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The survivors told me their storiesThe last speaker was a dignified woman who said her family had been identified to the rampaging killers as Tutsis by Hutu neighbors whose children had played with hers for yearsShe was badly wounded by a machete and left for deadShe awoke in a pool of her own blood to find her husband and six children lying dead beside herShe told Hillary and me that she had cried out to God in despair that she had survived, then came to understand that my life must have been spared for a reason, and it could not be something as mean as vengeanceSo I do what I can to help us start againI was overwhelmed; that magnificent woman had made my problems seem pathetically smallShe had deepened my resolve to do whatever I could to help Rwanda
I began the first visit by any American President to South Africa in Cape Town, with a speech to the parliament in which I said I had come in part to help the American people see the new Africa with new eyesIt was fascinating to me to witness the supporters and victims of apartheid working togetherThey didnt deny the past or hide their current disagreements, but they seemed confident that they could build a common futureIt was a tribute mens cartier watches roadster to the spirit of reconciliation that emanated from Mandela
The next day Mandela took us to visit Robben Island, where he had spent the first eighteen years of his captivityI saw the rock quarry where he had worked and the cramped cell where he was kept when he wasnt breaking rocksIn Johannesburg, I called on Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who had been meeting with Al Gore twice a year on our common agenda and was almost certain to be Mandelas successor; dedicated a commercial center named after Ron Brown, who had loved South Africa; and visited a primary schoolHillary and I went to church with Jesse Jackson in Soweto, the teeming township that had produced so many of the anti-apartheid activists
By this time I had developed a real friendship with MandelaHe was remarkable not only because of his astonishing journey from hatred to reconciliation during twenty-seven years in prison, but also because he was both a tough-minded politician and a caring person who, despite his long confinement, never lost his interest in the personal side of life or his ability to show love, friendship, and kindness
We had one especially meaningful conversationI said, Madiba [Mandelas colloquial tribal name, chanel lookalike bags cheap which he asked me to use], I know you did a great thing in inviting your jailers to your inauguration, but didnt you really hate those who imprisoned you? He replied, Of course I did, for many yearsThey took the best years of my lifeThey abused me physically and mentallyI didnt get to see my children grow upThen one day when I was working in the quarry, hammering the rocks, I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heartThose they could not take without my permissionI decided not to give them awayThen he looked at me, smiled, and said, And neither should you
After I caught my breath, I asked him another questionWhen you were walking out of prison for the last time, didnt you feel the hatred rise up in you again? Yes, he said, for a moment I didThen I thought to myself, They have had me for twenty-seven yearsIf I keep hating them, they will still have meI wanted to be free, and so I let it goThis time he didnt have to say, And so should you
The only vacation day on the trip came in Botswana, which had the highest per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa and the highest AIDS rate in the worldWe went on a safari in Chobe National Park and saw lions, imitation tiffany jewelry elephants, impalas, hippos, crocodiles, and more than twenty different species of birdsWe got very close to a mother elephant and her childapparently too closeShe raised her trunk and sprayed us with waterIt made me laugh to think how happy the Republicans would have been if they could have seen their partys mascot watering meLate in the afternoon we took a leisurely boat ride down the Chobe River; Hillary and I held hands and counted our blessings as we watched the sun go down
Our last stop was Senegal, where we visited the Door of No Return on Gore Island, the point from which so many Africans were taken to slavery in North AmericaAs I had in Uganda, I expressed my regret over Americas responsibility for slavery and the long, hard struggle of African-Americans for freedomI introduced the large delegation with me representing over thirty million Americans that are Africas great gift to America, and pledged to work with the Senegalese and all Africans for a better futureI also visited a mosque with President Abdou Diouf, out of respect for Senegals overwhelmingly Muslim population; a village that had recovered a section of desert with the help of American aid; and Senegalese troops being trained by fake rolex watches wholesale American military personnel as part of the African Crisis Response Initiative, which my administration had initiated, our effort to better prepare Africans to stop wars and prevent other Rwandas
The trip was the longest and most comprehensive ever taken to Africa by an American PresidentThe bipartisan congressional delegation and the prominent citizens who accompanied me, as well as the specific programs I was supporting, including the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, demonstrated to Africans that we were turning a new page in our shared historyFor all its problems, Africa was a hopeful placeI had seen it in the faces of the massive crowds in the cities, in those of the schoolchildren and villagers in the bush and on the edge of the desertAnd Africa had given me a great gift: in the wisdom of a Rwandan widow and of Nelson Mandela, I had found more peace of mind to face what lay ahead
On April 1, while we were still in Senegal, Judge Wright granted my lawyers motion for a summary judgment in the Jones case, dismissing it without a trial, because she found that Jones had produced no credible evidence to support her claimThe dismissal exposed the raw political nature of Starrs male rolex watches investigatio |