Never Again: Memorial sites: Lay remains of our nation’s greatest loss, A testament to ‘Never Again’

The first thing which ushers you into Bugesera, are the splendid meadows spreading up to the hills where the misty heavens kiss the tall trees on top of the hills. People I am travelling with in the taxi seem not to mind about the beauty we were passing. This perhaps was due to the possibility that they don’t derive meaning in nature or it was the sheer familiarity of the environs. But that doesn’t stop me from marvelling and enjoying the beauty of the place. It is 3.30p.m and we are midway, I start growing impatient of when we shall reach because I have it at the back of my mind that Genocide Memorial Sites don’t open beyond 5p.m. The person I sat next to tells me we have 25 five more minutes to reach Nyamata, looking outside the window; I see a sigh post written on Kanzanze. My mind briskly runs to a Jean Hitzfied book I had read a month back. In the book he interviewed a gang of genocide perpetrators from this very village. So I got this numbing feeling that many of the remains I will see are a result of the brutality displayed by Adalbert, Leopold, Jean Batiste and others who were in this notorious clique from Kanzenze in Kibungo. It felt as if it’s me who had interviewed them and now I was going to come face to face with what they did. Just by observing the surroundings, one can easily tell that farming is the major economic activity for the people of Nyamata in Bugesera District. The biggest part of the hills is cultivated and the crops grown there, from the look of things, are really promising. Fifteen minutes after leaving Kanzenze we reached a place where the person next to me advised me to get out and get other means to take me to the genocide memorial centre. The entire community has only one motor cycle, making bicycles the only reliable means of transport. I swiftly sat on one ridden by an eighteen year old chap. He charged me Rwf 200 to the site. Ntarama Memorial Site was previously a catholic church. It’s where thousands of desperate Tutsis tried to hide during the Genocide. On its entrance is an army man holding a gun. It obviously must be one of the security measures put in place to prevent grenade attacks similar to those carried out on the Gisozi Memorial Centre. A pregnant lady who happens to be the guide and care taker of the final home of close to 5000 remains of Tutsis who were murdered in there, approaches me. What strike me first are the countless clothes which have turned colourless due to a mixture of the long dried blood clots and dirt. They are hanging all over the place. These were clothes which belonged to the victims who perished in that church. Just as I enter the Centre, I see countless skulls aligned on wooden stands. The first and second Deckers are all filled with skulls. My eyes get stuck on a skull which had an arrow wedged inside it. On the upper Decker are the rest of the bones including arms, legs, the hip bones and many more body parts. The silence hits me. I find myself momentarily numb. Being in the middle of people’s remains had always been one of my worst nightmares when I was young. We used to imagine such horrific scenes as things that happen in horror movies or Halloween nights. We used to link dead bodies with ‘night-dancers’ (traditionally believed to be people who feed on dead people), but here I was face to face with them (the dead). The guide took me through, explaining to me certain things. I saw tinny shoes and I imagined these belonged to some of the children who were mercilessly killed in the church. Just like how it happened in many other places, people from nearby villages sought refuge in Ntarama church thinking that they would escape, but this just made the killing easier for the Interahamwe Militias. This explains why in this memorial site lays many domestic supplies including sacks of beans, books, sauce pans among others. The Tutsis had escaped from their homes with their basic domestic materials. The Nyamata Cemorial Centre which is a fifteen minutes drive from Ntarama just like many others is a church-turned memorial site. It’s where Tutsis from Kibungo, Kanzenze and other surrounding areas had fled and locked themselves. The guide is a dark-skinned man called Karisa Marite. He looks to be in his late fifties. With a slight limp, he comes to me and welcomes me inside. The metallic door is shattered and some bars missing. Marite tells me that the Tutsis had locked themselves in there but when the government soldiers and interahamwe came, they used grenades to break the door and started massacring everyone inside. The sites where the congregation used to sit is where piles of the now colourless clothes which belonged to the victims are arranged. From the sheer number of the pile, one can vaguely estimate the number of people who were killed in there. All around are skulls arranged in order, some having deep cuts across showing the thrust of the fatal machetes blows. I suddenly see a go-down. Slowly, carefully, I slope there. A solemn feeling grips me. I look up and see the guide watching me. He tells me that many of these people were shot at; others killed with grenades and others machetted by the militias who found them in this church. In the centre of the go-down, lay a separate coffin surrounded by glasses. Marite tells me that in the coffin is a woman who was called Mukandori. She died a horrible death. After being raped, she was pierced with a sharp object through her private parts until it came through her mouth. Marite said that her body was preserved together with the child she was carrying inside her but that due to insufficient preservatives, the body was beginning to rot thus its being put in the separate coffin. In a recent press conference, the Minister of Culture and Sports, Joseph Habineza, said that his ministry is liaising with countries like Mexico which have specialists in preserving bodies. He said they would help us effectively preserve those of the genocide victims in the memorial sites. Over ten thousand Tutsis died in the Nyamata church and all their remains plus those of others killed in nearby areas are in this site. Outside the site is a mass grave which has a go-down and in there also are remains of victims on display and others in coffins that are kept in cubicles. The whole environment is punctuated by loneliness and sorrow. These are our wasted lives that we remember every year and every time. There are also headstones of various people. Marite shows me one of an Italian woman (unfortunately, the writer was too shaken to remember noting her name) who was shot dead by government soldiers because she was attempting to call for support for the dying Tutsis. The most visited memorial site in Rwanda is the Kigali Memorial Centre (KMC) which is located in Gisozi. It was officially launched in 2004. This site has a number of sections ranging from the cemetery, museum, documentation centre, gallery and the education program. From its inauguration in 2004, over 258,000 genocide victims have been given a decent burial there and their remains lay in the graves around the memorial centre. People from all over the world, from all walks of life; come to KMC everyday to see for themselves the reminders of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. According to Honore Gatera, the chief guide at KMC, the sole essence of the museum is to keep the memory of genocide alive and to act as a tool for educating people about the gravity of genocide to every society. The museum includes the sections showing times before, during and after the genocide. These are accompanied by vivid pictures and information depicting the background of the genocide and its implications. In the gallery are pictures of the victims, the sanctuary for the remains and personal belongings of the victims. This really emphasizes the reality that these were real people who were ruthlessly reduced to something less human and blatantly massacred in cold blood. Another section of the museum shows the wasted lives and this is where indicators of other genocides which happened in other places of the world are kept. There is also a children’s section. “This shows how children were a special target during the genocide. The perpetrators had a goal of finishing off all the children of the Tutsi such that the all Tutsi are wiped out,” Gatera said. Both the documentation centre and the education program are aimed at passing on information to people, especially children, about the magnitude of genocide on every society and how to prevent situations which lead to Genocide. The documentation centre applies audio visual testimonies. The management of KMC is working on strategies of improving it so that these materials can be posted on the internet for wider access. KMC also has a social program where its employees started by deducting on their salaries to support some groups of people who were made vulnerable by the genocide. As we speak the programme is paying tuition fees for over 30 Genocide orphans in universities and it’s also supporting Genocide widows with shelter and other needs. The KMC bookshop also contains books on genocide. It also has art crafts on genocide crafted by Genocide widows. All these are sold to visitors; the money from them goes back to supporting the vulnerable groups. What might be considered strange is the fact that since the time KMC was inaugurated in 2004, the people who have visited it don’t even reach a half of those estimated to have been killed in a genocide that lasted only 100 days. From 2004 KMC has received only about 350,000 visitors, and these significantly include foreigners. Gatera called upon all people, especially Rwandans, to come and visit the memorial sites because that’s the only way how the memory can be kept alive to give hope that something as grave as genocide doesn’t happen again. It’s only by visiting these sites that one’s resolve and firm stand to the ‘Never Again’ creed can be truly cemented. Mine was. Email: gahimore@yahoo.com