Well, it has been too long since my last entry. I intended
to have at least one, of not two posts up while I was in Kigali. However, we
traveled quite a bit and met so many people, the time just wasn’t there. In
addition to that, I arrived in Rwanda at the end of the 1994 Genocide
Commemoration Week, which was a difficult time, but also possibly the best time
to be in the country. To say the unity of most of the population is impressive
is a massive understatement and I simply do not have the words to describe the
way that Rwandans have come together in the last 18 years. My experience is
limited to about five weeks in the country, but aside from the memorial sites
in nearly every town, there really are very limited signs that nearly 1 million
people were killed. From my experiences reading accounts of other genocides
around the world, Rwanda’s progress is remarkable to say the least.
Aside from the Commemoration week, and really month long
remembrances, Kigali was just as busy and fun as it was in January. Of course
the main objective of my visit was to spend time with Laura, but there were
many opportunities to experience things that I had shied away from on my first
visit to Rwanda. In the southern part of the country we went to the National
Museum in Butare, saw the King’s palace in Nyanza, and saw the Genocide
Memorial in Murambi (some of these details are in the latest Rooster Rouser, my apologies if you
are following both blogs). In the northern part of the country we visited the
family of Laura’s Kinyarwanda teacher in the village of Mutara. Finally, near
Kigali we met with a good friend’s family and saw their farmland and livestock
met their friends and enjoyed some excellent food together, also met with other
friends and tried sorghum beer. There are so many details I hope to fit into
this entry that it may get a bit long, but stick with me. Trust me you will
enjoy the read.
Let me begin with the fun and work myself up to the more
difficult topics. Laura pretty much had the first couple of days in Rwanda
planned out for me before I got there. I found out that the plan was to get on
a bus for about four hours and head north to Mutara. This was a village near
where Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda meet. There Laura introduced me to friends
she had met over the last few months, and really most of the village. I would
describe the northern part of Rwanda as the Wisconsin of the country, meaning
the people are amazingly proud of their cows and milk. We visited three houses
there and were offered milk at two of them. I was informed that it is very rude
to refuse, so I had the freshest milk I have ever tasted, not that I really
liked it, but the gesture was understood. I guess American food processes have
ruined my taste for fresh, warm milk. But everyone in the village was so nice
and welcoming, we were invited to come back any time, and I could tell they
really meant it, part of me felt rather bad that I know it will be quite some
time before I will be back in that neck of the woods. Upon preparing to leave
the town we were offered a ride to the bus stop by a friend, he was so excited
to show us some of the scenery and the borders with the other countries that
we nearly missed the bus back to Kigali.
Towards the end of my visit we got to meet with a friend’s
family on their farm outside of Kigali. Emmanuel is a very good friend who has
visited us in Lincoln and Sioux City, and met Laura and my family, so it was
exciting to meet his siblings. They have a nice plot of land overlooking the Nyabarongo
River where they have hogs, cows and a good amount of crop space where they
grow onions, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, and beans. The area is beautiful, but
flooding a bit near the river which was a good thing for my own safety. I was
talking about going down to the shore when Emmanuel casually mentioned that
there are crocodiles in the river, and rarely hippos, as well, good information
to have near a river anywhere in Africa, I guess.
Complicating the visit a bit, as mentioned in Laura’s blog,
there was a discovery of a mass grave in the area earlier in the week. This was
a strange experience and I will try my best to explain the happenings we
witnessed while there. Apparently a genocide perpetrator had revealed the
location of a mass grave and the neighborhood was having a meeting to decide
how to proceed with the recovery of the bodies. I came to find out that this is
a not unusual meeting, and Laura had even been with a group earlier in April
when they exhumed a mass grave for proper burial. So the night we were there
Emmanuel’s sister, who is one of the community leaders, was taking part in
planning for exhumation and related issues. The meeting was sort of a weird combination
of a funeral and a family reunion. There was laughing and stories being told,
and some people you could tell were a bit sadder, being quiet in the
background. Really, just quite the thing to see, and just difficult to grasp
the intricacies of what was happening. All in all, it was a very unique
experience and one I am glad I could share, even if as an outsider.
Then there was Murambi.
I rarely am at a loss for words, especially when writing,
but this section is the one that has held me up for two, maybe three weeks, in
getting a blog update done. There may, in fact, not be an appropriate way to describe
the memorial there. A couple days into my trip we decided to go to the southern
part of the country to see the National Museum, the Kings Palace and the
Murambi Genocide Memorial. The museum and the palace were informative and worth
the trip…but again I say, then there was Murambi. So let me start with the
history of the site as it was explained to me. The area is on a well visible
hilltop and was a technical school that was under construction in 1994. There are
several classroom buildings that people fleeing the early genocide violence
were led to for safety, as many as 40,000 (some websites say 50,000) were
staying there when the Genocidaires arrived. It had been a trap. With that many
people on a relatively small hilltop, killing was depressingly easy. The bodies
were dumped into mass graves and covered with lime which sort of
preserved/mummified many of the bodies. A small fraction of those 40,000-50,000
are on display in the classroom buildings, laid in neat, but crowded rows on
wood slat tables and benches. There are many websites out there with the
terrible images, search them if you wish, but if you are planning on visiting
the site, they will not completely prepare you for what you will see.
The best advice I have for preparing for a visit to the Murambi
site would be don’t go alone, Laura and I went with a group of three others,
all had different reactions, some were prepared, some didn’t really know what
they were in for. The main museum prepares you (as best as possible) for what
you will see in the classrooms, after a self-guided tour in the museum we
waited for a guide to take us outside to the classrooms and the mass grave
sites. First you will be walked by the relatively newly constructed concrete
tombs for the victims that have been laid to rest. You may bring a flower to place
on the graves, and after a moment of silence the guide will lead you back to the
classrooms. There you will see maybe about 50 to 100 bodies in each of the
rooms, I believe the guide said there are 24 rooms of bodies. At the first room
the first thing you will notice is the smell. The smell is something you will truly
never forget. Then you see the bodies. It takes a moment for your eyes to focus
from the bright equatorial sunlight into the dark brick classroom. I found it
strange how easy it was to see, but on some other level, terribly disturbing.
Laura had prepared me well for what would be seen, as she had been there in a
couple of years ago, still being led through room after room, some containing
bodies, some containing bones, and some containing personal effects of victims
you just see the magnitude of what happened a mere 18 years ago. I think there
are only about 1000 bodies on display, maybe a few more if you count the bones
that are in display cases and it seems like so many, but even counting all the
deaths there it only accounts for 4-5% of the genocide deaths.
Then the tour concludes with the stinky French cherry on
top. The tour guide concludes the tour by showing where the exhumed mass graves
were, and explaining how useless the international community was in Rwanda.
Apparently there were French soldiers in the area, who could have lessened the
damage done at Murambi, instead they waited for things to calm down and moved
in afterwords for the cleanup, which consisted of cleaning up classrooms to use
for barracks, and, finishing off the mass graves by building volleyball courts
on top of them.
Despite the atrocity there, it has been turned into a strangely
serene and eerily peaceful memorial, and I would hope that anyone interested in
Rwandan history or genocide studies makes the trip. Life as usual goes on
around the memorial, there is a busy town nearby and it is not far from Butare
where the National University and Museum are. It is also only a few hours from
Kigali and worth the drive.
I think that will be all for this post. Sorry for the
length, but there was a lot stuck in my brain that needed to be put on paper.
Hope you enjoyed!
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