Summary

Part Two, “Gusimbura,” Chapter Eighteen: Rwanda, 2006. As Deo and Kidder travel through Rwanda, they note different signs of progress and healing – good roads, flourishing new forests, busy churches. Kidder then discusses the different perspectives on Rwanda’s recovery – how some see it as still corrupt, how others (including Deo) seeing it as making good and necessary progress.

Deo and Kidder travel through a succession of memorial sites, some of their stops having been planned and others being spontaneous. At each one, Kidder says, Deo allows his grief to flow out as tears. Kidder comments that he had thought that “…if I had memories like his, I would spend the rest of my life as far away as possible from Rwanda and Burundi. But then I entertained the idea that, no, if I had places like Murambi in my past, I might want to revisit...