Urunturuntu

RWANDA—19 years ago this month, Rwanda was a place that seemed to be full of evil; it is hard to imagine a society in a worse state. And yet, living here, I frequently find myself marveling at how good its people are: they are all warm and welcoming, and their commitment to kindness and generosity borders on illogical. How this can be is a question I have grappled with, as I am sure have many Rwandans.

The best answer I can find is that we should not generalize. Humans are incredible organisms, with the capacity to do things both great and terrible, things that are often not consistent with each other. It could be argued that to characterize a single person, let alone a nation, with one adjective serves only to flatten a multifaceted entity into a preconceived mold.

I bring this up partly because of a word in Kinyarwanda (Rwanda’s national language), urunturuntu, which translates as “humanity”; but it requires some more explanation. It is related to umuntu “person,” and encompasses everything that is perceived as separating humans from the rest of the natural world. When we talk about “humanity” in English, we think of valued qualities like courage, compassion, and generosity, even though looking out the window provides abundant evidence that there is more to humanity than that. This Kinyarwanda word acknowledges all the rest as well. It calls to mind an image of human society as a diverse, messy mixture of people and actions, full of good and bad and everything in between: something that can only be described in English as “human.”

There is a proverb that incorporates that word: Aho abantu bari ntihabura urunturuntu. Roughly translated, “Places where people have been will not lack humanity.” In other words, for better and for worse, human beings leave their mark wherever they go. I have just been railing against broad generalizations, but I think this one is insightful: it is an old saying, but it finds a way to reconcile two sides of a problem that is very relevant today.

Who has been here and not wondered how this could be the same Rwanda, full of the same Rwandans, that shocked the world in 1994? This is the only answer that makes sense to me, though it may not be a totally comfortable one: Rwanda does not lack humanity, nor has it in recent history. It so happens that it has shown both the worst and the best that humanity has to offer, but the spirit that underlies both might be the only thing that has been constant through it all.