Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 13:33:43 +0200
Have they healed yet? Western dreams about Rwanda
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/rebecca-tinsley> Rebecca Tinsley
26 April 2014
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About the author
Rebecca Tinsley is the founder of the charity <http://network4africa.org/>
Network for Africa, which works with survivors of war and genocide in Rwanda
and Uganda. She is a former BBC journalist.
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Shattered societies cannot be mended with pills or analysis or technology or
foreign aid. Our need to hear that Rwanda is 'healing' tells us more about
ourselves than it does about Rwanda.
http://dy1m18dp41gup.cloudfront.net/cdn/farfuture/P7lvZKtj2wfUFA8GrjV-0be5ez
jHyCZeG-o_hdvVLjo/mtime:1398349525/files/Rwanda.jpg
Rwandan genocide survivors listen to the testimony of a fellow survivor in
Kigali. Credit: Melissa Musgrove/ <http://www.melissamusgrove.com/>
www.melissamusgrove.com. All rights reserved.
For the last ten years I have been involved in development projects in
Rwanda. This month, in April 2014, Rwandans are marking the twentieth
anniversary of the genocide that
<http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm> killed an
estimated 800,000 people, more than one in ten of the country's population
at the time. Non-Africans frequently ask me, "Have the people there healed
yet?"
As a British woman working on Rwanda, it seems to me that the Western
tendency to focus on this nation's healing process reflects our own
priorities rather than Rwanda's. In the West we tend to address
psychological health on an individual basis, because we assume that everyone
analyses their emotions as carefully as we examine our own feelings. "Am I
comfortable with what she just said to me?" we ask ourselves. "How am I
reacting to that piece of news?" Our society is so well-versed in Freud and
Jung that we are no longer aware of measuring each event or exchange
according to its emotional impact.
People in many other cultures put less emphasis on individual experience,
thinking more about the feelings shared by their community. They also see
themselves in the context of generations or geographical groups. There is a
vital connection between their ancestors and the great grandchildren they
may never meet. Asking how a nation is 'healing' would require a view
reached by consensus. In the meantime, people display admirable resilience
and stoicism, getting on with their daily challenges which are not
insignificant.
We Westerners also yearn to be assured that everyone in Rwanda has 'healed'
because some of us feel guilty that our nations ignored what was happening
there, conniving to ensure the UN Security Council did not discuss the
unfolding massacre. We have leaders who
<http://www.lindamelvern.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/40-a-people-betrayed-
the-role-of-the-west-in-rwanda-s-genocide> still pretend that they did not
know well in advance that the " <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interahamwe>
Interahamwe" militia had compiled lists of potential victims, and that they
had been training and stockpiling weapons for years.
Those same leaders perpetuate the lie that there was nothing that could have
been done. Yet the UN commander at the time,
<https://lib.stanford.edu/preventing-genocide/transcript-interview-romeo-dal
laire> Romeo Dallaire, believes that a few thousand peacekeepers would have
been sufficient to signal to the murderers that the world was watching.
Failing that, we could have jammed the radio towers that broadcasted hate
messages that directed the killing machine. No wonder we want to think that
everything is better now.
Our certainty that a shattered society can be quickly mended also reflects
an assumption that all problems can be fixed with pills or analysis or
technology. It makes us uneasy to consider the possibility that some pain is
too dreadful to disappear, or that many memories will linger on long after
the last commercial break. We want quick solutions, and prefer not to have
to dig through too many layers of complexity to understand the issues
involved. Hence our fondness for dismissing other nations' conflicts as
'tribal.'
We yearn for feel-good closure, underestimating how long it takes a country
to process its history while ignoring our own unresolved conflicts. It is
150 years since the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War>
American Civil War, yet how many Americans have expunged its legacy from
their consciousness completely? How many Northerners, for example, still
hold onto the stereotype that all Southerners are racists? Why is it that an
Irish teenager can describe some obscure battle or skirmish that happened
several hundred years ago as if it was fought last week? And why do so many
people in Britain and Russia still have prickly feelings towards the Germans
and the Japanese?
If the answers to these questions are difficult and complex, why do we
expect Africans to forgive and forget so quickly?
Our need to hear that Rwanda is 'healing' tells us more about ourselves than
it does about Rwanda. It also explains why some of our 'development' efforts
are futile: we impose what we want for ourselves on different cultures and
political realities - what 'we' believe will solve 'their' problems rather
than examining the unique circumstances in which we are meddling. We fail to
ask local people what they think would be most useful because we are
convinced that our analysis of their needs will be superior to their own
understanding.
Some charities exploit this eagerness to 'fix' Rwanda's psychological scars
in order to raise money in the West by promising projects that will 'heal.'
But in the experience of my organization, <http://network4africa.org/>
Network for Africa, helping people to manage their trauma is far more
realistic than claiming that survivors can be healed.
The former child soldiers with whom we work in Northern Uganda will never
recover completely from the 'kill or be killed' initiation forced upon them
by <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony> Joseph Kony's
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army> Lord's Resistance
Army. However, they can learn some useful techniques to control the
frequency and devastating power of their traumatic flashbacks, thereby
unblocking their capacity to acquire new skills and rejoin society.
Many people who live in countries that are emerging from conflict spend much
of their day trying to provide the next meal for their families. They worry
that climate disruption means another year of drought on their farms. They
fear that their children will die of malaria or diarrhea. Forgiving the
unrepentant person who killed your parents may be a secondary consideration
when you are always hungry and tired. That's why we focus so much on
training people to develop sustainable livelihoods so that parents can feed
and educate their children.
As a cursory glance through history suggests, there is little evidence that
we in the West know much about the healing of nations. We are better
equipped to help with the more prosaic fundamentals: clean water,
sustainable agriculture, literacy, family planning, and accessible health
care. We should have the humility to base our support on what the agents of
change in African civil societies tell us that they need.
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