That is because missions such as these, in and of themselves, do NOT have a conclusion -- neither for the participants nor for the survivors. Koff can't convey what just isn't there. These missions are one -- important, but only one -- building block towards resolution and closure. So are the trials of those responsible; yet, anyone expecting a trial or even an appellate judgment against a perpetrator to provide a sense of conclusion is simplyl deluding themselves. I feel your frustration -- been there myself, intensely enough, when I was working on this myself. And yet, the work of that Koff's team did, as well as the trials and the sentencing of the perpetrators, have contributed enormously to finding a postwar way forward; in Rwanda in particular (less so in Croatia and Bosnia, but even there) ... as we know now, 20 years later. Koff, writing in 2004, couldn't even have said that with any sense of certainty.

While I completely understand that the reality of the matter is that Koff can't know what the overall conclusion of the mission in entirety will be, I think what really threw me was the way she ended this part. In a way, she sort of just continued to detail her movements and activities, which is in keeping with her memoir-like telling of events, which I DID find a nice touch, even if it didn't really end the 'Kibuye' part of the book in a conclusive manner.

I guess what I'm saying is, I would have liked it more if she'd also touched on a bit of the "what comes next" for the victims of the Rwanda genocide she and her teammates exhumed and autopsied, even if she didn't have a clear cut completion for the whole thing at the time. I just felt that that section was incomplete in some way and left me with a desire to know what happens next. I probably didn't convey this very well in my update, and DID wonder if the next part 'Kigali' would touch upon that. But I figured as much that the trials and convictions themselves wouldn't be instantaneous.

That's exactly what I mean -- she wasn't involved in that, so she cannot comment on it. The reality of these assingments is exactly as she describes ... finish your work, pack up, go home and wait for the next assignment (or move on to the next assignment straight away). And both from my own perspective and that of my BFF, who works for one of Germany's largest development NGOs, it just can't be overstated how nerve-wracking and emotionally difficult the "getting back to normal life in the first world" part is ... especially after a first assignment, as Kibuye was for Koff. Trust me, she was *completely* caught up with adjusting the reality of her own life; she simply didn't have any space left for anybody and anything else. The fact that early on in the assignment she made the (very wise) decision to put the witness statements aside while working on the site so as to be able to focus on the purely scientific aspects as much as possible is a huge tell -- and this is someone who passionately cares about her work. I really do NOT want to even think about what she actually saw (and smelled) -- and I think she is very wise in not putting it into the book. It would only encourage cheap voyeurism -- not among the scientists reading it, but among pretty much everybody else.