Rwanda is a beautiful country. Those brief glimpses of the countryside which were not immersed in bones were a testament to the sincere beauty of the landscape. Everyone, whether Hutu or Tutsi, must have felt some sort of connection, maybe even a gratitude for, the land that surrounded them.
All of the above descriptions of Rwanda could just as easily be about the hills and forests surrounding San Francisco. I began to think of San Bruno mountain as the site of a massacre akin to the ones that occurred throughout Rwanda, where hundreds or even thousands of people seeking asylum had been brutally slaughtered. What would that mean to me? Would I still be able to see the land as something wonderful and natural, or would it be just another casualty? Would I connect it so deeply with my trauma that it too would die? This is a question that genocide survivors in Rwanda must ask themselves every day, and one I cannot answer.
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