Author commentary on "The Bones of Ndundi"

While a graduate student in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a graduate seminar on the subject of genocide.  We ignored The Holocaust completely, as it would have unbalanced the class, but focused on quantitatively-lesser genocides such as those that occurred in Pol Pot's Kampuchea, the Armenian genocide, the Indonesian purges of the 1960's, the Stalinist policies implemented on the Ukraine, and, of course, the Rwandan tragedies of the 1990's.  Our teacher, visiting professor Dr. David Chandler, had done significant work on the Cambodian death camp S-21, while one of the students taking the class had been a child of the "killing fields".  The course was poignant, and, try as we might to sterilize the information given us, it was ultimately impossible to separate ourselves from some sense of collective responsibility for such tragedies.  This short fiction was a bit of an apologia for the anger and disdain that might arise in me towards other people (on a much smaller scale), but that ultimately, under all the wrong conditions, can lead to mass violence and even genocide. The possibility of human monstrosity within oneself is difficult but, I feel, necessary to face if one is to develop a truly deep compassion for
others.  Is it no surprise, then, that after all Dr. Chandler and our Khmer colleague had seen and rejected, they were, of all of us, the happiest, most loving people of all?  Their examples, above all, began to give me hope after what was one of the most depressing series of epiphanies about human nature gone wrong.  "The Bones of Ndundi" is another stepping stone, a cathartic stepping stone, if you will, towards redemption.