... Evariste Ahimana can’t even utter the word “one” to tell how many people he killed in Rwanda’s genocide. He just holds up a finger to represent what he did – clubbing a neighbor named Augustin Murinda, whom he liked and often drank with – at the behest of strangers from the next village. Since returning to this village after his release from prison last year, Ahimana has walked past the house of his victim’s brother every week as he climbed the hill to the church. Walking downhill after prayers and confession, he has never stopped to apologize. When he passes the brother on the narrow dirt paths of the village, the two men greet each other, but their eyes never meet.
“I’m planning to say sorry one day,” Ahimana said. “It’s not so much reluctance to go as lack of strength.” Leaning on a wooden stick in his house, with pictures of Mary and Jesus tacked to the wall, he says he can’t be held responsible: An armed mob forced him to kill the man....
And more:Friday, March 19, 2004
Article by the Amazing Gabi, Rwandan journalist for Hirondelle News agency:
CLAMPING KILLERS AND SURVIVORS TOGETHER
By Gabriel Gabiro Shyorongi, February 18th, 2004 (FH) – After a brief wait inside a stuffy little house in the middle of a thick banana grove, a small shy
man dressed in tired farm clothes and a flat cap made of part cloth, part red mud emerges from the front door clutching a machete. One can’t help but immediately try to visualize to how many uses Evariste Ahimana, 50 and a
confessed killer, may have put the soiled machete in his hands. At the start of the 1994 genocide, Ahimana and a group of his ethnic Hutu friends and fellow farmers swept through the hills and valleys of this remote Central Rwanda town of Shyorongi rummaging through all possible hideouts for their Tutsi neighbours before killing them. For the ‘work’ - a popular euphemism for ‘killing’ - they used machetes, cudgels, hoes, axes or any other farm tool they could lay their hands on...
There is a slide show here beginning with the photo of Mr. Ahimana that I used in telling his story . I didn't see the slide show until tonight because I read it in the physical paper in 2004 for a "newsreel in artworks" series. Drop the newspaper subscriptions and one naturally progresses to sagebrush oceans and clouds. Slide show photo number 16 is a must see also.
25 comments:
What happened in Rwanda was beyond words.
I read of a church where a group of people had gathered to escape the rampaging mobs.
It was unsuccessful - and those that had money on them paid to be shot rather than hacked to pieces.
Remarkable at that time to choose a "less violent" death.
I don't think any of us can conceive of the fact that in one month over a million people were killed in the most awful spree of violence spurred on by radio announcers urging genocide.
And families containing both Hutis and Tutsis must have lived in the most unimaginable fear.
In the movie Hotel Rwanda (recommended viewing) the most remarkable thing was how despite such unbelievable horror, there were individuals making a difference. A red cross nurse kept going back in for children and bringing them out, taking them to safety. Such heroic action that we know so little about.
Evariste Ahimana did not wake up one morning and decide to be a murderer, life conspired for it to be that way. I would rather be the murdered than the murderer as I am sure would many.
And there by the grace of God go I. Grace is the beginning, the middle and the end.
And Nina the touch of putting the hare there is especially poignant for me. The anthroposophists claim
that the reason the hare is the symbol of Easter is that it is the one creature that will sacrifice itself to save another eg. on a hunt, if one rabbit is exhausted another one will leap in view and let the chasers follow it, allowing the other to rest.
I wish Evariste strength for the day he can look into the eyes of the dead man's brother and know that it was the will of god.
What symbolism that Evariste has a cross over his door and then the crosses in #16 of the photos link--didn't seem to help any of them-they will probably be taken for firewood and the band will play on-at least the crosses will be useful then
I don't want any part of a "god" whose plan it is to have men women and children hacked to pieces---how fucking sick is that
Throw away the crutch and the excuse and walk on your own two legs--if they have not been hacked off according to gods will of course
Using tools created to sustain life, to take it--
And we in the west pour money into weapons systems that do the job so much more cleanly from a distance--I feel so evolved--Heck, oil is getting cheaper, maybe we could boil it with the crosses for fuel--god would not have made oil if we weren't supposed to boil people with it--I think that's in Numbers or Deuteronomy..
Hmmm white phosphorous or a machete--ever light a match and have it stick to your finger--I can't imagine the magnification of that--burning alive or being hacked alive--let's flip a coin with "In God We Trust" on it
It will happen elsewhere--it could happen here when the law has broken down and those who want to "get even" do, and those who are hungry want your food--
And when the ammunition runs out maybe that ax or machete will get sharpened up--just in case--
powerful post Nina--to have to even think about this......
Jj
Jj - I second the god's will thing. None for me, thanks.
Nina - Very powerful, but I have to say the man is a coward. He should do the world a favor and...
I don't care how big the mob is - I'm fighting to the death. What happened in Rwanda and elsewhere, is exactly why every human should be able to own, carry, and utilize guns. I abhor aggressive violence, but am well-prepared to defend myself and my family - should the need arise...and if the mob comes and tells me to kill my neighbor, hmmm, well.... they better come heavily armed :-)
I knew a guy from west africa some years back. He was from the brush... scarred patterns on his face type African. He talked of his teenage years killing the "enemy" with a total lack of emotion. It was a normal activity for his family and culture. It never ceases to amaze me, how little value some people assign to human life.
Nine, what does the writing on the roof say?
ummm...Nina, not Nine. sorry. I'm quite hungover at the moment. I took a sip of crown for a sore throat last night, and the bottle insisted I finish him off. Then his Dutch buddies Heine and Ken came over... bad news all around.
In Europe the old wounds of the Nazi regime still open from time to time ... in Cambodia, thirty years after year zero was declared, they're still trying to come to terms with what their own countrymen did to them, and that in the land of the people who built Angkor Wat ... this evil, this madness can strike anywhere. In the fullness of time it must strike everywhere, at least once, and the local population spends generations coming to terms with the consequences.
I have a terrible feeling it's coming for us, next. FEMA and the DHS have been building their detention facilities, busy as beavers these past several years. Mass arrests will lead to mass graves. Fight back and you might take a few down with you, but they'll kill you on the spot; offer no resistance, and they'll kill you at your leisure, though first they'll try and kill your spirit. I don't have any solutions to offer, here ... I'm as baffled as anyone.
And I don't have a gun. Hard to come by in Canada, these days.
I do, however, sleep with a very sharp, very real katana next to my bed, sort of a halfway compromise between a baseball bat and a shotgun. In close quarters, guns aren't so very much more effective than a long blade. And you know what?
Kevlar doesn't do shit against a sword.
Bah. Enough of such talk.
Nina, that's a beautiful painting. The use of colour, the symbolism ... a man alone with his thoughts and his shame, standing above the living land that remains happily ignorant of man's ignominy, and beneath the starry sky that looks down from a great height on both with equanimity. Wonderful and terrible all at once.
Get a compound bow and some hunting tips for the arrows--very effective against anything, and quiet--you can also recover the arrows if you don't mind cleaning them up a bit.
Jj
Stacy, the writing on the roof says "Evariste Ahimana who took part in the clubbing death of his neighbor".
Clubbing is a sanitized word for bludgeoning.
oh, I thought they were at a rave together... :-)
(I'm just being a smart-ass here, no disrespect)
The colors in the foreground (evariste) are so pretty, yet the mountains in the background and the dark shades elsewhere, look like a dark cloud that has settled and won't be leaving any time soon--if ever--
J
2nd time today, Psychegram. Wearing a mental tool belt today, hunh. Nailing everything in sight. I am looking forward to your next blog post.
Desmond Su Su, what is this urge I have to take your comments and place them alongside every piece you've mentioned? You know this entry and painting are up today because you brought it to our attention. And what you have to tell us about it is a perfect companion piece.
Thank you.
Nina,
Love the new name.
The urge - i have no idea.
And thank you for the thanking, I retreated to the high hills.
I have to live with the betrayals I have done to others. Perhaps these betrayals are bothersome not so much because of the harm I did; I would imagine that they weigh less heavily on those I betrayed than they weigh on me. After all, they have somewhere outside themselves to put the blame. The source of my shame, what I really betrayed, was not so much others but my own ideals.
The people that I didn't stand up for when others were abusing them; even those whom I abused too in order to fit in with the crowd or to show off. The people who I paid less than what they had coming for what they did. The times I listened to those to whom I had given my emotional power, when I knew what they were telling me was wrong but my weakness was such that I chose wrongdoing rather than face their disapproval. The most painful of all are the times when it would have been so simple to have done otherwise.
One little girl stands out. Many years ago I was in a thrift store in Tacoma Washington, waiting in line to make a purchase. Ahead of me in line was a poor woman with her little daughter, perhaps four years old. The little girl was clutching a clear bag full of cheap plastic toys, a grab bag stapled at the top. When it came time to pay, she put the bag on the counter; one could easily see that this was a treasure to her, that she didn't even want to let it go for a minute. The woman checker took one look and said "Sorry, but the price tag is missing and we can't sell anything without the price tag" then took the bag and put it away out of the little girl's reach.
I could see the tragedy of disappointment this was to this child. Tragedy to have her hopes risen so high only to have them dashed to ruin in a way that made no sense.
And I? I stood there and said nothing.
I still live with this every day, the cowardice I showed. Yes, I was shocked speechless by the callous, unfeeling and senseless act. But I make no excuses for myself, and I live with the memory of that cowardice, that failure to speak and act when it would have been so simple to speak up and bring joy back to that child.
Surely that little girl is a grown woman today and has long forgotten the incident, perhaps she had forgotten it by the next day. She could put the blame outside herself, but I have a much harder time forgetting.
I carry it with me and keep it as a talisman, a reminder.
It's hard for me to imagine living with the cowardice that this murderer lives with. All I can think is that some of us don't have the same reservoirs of shame and compassion that others do, and it seems those in power in our world have no reservoir at all.
Why did you say nothing? What was going on with you at that moment?
I honestly don't know why I didn't speak up, other than not wanting to make a scene or disagree with what everyone else was tacitly accepting as normal. Why didn't anyone else speak up? Because they are sheep. I don't allow myself that excuse. But I sure acted like one.
If I really look back at the whole scene closely, I would have to say that I was so shocked by the callous unthinking cruelty of the action that I was stunned speechless, not a good thing when action is called for and not excusable in my mind.
I think stunned speechless means you had not planned on any confrontations taking place that day, you were just going about your business staying under the radar of other people's issues. And then this "moment" suddenly unfolded in your immediate proximity and your first inclination was indeed to interrupt the flow, an inclination which you denied, and your denial of the basic and natural instinct for kindness and empathy with our fellows has increased your guilt. You know it isn't necessary to carry it now. But as you say, its a worthy lesson to keep in focus. What's really good about your experience is how you are remembering it, you haven't blurred it in some fashion that would lessen your responsibility.
nina, thank you for asking that question. Thinking about it last night brought it into perspective so I could understand what happened.
I was emotionally stunned, startled into paralysis, like what happens to the physical body when walking along and suddenly a pheasant flies up in one's face. By the time I had recovered enough to react, the woman and the little girl had left.
That incident has bothered me for over fifteen years because it was so against what I believe in and so out of character for me.
Finally I get it.
And it seems the only way to prevent such a reaction another time would be to be fully self-aware and present at all times.
I wrote somewhere"it hasn't all been good, but it has been necessary"
That it stuck with you so deeply is what is called a lesson learned. So many opportunities for us to learn and we just blow them off as inconsequential--they are the whispers that allow growth and wisdom--not what we would consider a "save the world" moment but a manageable and doable one non-the-less. Had you spoken up, I doubt you would remember it--
Jj
Indeed, Jj.
Many things I would have done differently in my life had I learned the lessons earlier, but no regrets. That little incident is a talisman, as are the others I alluded to, all of which revolve around having the courage to be true to one's own highest ideals.
I read somewhere that in life one gets the test first and the lesson afterwards.
Susana
I just wanted to acknowledge your compassionate comment.
I have had, more than once, in interrogations, a gun pointed at my face and the trigger pulled, without feeling any fear. I just figured I was getting off easy. I have seen people shoot themselves rather than go thru another interrogation. I have been worked over by groups of men taking turns kicking me in the solar plexus until I started making up stories to try to save myself, and then when the pain level went down I would tell them that I had just made it up because I was afraid they would go out and arrest some other person who was innocent who accidentally matched my description of my imaginary "accomplice" so another cycle of the same thing would start. This for many cycles until finally I was given the demand to say whether it was I or the other "detainee" who was the killer and I finally said it was the other guy. (As it turned out he actually was one of the guilty parties and knew that I was not--whether he could have spared me by saying so is debatable--but the fact is that in that sort of a reductive bind I turned on him rather than say nothing is an embarrassment. And later, when I insisted on denying my "confession" I was taken out in a field in the middle of the night and held under water until I made up a cockmamey "confession" that I figured I could easily refute later if I manged to survive long enough to have a court hearing. Only to find out that there would be no such hearing or trial in Mexico. I learned that I did not have the strength to let myself be drowned by an act of will and that is humbling to understand about myself. That I am not free, I am bound in a condition of identification with this body-mind, and that is why for me Enlightenment is a serious matter, it has to do with establishment of that condition of freedom that allows surrender into what IS, which I intuit is my actual natural state as a potential that is realizable. Meanwhile we have this crazy circumstance which keeps pushing us to Realize because it really is not tolerable at all.
Hi Brian-
I've never been tortured so I can only imagine how I would react; probably much like you did.
I have had my share of adventure in Mexico, once barely coming out alive from a hellhole prison where something woke me up just as my head was about to be smashed in by a large chunk of concrete. Been interrogated by the Federales too, just not tortured. I was facing five years on a drug charge I was completely innocent of but I still refused to turn evidence against the guy I knew was guilty. If I had been tortured I'm sure it would have been a different story.
What we will say when we are in pain and our life is in danger is a bit different than what we will do, though. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't club an innocent man to death in order to escape torture myself.
The psychopaths and the moral weaklings would have us believe that we are all as self-centered as they are but it isn't so. There are a lot of weak people in the world, but that does not mean that all are that weak or would be that weak depending on circumstance. No way.
Hey Michael
I tried to write you over at your space but it didn't take awhile back. I wondered about your take on Masanobu Fukuoka's work, the man who wrote" The One-Straw Revolution" "The Natural Way To Farm" "The Way Back To Nature," etc.
Also I have been curious about life in Venezuela, as I think I will have to bail out of the U.S. eventually if not immediately. I want to be somewhere in a nice, warm climate where they aren't running the building code scams where I can build something creative without interference and have a nice garden for food. What is the situation down there?
Of course I wish to avoid torture as much as possible also, ha ha, so would really hope that I could avoid being scape-goated as a CIA agent when the US attacks Venezuela.
Hi again Brian-
These probably wont' be the answers you might expect, but anyway-
Fukuoka's version of permaculture/organic growing would only work in a soil that was naturally very high in fertility, i.e. high in mineral nutrients. Farming for profit is a form of mining; the plants and take up mineral nutrients from the soil and the crops and animals that are sold take them off the farm.
Most of a plant's bulk comes from the air and water elements: Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen which are inexhaustible, but everything else like Calcium, Potassium, Phosphorus etc comes from the soil, which is made from the breakdown of rocks. Whatever amount of Calcium was in those rocks is the total amount of Calcium available to grow crops; eventually any soil will be exhausted if crops are taken off and the minerals that are taken away are not replaced. Even if a good percentage of the organic residue is returned to the soil, sooner or later one reaches a point where some mineral element is lacking.
As a quick example, dairy products are high in Calcium and Phosphorus and every gallon of milk sold takes Ca and P off the farm, even if the manure stays behind. Mulch and compost are all fine and good but the only ways to have a truly sustainable agriculture is if everything grown were returned to the soil, or if the minerals taken away are replaced. Lots more on this at my website www.soilminerals.com. The interview with Agricola linked at the top of the right hand column is a good starting point.
Venezuela: The US is not going to invade Venezuela. Why would they? Hugo gladly sells his oil to the US which is the only country with large refineries specifically built to handle the thick tarry high-sulfur crude. Hugo and his "Bolivarian revolution" have been entirely funded by capitalist $s. Take away the $s and the whole thing collapses. Over the past ten years most of the little manufacturing and agriculture there was has disappeared, mostly due to farms and industries being nationalized and then either neglected or mismanaged, looted, and driven out of business. No investment is made in infrastructure or new industry by the private sector out of fear they will simply have it taken away, and the "Bolivarian" government consists mostly of ignorant thugs looting whatever they can. Simply how it is, despite the hundred billion or so of oil-financed propaganda Hugo has spent his country's wealth on.
With oil at $35 barrel, down from almost $150 last summer, the Gov't has lost half of its income and at least 80% of its foreign exchange income and things will tank, hit the wall, within the next few months. 80-90% of food and manufactured goods are imported with oil money; no oil money, no food. Expect to see that by April. My guess is mass starvation ala Zimbabwe by late summer. Hope I'm wrong but I see nothing being done to prevent it, only denial from the government while Hugo is presently spending the Forex reserves on a campaign to change the constitution so he can be re-elected for life.
Venezuela is probably the richest country in South America in natural resources and potential agricultural land,(much like Zimbabwe in Africa) but it has always been run by short-sighted greedheads of limited intelligence, and the greed, shortsightedness, and stupidity have reached an apex under Chavez, populist rhetoric notwithstanding. The oil boom is over and isn't coming back and things will have to sort themselves out.
In the short term, as long as the US$ retains some value, Venezuela will become a bargain for those having $s, but things could and probably will get ugly when the food runs out.
So my advice would be forget Venezuela unless you are looking for some real adventure short term. Columbia and Ecuador at least feed themselves more or less; Venezuela has been living on oil money for generations and the society isn't presently capable of or interested in feeding itself or producing anything.
And that's the report from our man on the ground.
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