Hatred I Have Not Known

Hate is killing your neighbor for no other reason then he is from a different tribe than you. Hate is swinging a baby against the wall of a church til death. Hate is chasing your colleague and then slaying her with a machete. This is hatred I have never known and hope to never experience. I cannot count the number of times I have misused this word. I hate liver and onions. I hate slow drivers. I hate inconsiderate people. My "hatred" pales in comparison to what the people of Rwanda experienced during the genocide of 1994. Do you know that was less than 20 years ago? Amazing that an ethnic cleansing of that degree could have happened not so long ago. We visited Nyamata, the church where thousands fled as they thought they would be safe from the killings. They were massacred with machetes, bullets, and grenades. All of their clothing remains, which is an incredibly sorrowful sight. There were less than 5 survivors and I cannot imagine how they made it out alive. Playing dead amongst their dead family and friends, emotionally and spiritually scarred for life. The most horrific story told by one of the survivors was of a woman who had refused to marry her Tutsi boyfriend. He was amongst the killers that day and was one of 20 men to rape her. They then stuck 2 long metal rods, horizontally and vertically through her body. One of the rods piercing her baby to her heart. I cannot fathom this level of hatred and I vow to remove this word from my vocabulary. I want to love the World extra hard to make up for those who hate it extra hard.