In Memoriam

Kigali

“When they said ‘never again’ after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?” -Apollon Kabanizi

I recently visited the Kigali Memorial Centre and Genocide Museum, which serves as the burial site for over 250,000 of the 800,000 people killed in the Rwandan genocide of April-July 1994. This reverent museum has been in operation for about five years now and is surrounded by gardens and fountains that provide a humble backdrop to the cruel stories told within its walls. The museum itself is divided into three main exhibits. The first is a history of Rwanda leading up to the 1994 genocide and detailing the event itself through its aftermath using artifacts, photographs, video, written testimonies and other primary sources (i.e. newspapers demonstrating party philosophy) to illustrate what happened. The second exhibit is a reflection on the phenomenon of genocide in light of other genocides that have occurred in the past century, including those in South-West Africa, Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia and Bosnia. The third and final exhibit is tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan children killed during the genocide.

A few rooms were especially powerful in the main exhibit. In one of them, the skulls and bones of dozens of people were laid in display cases, while a seemingly endless litany of names was read plainly in the background. Another room, much larger than the last, featured hundreds of photographs of the dead. These pictures were submitted by family members who sometimes attached a letter to the person in the photo. The second exhibit opens with a quotation from the director of Aegis Trust, a UK based NGO dedicated to the elimination of genocide. It reads as follows: “If you must remember, remember this…the Nazis did not kill six million Jews…nor did the Interahamwe kill a million Tutsis. They killed one and then another, then another. Genocide is not a single act of murder. It is millions of acts of murder.” The exhibit reminds its viewers that genocide is never a spontaneous act but rather planned acts of violence intentionally targeted at destroying a population, usually carried out by the government in charge and its collaborators.

For me, the most upsetting exhibit was the children’s memorial, which consists of several connected rooms with enlarged, individual photos of children of all ages. Under each picture is a bit of information about the child. Two examples are listed below:

Nadia Chanelle
Age 8
Favorite sport: jogging with her father
Favorite sweets: chocolate
Favorite drink: milk
Favorite song: My Native Land Which God Chose for Me
Enjoyed: TV and music
Cause of Death: Hacked by machete

Aurore Kirezi
Age 2
Favorite drink: cow’s milk
Favorite game: Hide and seek with her big brother
Behavior: very talkative
Cause of Death: Burnt alive at Gikondo Chapel

The exhibit closed with a particularly poignant anecdote, demonstrative of a kind of mercilessness that is still difficult for me to fathom:

“A militiaman came up to kill me. I was astonished because I thought he was a friend. He used to come to our house every day. He farmed my father’s fields and he received a salary. My mother gave him food. We used to play with him and he was like a brother to us, even though we were not from the same family. I asked him why he wanted to kill me when I had done nothing to hurt him. I begged him to take pity on me. He said nothing but just hit me over the head with a machete. He had bits of wood in his hand which he stuck in my face. When he thought I was dead, he left.” –Uwayisenga, Age 7

Visiting the museum in Kigali left me uneasy in so many ways. One of the hardest things about the visit was realizing that even though over 250,000 are buried on the premises, only a handful of men, women and children can actually have their stories told.


Nyamata

“If you knew me and you really knew yourself you would not have killed me.” –Felicien Ntagengwa

Nyamata is the village 30km south of Kigali in which I live. It is also the site of a well-known genocide memorial, a Catholic church where about 10,000 people were killed by the Interahamwe. It is no accident that the Maranyundo School was set up in this part of Rwanda: decades prior to the genocide, Nyamata was the site of large concentration camp for Tutsis. It was one of the first regions to be targeted by the Interahamwe in April 1994 since so many Tutsis lived there. For that reason, Nyamata and the Bugesera District has had a particularly hard time rebuilding itself from the massive destruction, and schools and families in the region are very poor. When the women who founded Maranyundo consulted with the Rwandan Ministry of Education about where their school was most needed, Nyamata was a clear choice.

The church is located along a dusty dirt road several hundred meters from the main thoroughfare of our village. I had passed by it many times on Sundays on the way to mass, which is held in a nearby building since the structure is maintained as a memorial only. Like many buildings in Rwanda, the church is simply constructed of brown brick and a tin roof. Perhaps it was this sense of familiarity with my surroundings that made the experience of entering the church for the first time so startling: although I always knew it was there, until that sunny Tuesday morning I never actually considered what was inside. What immediately struck me was the stillness. The pews of the church are arranged in rows facing the altar, and lining each pew, all sides of the church and the altar are mounds of tattered clothing. I took my time walking the aisles of the church and processing what I saw. At first, everything seemed to be of a dark, muted brown hue, but as I neared closer to different items I could make out striped and polka dot patterns, floral fabrics with faded tints of red, blue and yellow; a woman’s blouse, a man’s hat, a little girl’s jumper. Although the massacres committed here took place almost fifteen years ago, there was a faint smell of urine and death stagnant in the air, reminding me that this place has still not fully rid itself of its transgressions. There were other indicators of destruction within: behind the altar, the tabernacle had been hacked into so that the symbolic fish and wine were hard to distinguish. Images of apostles and saints on church walls were mutilated, and even the Virgin Mary statue had been struck and crumbled in places. As I took another look around the space, I noticed beams of light ironically flowing through bullet holes that peppered the tin roof, with the faint chirping of birds interrupting the silence inherent to this memorial.

Although there was no guide to walk me through my visit, prior to going I had learned from my housemates what happened there. As in many areas of Rwanda during the genocide, thousands of people fled to local churches when they heard news of the impending attacks. People believed that churches would be safe havens and clergy usually encouraged people to congregate there for protection. In some cases, as in the case of L’Eglise Sainte Famille in Kigali, the pastor was affiliated with the Interahamwe militia and used his role as a church leader to cause the death of as many Tutsis as possible in one go, falsely leading his parishioners to believe they would be secure there. The Interahamwe militia was in fact ruthless in its raids and didn’t have any problem with attacking churches, schools and orphanages just the same. The church in Nyamata witnessed a major attack on April 10, 1994. Those seeking refuge padlocked the door shut, but the militia was successful in breaking down the door and entering with their machetes, rifles and hand grenades. An estimated 10,000 people were killed that day, including the entire family of one of our four resident nuns. There were also survivors of the massacre: one of the men that I work with at the Bugesera district office was ten years old at the time, and remembers hiding still under dead bodies for hours until the militia moved on.

After several minutes inside the church, I went outside and around the back, passing two large tombstones with names of parishioners who were killed in earlier massacres of Tutsis in 1990 and 1992. Behind the church are underground vaults filled with the remains of victims of the 1994 slaughter. I wasn’t sure whether or not to descend into the vaults, as I was already on edge from going into the church and I was all alone. But I took a deep breath and climbed down.

In my family I was always taught that death is a part of life; my parents didn’t shy away from bringing us to funerals of relatives or answering questions about casualties we learned about at school or in the news. I usually find cemeteries very peaceful, and always felt a little sad but more reflective when confronted with the relics of saints or scholars (Pope John Paul II, Victor Hugo) at churches across Europe. But descending into these dimly lit crypts that contained thousands of skulls and bones stacked in rows, I really felt scared. Physically, I was so close to the remains of so many people who had been violated and brutally murdered for no good reason: it was both eerie and devastating to be there among corpses and consider how horrible it must have been to die that way. Within the vaults, there were also a few covered tombs clad in the purple and white ribbon symbolic of the genocide, some bearing flowers, crosses or other personal mementos. But too many victims had no burial at all.

When I visited Kibuye (Lake Kivu) again this weekend and attended mass at the genocide memorial church there, shown below, I thought about the similarities between these two places. Both were vibrant parishes prior to the genocide, both suffered unimaginable horrors during the three months of attacks in 1994, both reported casualties in the tens of thousands. And now, fifteen years later, both parishes have re-built themselves. In the case of the Nyamata parish, it is true that the location at which mass is held has moved, in order to permanently honor the dead at the original church. But the will to survive, persevere and re-build is something that I find extraordinary about Rwandan society.



References: Kigali Memorial Center and Genocide Museum, Kigali, Rwanda
Nyamata Memorial Church, Nyamata, Rwanda