Rwanda Journal, Entry 40: Scars

Rwanda is a country with deep scars that only willful blindness or callous disregard can obscure.

Behind the beauty of the thousand rolling hills, and the people who walk over them, is a history of pain, hatred and bloodshed.

Many buildings, including the country's parliament, still bear bullet holes from the civil war in 1994. They are a monument to the closeness of the past in a country that has moved so far away from it.

A wall, dotted with bullet holes, in Gikondo district, Kigali.

Soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (now called the Rwandan Defence Forces), who ended the genocide and assumed control of Kigali in 1994, still patrol the streets to maintain security.

Their presence serves as a reminder of the past, but their role is more than symbolic. A series of grenade attacks, carried out by Hutu extremists,  demonstrates that even now hatred and violence linger in the shadows.    

The streets are filled with disabled beggars, many survivors of the civil war, who have lost arms, legs, fingers and hands.

I do not know how this man lost his leg.

When the source of the disability is uncertain, the mind drifts towards a terrifying explanation. If you can spare a few francs they offer sincere thanks and carry on with as much dignity as they can muster.

Like most Rwandans today, the disabled live their lives and try to avoid dwelling on the past. There is a time and place for reflecting on bygone days and it is better to look forward.

The government has made strides in modernizing the Rwandan economy and has presented its people with an ambitious vision of the future.

Vision 2020, a development program that aims to turn Rwanda into a prosperous middle-income country by the year 2020,  has given many Rwandans reason to hope for brighter, more prosperous times ahead.

Too many cannot.

The more than 800,000 Rwandans who were brutally murdered during the genocide, have no future. They can do nothing more than be mourned and remembered.

 

From April to July, Rwanda enters the 100 days of mourning. Millions of purple-clad mourners, many survivors themselves, gather at memorials around the country to grieve the deaths of their loved ones.

At the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, in the Gisozi district of the city, mourners assemble to remember friends, neighbours, colleagues and family members lost in a tsunami of murder and brutality.

Today, Rwandans lay flowers on the concrete slabs that conceal the bodies of 259,000 victims; some weep and tear at their clothes; others stand in silent contemplation of the lives snuffed out like candles.

It is a solemn and inescapably tragic thing to witness.  

From the outside, the memorial centre looks tidy and unexceptional, similar to many compounds owned by Rwanda's upper class.

The grounds are neatly-tended, a small pool and torch sit outside the front entrance.

An intricate series of lattices link the main building to a small garden set aside for reflection and meditation.

It is a still place where not even a bird disturbs the silence.

The peace outside only adds to the painful drama of the interior.

A swirl of emotion greets visitors of the memorial. The history of the Rwandan genocide is well known to anyone with an interest in it; but the poignancy of standing in Kigali, with the bodies of the victims so near, is more than any wikipedia entry could ever capture.  

From the history of Belgium's colonization and the introduction of an arbitrary system of ethnic identification to the creation of the Interahamwe and the atrocities that claimed close to a million lives, the events are recorded for posterity.

Grisly remnants of the genocide are displayed in glass cases: the skulls of children, once living and now dead; femurs, split at the hamstring to prevent victims fleeing; machetes and wooden clubs, still marked and dented; soiled and bloodied clothing; and the best-loved possessions people clung to as they died.

A special section in the memorial is dedicated to the children who were murdered. Plaques below the portraits of a few of them recount their favourite food, their favourite sport, their best friends, their last words.   

"Where can I run to mommy?"

A wall near the exit offers hooks where families have hung photos of the sons and daughters they lost.

These children explain the nature of Rwanda's scars.

For all the country's success at rebuilding and moving forward, an entire generation can never be a part of its future. Rwanda's material growth and success are extraordinary but they can never completely overshadow the pain that comes from being unable share it with the ones that are gone.

Like a parent is maimed by the death of their child, Rwanda will always bear the marks of its past and can never forget what happened.

To forget, would be a crime as vile as the genocide itself.