My night in a Genocide memorial site

The cold wind was whistling when I reached Nyamata at around 11.00pm. The vihicle in which I had travelled had had terrible mechanical fault that kept us waiting until late hours of the evening. Kigali - Nyamata is normally 30 minutes drive. We used hours! After desperately trying to get a place I could call my overnight accommodation, I was lucky enough to be ushered into one of those local bed and breakfast lodges in Nyamata. What surprised me later on was that I was just a short distance from a huge Genocide memorial site. Upon stumbling upon this site the purple cloth decorations assured me. I had slept just with in the parameters of the infamous Nyamata Genocide memorial site. What a night! In fact the location where I spent the night is about ten steps from the memorial site/Church. I remembered the Nyamata Genocide site because of the high level of torture the victims suffered from my readings. Good readers of the Tutsi genocide know the woman who was hanged with a baby on the back, etc. I decided that it was only natural for me to visit the site. Upon reaching the site, I was privileged to meet Andrea Kamana, officer in charge of Bugesera district memorial sites. He took me inside the building to witness the hell that befell the Tutsi. The silence and scene of death looming inside the graves was actually a chilling reminder of the tragedy which visited Bugesera in 1994. “In fact the location of your lodging is a location which had heaped dead bodies. Some Tutsi who were inside the church compound here were hacked to death by the genocidaires. So, the outside of this grave may be the inside of another,” Kamana Andrea, said telling me that I had actually spent the night in a grave yard turned hotel which is adjacent to the actual memorial. The inside scene is not so different from the others I had visited such as the Murambi-Nyamgabe site. All evidences show that the victims met very bad - slow death. Most of the skulls have scars of spears and machetes. Another remarkable thing is that they were strong believers of Jesus Christ-heaps of Cross attest to this observation. “Tutsi fled into Churches expecting to be saved by men of God. But alas, they were betrayed and slaughtered in the broad-day light. Even the Italian woman, Tonia Locatelli, who tried to blow the whistle, was assassinated,” Andre Kamana said. Bugesera is one of the sites that were used for genocide trials. During the so called Hutu revolution in 1959, many Tutsi were brought to Nyamata. It was a forest area infested by Tsetse flies. Painstakingly though, they survived the harsh conditions. Kamana recalls that in 1963, the Tutsi who had fled the country, tried to fight their way back home through Bugesera. They were overwhelmed by the Mighty Belgian forces. “Bugesera was an island in a way. So the people could not even manage to escape. After failing to resist the killers, some tried to flee towards Kigali. For those who escaped the genocidal trap they found Interahamwe and Ex-far waiting for them at Nyabarongo. They were tortured and thrown into the river. They are actually those that went as far as Lake Victoria,” observed Kamana Andrea. The Church is now a memorial site and men of God leave within the same environment. If I had my way I would advise them to make the whole place a memorial site. The clergy could do better by building their dwellings at some reasonable distance. “Here we live with death around us. I really don’t like it but… For example I cannot enter into the massive grave, but when I remember that this place was also littered with bodies, it gives me a very sad reminder ,” said one local defence official at the Father’s residence and the memorial site. Even though, I got good hospitality from the nuns, I will never forget my night in a Genocide memorial site. It was a chilling experience. mugitoni@yahoo.com