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An African peace now sits over the church at the edge of Nyamata, a town just south of Kigali. The creaking of the iron roof as it heats up in the sun, the birds singing in the trees, and the fluttering of flags in the wind - the only noises breaking the peaceful silence of the afternoon . But 17 years ago, this very spot was the location of a scene of utter horror. A scene that defies words, and left me in complete shock. Seaking an escape from the genocide that swept through the country, 10,000 people gathered here - 6,000 packed shoulder to shoulder inside the church, while 4,000 saught shelter in the shade of the walls outside. But there was no escape, as the army, the militias, and the Interahamwe, advanced on the church. Of the ten thousand people seaking refuge, just two survived. Realising there weren’t enough bullets in their guns, the soldiers through grenades into the packed church. When they ran out of grenades, they sent in the militia to finish of those who weren’t already dead.
From the outside, the church appears nothing but ordinary - the simple cross on the roof, the red brick
walls, the iron roof and the manicured lawn. But as you walk closer, you notice that the iron door has a huge hole in it from where was blown apart by a grenade, you see the holes in the roof as beams of light drift though, and you notice the faded stains of blood on the brickwork. And as you move inside, you're suddenly confronted by piles and piles of unwashed clothes preserved from the victims bodies, still brown with dirt and blood. Each pile is 40cm high, and each of the 50 benches in the church is entirely covered. And as your eyes settle on the scene, you smell something. Through the heat and the rain, and the freshly cut grass, you smell of something subtle in the air. And you realise it’s the stale and stomach churning smell of death and decay.
The clothes of each victim have been kept as a reminder, as proof, of what happened here. And you can see the very same clothes in any East African street, in any market, in any shop. The long sleeved shirts of men going to work. The colourful kangas of the women on the pavement selling their crops. The t-shirts of the boys playing football in the fields. But, instead of the joy that normally pervades African life, here there's only death.
And if the scene inside the church isn’t shocking enough, isn’t proof enough, the memorial continues in the church garden, for below the freshly cut grass and manicured flowers, are the mass graves of those who died. As you walk down the steps, into the claustrophobic and dimly lit passage, you realize that the shelves that line each side as piled high with the remains of the victims. Stacked on shelf after shelf, to ensure that we never forget what happened here in those dark months of 1994. The bones, upon bones, upon bones, like stacks of wood next to a fire. And the skulls, row upon row, reminded me of something I’d seen before. They reminded me of the schools I’d visited in Uganda, when I was surrounded by a mass of children, all on tip-toes for a better view, eyes wide open in expectation. It’s scene that anyone who’s been to an African primary school will be familiar with, and here was it’s chilling parallel. And that's when it hit me. I could put a face to each and every skull here. Sudden the genocide stopped being a distant tragedy that I remember hearing on TV and radio at the age of 11, but always seemed so far away. And it became something a lot closer to home. It became something that tied my stomach in a knot, and made it impossible to think straight.
And then, as I left the grave into the bright afternoon sun, my mind became full of questions; How could this be real? How could this happen? How could a whole country turn into a nightmare? And how could the world sit by and watch?
It's all to easy to focus on our lives, instead of others. To worry about the football, and not the rest of the world. To concentrate on today, and to forget the past. But, for everyone buried here, as is written on the bunches of flowers that now lies on the graves
Tuzahora tabibliza - We will not forget. And we can't let it happen again.
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