What really gets you is the children


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Africa » Rwanda
May 29th 2006
Published: July 20th 2006
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Muganero Genocide MemorialMuganero Genocide MemorialMuganero Genocide Memorial

This memorial is a morbid reminder of how thousands were killed in Rwanda -- with bare hands wielding machetes or clubs studded with nails. There are tens of thousands of people buried here, many killed when the church where they sought refuge was stormed.
Children have a space of their own here. The winding trio of rooms feels empty except for the ten floor-to-ceiling photos of individual children. Each photo is accompanied by a simple plaque with the child’s name, age, and a few details like favorite foods, best friend, character traits, last words, and cause of death - hacked with machete, smashed against the wall, clubbed with rifle butt, shot.

The final room offers just one wall to look at. A wall on which are displayed -- quite simply, as if hung on the fridge or living room wall at home -- snapshots of so many more children. They are riding bikes, celebrating first communion, enjoying a picnic, laughing with friends, watching TV. And now every single one of them is gone. How is one to understand this? There is simply nothing in my imagination that allows for the systematic murder of children.

The thing is, it is not so rare. The genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, puts the horror of the 1994 genocide - over 1 million people killed in three months - in the painful context of a century of human atrocities. 1 million Armenians killed by the Turks just after the turn of the century. Six million Jews and others killed by the Nazis during WWII. Two million Cambodians and Vietnamese killed by the Khmer Rouge in the early seventies. 200,000 lost in the Serbian genocide in the late 1990s. (You can take a look at the Kigali Memorial Center)

The comparisons are not there to justify, or really even to compare. They are there to remind us that the only way to escape this horrid side of human nature is to remember, to learn, to ask why, and to try and understand the answers. And perhaps they are there to offer Rwandans just a hint of consolation - they are not the only ones.

What is so amazing, in some senses even more incredible than the scale of the massacres, is that things seem somehow so normal now. What could I possibly know, as a tourist after two days in Kigali? But the streets are alive with activity. People are everywhere - market ladies, business people dressed with such sophistication, school kids, motorcycle taxi drivers, and everyone else who fills a vibrant, growing city.

I wonder how much time in a given day or month or year these individuals think of the genocide. How does an entire nation manage the psychological and emotional effects of such horror? Were all of the people we see in the streets -- that we buy juice from, get taxi rides from, ask directions from, and wave at when they call out “uzungu” - were they all involved? Did every single one of them lose family and friends, or know people who perpetrated crimes. Did they perpetrate crimes themselves?

It is not really fair for us to ask these questions. Rwanda and Rwandans are working so hard to heal, to unify, to define a future different from their troubled past. The last thing they need is a bunch of tourists walking around wondering what they are guilty of, or how much they are suffering from the loss of loved ones. So we try to see the beauty and the vibrancy of this place. And it is actually not hard at all. Rwanda is stunning - the land of a thousand hills. Green, mountainous, sprinkled with lakes, abundant cultivation that many countries dream of, countless incredible views that jump out at you from around the corners of winding roads and sweeping valleys. Warm people, many of whom (at least in the capital) converse easily in French, English, Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili.

But tucked among these swaths of paradise are the traces of genocide. Many churches, where so many people gathered in search of protection, stand as empty shells that hold only the memories of the thousands who perished therein. The roadside markers that tell of the 11,000 here or 5,000 there that were massacred. The countless survivors missing half an arm or a part of a leg. The dark expressions that make you wonder if you have caught someone in the middle of a memory, or simply after a break-up with a girlfriend or a bad report card at school.



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