Having the opportunity to travel to Rwanda and learn about her long life was
such a wonderful experience that I will not be soon to forget it but it was
also not easy. It is a tough subject to write about and it has taken me a while
to put these words to page as the emotions from the trip have been a challenge
for me to process (plus I have been really busy at site). The people are very
kind, the streets clean, the air goes silent after 9PM, the shops do not sell
the same things, the cars and motorcycles drive like normal, and the
countryside is beautiful. Rwanda like many countries around the world has
a history that is both heartbreaking and challenging to understand.
In 1994, Rwanda experienced genocide of ginormous proportion where from
April to July, just under a million people were brutally murdered because of
their ethnic background. Rwanda’s majority ethic group Hutus led the
extermination of the minority group Tutsi who accounted for roughly 14% of the
population. Hutus made up about 85% and the remaining goes to a small group called
the Twa. The country has seen violence since before the 1960s but nothing on
the scale of the summer of 1994. The Belgium colonial period that lasted until
July 1962, when Rwanda gained their independence, had always favored the Tutsi
that lead to jealous and a hate of their Tutsi neighbors from the Hutus.
Extreme Hutus started training for mass extermination and ending the Tutsis. On
April 6th, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana (a
moderate Hutu) and the Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down
near Kigali’s international airport, no one survived and within an hour of the
plane crash the killing began. Roadblocks and barricades were set up and Tutsis
began being slaughtered as well as known moderate Hutus in Kigali. Over the
next three months the killings spread throughout Rwanda from Kigali into the
countryside. Finally, in early July, the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front
(RPF) was able to gain control of the country. Almost three quarters of the
Tutsi population had been murdered as well as thousands of Hutu’s who were
against the killing campaign. Thousands of Tutsi had become refugees in
neighboring countries and after the killing had stopped, over two million Hutus
fled Rwanda into the neighboring countries fearing retribution and created a
massive humanitarian crisis. After the genocide came to a close, Rwanda was
placed under military control; the RPF put Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu and Paul
Kagame, a Tutsi in power as President and Vice-President. Kagame would later take
over as President and has served in that position ever since. In my opinion
this is a dictatorship that in many ways has worked and helped a broken country
become functional again. I know people have very mixed feelings about Kagame
with his policies and upcoming election. I know he is not horribly popular in
his country but the guy had a tough situation handed to him those some of his
rules and polices are a tad behind and over controlling he has done an okay
job. Hopefully, he will hand over his position peacefully to someone else in
the coming months because this country has had enough hurt for a lifetime and
it is time to move on and start a new chapter.
When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to enter the National Peace
Essay writing contest for AP English and that years topic was on child soldiers
and this was the first time I was introduced to the history and concept of
genocide as I focused my essay on the genocide in Burundi (which took place at
the same time as the Rwandan genocide but got way less press and is all but
almost forgotten when discussing genocides) the second genocide that I focused
my paper on was the Cambodia Killing Fields. Since then, I have always had an
interest and questioning of how genocides start, what impacts them, what makes
people have so much hate to murder, herd mentality, mass medias impact in
genocides, also looking at how countries deal with the aftermath and overcome
something as devastating as mass murder. I think for me there is also a great
interest in Human Rights, which genocides are a human right violation on many
fronts.
I traveled down to run in the International Peace Marathon at the end of May
but it was not running that impacted me the most. I have been to a few
memorials and genocides museums in the United States but this trip by far has
meant the most to me and also being older, I can understand better how this
genocide impacted the country. I have spent years reading about genocides
around the world and I have always wanted to visit Rwanda and Burundi to learn
more firsthand the impact it had on the countries. I was fortunate enough to be
in Rwanda and I thought I was prepared for what I was going to see but I was
wrong, The Rwandan Genocide Memorial started you in the mass graves surrounding
the memorial, over 250,000 people are buried in the 13 graves overlooking
Kigali. It was very emotional to be standing there; I was the only one there at
the time in the gardens and the stillness was extremely powerful and moving.
Flowers lay on certain parts of the graves with family names written on them. A
wall lines the graves for the names of those killed but it is almost empty, as
no one really knows who was killed. Overnight, whole families disappeared or
were murdered – no one kept records – another devastating aspect of genocide.
The memorial is by far the best memorial I have ever been too. It was so
respectful but also sends a powerful message of the importance of not letting
something like this happen again. It showed you how the genocide and hate for
the Tutsi grew out of how the West (Germany and Belgium) had come and created
these groups of people labeled them back in the early 1900s because they looked
a certain way or acted differently, also how many cattle you owned determined
which group you were in… and we say Africa has issues… well most of those
issues and conflicts, I am finding out were because of the West not because of
the people who live in Africa. Then the memorial showed us how newspapers and
radio played a large part in gaining support and spreading hate for the Tutsi,
then brought us right into the day the killing started. They have a room filled
with photos of those who have lost loved ones, photos after photos line the
walls, clothes from those murdered in Kigali hang in glass cases along with
bones and skulls from people. Just as powerful was the five different rooms
dedicated to the world genocides and they all had the same message Hate of a certain
group of people who were different or didn’t do something ‘we’ wanted them to
do. Why do we keep letting things like this happen around the world – we turn
and act like it is not there? The final room was called the Children’s Room
and it was dedicated to the children of the genocide and I was only able to
make it through about half of it before I had to leave. Photos of children
lined the walls but also listed were their hobbies, activities, how they acted
as children and how they were killed. They really got you with that room and I
had to call it quits.
While I was walking through the genocide memorial there was a fire in my
stomach that was anger at a simple thing ‘hate’ and how it could destroy so
many. As I have had the chance over the last year to disconnect to the outside
word I am finding I am more aware of that simple thing ‘hate’ in the media.
Much like that women who set up the Mohammad cartoons contest in Texas – that
is ‘hate’ I do not care if you are democrat or republican that is ‘hate’ of a
group of people and they should be ashamed of themselves for spreading that.
All because a group of people worship a religion different from our own, a
woman on the BBC the next morning was talking about the ‘Love thy neighbor as
thy self’ and how we seem to have forgotten that – especially in America and we
should focus on it more and our world would be a better place and she is so
right. ‘Hate’ can destroy a whole generation and we as a world choose to ignore
it just like ignore our neighbors and then something happens.
After visiting the memorial, I was not going to visit the churches from the
genocide because walking through the memorial was hard enough but since a
fellow PCV was going to the churches one day, I decided to go with and after
visiting them, I am very grateful I did. Cody and I traveled out of Kigali about
30 minutes to the villages of Ntarama and Nyamata home to two of the many sites
around Rwanda were mass murder took place.
Ntarama is a small one-room church, with a storeroom; kitchen and Sunday
school all separate from the main building set on a low hill overlooking the
green rolling hills. It is fenced off and white and grey streamers and flags
line the fence and walkways. Large metal roofs cover all the buildings to
protect them from the elements of the weather. An older woman, Mary Ann met
Cody and I at the entrance. She tells us of the history of the building, were
people would gather for celebrations and worship in brighter days. The outside
of the main building is missing chunks and half of the wall if not covered with
metal sheets would be open. We enter the church and my heart stops, the rafters
and walls are all covered in clothes from the over 5,000 victims murdered here.
Coffins full of bones from victims sit on the pews and Cody gasps and I turn
and next to the wall covered with metal sheets that once was a large class
window are shelves filled with bones and skulls of all different sizes. Showing
signs of how they were murdered – either by a spare, machete, gun, or club. On
the far end of the church are more shelves with shoes, pots, bibles, items from
the people. After the killing started in April, Tutsi gathered at the Ntarama
church and barricaded themselves in fighting off the killers outside, who
retreated but after a couple days they returned this time with grenades, guns,
more men and one goal of killing. They threw grenades into the church, fired
guns through any opening they could find. They burned people alive inside the
kitchen. The moment I will never forget is in the Sunday School they showed us
a wall where people smashed young children against the wall – the wall is
stained a dark red with chunks of brain matter still there. People were
murdered in the yard outside the church. Some of the survivors, mainly men and
young boys ran and hid in the swamp until the end of the genocide and come out
and started burying the dead at Ntarama.
The second church is about 10 kilometers down the road from Ntarma in
Nyamata village. Nyamta Church sits on a slop overlooking the main road and is
surrounded by a large graveyard that stretches all the way to the main road,
the graves of those long gone are barely visible because of the overgrown grass
that has grown since 1994. Across the street sits two schools, one of them
built by a woman for the Tutsi children when they were banned from their schools
before the genocide happened. Sitting at the churches two o’clock a new looking
large church sits. As Cody and I arrived, music from the church drifted over to
us and members of the church were making their way over to pay their respects
to the victims at Nyamata Church. During a tour we heard them singing outside
near the mass graves and they made their way through the church silently
morning those lose, many wearing anti-genocide t-shirts and white and grey
ribbons (a sign of mourning and rebirth). We were greeted by an older gentleman
who gave us a beautiful tour of the church which has had not changed since the
day. Just like the church in Ntarama, people came to the church seeking a safe
place thinking the church would protect them when really all the churches cared
about were their own property and did not care about their members. 10,000
people were murdered in one day at Nyamata; they were murdered in the
churchyard and in the church itself. The only difference from this church and
Ntarama is that they went around and made sure everyone was dead, they left no
one alive. They double-checked everyone. Clothes from all the people lay on the
rows of pews in the sanctuary, a few items sit on the alter: some rosaries and
a bible or two, a photo identification card. Nothing hangs on the walls but a
statue of Mary that has a bullet in her cheek. One of the Hutus shot her
because she ‘looked like a Tutsi.’ The mass graves sit in the back and they are
open for people to go down and see the rows of coffins and skulls, bones that
are on shelves that go six or seven high. One of the mass graves was just
recently added and closed due to respect for the died.
Rwanda will never know the exact number of people killed during the
genocide, the country are still finding bodies, 21 years on. They had just
pulled hundreds of bodies out of a pit latrine, it was said they were buried
alive and something like five or six people deep. There are mass graves
throughout the country that have still yet to be found. Family members still do
not know what happened to those lost and may never know. It is just
heartbreaking. What a horrible thing to do to our fellow man all because of a
label.
I had a lot of time to think and talk with many local and ex-pats living in
Kigali. Many of the ex-pats expressed concerns of how closed off people are and
I think a lot of people have just pushed this issue deep inside and never faced
it – I do not blame them. During dinner with a couple Rwandans, we got talking
about Western Aid and one of the men started crying when talking about how the
West left during the genocide and I realized there must be a deep mistrust,
dislike, and hurt of Westerners due to the fact we left the country to fend for
themselves during the genocide. We always say we will never let this happen
again and we still do. Look at Syria, look at treatment of the Rohingya
in Myanmar, when will we ever stop, the wheel just keeps turning? I hope one
day we do end up saying stop.
I am not sure how to conclude this article so I will simply say, I will
never forget the beauty of Rwanda and her people. It was such an amazing
experience and I hope that one day on the eve of a future genocide that the
world shouts 'no' and we do not let something like this ever happen again. This
World is too beautiful to let something like that stain it.
