by Jennifer Parmelee

About the author: Jennifer Parmelee is a Washington Post special correspondent based in Ethiopia.

Before April 1994, those outsiders who could pinpoint Rwanda on a map might know it as “the Switzerland of Africa,” a tiny republic of rolling green hills where mountain gorillas cavorted with anthropologist Dian Fossey. But then, for one ephemeral and terrible moment, Rwanda was thrust in our faces in images that screamed of blood and terror.

Fifteen Minutes of Infamy

At first, the world was riveted in horror to scenes of carnage: Women and children were hacked to pieces by machete-wielding gangsters who reveled in the gore; the heads and limbs of victims were sorted and piled neatly, a bone- chilling order in the midst of chaos that harked back...