All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [178]
Kofi Annan, head of the UN’s peacekeeping forces at the time, and other world leaders, including President Bill Clinton, have offered their apologies for failing to stop the genocide. Clinton says he “did not fully appreciate” the speed and intensity and orchestrated nature of the killings and has called his failure to intervene the greatest regret of his administration. He has been making amends ever since, visiting the country often and committing massive resources from the Clinton Foundation to help bring about Rwanda’s recovery.
For the rest of my time in Rwanda, as we drove through the now clean and orderly capital, as we drank in the lovely countryside, my mind would occasionally run an automatic slide show, imposing the detritus of genocide on what I was seeing. It really was incomprehensible that such protracted filthy evil transpired ever, anywhere, but especially in a place this pretty and seemingly serene.
This country is close to the very bottom of impoverished nations, ranking 159th out of 177. Yet our hotel was terrific, with a sparkling azure pool surrounded by palms. I had a little suite, and as part of my meditation each morning, I stood at my window drinking tea, watching a woman with a handmade broom sweep the street below. This had to be the cleanest country in Africa, if not the world: All the lavatories in Kigali were clean, and there was toilet paper available in public places everywhere. The streets and fields were free of litter; those ubiquitous plastic bags clogging gutters everywhere on earth were banned in Rwanda. And this was also the safest country in Africa, Papa Jack had assured me.
The government keeps a tight rein on its people to enforce a national identity without ethnic divisions. The downside of this extreme vigilance is an authoritarian streak in the government and a restriction of free expression, particularly among political opponents of the ruling party, that is easy for a Westerner to perceive as over the top. One PSI staffer was jailed for rolling his eyes at a traffic jam caused by the discovery of a genocide victim’s remains. As a foreign visitor, I was told to expect that my telephone and emails would be monitored at the hotel. But President Kagame himself told me that when we have lived through their many genocides (1994 was actually but one in a long series), we will have the experience and the right to judge their genocide prevention policies. I really can’t come up with an adequate counterargument to that.
Looking at the extreme nature of what transpired, the government reckoned that extreme solutions were necessary, and the positive result is one of the most dynamic governments in the entire world. President Kagame and his cabinet seem to spend every waking hour looking for innovative ways to modernize Rwanda and improve the lives of all its people. They rely heavily on international aid but have a can-do attitude about rebuilding their country themselves. The government partners directly with all NGOs and encourages local participation. For instance, of the 150 people PSI employs here, only 4 are non-Rwandan.
After my wrenching morning at the genocide memorial, I was looking forward to meeting those staff members and absorbing their positive energy. The offices were housed in a two-story brick building set into a small hillside. There was a rondel of cosmos growing by the PSI sign and a small fleet of tidy white trucks parked in front. I met with our country director, Staci Leuschner, and the staff for a briefing about our mission here. The challenges are massive and all too familiar: lack of infrastructure, lack of health care providers, an explosive birth rate and high infant mortality, endemic malaria, lack of safe water (only 2.5 percent of Rwandans have piped water), and the prevalence of STIs, HIV/AIDS, and other preventable diseases and issues that keep the entire population subsisting on less than a dollar a day.
What is quite special about Rwanda is that the Ministry of Health is attacking these problems in a holistic manner, creating