You Never Know Who Might Be Sitting Next to You

A woman in her 30s was sitting next to me on my flight back to the U.S. I took a liking to her because she immediately smiled and said "hi" as she sat down. (Lately, most flight companions I have had have simply ignored my presence. Not that I necessarily want to spend the duration of the flight talking to the person next to me, but a simple acknowledgment would be nice.) We exchanged a few comments here and there but it was during the last hour of the flight that we really got talking. The conversation started when she asked me to help her fill out her immigration paperwork. Turned out that she was from Rwanda. (I had never met anyone from Rwanda up until that point.) She was going to study Theology in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So she asked me if I was Christian. I told her yes, but I am not very religious. I explained that hardly anyone in Bulgaria is. She looked at me as if almost feeling sorry for me that religion wasn't a big part of my life. I later learned that she was a pastor. The conversation then turned to family. She asked me how many brothers and sisters I had. I told her I had only one sister. Again, she seemed to feel sorry for me. I know most African families have many children so I asked her how many siblings she had. She replied that she used to have 15 but now has only 3 sisters. The rest were all killed in the genocide. She added, "Twenty people in my family were killed." She said it so matter-of-factly, without exhibiting any emotion. I was caught unprepared. Of course, I have read much about the genocide; I have also watched Hotel Rwanda that illustrates the atrocities quite graphically, but still, having this woman tell me that she had lost 12 brothers and sisters made it all significantly more real and horrifying to me. The people killed weren't merely faceless statistics or actors on the movie screen. They were the flesh and blood of the woman I had spent 8.5 hrs sitting next to. And I felt sad, but I couldn't do anything. I mean what do you say to someone who tells you they lost so many family members in a genocide? It's not a situation you are faced with frequently.

As we left the airplane she commented, "You are very tall, just like the women in my country." I asked her, "What about the men, are they tall?" She replied, "Only the Tutsi." Then added, "That's why it was easier to kill them, they were less nimble and couldn't hide as easily." Again, I was left speechless. Somehow, I was surprised by the matter-of-fact way she told me these things. But then again, if you have experienced such horror you probably try to distance yourself from it, numb yourself in a way. Who am I to know or judge?

To Josephine, I wish you all the best in your future.