After visiting to Rwanda to commemorate to 16th anniversary of the genocide that ravaged the country, actor Clive Owen was moved enough to write a piece for the Times on the devastation that still exists.
He wrote:
When are we going to Rwanda?” my 13-year-old daughter kept asking. She wanted to go there as soon as I was asked to visit the country to show solidarity with its people. She wasn’t asking in a naive, childish way; she knew that it was a serious thing, marking the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Initially, the scheduling wasn’t working out, but Hannah kept on reminding me.
And so, almost a year later — thanks to her and the Aegis Trust — I’m standing in the Kigali Genocide Memorial, trying to get my head around what happened in 1994, what that means for Rwanda today and what, if anything, it might mean for the rest of us.
Sixteen years can feel like a lifetime. But when you’re facing the fallout of a genocide, as I discovered in Rwanda, it can feel like no time at all.
It’s very hard for an individual to take on the concept of a million people dying in 100 days. But as soon as you listen to one person’s story you start to relate on a human level, and you begin to realise just how devastating it was. The centre at Kigali was at its most powerful when it got personal.
CLICK HERE to read the rest of his extremely moving article.
[Image via WENN.]