In April of 1994, the African country of Rwanda was in chaos. Fueled by decades-old resentment and the local media, ethnic Hutu extremists turned on their Tutsi neighbors, killing nearly 1 million people in just 100 days. With the exception of a few U.N. troops and some brave individuals, the international community stood by and watched the drama unfold on their television sets.

Christopher TaylorIt’s a situation Christopher Taylor remembers all too well, because he was there. Taylor, an associate anthropology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will talk about his experiences at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, in Tyson Auditorium at Sweet Briar College. The lecture is open to the public and admission is free.

His lecture, “Divining the President’s Death: Magic and the Imaginary in Rwanda’s Pre-Genocidal Media,” will address the events leading up to the genocide including the mysterious death of the country’s president and a media that was rabid with ethnic hatred.

Taylor was in Kigali, Rwanda, when the genocide began. He had been there just five months, working with Family Health International on an AIDS/STD prevention project when the fighting broke out.

In the introduction to his 1999 book “Sacrifice as Terror,” Taylor writes about how he and his Tutsi fiancée — now his wife — narrowly escaped the genocide but lost family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to the violence. After clearing one of many terrifying checkpoints on their way to neighboring Burundi, Taylor said he felt “that wave of relief that comes only after a stay of execution. … ”

For more information, contact SBC anthropology professor Debbie Durham at 381-6229 or durham@sbc.edu.