with is, of course, our fees, but it is still nice to go out and not pay).

On Sunday Arcaida also took us out to a very nice hotel buffet lunch. Both meals were spectacular and indulgent, and while I’d hardly call our comfortable accommodations a cultural reality, one of the things that kept coming back to me about while eating both meals was this is how some people visit Tanzania. The nicest buildings in Arusha, the most modern, well-constructed, fancy and industrial looking buildings are hotels. The best and priciest café in the city is filled with more white people then you’d see in an entire day walking around the city. Their experience is extensive brunches, expensive safaris with gourmet lunches, dinners with champagne and returning to tall hotels where all the staff speak English for hot showers and flipping on cable TV before falling peacefully asleep.

Across the street from the tall hotel, however there are streets lined with garbage and people who own fewer clothes than the hotel-goers packed in their carry-on luggage living in open-air houses the tourists would call shacks. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the abject poverty that exists here and I ache for the needs of people that go unfulfilled, but I am also not going to pity someone for the cement or mud house that they are proud of—- it is a need met. We need to become aware of the reality that our planet physically does not have the resources to sustain the standard of living of the average American (which many enjoy both at home and abroad) for every person. While there are many ways people here need to be brought up, there are many ways we need to be humbled.

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On our bus ride back from Shanga we witnessed some “mob justice” in action. Since I’ve been in Tanzania I’ve heard several stories and warnings about the beating of thieves and criminals. “If a driver hits a pedestrian in Tanzania,” someone told us, “they’re not supposed to stop. They’re supposed to drive to the police station. If they stop, there’s a good chance they will be pulled from the car and beaten up.”
I have no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the incident we saw, but a man was clearly being thrown around and punched in the stomach in front of a large truck as everyone drove past.

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And finally, the most impactful event of the day started before Shanga…

This morning, instead of class, all 16 of us attended a hearing at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is right near our classroom. We arrived a little late and didn’t look at a docket, so most of the time I wasn’t sure what was going on.

The defense attorney and the witness, referred to as “Colonel”, spoke French while the bench (Judge Byron presiding) and the prosecution attorney spoke in English. Everyone in the courtroom and the visitors’ room (where we were, separated from the courtroom by a wall of windows) wore headsets where the whole hearing was being simultaneously translated. It was really interesting. Parts were a little slow, and there were a few minutes of misunderstandings due to the languages employed.

I deduced that they were discussing the circumstances surrounding the death of the Rwandan president on April 6th, 1994 and the possibility of pre-conceived plans for a coup. It was clear to me that the witness, sitting mere feet away, had a fairly hefty role in the events that followed after that fateful day. The Rwandan Minister of Defense had been absent at the time, which left this man, the former Cabinet Director for the Department of Defense, to fill the vacuumed of power that resulted.

As we left, we discussed briefly the uniqueness of our experience and different theories for what was actually the subject of the trial, but I think we took it pretty lightly as we walked back to our classroom excited for Shanga and lunch.

Just now, upon getting home from our adventures, I started researching the trial we saw so I could more accurately explain it for this blog. I found that the trial we watched, trial 0845 was that of the Prosecutor vs. Edouard Karemera, a former Rwanda politician.

I discovered that the man on the witness stand in front of me had been Colonel Théoneste Bagosora. While I had deduced his last name and loosely grasped his probable importance from the trial, I tend to assume the best of situations and people and did not understand the gravity of the circumstances until reading more about him online.
In December 2008, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of 10 counts of 8 different international crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, murder and rape.

From Wikipedia: three trial judges concurred that "The toll of human suffering was immense as a result of crimes which could have only occurred with his orders and authorization"… Additionally, the court ruled that Bagosora was responsible for the murders of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the 10 Belgian peacekeepers who had been guarding the Prime Minister at Camp Kigali, the president of the Constitutional Court Joseph Kavaruganda, and three major opposition leaders.

Part of me is glad that I did not realize all of this as I sat there and watched the trial earlier today. I’m not sure how it would have affected me. Even now I don’t know how to react. In the abstract, I find it hard to imagine meeting a person who has murdered another human being. In the abstract, I cannot even wrap my mind around the notion that an individual could oversee the kind of genocide that was carried out in Rwanda. And there he was. A tangible, living, breathing human being, speaking French, wearing a blue suit and sitting in a courtroom feet away from me in Tanzania.

I have some wonderful pictures from today of Shanga and of my new friends from class, but now doesn’t seem the appropriate time. Another day, friends. Be well.