May 6, 05:08 PM
The Hills and People of Rwanda
The hills of Rwanda are breath-taking, yet so many horrific things happened among them 12 years ago that, while driving throughout southern Rwanda this past weekend, I couldn’t just relax, be present, and enjoy them.
Saturday through Monday (4/29-5/1) we were visiting a friend of ours in southern Rwanda. Since she works for the government in the southern region, we were able to attend many government-related events with her and her friends this weekend. They ranged from a memorial service for those who were lost and survived the genocide; a Labor Day celebration; a tour of a government-owned tea plantation; and a trip to Murambi, a local genocide memorial in the southern region.
During the months of April-July in Rwanda (the 100 days when the killings took place in 1994), each region has their own local services to honor those lost and those who have survived. As a government official, our friend was to attend this event and took us along as her guests and kindly translated some of the 7 hour service, all in Kinyarwanda, to English for us at various points. Even without the translation, one could feel the emotions in the crowd. Nearly 2,000 people crammed to find seats in the local stadium and to honor those 350 bodies who had been dug up in mass graves from the genocide to be put into proper coffins so that their families could have an honorable burial service for them. Many of the bodies were located due to the work of the local Gacaca courts.
The service consisted of a full mass; a young woman’s harrowing survivor story (which lasted an hour); and messages from various governmental officials and organizations, urging people to continue to help find the bodies that were lost and to stand up for those who are surviving and those who were murdered. Many of these messages included the phrase, “never again,” and explained the importance of these times of memorial, encouraging people to honor the dead.
The service ended with people gatheringed to follow the coffins to the gravesite. Families brought flowers and everyone was wearing a purple ribbon, arm band, or bandana as a remembrance color. The burial event continued well beyond our departure at 4pm; people were still there mourning, many of them re-experiencing memories. In a country where “collective trauma” is a phrase used by many professionals to describe times where Rwandans experience communal re-traumatization of the events of 1994, it was hard for me to imagine, as I was able to walk away, what it must feel like to live here every day of your life.
And, yet, the event I attended on Monday for the national Labor Day holiday (believe it or not, Mark had to go back to Kigali and work), at a similar stadium packed with locals, couldn’t have been more hopeful and exciting. The event was a Labor Day parade, essentially, with marchers including local military, children waving humble banners that advertised the local primary or secondary school, government officials, local companies, NGO’s, bicycle taxi drivers, and local carpenters who were carrying beds above their heads as examples of the work that they do.
In fact, it reminded me of similar Labor Day parades I attended growing up in central New York, except without the candy strewn everywhere, the shriners and clowns, or the garishly decorated floats.
It gave me hope that the same people who attended Sunday’s memorial service could also be at this Labor Day celebration, honoring workers and laborers, and enjoying traditional Rwandan dance and song through performances; sitting side by side, looking toward the future.
Later that day, I got a tour of the government-owned Kitabi Tea Factory, where there are nearly 70 acres
of beautiful tea plantations. The tea is planted on slants in the hills, in order to prevent erosion, and it couldn’t have been a more inspiring sight to see. I toured the plant, met many of the workers, and was impressed that it seemed (for all I coud know) to be a very moder tea factory. The assistant manager, who gave me the tour, and I enjoyed a cup of tea together before I left for the day.
During this time, we discussed politics, tea, and his hope for Rwanda. He said that he thought education was the key to ending poverty in this region of Rwanda. Although he has much hope for the future, he did tell me that much of the tea factory was destroyed during the genocide and, yet, it did not take them that long to build up again, as it was something that everyone really wanted to make sure could run effectively soon. Tea, in fact, is the hope for the future of Rwanda, he said, as it is one of the major exports for the country.
Later that day, at a party I attended for the Kitabi Tea Factory, the factory’s president echoed these sentiments. Over beers, sodas, and chicken with chips while sitting underneath a coconut-husked roof at picnic tables, we gathered
together and heard the president say that he hoped the workers would see the tea factory as a chance to have pride in their country.
Despite what happened during the war, he said, this is a way that we can come together for our country, so that we don’t have to be so dependent on other countries to give us resources. If we make Kitabi Tea Factory a success for our country, he said, then we can gain even more independence as Rwandan citizens. This kind of hope and insight into a country fraught with grief, yet excited to move on, provided an interesting background for what I experienced next.
About a ten minute drive from the Labor Day picnic, I was taken to the Murambi genocide memorial. Supposed to be a technical school for secondary students, Murambi’s construction was almost finished before the war broke out in 1994. The big sprawling administration building looked beautifully designed as we drove up to it; yet, the out buildings (designed originally to be classrooms and dorms for students to study in), were filled with the 12,000 bodies found in the mass graves on this site after the war. What was supposed to be a place of hope, turned into a site for massacre—with machetes, guns, and grenades used to kill these 12,000 people.
Looking for safety anywhere, the Tutsis in this region were convinced by French soldiers to come to Murambi, where the construction was almost completed for the school to open later that year; it would be a safe harbor and there were many rooms where Tutsis could hide. The Tutsis, hopeful for any place to seek shelter, were especially pleased to know that the French, “mzungus” (white people), would save them.
As the tour guide told me, that wasn’t the case, and the French, he said, actually supplied the weapons for the Hutus to murder about 12,000 Tutsis at this site. After that, mass graves were dug, and basketball and tennis courts constructed on top of them.
My tour guide showed me room upon room of bodies dug up after the war from these mass graves, and put into rooms together in order to preserve a memory for the country of what happened there. In rooms where children were supposed to learn, they were instead laid side by side, with their parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, with machete wounds all over their heads, with arms chopped off, and legs mutilated. The rooms, instead of exuding a learning environment, smelled of death. It was the first time I’d ever seen something like this; tears wouldn’t even come. I could barely feel anything but disgust for those who let this happen.
40,000 bodies are buried there in a mass memorial site, yet those that remain in the rooms are there to remind Rwandans, and visitors alike, what happened at Murambi. And, if you can imagine, this is just one of 15 sites like this around the country and yet they are still looking for bodies so that people will know where their brother/sister/mother/father/daughter/son are buried.
Saying goodbye to the friends I made was hard to do. They were such nice people who all wanted to know the same thing: “How do you find Rwanda?” When I answered “beautiful—so many hills” to one of the people I met at the picnic, a local government official, he responded “beautiful, yes, but what do you make of what happened here?”
Yes, I thought, as I boarded the bus back to Kigali that evening, what do I make of what happened here? I can’t stop thinking of it even now, and then, as I looked the bus window, onto the sun setting on those beautiful hills, I couldn’t help but wonder, how do people do this? Every day, driving by a beautiful hill to them might mean seeing the grave of their relative or dear friend. Yet, I continue to have hope for the Kitabi Tea Factory, the people I met, their lovely hospitality, the way they greet each other, the way they grieve together, the way they dream together, their beautiful smiles; all a reminder of how life can be divine, even among the hills of Rwanda.
Dearest Ones: At a recent Inspire the Next Generation event here at our NASA Facility I met two sisters, ages 7 and 9, who talked to me of their Iranian Grandmother and their wish to see her. Of course, the world as it is, that is not a simple wish. At the end of a long conversation about global politics, during which they convinced me that either would and should be a future UN Secretary General, I was so very moved and heart-shaken. The older of the two sisters concluded this amazing encounter with the declaration that if governments could just make policies that make sure everyone can safely visit their grandmas then the world would be at peace. I don’t know how to respond to such an experience as you have had except to let you know that new world leaders are growing up among us…”and a little child shall lead them.”
— kathlen millson May 8, 05:17 PM #
A shocking and yet hopeful experience. It’s all so much to take in at a distance, but making significant events more tangible, is an aspect of travel that we also feel will always stay with us.
— Correna & Teresa May 15, 05:30 PM #