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During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
that left an estimated one million people dead and some 250,000
women raped and mutilated as part of the systematic effort to
destroy Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsi minority, I was a TV news
producer in transition switching from one job to the next between
Tennessee and South Carolina.
What led my newscasts and dominated the American
general consciousness was the O.J. Simpson case and while I remember
reading about the atrocities in Rwanda on the Associated Press
newswire I, like so many others, didn’t pay much attention
to the horror.
My first warning of the emotional toll this trip would take came
from a friend I had met online preparing for Rwanda. Dart Fellow
Gina Barton, who had traveled to Rwanda in 2001, put me in touch
with Steven Pasternack, a journalism professor at University of
New Mexico and a Fulbright Scholar who had spent months in Rwanda.
It was Steve who first warned me about the genocide memorials
everywhere in Rwanda and the impact they could have on my psyche
once I got on the ground. Always the TV journalist looking for
visual elements, I had asked Steve how much of the evidence of
the genocide I would still be able to photograph now eight years
after the massacres. In one of his most helpful e-mails directing
my preparation for the trip Steve wrote: “There are several
genocide sites sprinkled across the landscape. A genocide museum
is in the planning stages in Kigali, but not under construction
yet. Easy to get to genocide sites, but really gruesome, I'll
alert you. Much worse than Dachau or Auschwitz.”
Almost delighted to know there would still be images to photograph,
I ignored the larger meaning of Steve’s message.
Needless to say my attitude changed quickly once I arrived in
Kigali in early June. Ethiopian Airlines lost my luggage and I
was left to go shopping for everything from toothpaste to hiking
boots at the local market square. The locals were very helpful
and curious about my presence in Kigali and as I shopped for my
items they freely shared their experiences of the genocide.
And I quickly came to the conclusion that everyone in Rwanda
was a victim. Everyone had seen death. Everyone had seen bloodshed,
murder and massacres. Everyone had lost a loved one. And everyone
was looking for a way to reclaim their lives or whatever was left
of them.
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Liisa Hyvarinen, a freelance journalist based
in Tampa, and Deirdre Stoelzle, an editor of the Casper, Wyoming, Star-Tribune since
1992, recently visited Rwanda as part of a Dart Center mission
to journalists there.
Hyvarinen served as a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism
at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Her documentary on depression and suicide, “Silent
Screams” was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2001.
In these articles the two Dart Fellows describe their meetings with Rwandese
journalists and their impressions of that country. Hyvarinen and Stoelzle collaborated
with Laurie Pearlman (clinical psychologist) and Ervin Staub (University of
Massachusetts psychology professor) who work in Rwanda on communication about
the community justice process (the Gacaca).
Photo and caption © Liisa Hyvarinen, 2002
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