Pack Up and Move

       
       
          I have just recently started the book Left To Tell-Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust for my writing and rhetoric class at BYU. This is a detailed and moving story of a girl who survived the Rwandan holocaust living in a bathroom for three months with 7 other woman. Although I am not very far, I am already feeling the power of her story. I chose this picture for the week because of this sudden interest in the Rwandan holocaust.
          This weeks photo is a picture of Rwandans walking to the refugee camp in the region of Ngara just outside Rwanda, Tanzania. In 1994, the country of Rwanda was hit with one of the most devastating genocides in the history of man kind. It was a bloody battle between the two main tribes in Rwanda-the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Tutsis had been in power, and persecuting the Hutus, until 1962 when the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy. That was the straw that broke the camels back. After that, persecution upon persecution persisted. Eventually the persecution got so bad that the Tutsi people were fleeing the country. The tutsi's, much like the ones in the picture above, would try to escape to any country but their own because the persecution got so bad. They had no two week moving warning, they had to pick up what little possessions they had, and flee. 

          When I saw this picture, I thought of the mormon pioneers as they fled the persecution in Independence, Missouri. They had to pick up what little possessions they owned and carry their life across the country in a handcart. Although it may seem like these are two completely different scenarios, they are actually quite similar when you think about it. Both of these groups were forced from their homes because of religious, ethnic, and social persecution. Neither of them had time to make a game plan, they had to leave as quickly as possible. Both of these groups had various ages traveling with them. If you look at both of these pictures carefully, you can see that there are older people, parents, kids, younger kids. I think sometimes it is hard to fully understand hardships that happen in other countries. Comparing the Mormon pioneers to the Tutsi refugees helps put it into perspective and helps us understand that these people fleeing Rwanda are just like us. 


Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition." Aperture. New York, 2000. 
170.

"Rwandan Genocide." History . N.p., 2012. Web. 1 Oct 2012. <http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide>.