'Lest We Forget'

***Just thought that I'd start out by warning that there are pictures of human bones within this blog posting, as it was a part of the memorial site that we visited. So if you aren't good with these things (they aren't very graphicthough)...might want to skip this blog.

After hearing so many good things about Rwanda, we finally decided that a weekend trip down there would be something fun to do. Not only was the trip a much needed holiday, it was also a very emotional experience that I will never forget. Our holiday turned into a lesson of history, and experiencing history in a way that will be forever imprinted in my memory.

The country of Rwanda is a southern neighbour to Uganda, and to get to the capital city of Kigali it was about an eight hour drive from here in Masaka. Though it was a long drive, the scenery was breath taking. Rwanda is known as ‘Pays des Mille Collines’, which when translated literally means‘Country of a Thousand Hills’. The landscape mad up of hills and valleys, covered in lush landscape boasting many tea and sugar cane plantations that are scattered across the countryside. Even the city Kigali itself is a beautiful place. Every part of the city is manicured and clean. There are sidewalks, streetlights and landscaping in every part of the city; many of these things I haven’t seen in quite a long while.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to come to Kigali was to experience the genocide memorials that are located within the city. The Rwandan Genocide (though there was more than one) is the mass murder of an estimated 800,000 Tutsi people, conducted by the Hutu tribe. The history is a complicated one, and for information about the genocide and the memorial refer to: http://www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/old/index.html

The first stop we made was the memorial museum, which was located in downtown Kigali. This was only the introduction to what we were to experience on this day. The museum was full of photos and videos which depicted the horrific events that occurred during the genocide. The entirety of the place essentially existed to recognize the people that were so pointlessly murdered during this time in history. There were rooms where the walls were covered in pictures of those who died during this time, and plaques all within the memorial gardens of names those who were buried there and had been identified. Outside of the museum were mass graves, where some 250 thousand people are buried. Many of those in the graves were never identified and their memories are lost within history. Just by learning more about these events and the people who were affected, it made me wonder how people can do such terrible things to one another. The museum talked about how people turned on their friends and family; often if a man was married to someone of Tutsi descent, he was told that in order to remain true to his people he must kill both his wife and his children so that they cannot carry on the Tutsi name. Its jaw dropping that people would turn on those who they loved the most so quickly, especially a father on his family. People are people, no matter what tribe or place they are from, and it’s amazing how this can be so disregarded because of hatred.

the mass graves outside the museum

the names of those who have been identified

the hotel where the events of the movie
Hotel Rwanda actually occured

The most powerful part of the day was visiting one of the actual genocide sites, a church outside of Kigali called Nyamata. The church was the site of a mass murder of thousands and thousands of women, children and elderly people. Those who were in the church came there for refuge from the massacres and while trusting the church and its pastor for protection, but they were turned in by the pastor himself, and to enemy moved in and slaughtered these people. When we first got to the church the outside look like an ordinary building, but it was very different once you entered. The inside of the church was still in almost the same state that it had been that day of the massacre. The pews within the church were covered in the belongings of those who had attempted to take refuge there. The original prayer table was up at the front of the church, and the Virgin Mary stood where she has always stood. There was every type of belonging you could imagine; the church was covered in clothing, hats, jewellery and bibles. The place was dark and reeked of death. Though the bodies had been removed, remnants of the terror still remained. There were still some machetes (which were a popular instrument of death) lying on the floor of the church, and the blood stained table cloth still remained. Walking around the church and through the pews was a hard thing to do. I couldn’t imagine being one of these people trapped in the building, knowing that their end was coming soon. When we had some time for the initial shock to sink in, the guard took us down to a crypt that had been created under the floors of the church. In the centre of the underground area, there was a class case where the bone remains and personal belongs of those murdered were displayed. There were stained Bibles and rosaries amongst these belongings. This is when the whole situation became so real and so emotionally charged. We were actually among the remains of those who had died in such terrible and gruesome ways. After taking this in for a moment the guard led us to the back of the church where the mass graves and crypts were located. There were two large crypts and we were given the chance to enter into both of them. Because of what I had already seen, I didn’t feel as if I was able to handle going into crypts. The first crypt (from what I could see at the entrance) contained coffins where many of the bodies were laid to rest. The second crypt contained many of the bones and remains of people who had died in the church. I was able to bring myself halfway into the underground storage area, but when I saw the shelves covered in skulls and bones I could not bring myself to go further down. The whole thing was very difficult to see and to experience after learning so much about the genocide.

the prayer table at the front of the church

the belongings of those killed at the church

I didnt take this picture myself (out of respect) but its
just an illustration of the crypt under the church

one of the crypts behind the church

As I look back at what I learned and experienced that day, I am still very emotionally affected and the things that I saw still haunt me and will for a very long time. I woke up that morning understanding that what I was going to see was hard, but I wasn’t expecting to see everything that I saw. I can say without a doubt that it was something that I needed to experience, though the images still haunt me. The way that these people were murdered was not only inhumane but deeply disturbing. These people were murdered and rapped; they were slaughtered by machetes, shovels, guns and anything else that could cause harm to a human being. The pictures were gruesome, and the videos of people slaughtering one another were even more disturbing, only added to the reality of the experience. What I saw I never want to see again, but it’s something that I can never get away from because the images are burned into my memory. I come from this situation with a better understanding of what happened, but my understanding has also caused me to question how something like this could ever happen. I don’t understand how people could do what they did to one another, and especially to those who they had cared so much about before. I also can’t understand how the world knew what was going on, but every attempt to bring relief to this country was stopped and the genocide only continued. The destroyed not only a people (85% of the Tutsi population was eradicated during the genocide) but destroyed their society. Nothing will ever be the same; those who survived are haunted every day by what they saw and those who they lost. When I was walking around the memorial garden outside of the museum I came across a plaque with a quote from an eleven-year old survivor:

"Sometimes, I get terribly sad because I can’t imagine what my life will be like. I’ll never see my parents again, and yet I’ll see the people who killed them, and those people’s children, for the rest of my life. I can’t bear the thought of it.”

After experiencing and seeing everything that I did that day, I could never imagine having lived through the genocide. But to so many people this is their reality; they have to live their everyday lives in the shadow of what happened. It’s only fitting that this trip happened on Remembrance Day weekend. After taking this trip, ‘lest we forget’ has taken on an entirely different meaning. We need to always remember our past hurts, but also recognize those of other countries who have also lost a part of the people. Words cannot describe the evil of human nature that I experienced slightly today. I will never forget these people or this country.