it feels like a lot to put these two posts next to each other but for right now that’s just the way it is

I’m going to try to explain this but its just still my streaming thoughts so be patient with me.  Today we visited a memorial in Rwanda for the genocide.  I’m warning you now that I am going to tell you details and walk through my experience as best I can but it may be more graphic than some of you are interested in getting into.

In Rwanda they have a practice of making mass graves preserved for people to see.  People here don’t put things behind glass and there is no rope you can’t cross.  On April 21st in 1994  50,000 Rwandan Tutsi’s were massacred in Murambi.  There was a school built there nestled on a pedastle inbetween gorgeous looming mountains.  When the genocide began in 1994 Tutsi’s were fleeing to find safety and many were told to go to safe places like churches, schools, etc. and that they would be protected there.  Most of them were systematically taken down and all seeking refuge were killed.  Murambi was supposed to become a technical school and the buildings still look new.  This only happened 15 years ago.  There was no food and water there and when Hutu’s and genocidaires came to kill Tutsi’s most of them were too weak to fight back.  Two months or so after the event French troops came in (project turquoise) to Rwanda to help keep people safe.  The French’s connections to Hutu Power meant that the French were planning on keeping the Hutu safe.  It wasn’t explained that many of the Hutu they were protecting were participants in the genocide that were trying to flee the country and escape the backlash of the RPF.  They buried the bodies and washed the walls of the school so that there was no remnants of what happened there.  There is a marker for where they played volleyball while stationed at Murambi.  It’s next to the placard for the mass graves. 

 It is not shocking that Rwandans and Tutsi especially in this case want people to see the bodies.  People have put good honest work into making the genocide disappear.  If you preserve thousands of bodies it’s hard to say they’re not dead.  The mass graves were dug up and many of the bodies were preserved in lyme so that they are still visible today.  Our translator for our month in Rwanda told us that there were a lot of debates about if this was exploiting the dead or not.  She said that the killers wanted the bodies buried because it was hard for them to see but that Tutsi that had lost family there want the bodies preserved.  She had never been able to see her grandmother before she died and when she visited the memorial for the first time they showed her the skeleton and clothes of her grandmother and she felt like she was finally able to say goodbye.  I can’t imagine this.
 As we drove closer and closer to the memorial all I could think about was how all the people that we passed knew where we were going. A bus full of white people coming to see their memorial.  It’s not that I think we’re unwanted there.  I think it is important to see this and realize what happened here in Rwanda.  Sometimes it can get hidden under all the development and lost in language translation but there isn’t anyone in Rwanda who doesn’t know someone that has been killed or someone that is still in jail for participating in the genocide.  The prisons are overflowing with the accused.  Our lecturer told us that they are all tried and that evidence is brought up against them.  When I asked if being accused by one person is considered evidence enough…he said no but didn’t really answer when I asked if being accused by a few people was enough.   How do you even decide how to punish people?  Hutus that sided with Tutsis were in danger too.  That does not forgive the atrocity that happened in this country, I’m just trying to describe the difficult situation this country has found itself in when it tries to bring justice for what has happened.
 Each one of us grieves and processes in a different way.  In going through the memorial it wasn’t like a tour; we were each left to wander on our own and see as much or as little as we wanted.  As we walked up to the first building I didn’t know how to think or feel.  I walked into the first room and the thing that really hit me was the smell.  I couldn’t decide if I should take it in or if I was honestly scared to have it enter my lungs.  I couldn’t hold my breath long enough to leave the room.  It’s not so much that it smells like you would expect a dead body to smell, it’s just this horrible old rotten smell. I can’t even describe it so I won’t try.  I didn’t know how I could enter another room. It’s not that you get used to the smell, you never get used to that smell, it’s just that you lose that initial shock and begin to look around you.  There are bed frames or tables set up and all the corpses are laid out.  The lyme has made them white and in some ways at first it makes them seem more like skeletons but you realize many of them really don’t feel like you’re looking at a skeleton.  Some of the skulls still have hair patches and many were even left with their clothes on.  As you walk room to room the mouths of many are open and my teacher was right in describing that some look like they’re screaming.  I looked at one small corpse and how his or her foot really just looked like a child’s foot, not bones.  Some really were preserved before they decomposed.  We all walked from room to room, silently, taking the fresh air in while we periodically entered back into the world.  No one really spoke and I felt the pull to hug each one of them while simultaneously wanting to be alone at the same time.  Leon pointed to one of the corpses and there on the woman/man’s body you could still see the string of a necklace that looked like it had been clutched to their chest.  On the string was a little saint medallion. Many of the students cried and one of the survivors of the massacre who worked at the site carried around a roll of toilet paper for us to wipe our eyes.  As we walked out of the first row of classrooms I looked at the neighbors who were watching us move to the next building.  People here don’t shy away from this.  You would think that people wouldn’t want to live near this, regardless of how beautiful this place is.  Maybe some can’t afford to move but you get the feeling that there is some part of the mentality that just says this is what happened and it happened whether we live here or not.  This is one of the top ten most beautiful places I’ve probably ever been.  The mountains that are surrounding this open place are just indescribable. 
 The last room I visited was the hall where many of the victims clothes were displayed.  They were all folded or shoved onto wooden shelves against the wall.  When you see clothes or patterns that could still be worn today it suddenly hits you that this happened in your recent lifetime.  One of the bundles was of kitenga fabric (used for traditional garments in Uganda and Rwanda) and it looked just like it could be one of the yards of fabric you find in the market.  I sat down outside and put my back against the wall. I just felt like I needed something to back up against.  I could here someone going door to door locking the rooms up.  It almost seemed strange that they locked the doors when as we walked around we could touch the bodies if we wanted to.  John Bosco, the man with the keys, was a short Rwandan man that lived near by.  He came up to me and just seemed like he wanted to observe me at a closer distance.  When I greeted him in Kinyarwanda he seemed really pleased and tried out some basic phrases.  With the only things I could remember I asked him how old he was, his name, and if he lived here.  John Bosco is 20 years old and grew up in Murambi.  I tried to tell him in English that it was a beautiful place with all the mountains but it just seemed wrong and I didn’t know what to say that didn’t feel awkward. 
 When we walked back to the front there were cheese sandwiches and chips waiting for us.  Morgan told me that that smell was something that would never leave us.  As I took my first bite I realized that even the cheese tasted like it.  That may sound over dramatic or disgusting but in some way it really did and i felt utterly disgusted.  I tried to avoid the bigger pieces and felt like I was just choking it down a bit.  We were hungry but seemed to agree we should have left the food alone. everything just made me feel a bit nauseous.  I don’t know how to verbalize where I am now.  It’s strange to put words to something that in the grand scheme of life seems like it’s actually not going to change you….or how do you describe the change?  I am still coming home to the same life I left and these are people I don’t know and this is something that happened years ago when frankly I was six years old and completely unaware.  I just kind of feel like being quiet.  This doesn’t really describe anything but I guess the point I want to get across to you is that what has happened here in Rwanda, and Uganda for that matter, is so much bigger and more complex than I could have ever understood before I came here. I think I’m done now.