Advertisement
Published: December 19th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We arrived at the gates to find the place seemingly deserted. Looking at our watches we concluded that the memorial center would probably open soon enough. We walked up the long entranceway to the main building looking for anyone who might know when the center opened. I gazed around the grounds thinking how normal the school looked. Essentially, it looks the same as it did back in April of 1994. Had I not been told, I would have never guessed that this open hilltop was the sight of one of the worst single acts of genocide in modern day history.
After news of mass killings throughout the country reached Butare Tutsis in area flocked to churches in hopes of hiding from the killers. There, authorities and priests convinced them that they should go to the college where the French soldiers who were stationed here would better protect them. Somewhere between 50,000 - 60,000 Tutsis made a collective flight to the campus where a French flag proudly flew above the school. Soon after, however, the soldiers were ordered out of the area leaving the Tutsis with nothing but the stark realization that there would be no outside military intervention. Over the
next two weeks they were able to fight off small pockets of Hutu attackers, armed with nothing but their sheer numbers and small rocks. Without water or electricity they held out for help that would never come. Then in the middle of the night on April 20th, the Interahamwe militia along with police and military raided the campus, initiating the massacre. The killings lasted for two days. With deadly effect, the Hutu militia had successfully lured their pray into a central location allowing for a chaotic but efficient mass execution. The victims were forced out of the larger buildings by grenades lobbed into the packed structures, where they were hacked, shot or bludgeoned to death. In the smaller classrooms, they were killed where they were.
I stood on the hillside looking over the neighboring valleys trying to mentally prepare myself for the horrific scene I would soon witness. A tall and slender man dressed in a white shirt and kaki pants walked over to where we stood. In my head I tried not to make the same characterizations that the Belgians made when they ruled Rwanda; dividing the country along perceived tribes based on physical characteristics. It was the
way they controlled the country - divide and conquer. Tall, long nose, must be Tutsi… This was a root of all the death and suffering. The man introduced himself as Emmanuel and pointed to what was an obvious gunshot wound in his forehead. “I’m a survivor,” he said.
He led us first to where the flag post was that carried the Tricolor. Next, we walked to the spot where French soldieries were found playing volleyball yards away from the mass graves. Then, to the plots of open fields where just a few feet under the ground was the final resting place for 45,000 innocent men, woman and children. We stood quietly for a moment before Emmanuel placed his aging hand on my shoulder and told me how his wife and children were among those buried here. Up until this point I had been able to wrestle back the tears but I couldn’t hold them back any longer. I felt guilty for obvious reasons; while my Government carried on debates over the definition of genocide Emmanuel’s family along with hundreds of thousands of others were being slaughtered. But I also felt guilty for not being strong enough to hold
back my emotions when I looked into the face of a man with so much courage that he has returned to this place.
We then moved to the row of long buildings were the mummified bodies of the victims are preserved in the classrooms. A year after the killings, a portion of the graves were unearthed, the bodies preserved, and placed back into the rooms. Now, to this day, the ghostly figures lay on white tables side by side. Their body’s mummified in embalming powder and lime-salt. Clothes and hair still cling to a few of the corpses. Some, even have visible wounds from machetes or cracked skulls from blunt instruments, but what disturbed me most was the desperate positions many of the bodies were frozen in. Hands raised to their heads, trying to protect themselves in their last moments.
We stepped out of the last room and back into sunlight. Above us, there was a break in the stormy skies that casts shadows over the rest of the rolling hills. As the sun light filtered over the school perched on top of the tall hill I immediately understood why so many saw this place as a haven.
High defensive position, an establishment, larger structures, ect… I would have sought shelter here my self, I thought. And that’s when it occurred to me that this is the power of the Murambi Memorial. Unlike the United States Holocaust Museum, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center or any other thing I have seen, here you place yourself in experience without even realizing it. Rather then just learning about it, you feel it. It is not easy internalizing something like that but it has fundamentally changed me, changed who I am, and changed how I see the world.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0901s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb