Genocide on Paper

Over the holiday season I read a most un-holiday kind of book: A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali by Gil Courtemanche. I picked it up quite by happenstance but was immediately interested in reading it.

The book is a "based on a true story" kind of book about the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s. It recounts a fictional journalist's (presumably based on Courtemanche) experience in the days leading up to and during the genocide.

I had read Romeo Dallaire's book about the genocide, Shake Hands With the Devil, earlier so I had some sense of the horrors of the genocide and the lack of international concern. While both books are personal accounts of westerners, they are written very differently and come from different perspectives. Dallaire's book is very much focussed on the broader perspective of the genocide - the major players, the major incidents, the role of the international community (or lack thereof), and the like. While Dallaire recounts his personal experiences, there's not much from an everyday Rwanadan perspective. Courtemanche's book is very much an ordinary Rwandan perspective (as much as I can judge what an ordinary Rwandan perspective is).

While the main character is white Canadian journalist, he is close friends with ordinary Rwandans, and it is just as much their story as his that he is telling. The writing is raw, so don't expect to be cushioned from Rwandan life before and during the genocide. There are marked differences in sexual culture in Rwanda than here (as much as I'm on top of the sexual culture in either country), and there is a persistant sexual theme in the book, though not at all in a pornographic sense.

Several things struck me about the story this book tells. The first is that many of Rwandans in this book view personal pleasure as the ultimate goal in life. Perhaps we are not so different in that, but we tend to try and convince ourselves that we strive for "deeper" things, while the Rwandans in the book are very open about it as if it is the accepted norm. It seems more unwritten here. A second thing that struck me that for some reason I hadn't thought while reading Dallaire's book, is the lack of mention of any resistance to the genocidaires ("genociders"). I can't recall any mention in Dallaire's book of average Rwandans banding together to defend themselves (other than the RPF). I would have thought that as they realized what was going on, the Tutsis and moderate Hutus would have banded together to defend themselves against the extremists. There is only a brief mention of this happening in Courtemanche's book. Perhaps it happened more but that story hasn't yet (to my knowledge) been told.

Reviewers of this book have talked a lot about the moral challenges this book presents us with. While it did do this, I was challenged much more on an emotional level. After forming relationships with the people in the book, there was the persistant question of "What can I do for them?" Satisfactory answers haven't been forthcoming.

A similar genocidal scenario is playing itself out in Sudan, and likely other places, right now. What can I do about it? I can write letters to my MP, I can donate money to organizations working in the area, but these things are very impersonal and leave me with a sense of powerlessness. While reading books like Dallaire's and Courtemanche's, there were many times when fantasies of sitting on Kigali (capital of Rwanda) rooftops with a sniper rifle and picking off the genocidaires came to my mind. Then I would feel like I was doing something to stop the absurd rampage. While writing a cheque may be useful, I just don't thing it would bring the same feeling of accomplishment as actualizing my fantasy.

Some of you may be surprised and unsettled that I would have such murderous thoughts in my head. Read either of these books, and I'd be surprised if you didn't have them, too. Coming to terms with the full capability humans have for brutality (and this term seems very weak) is not an easy thing to do.