Rwanda: Gu ha ha muka

In the work of grieving, it is not grief that works. Grief keeps watch.
Maurice Blanchot

We learned a new word today. It’s a Kinyarwandan word Gu ha ha muka. It means – roughly – to be out of breath, to be breathless, to be unable to speak, to have a question or image to the side or behind language, to have no words…

According to Bea Gallimore, one of the founders of IGSC and professor at Missouri, it is a word that comes up often in testimony. (Bea is writing or has written a book analyzing testimony and also founded the Step Up! American Association for Rwandan Women. This organization helps women find jobs, food and school supplies; it also works to meet their mental health needs as a result of the genocide.) She points out also that this word – gu ha ha muka – imitates the sound of being out of breath – she points out that one can be breathless from terror and breathless from beauty. This is a useful image to me to warn against sentimentality as in being present to someone’s silence or inarticulate expression is not the same as pity.

We go to Nyanza. This is a memorial to the failure of the International Community. The genocidaire’s murdered 12 Belgian UN soldiers and the UN pulled their troops out of Rwanda. The peacekeeping forces were guarding 2,000 Tutsis in a school on the outskirts of Kigali. When the soldiers marched out, the genocidaire’s marched in. They had the Tutsis walk to the garbage dump and they murdered almost all of them.

Rwanda’s disappointment with the international community has led to a policy of independence (as much as possible in a country whose budget is still mostly aid) in its (re) construction. Kagame and the government have a tight hand on development – NGO projects must be accepted by the Rwandan govt, the gov’t controls the radio and recently shut down a BBC program it felt was airing negationist viewpoints. There is some talk in the world at large that worries the govt is not democratic, but the country is remarkably stable. Hilary Clinton has just applauded it as one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, despite the genocide 15 years ago.

A woman named Mohamima Chantal tells us about her experiences during the genocide. Another impressive act of resistance – a woman who was meant to die standing in front of a group of people saying – This is what happened. This is my story. Also, I was impressed that in the end she said – or at least what she said was translated as – and that’s all I want to say. Which I thought was impressive too as it complicates my thinking of victimization – someone who has been a victim of violence but is in control of their story and what of this story enters public (political) space.

And a way I understand this is by reading the Wikipedia article on Rwanda which declares the period of 1990-1994 a civil war in Rwanda and the period following 1994 the post-civil war. ( Which is misleading because an army of predominantly exiled Tutsis overthrowing a genocidal government does not justify genocide. It doesn’t seem to be a thing that becomes justified by war which this labeling implies.) As I stay up half the night proposing edits to the article, I think of Mohamima saying that she is proud to tell her story because people still don’t believe that a genocide happened in Rwanda. The history is still being written.

So there is a need for personal testimony to enter public space, but also – how does it stay personal? … This word gu ha ha muka seems useful – a shared recognition of the space between – the experience and telling, survivor and witness…

And personally, something that occurred to me working on Angel of History last year, is genocide is asking a people to stand as a metaphor for the negation of life. To write on people’s bodies – you are not life. How do I enact that in my daily life?

*photo taken by Zak Landrum