Mom went to all sorts of places that most would not only not think of visiting, but places that many people would refuse to visit if given the chance: Somalia, the West Bank of Palestine, Upland Vietnam, the refugee camps of Yemen, to name but a few. The one that really stood out in mom's experience, though, was Rwanda.
When mom went to Rwanda, at some time in the mid-nineties, she had assumed that the conflict there was over, and that the more gruesome signs of the genocide that had occurred there had been removed. She was wrong on both counts.
She told me about the burned houses in the villages, whose owners had been killed. The Rwandans left the houses standing, uninhabited, in order to leave monuments to the evil that happened, so that they will not forget. There are, apparently, many of these houses still standing.
Mom's worst experience was when she went to see the genocide museum at one location. I suppose what she had expected was along the lines of the holocaust museum in Washington, DC; photographs and artifacts of the dead. What she found was something quite different. For example, she told me that there had been a room of feet. The room of feet contained a long table covered in leathery, dried human feet. The display made mom feel so queasy that she nearly fainted. Then she saw the arrow pointing to the room of babies, and fainted dead away.
Now, you surely know that Mom is a strong woman. She had three babies at home, naturally and without anesthesia, because she wanted to. This was too much even for her.
You might ask why I put this story here. The answer is that she told it to me, and I want it remembered.
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