It’s true it wasn’t exactly front page news here in the US. This was Africa after all….and the people that live there are….er….black. And…well…..the ethnic groups over there kill each other all the time don’t they? So, the story was placed on page 27b, bottom right hand corner…next to the movie times. Maybe that’s how I missed it. I mean….who has money to go to the movies nowadays anyway. Do you realize how much tickets cost?

The stories did mention that ethnic tension between the Hutu and Tutsi's of Rwanda was almost non-existent until the white people showed up (in this case...the Belgiuns), but since nobody was actually reading the dispatches, it didn't much matter what was in them. 

And besides…..that Africa place? The last time I saw Africa on CNN was in some place called Mogadishu...which sounded like some long lost Indian tribe or something. The country itself was called  Somalia, yet another place I'd never heard of. And here was the ghastly footage of a dead naked US soldier being dragged through the streets with people cheering. Whoever the hell these people were, one thing was apparent at first glance. They seemed awfully mad at something. Best to avoid them.

So Africa seemed like a good place to steer clear of at the time….and I’m sure I had more important things to think about anyway. I'm not sure what they were, but maybe it will come to me.

Fast forward to 2001. I’m handed a book called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. I’m urged to read it. The title  is somewhat intriguing, and since I just finished reading a bio of John Lee Hooker, I’ve got an open slot on my reading calendar. I could use something a bit more thought provoking anyway. Not that John Lee doesn't do it for me mind you....but the one chord drone of Boogie Chillun' gets old after a while...know what I mean?

I open the book at 7pm. At 4am I put it down. I’m drained….so drained that I can’t sleep. I’ve just read about the holocaust perpetrated at warp speed. I’m furious….stunned…dizzy. I’m mad at myself, I’m mad at my country. I’m mad at the world. But at 4am there’s not much you can do to lash out…so instead I simply cried. And I went in and kissed my sleeping 3 year old daughter.

I never heard of this place…..Rwanda. And when I went looking for it I still couldn’t find it because the country is so small that the name can’t fit inside its own borders on a map. It has to be written outside and linked with an arrow. It’s like asking a first grader to find Rhode Island. 

But there it was. In central Africa. This insignificant little place just hosted an orgy of bloodshed whose authors made the Nazi’s look like rank amateurs. And even the Nazi’s….guys my age could still look at that as being ancient history. Even though our parents were alive at the time…..we weren’t….and certainly that type of madness was during the black and white newsreel age. Right? I mean....Genocide in the age of Bill Gates? Please. "Never Again" we said at the end of the Holocaust. Remember?

I mean…this was nineteen ninety four! I was just getting the hang of email. And you’re telling me that one group is hacking nearly one million of their neighbors to death with machetes? And that they announced their intentions publicly before they started the killing? The had machete training out in the open in front of their soon-to-be victims? That priests and nuns assisted in the slaughter? You’re telling me that the UN sent an absurdly small “peace keeping” mission to Rwanda with instructions that they couldn’t lift a finger to prevent any killing…only “observe” it? That the UN force was so ill equipped that...forget about weapons, they were actually  running out of staples and fax paper? That the US did nothing to stop the killing because we had no financial stake in the country? Is that what you are telling me?

When does an event become so cataclysmic…so bloody illogical, that it simply fails to register on the humanity meter? Subsequently, much blame has been placed for the killings in Rwanda, and rightly so. The Clinton administration certainly has blood on its hands….but even now, in what should be the defining failure of his presidency, all people talk about is him getting blown by an intern. Most people have still never heard of Rwanda, and therefore are certainly unaware of Clinton’s refusal to stop the killings. I often wonder… what if white European’s were killing each other at a rate of 8000 per day. Would the story be on the front page then? Would Clinton act then? Would it be in our “interest?” Is prejudice more ingrained in the psyche than even us so called enlightened liberals are able to let on?

Probably not enough blame has been placed on the killers themselves. I mean, it’s one thing for somebody to broadcast over the radio that it’s OK to kill pregnant women and cut the babies out of their stomachs….but it takes more than words to wield the knife. Literally tens of thousands of so called “normal” people became grizzly murderers literally overnight. How can this happen? How truly humane is humanity?

So how ashamed am I? I can truthfully say that I had no idea what was going on in Rwanda back in 1994, so that should get me off the hook guilt-wise…shouldn’t it? Then why do I still feel dirty? Why do I still come back to the subject time and time again in song? And why……when my mind wanders towards Rwanda on sleepless nights, do I sometimes feel the need to go and kiss my baby girls?