No one can understand the horrors that people witnessed during the Rwandan genocide except the survivors. Only through their stories can we begin to understand what it was like to be amidst the horror. In the book, “ Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You” by Hanna Jansen, The story of a brave young girl, Jeanne, is told so that others can understand how brave the Tutsis and some Hutus had to be to overcome the genocide. This book helps people understand how the nation was before the genocide began, the fear that many had to live with, and the horrors they had to endure. In the beginning, The reader can see what life is like in Rwanda through the eyes of Jeanne. The children went to school and led a normal life. The President had not yet been …show more content…
Friends and neighbors that they once knew killed their families right in front of them. All of this based on race and tribal affiliation. They sustained many injuries that left a permanent scar on their body and would forever remind them of the atrocities they had seen. The Interahamwe loved to show off the dead Tutsis like taking their heads and putting “ it on a pole and set it up on the street for all to see”( Jansen 127). This along with the piles of bodies left to rot on the streets left unsettling memories of all the horrors that the Interahamwe did. The mental and physical scars that were left can only be understood by the survivor. They lost everything and had to walk through hell just to live, so all they wanted to do was to “leave everything behind...forever”(Jansen 328). This helps the reader see that the things they had to live through were so horrible that all they wanted was to get out of Rwanda and as far away from the memories of the horrors as they could get. Jeanne saw some Hutu teenagers “hack at the man on the ground” for no specific reason (Jansen 180). This shows the amount of crimes that were committed by ordinary everyday people against innocents. It makes the reader understand the chaos that was going on at the time in