34 pages • 1 hour read
Paul RusesabaginaAn Ordinary Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
The Rwandan Patriotic Front move people from the hotel, including Paul and his family, to a camp in Kigali’s Kabuga neighborhood. The Tutsi rebel soldiers loot food from the shops, dig up unharvested potatoes from the fields, and slaughter goats. During war, these survivalist thefts create permanent resentments that could again boil over into conflict: this “casual disrespect for other people and their property was what helped create the genocide we had just lived through” (166).
In the camp, Paul reunites with the children of his wife’s brother. The camp holds many such portions of families: children with no parents, and parents who have lost their children. The rebel RPF soldiers treat the refugees like prisoners of war and tell them to take a few days of military training to help fight against the Rwandan Army.
Meanwhile, with UN Security Council sponsorship, the government of France dispatches a humanitarian peacekeeping mission to western Rwanda, basically supporting the Hutus carrying out the genocide. The United States also decides to act, announcing a $320 million aid package for refugee camps at Goma, on the border of Zaire. These humanitarian efforts will eventually be known as The Great Lakes Crisis because the Hutu “refugees” comforted at these camps will join militia groups attempt to fight the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
On July 4, the RPF captures Rwanda’s capital Kigali after a brief battle. Two weeks later, the rebel army proclaims a new government, officially stopping the genocide. The RPF takes Paul and his family back to Hotel Mille Collines, but they settle in the manager’s house at the Hotel Diplomates as Paul feels the safest there. Later, Paul and his wife travel to their hometowns to learn that neighbors have slain most of Paul’s wife’s family.
Although Paul is allowed to keep his job as the general manager of the Hotel Diplomates, his friends repeatedly warn him that his life is in danger. Paul and his family leave Rwanda and start a new life in Belgium. He buys a Nissan and gets a permit to run a taxi company.
One day, Paul gets a call from Keir Pearson and Terry George, who want to make a movie about the genocide in Rwanda. After the movie Hotel Rwanda comes out, Paul becomes a sort of humanitarian celebrity. He is invited to the White House and gives lectures to various forums on the importance of truth and reconciliation and the current state of affairs in Africa..
Chapter 11 Summary
In the concluding chapter, Paul discusses genocides that have occurred in different parts of the world. He says that every genocide has a different set of circumstances attached to its inception: “In Cambodia, slaughter was done in the name of absurd political dogma; in Bosnia, the killings erupted after the fragmentation of a multiethnic federation; the Kurds in Iraq were gassed when they demanded independence from a dictator” (192).
Rwanda had its own set of circumstances that led to its genocide: leadership that was more concerned with survival than the needs of its people and easily diffused propaganda that gives support to everyday killers to commit slaughter—“all genocides rely heavily on the power of group thinking to embolden the everyday killers” (193). Paul adds that unless the world community finds ways to stop such actions, genocide will keep happening around the world.
The Rwandan criminal justice system moves slowly and deliberately according to the “justice on the grass” method, an old village justice system that offers warring parties the opportunity to reconcile with each other. Paul worries that this system solves cases of missing goats and stolen bananas and is not enough to deal with the criminals of genocide. The absence of proper judicial justice leaves Rwanda in danger of falling prey to similar problems again in the future since the country is “not binding up the wounds of history. And […] History dies hard” (200). However, Paul says that he hopes that whenever this happens again, “there will still be those ordinary men who say a quiet no and open the rooms upstairs” (204).
Chapters 10-11 Analysis
Victims of war have a way of indulging in atrocities and effectively repeating the cycle of abuse in the future. Because of this, Paul refuses to participate in military training when offered the chance to do so. He also refrains from acting out of emotional pain and rage, even when learning that former neighbors have killed his wife’s family. He knows he has “tasted, in that moment, the poison and self-hatred in my country’s bloodstream, that irresistible fury against a ghost, the quenching desire to make someone pay for an unrightable wrong” (175).
Even when forced to leave his country out of fear of being killed or wrongly persecuted, Paul still cherishes Rwanda. He knows that he and his family “may have left Rwanda, but Rwanda will never leave [them]” (179). Even though some of the genocide’s architects are put on trial, Paul feels that Rwanda has still not learned from its mistakes because tyrants understand how to exploit a population’s herd mentality. This is a phenomenon that has “happened in every culture on the planet, in every period, and the advancement of civilization has been no protection” (195).
On the other hand, Paul also believes that his countrymen can solve every problem if they talk to each other rather than relying on Rwanda’s superficial democracy and hollow system of justice. He is a firm believer in the idea that humanity and goodness lie at the heart of each person, and that given time, most people can follow those better instincts. This notion that decency can conquer evil is, to Paul, “a simple belief, but it is not at all naïve. It is, in fact, the shrewdest attitude possible. It is the best way to sabotage evil” (203).
