I awoke today with a feeling of calm dread, knowing the day’s events would be draining, but strangely drawn to my destination. A morning journal excerpt:
I’ll be on my way to Murambi soon. What awaits me there? Do I really want to do this? Just hope I can attempt a sense of understanding and thoughtfulness.
I do not have a morbid fascination with genocide memorial sites. My work here looks toward the future of Rwanda, seeking peace in the cooperative spirit of pursuit of a common goal: economic opportunity and prosperity. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the tangible impacts of the lives lost and spirits haunting this country. The genocide is a part of Rwandan history that can never be forgotten if we are to ensure it never happens again.
So I decided to go to Murambi.
My Rwandan friends shudder at the mention of this, the most graphic of the hundreds of memorial sites that dot the countryside. At three hours from Kigali, along the road to Gikongoro in the southwest corner of Rwanda, it’s off the beaten path for the gorilla-tracking-safari-seeking brand of tourist, but a relatively easy trip for those curious about this dark period of the country’s history.
I had spent Saturday in Butare with my friend Carolin, then continued along the route to Gikongoro alone. We wove among hillsides until the bus finally deposited me in Nyamagabe, about 3 kilometers from the memorial. Ignoring the moto drivers jostling for a client, I indulged the urge to walk.
I met a young man named John K. along the way who offered to show me the route. “I’m going to visit my mother,” he told me. Assuming he planned to pay his respects, I was a bit confused when he claimed to be twelve. “Twelve? You’re sure? You look fifteen to me.” A language barrier issue, I decided. We walked together along the red dirt road, admiring the verdant hills and flourishing coffee fields, chatting sporadically about America, school, and his village, but generally not saying much. When we parted ways at the memorial gates and he continued towards the village in the valley, I realized that his mother was in fact among the residents whose huts and banana trees literally crowd up to the perimeter of the site. Imagine living within meters of a mass grave. Testament to how precious land is in Rwanda.
A gaggle of children too young to understand why Murambi draws mourners from near and far played football in the sandy plot just before the gate. They stopped to stare and launch a barrage of questions at this wayward muzungu. They especially love to practice their nascent French and English phrases: “Muzungu! How are you? Me I’m fine, thank you. Ça va merci. Comment t’appelle-tu? Give me money.” They reached out their hands, grubby from football, searching, groping for tangible contact with a pale hand that represents something else significant they don’t quite understand. I was struck by how small they were. Children hands. Innocence cannot be lost here, not forever. We parted and I walked slowly, deliberately, up the hill, composing myself, catching my breath.
50,000 people were murdered here in 1994. That’s more than the populations of Troy and Tipp City put together. 50,000 people who huddled here for protection and instead found two weeks of hunger, thirst, and eventually slaughter. Wiped out. Gone.
Although not really.
Their bodies remain: 48,000 people are buried in mass graves here and another 2,000 have been exhumed for display. Twenty-four rooms bear their corpses, skulls, femurs, clothing; the stench of decomposition is as tangible as the spirits that haunt this place.
A survivor who lost all her family save one child led me room to room. Matter-of-factly, she opened and closed the doors, gazing into the distance and jangling her keys as I gasped at this horrific testament to the human capacity for inhuman brutality. I must be one of many Westerners who come to gape and weep and consider and lament and promise that never, ever again will the world stand idly by. I thought of Darfur. I wanted to know her story. But I could not bring myself to ask. The look in her downcast eyes told me that fifteen years of opening and closing doors has imposed a reserve I should not violate with questions.
There were few signs in the memorial aside from an exceptionally aesthetically pleasing entrance panel directing visitors to a library, toilets, and a meditation room (none of which were in operation as far as I could tell) in English, French, and Kinyarwanda. Unlike Gisozyi, the museum in Kigali, there was no commentary, no historical context. It’s as though they recruited a philanthropic Western graphic designer who came to install the entrance panels and decided the context was too heavy a burden for commentary to bear.
The sole exhibition sign notes the spot where French soldiers played volleyball when Opération Turquoise was stationed here too protect fleeing génocidaires. Few visitors, perhaps, would understand the scale of this audacity without a sign indicating the proximity between the volleyball court and the mass graves.
Perhaps the significance of the bodies is self-evident.
