More than 600 students, staff, and Bowdoin community members crammed into Pickard Theater last Friday to hear Rwandan hero Paul Rusesabagina recount his experiences of the Rwandan genocide, a story popularized by the 2004 Academy Award winning film, Hotel Rwanda.
With a deep, booming voice, Rusesabagina greeted his audience and promised to reveal "the real life behind the movie on the screen."
Rusesabagina emphasized that as manager of a four-star hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, he was put in a unique position to save some 1,200 lives by bartering, negotiating, and blackmailing military and government officials.
He recounted in vivid detail his having to plead with Hutu militia to spare the lives of Tutsi neighbors who had flocked to his house shortly after the genocide began. "I was told, on the streets of Kigali, to take this gun and kill the 'cockroaches,'" he said.
"For five minutes I was speechless," Rusesabagina said. "Then I told them that I didn't know how to use this gun, but even if I did I wouldn't kill these people"
Rusesabagina pled with the militia, showing them the faces of the children, women, and old men. "These are not your enemies," he told them.
He reiterated the absurdity of the massacre, saying, "Tutsis and Hutus, what is the difference? They share the same language, the same culture, territory, the same marriages."
Rusesabagina then recalled surveying the aftermath of the genocide from his car as he maneuvered through dead bodies while searching for his family.
"The whole country was smelling of dead bodies, flies. I went to see family. My mother-in-law was dead, her six children killed," Rusesabagina said.
"We sat down in the ruins and we cried. The trip opened my eyes, it was very influential," Rusesabagina said, adding, "Since then I've decided never to fight with a gun but with my mouth."
Disheartened by the lack of support from the international community both during and after the Rwandan genocide, Rusesabagina has dedicated himself to increasing awareness of past and current genocides and promoting an international discourse.
"The most abusive words that I hear are 'never again,'" Rusesabagina said, citing the current humanitarian crises in Darfur, Sudan, and in the Congo. "Have we learned from history? I do not know."
Rusesabagina asked students to support humanitarian efforts in Rwanda by giving to the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, which provides support, care, and assistance to children orphaned by, and women abused during, the genocide in Rwanda, according to the foundation's web site.
He also urged students to write their local political representatives to denounce the crises in Darfur and the Congo.
"Africa needs you," said Rusesabagina, "to break out a dialogue. I'm telling you this because you in the West are lucky, you vote for your own leaders."
Senior Mindy Chism, who saw Hotel Rwanda last summer, felt that Rusesabagina's personal account was even more provocative and emotional than the film. "To have him come out and explain that certain parts of the movie were downplayed...and were actually even more intense and frightening in real life blew me away," she said.
Lindsay Buntman '06 echoed Chism's sentiment, but wished "that he address the genocide more analytically instead of reiterating what happened in the film."
"The lecture leaves you feeling inadequate," Buntman said, "and it was to a certain extent limiting to hear that all we could really do was give money."
Visiting Assistant Professor Shelly Deane, who teaches two courses which examine ethnic conflict and genocide this fall, noted the importance of Rusesabagina's personal account.
"That some of the students felt disappointed by Mr. Rusesabagina's suggestion to give money and write to politicians is as much a consequence of the feeling of disempowerment experienced after hearing about the needless deaths of large numbers of innocent people," Deane said.
"If everyone attending Mr. Rusesabagina's lecture has written to their political representative to voice their concerns over the current deaths in Darfur then this is the first incremental step in creating and maintaining awareness of the injustice Mr. Rusesabagina mentioned," she said.