I Knew Then That I Mattered

You were just cockroaches, not people at all. The young men stare at the genocide perpetrator. It was our teaching, we were taught to maim and kill you. You were cockroaches. Three orphans tried to understand. In April 1994 a million people were killed in Rwanda, Because they were the minority. Unarmed women and children, slaughtered. By machetes and steel-nailed clubs called “no mercy”. Twenty-five years later three young men meet one of the perpetrators. The perpetrator asks for forgiveness yet he gave no mercy. The three orphans have healed through the art of photography. They were taken in to an orphanage run by Ros Carr, age eighty-two. She welcomed David Jiranek, who taught the orphans photography. They were eight, nine and ten, and they were lost, saddened by sorrow. Photography showed them a way to express themselves; it was cathartic. One of the orphans said “I realized then that I mattered.” These three were able to document their stories. They are now sitting under a tree, listening to one of the perpetrators. He had spent fifteen years in prison for his crimes. They have found humanity that was lost to them, but now is found. Forgiveness in another step in their healing process to wholeness.