The Fourth Plate

More often than not, we feel that we have already visited a place or know all about it even before visiting it.

That was the case with Rwanda for me. Not because I had read much about this African nation and its past nor because of systematic learning in terms of knowing more details about it but rather due to what this land represented for me through the years of reading books, watching news and documentaries, including one film that left an everlasting impression on me.

From the very beginning of my studying forestry, I became fascinated with Africa. One of my favorite books back then was Serengeti Shall Not Die by the German zoologist and environmentalist Bernhard Grzimek along with his son Michael. This book was not just about wildlife. It is rather a heartfelt ode to a beautiful landscape with a strong message asking humanity not to destroy this beautiful piece of land. 

Another book that increased this interest of mine and gave an even deeper understanding of this continent was Dian Fossey’s Gorillas in the Mist. The mountain gorillas she dedicated her life to protect and the misty forests of the Virunga Mountains captured my imagination and never let me go. 

Then came 1994, and changed how I saw it.

At the time, I was working within the cashew industry; the lot of raw materials processed by my company were from Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, and Tanzania. We received shipment after shipment of cashew nuts from there, and I would see the names of far away ports that I probably only knew from reading and had previously imagined in my head. Africa, which had initially sparked my interest through its natural history, had now become a part of my career.

But 1994 also brought something else entirely.

The news coming out of Rwanda that year was different from any other news I had heard before. In the course of one hundred days, nearly ten lakh people lost their lives. Friends became foes, and life became incomprehensible.

Watching such news, like many others around the globe, I found myself staring in utter disbelief, wondering how the rest of the international community remained so indifferent toward the events. 

Later on, years down the line, I happened to watch the movie called Hotel Rwanda’, which tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina who protected over a thousand people by giving them refuge within his hotel when everything outside became bloodthirsty. What I saw as news reports before was now being shown to me in close quarters through the movie.

This is why when I finally came to Rwanda in 2025, visiting Kigali for attending the World Agroforestry Congress, I was carrying with me three decades worth of images and impressions about the place. Some memories were sweet while others were painful; nevertheless, none could be complete.

I thought I knew the country. I was wrong.

Kigali surprised me. What I had imagined would be an obvious sense of burden from its history turned out to be a completely clean and well-ordered city. The streets were spotless. The traffic followed an extremely well-organized system. There was something about the orderliness of the city that was hard to pinpoint but certainly noticeable.

More surprising than the immaculate appearance of the city was the impression it gave regarding its people. What I saw was not just a city made spotless, but a city that chose to be different. History, though, was never far away.

One afternoon, I visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

I do not know what I was expecting. Maybe something more like a museum which is curated and educational, yet somewhat emotionally distant.

The experience that I received was different altogether.

The silence within is of a kind which is unique. The weight of silence gently press against your chest that you almost choke up. Nothing that I had ever read or watched could have prepared me for this museum. The memorial does not allow you to hold the number of people killed as a statistic. It insists, gently and relentlessly, to remember those people.

There are pictures on the walls. Just ordinary faces of people that make everything seem more painful. Their personal possessions are contained within display cases. There were toys, family photographs, descriptions of youthful lives cut short. Favourite foods, friends, characteristics remembered by parents who would not live to see another day.

Especially disturbing was the area dedicated to children.

Wandering the halls, thoughts of the film Hotel Rwanda came unbidden to mind. It was the first time that I had truly felt the horror of the genocide depicted by the news. But here, walking the halls of that museum, I realized how far away movies could be from reality.

Near the exit, I came across an inscription on the wall.

Just one sentence.

“If you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.”

I stopped.

I read it again.

And then I stood there for a while.

Of everything I encountered that day, that single sentence stayed with me the longest.

Violence of that sort is not an act of impulse. For such violence to occur, years must pass during which divisions creep in, suspicion grows, and a person’s humanness gives way to classification. And then the catastrophe strikes.

As Paul Rusesabagina noted in his autobiography, An Ordinary Man: “The other thing you have to understand was that the message crept into our national consciousness very slowly. It did not happen all at once. We did not wake up one morning to hear it pouring out of the radio at full strength. It started with a sneering comment, the casual use of the term ‘cockroach,’ the almost humorous suggestion that Tutsis should be airmailed back to Ethiopia. Stripping the humanity from an entire group of people takes time. It is an attitude that requires cultivation, a series of small steps, daily tending.”

As an Indian, that understanding unsettled me. One of the greatest things about India is its rich diversity of language, religion, geography, and culture. But those very diversities could become means of separation. No society is immune from this. The idea that it cannot possibly happen here might be one of the most dangerous illusions a country can hold to, all because of its seeming reasonableness.

When morning came after my visit to the memorial site, I noticed that the streets of Kigali were oddly silent.

I was seeing the effects of Umuganda, the day of community service observed in Rwanda every last Saturday of the month when the entire population, including the president of Rwanda, comes out to tidy up their neighborhoods, fix roads, plant trees, and improve any public space they can.

At first glance, it looks like a cleanliness programme. And it works. Kigali is among the cleanest cities I have ever visited. But Umuganda is really about something deeper.

This act of coming together is a testament to that spirit of rebuilding after devastation. In a country where it was once common practice to view each other as rivals, teamwork has its own significance. Month after month, they serve as a reminder that a society is not something abstract; it is something built by people.

Home came to my mind. I started to think about schools, work places, and societies. What would have happened if instead of focusing on our differences, we focused on doing things together because of our common ground?

It was at the Kigali Genocide Memorial that I saw how a society could be torn down. And it was Umuganda that taught me how it could be restored.

The two experiences felt inseparable. One was a warning. The other was an answer.

As the aircraft climbed away from Kigali, I looked down at the hills. Rwanda is called the Land of a Thousand Hills, and from the air you understand why. The green ridges roll endlessly into the distance before dissolving into cloud.

Somewhere below lay the memorial. Somewhere below, people were gathering for Umuganda. Somewhere below was a country that had endured one of humanity’s darkest chapters and had somehow found the courage to imagine a future beyond it.

As Rusesabagina so profoundly reflected, “Human beings were designed to live sanely, and sanity always returns.”

The Rwanda beneath me was not the country I had carried in my imagination for thirty years. It was more complicated than I had expected. And more hopeful.

I arrived thinking I knew Rwanda. I left with a deeper appreciation of how fragile societies can be, how easily people can be persuaded to fear one another, and how much effort it takes to rebuild trust once it has been lost.

Most of all, I left carrying a sentence from a memorial wall: “If you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.”

Of everything I brought back from Rwanda, that may be the thing I will remember longest.