Rwanda: A Paradox and a Paradise (Essay‪)‬

On my trip to Rwanda this past spring. I saw the memorials and saw blood on the walls. I saw the skulls cracked by machetes and the man with no legs. I saw the bones packed in rice sacks bearing the letters "USA," the very country that ignored the obvious in 1994. I heard the stories from the survivors: of the identity cards (which determined whether you were killed or "spared"), of the starvation and the tears. Yet through all of this I also saw a light of hope. I saw a people with the power to love, the power to endure and the power to forgive. Rwanda is an unexpected paradise, with a bloody past and an uncertain future, but with the potential to be an example for the world.