Books Brought to Life

Today started off on a good note, I had peanut butter on my toast for breakfast with Rwandan coffee.  Fabulous!  Then we boarded the bus to take a trip to two memorials outside the city.  We actually picked up four more passengers for our trip, two crisis counselors from Mizzou and the second in command of the US Embassy, Anne, and her husband Carl who is a psychiatric nurse.

I was talking to Carl on the bus when we all of the sudden I realized we were out of the city and the view from the top of the hill was breathtaking.  I actually stopped mid-conversation to stare because I was in awe.  You could see hills for miles.  We drove through the hills for about an hour when we turned down a dirt road.  Our guides asked us to close the bus windows because it was extremely dusty.  Then through the dust we arrived at the first memorial, Nyamata.

Nyamata was a catholic church located in rural Rwanda where Tutsis first fled from the killings in 1992 and were protected.  However, in 1994 when they returned to their church for safety they were not a lucky.  The interhamwe, many who were fellow parishioners, broke through the gate to the parish where they began to torture, mutilate, and slaughter the people inside.  They used fear as a means of torture because people inside the church saw the unspeakable ways they were going to be killed.  I was disgusted and repulsed.

Since we had arranged to visit the church through the ministry we were able to take pictures and a survivor gave us a tour of the memorial. Charles, our guide, was eight years old in 1994 when he fled to the church with his family for protection.  He was the only one in his family to survive; his twin brother, mother, and other brother we killed.  His brother actually saved his life because he smeared his own blood on Charles so he could play dead.  I could only image how horrible that must have been for Charles, he couldn’t tell us all the details because it was to difficult to talk about 15 years later.  Charles then fled the church and spent 21 days in the marshes hiding from the killers before the RFP came to liberate the region.

As Charles told his story the sounds of worship swept across the courtyard.  It was ire to hear sounds of praise, joyfulness, and faith so close to where the massacres happened.  The Genocide of Tutsis strengthened the faith of some but destroyed the faith of others.  Although Catholicism is no longer the leading church, many have switched to Pentecostal where they can dance, sing, and praise the Lord.  Which side would you have chosen?

Behind the church were burial grounds for the people who were killed that April in the church.  There were two large concrete cellar-like structures that make up the backcourt yard.  On top of these concrete slabs are purple and white flowers, wreaths, and single stems to remember those who were lost.  Just four steps down into these cellars there are two tiny isles, one of each side.  Each is lined with shelves where the skulls, bones, and coffins of those left to die in the church.  This is also the final resting place of Charle’s family.  It is overwhelming to walk down these thin isles.

After this memorial we made our way to another rural church, Ntarama.  Again people fled to the church for refuge but instead met their deaths.   The image that is still burnt into my mind is the small, one room Sunday school building where there is a large dark spot on the front wall.  It was explained to us that this is where the killers smashed the heads of the children.  

As we tried to process the events that took place here 15 years ago we did so with children laughing in the background.  They are the next generation of Rwandans who will lead, promote, and change the future of the country.  It is interesting though that one of our hosts made the comment that the people here are all new.  They are people who were exiled during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s before the genocide and now return to their home country.  Yet this was only made possible because a tenth of the Rwandan population was killed in 1994.

The ride back to Kigali was very somber as we contemplated what we experienced at the memorials.  It did give a few of us a chance to talk to Anne the second in command of the US Embassy in Kigali.  She will be stationed in Kigali for three years and her job is to build relationships between the US and Rwanda.

Lunch was a buffet at another hotel but this hotel was different, it had a swimming pool.  However, we didn’t bring our “swimming costumes” with us so we couldn’t hop in.   Instead we went back to the hotel where we planned to walk to city streets before dinner to familiarize ourselves with the culture.  First we were going to grab a quick cup of coffee and then we would be on our way.

Well quick didn’t happen.  We placed our order for coffee and sat around a table in the back courtyard of the hotel.  Coffee and teatime in Rwanda is a production.   A whole drink buffet is set up tableside and it takes almost an hour to get the coffee.  We joked that our coffee was made with freshly plucked coffee beans.

Since coffee time was extended we only had an hour before dinner to go on our walk.  We were only five minutes away from the Bloom Hotel when a man came up to us and began shaking our hands.  It was Dominique our coffee time waiter who just got off work. He tried to teach us some Kenya-Rwandan, the native language, and we tried to teach him English.  It was entertaining to say the least.

When we returned to the hotel dinnertime got delayed because the Cal-Art students were not back from their weekend trip.  It got pushed so far back Melissa, Roshani, Emily and I watched Sometimes in April in our room instead.  Fig Newton’s and goldfish are what we had for dinner.