(Posted by janine)
Yesterday I talked to my colleague about her 17-year old sister who attends a boarding school. Whenever someone tells you he or she is 17, you cannot help thinking about the year of birth... 1994. I asked my colleague about whether her sister learns about the genocide in school?
Her answer is giving me the shivers. Of course they learn something about the history of genocide (the 'official story'), but they don't really talk about it. It's too difficult, which is understandable. But then she tells me that her sister actually got traumatized last week because of a fight that broke out at the school. Turns out that the T (utsi) children at the school have been receiving small notes with 'hate speech' from some other students, threatening them that they should be killed. Where did they get those ideas from?
Once again you realize that some tiny flame is still simmering throughout the country. And you wonder how often it sparks up a fire, and where, and who gets hurt by it. But you don't know because you just don't see it...
3 comments:
Hi, I do not think the genocide and the crimes of Communism are comparable. However your story made me think about a recent article int the Czech Rep about the lack of history knowledge. One thing is that teachers do not like the subject, however it seems even worse for the awareness that parents here do not like to talk about the past at all..
Just found this article, illustrating that it's -unfortunately- not a single event: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7246985.stm
reminds me of 'the wave', but than for real... Awful.
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