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Lost it

Oy, I have to teach Bosnia and Rwanda in a class I'm teaching this semester. I can't even do it anymore. I'm currently busy trying to substitute for my original readings something that gives the gist of what happened, without all of the detailed descriptions of deeply personal and sadistic killing which really characterize the essence of what happened during those two conflicts.

Back in the day, I used to be able to read and talk about this stuff. Then I got soft and old and became a mother, and now I just can't imagine making my mainly sweet, tenderhearted class read these things. When we talked about UN peacekeeping in the DR Congo this week, they were utterly dumbfounded by some of the things that went on there. Christ, they were even shocked to discover how little water people have to get by on in UNHCR refugee camps. What are they going to do with Rwanda and Bosnia? What's an easy way through this?

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Permalink Reply by hermit crab on November 2, 2010 at 7:47am

Whew! Got through the discussions of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Now on to postwar reconstruction in those two countries - complicated, but not as emotionally difficult.

I found myself doing a not-awesome job with Bosnia. Having lived there for a few years, my feelings and knowledge about the Bosnian war are pretty personal. I have close relationships with people who experienced some horrifying things, which makes it more difficult to generalize and not go into specific stories - but if I get into specific stories, it's no longer something I can discuss in a professional way.

I did a better job with Rwanda, with which I don't have the same degree of personal connection. I relied heavily on the 1999 Human Rights Watch report which has an unusually good history section. Students also read a good timeline which gave both a longer-scale and more immediate timeline of relevant events. What was nice for me to get clear on was that the killing in both Rwanda and Bosnia occurred in the context of moving from dictatorship to (Western-supported) democracy - both had power-hungry leaders, losing a degree of their power, who used their countries' deeper histories as a way to gather more power and push blame further from themselves. Students were naturally horrified, but by providing a historical context the focus was less on the sheer brutality of the killing and more on how it was possible for the killing to take place and, in some extremely twisted way, make sense to the people who participated in it.

Anyway, just thought I'd report back on how things went after panicking about it. Turned out okay.