Gary Johnson
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
By: Philip Gourevitch
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch aggressively exposes a world event that too much of the international community was never even willing to recognize: genocide in Rwanda. Gourevitch’s account of the clash between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority in Rwanda eloquently captures what happens when a powerful, controlling government tells an uneducated, poor peasantry to slaughter their own neighbors and families. Much of We wish to inform you… points out the absurdity of the unnecessary deaths of well over one million people and criticizes the international community for both tacitly letting genocide continue (by not characterizing it as “genocide”) and supplying the Hutu refugees with the sustenance and weapons to continue raiding and killing the Tutsi. By interviewing people who survived and were impacted by the genocide from all sides and viewpoints, Gourevitch paints a lucid picture of the motivations and devastation imposed by angry, misled combatants. Most importantly, Gourevitch’s book serves as yet another warning that horrible acts of violence continue to happen everyday in the world, most of which are never reported in major newspapers.
The book relates to health concerns particularly in one major area. After Hutu rebels were exiled to Zaire and Burundi, a cholera epidemic began, which killed more than 30,000 people in the 3-4 weeks before the outbreak was contained (p. 164). The ironic part of the book is that the Hutu refugees who had massacred much of their own country got all of the international news media coverage because they were refugees dying with the Nyaragongo volcano in the background. The world forgot about the Tutsi minority left in Rwanda who was suffering from many of the same woes as the Hutu refugees. But the United Nations came to the rescue of the murderers by supplying them with medicine, food, and other necessities while the Tutsi continued to perish in Rwanda. The cholera outbreak was largely a result of over a million people crowded together in Goma, Zaire, on the shores of Lake Kivu with a lack of sanitation facilities and no running water. Cholera resulted from people bathing and drinking from contaminated water that contained human waste. The book proves that cholera and other contagious diseases are still major concerns in developing countries even in July of 1994 when these countries have a high concentration of people in a small area that lacks the resources to maintain clean water. The UN’s response to refugees with cholera also proves that unfortunately it takes a major outbreak and worldwide news coverage to raise awareness about health concerns in the developing world. Because the book highlights the paradoxical and absurd response of the international community to the events that unfolded in Rwanda and its’ surrounding countries around 1994, I highly recommend this book.