rwanda is a graveyard

---

since arriving in rwanda i have seen countless mass graves and memorials on the side of the road, where 10's of thousands are buried. the mourning color in rwanda is a deep purple, and as soon as you see that color in the distance, you know what's coming. it's a common color.

kigali is home to the "official" the genocide memorial. it's devastating. besides being a mass grave for approximately 250,000 bodies and growing, as bodies are still being discovered throughout rwanda (in fact, just the day before my visit they had brought in a newly found body), it's a museum about of the history of the country and genocide. it is done thru showing photos, short films and testimonials, skulls and bones, and clothes.

you really start to understand how planned it was. the museum makes the point that genocide is always well planned. nothing here was random. 6 hours after the president's plane was shot down, the prime minister was murdered, road blocks were in place, and the killing began. it continued for 100 days. what i hadn't realized was that since the 50's there had been massacres against the tutsis and this was in fact the second attempt at genocide. this is why so many rwandese were in exile in uganda, congo, burundi and tanzania, as many tutsis fled in the 50's to escape the hutu regime the belgians put in place.

the brutality of the murder is shocking. besides hacking people to death with machetes, they dropped people off of bridges head first, burned them alive, cut off limbs, slammed babies against walls, and buried children alive. to punish women for marrying out of "ethnicity" they were raped by known AIDS carriers. people were forced to kill their families before they were killed. congregants took refuge in churches only to be locked in, turned in by the priest and murdered by machete or the church was burned down with them inside. students at the french school suffered the same fate.

they have a wing dedicated to other genocides throughout the 20th century, including the arminian, the holocaust, the cambodian and the bosnian. soon they will have to add a room for sudan.

but the most heartbreaking is the children memorial. i was not prepared for the impact it would have. there is picture of a child, the last known picture taken of them, their age (5, 9, 10, 15 months, 3, 2), and some bulleted details of their life. their favorite sport (football, jogging with her father, riding bicycle), favorite food (chocolate, cake, chips, rice with sauce), enjoyed (tv and music, singing and dancing, making people laugh), best friend (mum, sister), behavior (daddy's girl, cried a lot, a quiet, well behaved boy, a neat little girl), dream (becoming a doctor), last memory (saw his mum dying)... the last detail: cause of death.

about 3 hours south of kigali they are preparing a second genocide museum. this site was a school where tutsis ran to hide only to be slaughtered. i was unable to enter the museum b/c it is not yet complete and it is a public holiday, but the power of this site is in its realism. the classrooms where tutsis ran to hide are still standing and inside 10 of the rooms they have placed the bodies of victims. some still had clothes on, some hair, one had a rosary around his/her neck. there were bodies of all sizes, adults, children and tiny ones of babies.

what a waste.

it was at this site the french set up their military base when they came to "help." when they found the mass graves, they paved over them with a volleyball court. everyday i find another reason to disdain the french.

i normally don't try to depress people with my emails but there are some things that need to be shared.

---