As I stepped out onto a battered and foreign tarmac this May, it struck me that my landing at Gregorie Kayibanda International Airport was something of an arrival in its own right. It was here that the Rwandan president's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, signaling the start of what would be the fastest genocide in recorded history. It was here that, during the genocide, UN troops evacuated Western expatriates, then themselves, while the killing continued unabated. And it was here that, in 1998, Bill Clinton came to apologize to the Rwandan people for the failure of the West to intervene in the genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions in diaspora. This gesture, perfectly emblematic of the international response to the genocide, was too little, too late.

I had arrived in Kigali on a Saturday; Sunday was spent sleeping in, then driving around Kigali with the executive director of The Aegis Trust, James Smith, and his girlfriend (now wife), Beatha, a Rwandan who had survived the genocide. We stopped in one area of town so she could point out the gutters in which she had hidden to avoid being killed. A successful strategy, obviously, but it must have been awful. The smell in the gutters was bad enough as we walked past, even with them empty; 10 years ago, when they were filled with dead and decomposing bodies, it must have been unbearable. The only thing more unbearable, I suppose, would have been death. But Beatha, like most genocide survivors I would meet, was remarkably detached, even as she showed us these places. She had been persecuted for belonging to Rwanda's Tutsi minority, although this topic was rarely broached during my stay. In 1994, the genocide had ceased only when a rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, succeeded in wresting control of Kigali, and the whole of Rwanda, from the extremist Hutu government. That rebel army then formed the basis for a new government, the so-called Government of Unity, that would seek to eliminate the language of Hutu and Tutsi from Rwandan culture. As such, speaking of these distinctions was taboo, particularly for a muzungu, or white foreigner, like me.

Aegis had decided to bring several international academics to Kigali to help evaluate the prospects for filming the gacaca (ga-CHA-cha) trials that the Rwandan government had recently instituted to deal with the more than 100,000 genocide suspects being held in prison. The traditional courts, even with the help of (or perhaps in spite of) the slow-moving UN tribunal, could never handle this volume of suspects, so the government took the bold step of reviving gacaca, which, before being banned by the colonial powers, had been used as a communal system of conflict management and resolution. Aegis, which had embarked on a pilot filming project in early 2003, had recently received a grant to expand the project; the conference was to determine how best to use this grant to film gacaca. My task was to act as rapporteur for this conference, and ultimately to produce a report that would be distributed both to the Rwandan government and to potential donors.

After getting settled, I set about this task enthusiastically, but with no small amount of uncertainty. Less than a week removed from final examinations in Claremont, I was now in the most foreign of places; moreover, I was working for a foreign organization on a foreign task. Speaking neither Kinyarwanda nor French, I relied on those around me to translate much of the time. Thankfully, as Aegis is a British organization, the conference was conducted in English. The participants in the conference, who had arrived several days after me, included three South Africans with relevant experience from their nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one Briton who had formerly produced films for the BBC, and a Canadian medical doctor who had begun to research genocide as a public health problem and had worked with Aegis in the past. In addition, the Aegis team in Rwanda, comprising James and two genocide survivors, Apollon and Manu, participated in the conference.

Before discussions about the filming project could begin, the participants needed to understand gacaca. As such, once they had all arrived in Kigali, we began the conference by sitting in on a trial in Butamwa, a district on the far outskirts of Kigali. We drove to Butamwa along with Charles Kayitana, an official of the Rwandan government's gacaca department, who had briefed us earlier in the day on what to expect. His presence was also essential to justify the presence of a large group of foreigners. It must have been strange, indeed, to see a group of eight muzungu sitting in the midst of a tiny Rwandan village; I certainly felt out of place. No sooner had we sat down than it began to rain, as if the earth wanted to protest our invasion of this enclave. Thus, it was indoors that we witnessed our first and only gacaca trial—ironic, given that gacaca means "on the grass," where the process has traditionally taken place.

After taking a day to visit some of the most notable sites of genocide in Rwanda, we began the conference in earnest. Discussions were held at Gisozi, the only true genocide memorial in Rwanda; in addition to taking copious notes, I often contributed to the discussions. We met with several more Rwandan officials; whether they contributed or not, it was of utmost importance that they be invited to the proceedings of a conference dealing with a Rwandan tragedy. By the time the conference had concluded, I had filled dozens of pages of a legal pad with notes; when the participants departed for their respective homes, I began translating those notes into a report, which I soon completed. Meanwhile, back at Aegis headquarters in the UK, plans were changing. I was scheduled to return in mid-June to Laund Hall, a manor that Aegis had recently purchased to convert into a research facility, for the remainder of my internship. Progress on Laund Hall had become mired in difficulties with local government, however, so James and his brother Stephen, with whom he directs Aegis, asked if I would be willing to stay in Rwanda a bit longer. I was, of course, so we rescheduled my return to England to the beginning of July.

As the conference had concluded, I began work on a new task: creating proposals for genocide memorial sites. There are some 200 sites throughout Rwanda where mass killing is known to have taken place, including churches, schools, and open areas. Aegis, in conjunction with the Rwandan government and people, has set out to preserve these sites and thereby to preserve the memory of the genocide. Gisozi, the main genocide memorial in Kigali, is the most pressing concern; although the building is not yet completed and its insides nearly bare, the government recently announced its intentions to hold the ceremonies for the tenth anniversary of the genocide there in April of 2004. Although responsibility for the memorial ultimately belongs to the Kigali City Council, the Rwandan government has neither the time, nor the capability, nor the resources to complete this task. Thus, I found myself at one point writing a letter for the mayor of Kigali to send to the Clinton Foundation. At another point, I found myself (and Manu, with whom I was working on the proposals) racing wildly around Kigali to find a printer capable of printing the graphics-intensive proposal that we had promised the mayor several days earlier. As I discovered, in a developing country like Rwanda, what we in the US might think basic tasks can quickly become complicated—hence our difficulty in finding a printer.

This is not to say that, on the whole, life in Rwanda is complicated. Despite everything that has happened—from the genocide, the echoes of which have not yet diminished, to an ongoing struggle with democratization—the Rwandan people live uncomplicated lives. Make no mistake, this is due in part to Rwanda's overwhelming poverty, which I do not mean to glorify; there is, however, some beauty to be found in the absence of the bustle of industrialized, big-city life. (Having recently arrived in Washington, D.C., I feel qualified to speak on this subject.) There is beauty in Rwanda, a fact lost on those who, recalling some vague memory of past horrors, cringe upon hearing its name. As humans, we tend to give in to that memory, however vague, and that is not only a tragedy in itself but also the source of great tragedy. Had the Western world, particularly the United States, faced its shadowy fears of Africa in 1994, Rwanda might have been spared what is, by any measure, one of the worst events in the long history of humanity. Thus, my trip to Rwanda was more than a summer sojourn; it was an undertaking in the face of the fear that paralyzes us, that prevents us from acting when action is required, and that itself breeds only more fear. Having fought that fear, I can now report happily that I have been to Rwanda, but also, more importantly, that I will return.

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Hunter playing soccer with Rwandan children

Hunter observing a genocide trial in Butamwa