Day 2 - Rwandan Rollercoasters

I apologize in advance if this post is all over the place and INCREDIBLY LONG I’m trying to break it up and bold the important things…but no promises. Today was such an emotional rollercoaster, I still feel like I can’t fully comprehend the experience I had today let alone pass that on to other people. Rwanda has changed me more in 2 days than any experience I’ve ever had. Nothing can compare. But I’m gonna try my best to explain.

I woke up under my mosquito net to soft sunlight and birds chirping out the window…2 hours before my alarm. I don’t remember the last time I slept that well and still woke up early. There’s a Rwandan saying that we kept hearing today “God spends his whole day working all around the world, but he sleeps in Rwanda” and at breakfast Drew asked what it was like to spend my first night with God.  We sat outside on the porch and took in the beautiful sunlight and scenery with my delicious Rwandan cup of coffee.

I’m gonna talk about my day out of order because I want to make sure I get to the important stuff and I’d rather end on a happy note…

NYAMATA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL – Questioning Humanity

The drive to Nyamata was our first time out of Kigali which is a major city. We drove there straight from lunch, so going from the city center and through all these smaller towns was one of the coolest transitions.  The landscape in Rwanda is so lush and green We’d pass a bunch of trees that would open up and show the hills and valleys. I’ve never seen so many banana trees!! There were children playing on the side of the road and carrying big square jugs of water on their backs or heads. There were bicycle taxis (yes a guy riding a bike with 2 seats who gives people rides) and women carrying fruits in baskets on their heads.

We get to the outside of the church and the guide, Valenti begins by telling us the story of the people who were massacred in this place.  The mere numbers were enough to sink my heart into my stomach.  Of the 45,000+ who are buried in the mass graves, Over 10,000 Tutsis were led to the Nyamata Church with false promises of sanctuary, and how they were killed is even more horrifying than the numbers.  It was a plan. Every piece of new information just made me question everything I believe about humanity. I hate to say it but I even began to question God. What God could let this happen? Of course I know that this was the pure absence of God, but it really makes me question my faith. How could any human PLAN to murder thousands of their neighbors with no mercy? What brings a person to do that?  They used work tools outside like machetes and hammers so that they didn’t waste their ammunition (something they could only get from the government). Then they tried to break down the doors of the church while the men inside pushed against the walls to protect the women and children inside. I can’t imagine the sheer terror to witness the massacre of your family and friends while hiding inside a church.  The screams ring in my ears and I know that what I imagine can’t compare to the reality of it all.  The image of the children cowering inside, trying to be quiet while seeing and hearing what will eventually happen to them is the heaviest truth that I have ever had to face. When Valenti points to the dent in the floor and huge gap in the metal door and says it’s from the grenade the Hutu extremists used to eventually get through the door. I look up and see the holes in the ceiling from the shrapnel.  We walk inside and the piles and piles of clothes on the benches taken off those who were killed there and more devastating reality hits me.  

At this point I’m still successfully keeping my composure because I’d seen these pictures before, but as I walk around I get the courage to really look at the details of these clothes and on the top of one of the piles is a tiny pink T-shirt with a faded cartoon on it and at the time I thought it was Rocket Power (but that wasn’t even playing till 1999).  Regardless, that tiny pink T-shirt was tattered and surrounded by more clothes filled with bullet holes. The clothes were so small. How could someone do this, let alone TO A CHILD? I want to erase my first thought from my mind because I thought that shirt looked a lot like one I’d seen Keilana wear with a similar character on it. It was exactly her size.  This is when I lost it.  The thought that a child just like my niece witnessed such hatred before being murdered so horrifically was unbearable.  They took this girl’s life and all of her innocence. We walk over to the back of the church and Valenti deals out yet another heavy story of how all the children hid in this area because it was the most protected and the adults hoped that by putting all the children together, the murderers would have mercy on them.  Unfortunately this genocide was about more than just killing the Tutsi’s physical bodies.  They’re intentions were to torture them not only physically, but emotionally by murdering all hope until they begged for death.  I remember the children we played with yesterday who were dancing and playing with us. Their curiosity still makes me smile, until I picture them cowering in fear while their innocence and faith in the world is destroyed under a cross in a house of God.

It was the job of the women to kill the babies. Most would pick them up and bash their heads against the wall, and most of the blood is still there. I remember when Eve and I were talking in the car on the drive up to Nyamata about how it’s scary to hold a baby because they look so fragile. Again I asked, HOW? What woman, let alone MOTHER could do this to a helpless baby? Later I am told that the more vicious women would pound the babies’ heads with a big stone mortar like a poi pounder.  It’s almost as if they got pleasure out of coming up with even more sadistic ways to end an innocent life. Like animals thirsty for blood.

We go down into the tomb and there are skulls and bones in a glass case.  I force myself to look at each skull and at this point I can barely hear Valenti’s explanations about IDs.  You can see exactly how each person died. Gunshots, machete, some looked like half of it had been completely torn off.  I tune back in and Valenti explains how most of the bodies were unidentifiable, so the survivors had no way to honor their dead.  They had to pass this place everyday with the knowledge that their loved ones never received a proper burial. So those who hadn’t found their relatives would clean unidentified bones to symbolically give their lost loved ones closure.  Going outside and into the next tombs, all you see are caskets draped with purple fabric (a symbol of mourning).  I couldn’t even count the caskets, and each had at least 5 sets of remains most had more.  One section had all of the skulls and bones laid out. The skulls were facing in towards the center, staring at me. 

Afterwards we spoke to a woman who was visiting the memorial named Veni, and she told us she goes there all the time and looks at the bones in the outdoor tombs searching for her family.  She talked to us for hours, and after going through such intense emotions, all she could talk about was how important it is to know the truth but also to move past it. “The mourning is over” and “There is a better day” such a wise woman and I’m blessed to have met her.  If she weren’t there I would have been in a very dark place. My heart had been broken and I had lost most of my faith in humanity.  Hearing her speak about something so horrifying and ugly in such a calm way lifted my spirit.  Knowing that a woman who has a direct connection to this place and even more questions that will never be answered can somehow forgive the murderers and those who refused to help is inspiring. The part of the apostle’s creed “forgive those who trespass against us” has never rung more true. She lives that everyday.  I think about all the people I get angry at on a daily basis for something as silly as cutting me off and the people I still hold grudges against because they’ve wronged me in the past and I think “If Veni can forgive the people who gave her brothers and sisters limps in 1959, made her move to another country, killed her family members, and be at total peace, I should be able to too.” I think how America reacts to any type of attack like 9/11 and how we’ve alienated an entire culture who had nothing to do with the attack. There is such hatred for the Islamic people in America because of what a few had done on 9/11 and some hold on to that hate, but somehow she is at peace with the thousands of her neighbors who raped and murdered uncountable numbers of her people including children.  She alone restored my faith in God and in humanity.  God sent her there to bring me back my hope, because without that there is no way I could have survived 2 weeks here.  Thank you Veni! I wish I had more time and space to tell more of your story. You have inspired me and given me something I will hold onto for the rest of my life.

On the drive back we stopped at a river (the name I forget, but will update later when Carl is up) There were men cutting sugar cane and young boys on boats hauling it down the river. The kids immediately crowded around us and loved playing with my camera (per usual).  We stood on the bridge with the beautiful Rwandan sunset and reflected on the memorial together just by saying single words.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER - at the beginning of the day..

Even though this happened first, I wanted to talk about it last.  My goal isn’t just to tell the story of the genocide. That story has been told many times and now there is a fear that Rwanda is still dangerous today.  That was in 1994, but Rwanda has grown and been reborn in the last 17 years.  There is life in Rwanda and so much joy. Just driving around if you smile at someone passing on the street they give you the biggest smile.  I’ve been given the best hugs by people I had just met.  There is an openness here that I haven’t seen anywhere else.  This is the Rwanda that gives Veni hope. (keeping it short because I’m already at 3 pages)

We went to the Mashirika studio at that’s a very small space with bright colors and great energy above a few shops down the street from our guest house.  The group did a lot of acting exercises and it was awesome to see how close we all were after only meeting last night.  Drew led breathing exercises and a fun name/movement game.  During the name part I wanted to get in the middle of the circle to film and of course slipped on my pants that are too long and slid right into the floor. Bruised my elbow, but the camera was perfectly fine.. so I’ll count that as a blessing. I always do know how to make an entrance aaand it was a game to introduce ourselves :) but the best part was definitely whenever Hope taught us songs in the Rwandan language. The first was repetition of “Mwaramuste” which means good morning. My favorite was  a song that was very playful, and the leader would say “Iyabi yabi yabawe” and the group would answer back “Iyaba Iyabawe” twice while going in a circle, then the leader could say anything they want being as silly as they want before passing it on to another person who could lead the circle in different directions. Difficult to explain, but that’s why we filmed the whole thing anyway :) We got some great footage.  Words cannot describe the joy in each of their smiles. As horrific as the memorial was, the time with Mashirika made me feel like I had grown another family and I never would have thought they had been through such a nightmare.  This is Rwanda in 2012. They’ve found the hope that was lost in 1994, built upon it and healed in less than 20 years. They remember their dead and the history and refuse to let anyone deny that it happened but still live their lives and find ways to find joy in whatever way they know how. For Mashirika it’s through music, dance, and theater. And coming from a place that still holds grudges about slavery and republicans or democrats, I wonder where we could think we are ahead of them.  The sense of community they have is priceless. The Rwandans I’ve met in the last 2 days have been through so much but are still happier than any American I have ever known and we could learn a lot from this “3^rd world” country.

I remember how ethereal my morning was, and I truly believe that the evil that occurred in 1994 (whether it be the fault of a corrupt government, the devil, mob mentality, pure hatred...WHATEVER it is) has been buried and built upon. Whether he was here or not in 1994, God is in Rwanda now.