Genocide Survivor Reminds CLNC® Consultants How Bright the Future Can Be
I was in Kigali, Rwanda talking to a young woman, Darlene, who’d lost her aunts and uncles to the 1994 genocide. As you probably recall, in 100 days more than 1,000,000 Rwandans classified as Tutsi were machine-gunned, hacked and clubbed to death by Rwandan Hutus. Neighbors murdered neighbors. Coworkers killed coworkers. Anyone labeled Tutsi by their identity card was marked for death and many were killed. Visiting the Genocide Memorial is a sobering experience. Photos of the missing victims, children, parents, siblings are hung in a room – taken from the walls of the refugee camps where survivors hoped that against the odds they’d find any other surviving family member.
Darlene attends the Akilah Institute for Women, whose mission is to help young Rwandan women become successful entrepreneurs and leaders in their country. She survived due to a stroke of luck – her parents sought refuge in Burundi during the genocide while the rest of her family had stayed behind in Rwanda to perish. When I asked her about her loss, she said “I cannot change the past, but I can change the future.” Profound and amazingly upbeat – I can’t say that I would feel the same way.
