The Road to Recovery and the People on It

I am so glad that I called Tom about tagging along with him and the von Trapps to the Nyamata Memorials. We actually visited two memorials - both in churches - and the perspective that the visits lent added much to my appreciation of what happened in the 1994 genocide. The Kigali Memorial was very informational and powerful, but these memorials largely maintained the physical scene, allowing one to better imagine and appreciate what actually occurred. For example, the blood-stained clothes of the victims are still strewn about the church, covering the floor in great heaps. It makes you wonder how this number of people possibly crowded into the vicinity (10,000 in church and 5,000 in the other - and both small churches). Tom was particularly familiar with some of the horrific stories pertaining to one of the sites and relayed them to us:

The doors of the church were barred. The killers, as they were collectively called since they included members of the army, militia, and ordinary men who decided to participate, were outside demanding entry from a group of relative leadership in a locked room within the church. Once the killers broke inside, they brutally killed the people within the locked room, dismembering them, and then threatened the remaining people with their limbs. They tossed their heads into the church and menacingly waved their arms at them, taunting them.

There was mass rape and murder committed on the altar. Generally, the militiamen were responsible for this - kill the Tutsis with as little effort and force (and therefore spending as few bullets) as possible - use machetes, beatings, latrines, etc. Infants were thrown against walls and crushed. One man is reported to have looked at Mary's statue, said that she appeared Tutsi, and shot the statue.

There were a few survivors, one of whom we spoke to - Charles Mugabe. His mother was one of those in the locked room and dismembered. His brother was macheted badly and told him to lie in his blood so as to appear dead and escape the brutality. He laid in his brother's blood while his brother was dying for two days. A man named Patrice, a Hutu unaffiliated with the killers, was helping children (including Charles), giving them food, etc. The killers asked him where the children were hiding, but Patrice would not betray them. The killers macheted him, and Charles helped Patrice crawl to a hiding spot to die. His body was largely eaten by dogs, but when the genocide ended, Charles identified his remains. In the collection of skulls displayed in the memorial, one has the name Patrice written across it - that is this Patrice. Charles wrote the name himself. When these events occurred, Charles was eight years old.

Obviously, following such, we all wondered once again how such inhumanity could occur - how can people hate like that but also commit such evil? Tom responded by saying the only explanation was a most intense spiritual warfare that had broken through the veil of consciousness. He talked about Bishop John's account of unimaginable incidents - primary school children who had gone to school together for years killing one another and then playing soccer with the dead children's heads. It is simply unthinkable. I really do not know how to account for what happened here in Rwanda - not just in 1994 but throughout the twentieth century.

I spoke to Tom about my discussion the previous evening concerning the parallels between the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust. He informed me of yet another parallel. Prior to the 1994 genocide, the Tutsis were largely geographically segregated into the most undesirable area of land: swampy land that was problematic for cattle raising (Tutsis were largely cattle-raisers) due to the prevalence of the tsetse fly and problematic for health due to the unusually high prevalence of mosquitoes (malaria). When the genocide began, it proved all the easier to annihilate the Tutsis with them gathered together in a concentrated area. --> ghettos, concentration camps

Following visiting the memorials, Tom was feeling adventurous and decided to continue down the road to see where it led. His curiosity proved invaluable, as we drove through rural villages set deep in the Rwandan hills. The people stared at this large SUV-full of muzungus (a word which they often shouted) with both awe and confusion. Some, mostly young children, waved excitedly. Eventually, we truly reached the end of the road and were forced to turn around on the shore of a river winding through the hills. On the return trip, the von Trapps and two of the Ritchie kids (Anthony and Thomas) belted out the Rwandan national anthem in Kinyarwanda. Again, we received looks of awe and confusion. Some truly seemed appreciative of our gesture and effort. In any case, I think our adventure into the hills of Rwanda was somehow a step forward for cultural understanding and dialogue.