Rwanda

Lake Kivu

Just returned from a 17-day work trip to Kibuye, Rwanda. What a beautifully lush, tranquil country! Tribal conflict sent the country to hell and back in the 1990s. Today it is illegal to inquire about someone's ethnicity. Everyone is simply (and gratefully) "Rwandan." The Rwandans have found a way to piece together the pieces of a brutally bruised nation and build a new one that is a beacon of peace and reconciliation. It is truly the jewel of Africa.

My visit coincided with the 17th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide. Emotions are still raw almost 2 decades on, especially in the region of Rwanda where my team and I stayed. We were thus advised to stick to the grounds of our hotel on the 17^th rather than try to peek in on the locals as they mourned their murdered loved ones. During the final, full day of our trip however my team got to visit two memorial sights. Both were former Catholic churches to which ethnic Tutsis fled with the hope of warding off the ever pursuing Hutus. Apparently, prior to 1994, churches had truly been respected as as holy grounds. In other words, during pre-Genocide violence, Hutus would not harm anyone who sought asylum on church grounds. After the outbreak of the 1994 Genocide however, Hutus decided to ignore this and murdered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. In one of the churches we visited, 10,000 Tutsis were killed in one day. That is just one little church in the boondox of Rwanda. One lady, whose body/coffin has been memorialized in the church's underground chamber, was raped by 10 different Hutus before they drove a spear between her legs, through her innards and up through her head. She was 9 months pregnant. I'll never forget the sight of her coffin...In the same chamber as her resting place sat the skeletons of the 10,000 souls who were also murdered the same day as her rape. I found myself alone down in that chamber. I was overwhelmed with the evil humankind is capable of. I placed my palm on top of one of the skulls belonging to the many murdered children and whispered a silent prayer for lasting peace in Rwanda and Africa in general.

A church in Kibuye

At another church we visited there were several thousand more killed. We were guided to a room where there was a large blood stain on the wall in an empty room formerly used for Sunday school classes. Our Rwanda guide numbly explained to use that the stain was from Hutu soldiers smashing one child after another against the wall. During the Rwanda Genocide, children, even infants were not spared. Hutus called Tutsis "cockroaches" and infamously campaigned that "all cockroaches should be killed, even infants. A baby infant is still a cockroach and must be eliminated." The main chambers of both of the church chambers we visited were adorned with the clothes of those murdered. Just imagine, thousands of bloodied clothes strewn everywhere. And then there were the skulls and bones stacked neatly on shelf after shelf on the perimeter walls. The skulls and bones were clean, but nearly every skull showed fatal blows to the head. Needless to say, I left both memorial sights chocked up and with tears in my eyes. Visiting memorial sights like those in Rwanda make you completely sick with disgust that people can hold such contempt for their fellow human beings. But, God, how imperative it truly is to memorialize the sights where such atrocities occurred. How else are we to ensure future generations don’t learn from our horribly misguided mistakes?