Rwanda is called “the land of a thousand hills,” but the landscape here is more majestic than that phrase conveys. It is more dramatic than rolling hillsides, but gentler and greener than mountain peaks. The drive to Murambi Memorial in Butare was no less beautiful… I think I annoyed quite a few people by gushing over the view from the window!
We were very close to the memorial when we drove past a parade of men in blue clothing, carrying hoes and farming tools. These men, our program director explained, are genocidaires performing TIG – general interest work. The government provides a place for them to live, and they essentially do community service to “repay” the community. Since they can totally make up for what they did 15 years ago. Rwandans continually amaze me. I meet person after person who lost every person he loved in the genocide, but he still wants to reconcile with the people who caused his loss. And it seems to be working! If only every divided community worked so hard to unify and heal EVERYONE, not just the group most recently victimized. Cough Israel.
Back to Murambi.
It was supposed to be a school, but never opened because of the genocide. The radio encouraged Tutsis to take refuge there, saying they would be safe, but it was a trap – the 40,000 Tutsis hiding there were weakened without food and water for days. Then the Hutu militia surrounded the hilltop and killed everyone. 40,000 people… 3 survivors.
We met two of those survivors, who were at the memorial (I think they always are?) while we were there. One man, who smiled and waved, and one woman who walked with us through the would-be-classrooms. I don’t know how they can bear to be near that place with so many memories, but maybe that’s exactly why they stay. Maybe it’s the only place they feel at home because all they have left is memories.
I warned that this would be a depressing post, so here goes: after the massacre at Murambi, the interhamwe (young Hutu militiamen) buried everyone in an unmarked mass grave. Before they had even finished cleaning the blood from the walls, floors…everywhere, Operation Turquoise had begun. French soldiers stayed at Murambi during their operation, which essentially provided an escape for Hutu genocidaires into the DRC. They hoisted their flag right outside the classrooms; they played volleyball on top of the mass grave. And they knew what had happened there.
After the RPF took control of the government, they bodies were exhumed, and most were reburied in a properly headstoned grave… because the dead care whether there is a headstone or not on top of their thousands of bodies. I always find it odd, how mourning is so much for the mourners, not the ones being mourned.
The others were preserved in a plaster-type fashion and laid in the classrooms. Their families, whoever survived, wanted it that way - for people to confront the reality of what happened.
The first thing that struck me when we walked through the rooms was the smell. I will spare you those details, at least. But we wandered into room after room; we saw body after body, skull after broken skull. Some of the bodies still had a bit of hair; some still had a shirt on. They all looked tense – fingers and toes curled. Even the tiniest hands and feet seemed clenched. One classroom simply had a stack of bones and rows of skulls; the last room was huge and empty, but for the shelves and shelves of the clothes of the victims.
We then walked outside to recover ourselves, but I hadn’t cried. I kept thinking I couldn’t cry if that man, one of the three, had smiled. So I went back into the classrooms and took pictures.
I know it sounds vulgar and disrespectful, but I felt almost like I had to. Everyone always talks about “never again” and how horrible these things are, but we never have to see it!
Americans, or at least most people I know, never see anything like that. We keep our distance from poverty and violence; we give some money to a charity and call it a day. We call it an “Africa problem” or a “third world problem,” like a disease that can be cured, and the cure is free elections and our mountains of aid.
But when people can’t read an election ballot, how can democracy be present? When a country depends on foreign aid to keep its economy afloat (partially because the aid has defeated enterprise and promoted corruption in government), how is self-determination possible?
So I took pictures to force people to confront it. But not even pictures, worth a thousand words, can reproduce that smell. Or express the feeling when an old woman – who survived this atrocity – ran over and wrapped her arms around me, comforting ME.
Happy post coming soon.
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