Nearly every utility pole along the main road through town has at least one bullet hole. I am not talking about bullet holes like we see at home where some drunk guy vandalized a sign. Oh no, these are bullet holes from war. These holes are all within the range of the height of a human being. These holes were made when one person was attempting to kill another.
I also often find tarnished brass on the ground when I walk. The brass that is expelled from a machine gun when it fires. Most are from the all too popular AK-47 while others are from the big gun, the .50 caliber. I have picked up a few but have left most. I actually found an old bullet once. The town now is very peaceful and it is hard to imagine the horrors that once filled the streets.
You see other reminders as well. You see the remains of buildings. You see people that are missing parts of limbs. You see people unable to walk because tendons were cut when they were left for dead. Today you could also see the deeper scars, the ones that are normally hidden deep within.
When the genocide took place, I was working on my master's degree at MSU. Where were you in April of 1994? Do you remember hearing about it in the news? There wasn't much in the news at the time. Over 1,000,000 people died because of their tribal ancestry. There were 800,000 people murdered in the first 100 days that followed this day in 1994. How can events like this happen in such a global society?
In the weeks leading up to today, many of the foreigners that have been here longer than I advised me to go to Uganda. "Either get out of the country or just stay in your home" they would say. "Leave this day, this week of remembrance to those who have the memories." I thought about doing that. I gave a lecture on the 6th and after class was visiting with some of my Rwandan friends. I told them what I had been advised. They told me that they were often disappointed by the foreigners who come here and work along side them, laugh along side them and even share meals with them, then leave on the most important day in Rwandan history. So, I decided that I would join in the ceremonies and that is what I did.
Walking to the bus stop this morning was very different. There were very few people in the street. Normally, the people that I met would cross the street to my side and speak, they typically greet me in either French or English and I greet them back in the local language. Today, people moved to the opposite side of the street and nobody made eye contact. As I walked passed homes, I could hear weeping coming from within.
We met on campus this morning and I joined the students and other faculty as we walked in silence past the genocide memorial to the town center and listened to a speech. After that, we all went back to the memorial. Similar to most memorials, the genocide memorials have some statues, are enclosed by a fence, there are small signs and markers. Unlike most other memorials, these are also mass graves. There is no way to know how many people are buried in such graves. Every town in Rwanda has one. They are full of the pieces that were collected. The weapon of choice at the time was the machete so bodies were not left intact.
After returning to the town center, people were given the chance to share their experiences. Many of the stories described the events carried out by independent groups of extremists in the years before the genocide. A co-worker discussed how his family fled to Uganda before he was born, back in 1959 after his grandparents were stoned to death. One woman from the community described how homes in the rural villages were burned back in 1972, the year that she was married. Then, in 1991, her husband was taken away. She followed the truck and saw how all of the prisoners were removed, beaten, and then murdered. The bodies were never recovered. She spoke of forgiveness and how her salvation has taken the hate and the anger away, then she begged that if any person knew what happened to those bodies to please tell her, her only wish now was to bring her husband home for a proper burial. There were other stories, like how the national radio at the time would broadcast live from the mass killings like reporting from a sporting event. Stories that told how the extremist government officials had the community dig giant holes that were to be used as new community toilets, only to be used as mass graves. And stories that described how families would give their life savings so that the children could be shot instead of chopped to pieces. Many families were a mix of the two tribal ancestries so some family members would survive after having watched the rest of the family be butchered.
It is impossible for me to understand what it was that these friends of mine suffered through. Many people in the international community view the annual remembrance as an inability to move on. Quite the opposite is true. The purpose of the ceremonies that take place throughout Rwanda is in part to educate the children. To show them that horrible things can happen if the people are divided. To show them that forgiveness and love triumphs over all else and that as a people united, they can accomplish anything. Another purpose was not to dwell in the past, but to be aware of the past. To know that the past is where your roots are, the platform from which to grow forward. A final purpose was to pay respects to those who died such horrible deaths and to show forgiveness for the ones who performed such acts. Those are the words from Rwanda's President Kigame.
It was a beautiful day. There were birds chirping, flowers blooming and butterflies. What I thought would be simply a day of mourning turned out to be a day of love, a day that recognized the power of the future. Unfortunately, events like these are happening now in other parts of Africa. We hear about Darfur in the news from time to time, but a genocide is currently taking place there. Nobody is stopping it.
