Post-genocide Rwanda

Tall buildings, shining glass windows, perfectly paved roads, a profusion of signs for clothing stores, sports stores, travel agencies, restaurants…are we in my hometown of Bethesda, Maryland, or is this really downtown Kigali 14 years after the genocide?

As we pulled into the central bus station, a huge outdoor area jammed with buses, minivans, motorcycles and taxis, we saw masses of people walking four and five abreast in all directions – it was as crowded as Manhattan during rush hour. There are 10 million people in Rwanda, but the country is about the size of Rhode Island, which makes for some cramped living. Much of it is mountainous, so the population is concentrated in urban centers like Kigali, Gitarama and Butare, a fact that made it easier for the genocidaires to kill a million people in 100 days in the rainy season of 1994.

At first glance, Kigali’s modern infrastructure belies its recent history – you would never think that these streets were witness to some of the most horrific acts of violence and brutality the world has ever seen. We walked around the city for two whole days marveling at the cleanliness, the newness, the apparent wealth of people, stores and businesses. We saw groups of white tourists being hounded by the ever-present trinket sellers. We saw plenty of cars with bumper stickers that said, “Rwanda is You and Me.”

Taking our cue from the locals, we breakfasted each day on thick green fish soup and read the morning papers. Then we noticed a pattern: genocide is always in the headlines. Even after 14 years, it is still the dominant issue in Rwandan society. Traditional courts called “gacaca” have been set up all over the country, but scarily, there are more than a few stories of gacaca witnesses disappearing and turning up dead weeks later.

Surreal to think that the people sitting next to us at breakfast, at lunch, on the bus, walking by us on the streets, had experienced - and quite possibly participated in - the killing. Bumper sticker slogans aside, what feelings they must still harbor for those who killed their family members, or for those they killed?

On our third day in Rwanda, we steeled ourselves for a visit to the Kigali Memorial Center, completed in 2004 with money from the Aegis Foundation. We didn’t go right away because we didn’t want the genocide to overwhelm our experience of the Rwandan people, but in some ways, the genocide is why we came. The Memorial Center is located at the foot of one of Kigali’s many hills, surrounded by mass graves and beautifully landscaped gardens with roses and fountains.

We took a cab, and when we asked the cabbie what he thought of the memorial he began to shake with nervousness. We didn’t understand all of his broken Swahili, but he seemed to say that the evil on display in the memorial center was still alive and well in Rwanda today. What must it be like for him to drive a steady stream of white tourists to stare at the unthinkable crimes committed by his own people against each other?

The first thing that struck us as we entered the dark hallways was that the written language of the exhibit was Kinyarwanda, with French and English in smaller letters near the floor. We had to get down on our knees to read some of the captions, but we were glad that the museum made the choice to put Kinyarwanda first, for it is most importantly a memorial for Rwandans, not for tourists, so that future generations of Rwandans will never forget, and never repeat the atrocities.

The exhibit begins with ancient Rwandan history, leads into colonialism when the Belgians exacerbated the split between Hutu and Tutsi, then documents the buildup in 1993 of the racist propaganda, inflammatory radio broadcasts of RTLM, the first massacres, and the pleas of the UN commander to the world that were repeatedly denied.

Then the genocide: terrible picture of corpses, copies of the identity cards that condemned people to death, actual weapons – machetes, clubs, knives, guns – still stained with blood, videos of the killings, interviews with survivors. We walked in silence, overwhelmed, angry, heartsick.

Finally we went upstairs, where the exhibit ends with the hall of children: life-sized pictures of beautiful children in the last photo ever taken of them. Below the picture, a small plaque states their name, their families’ memories of them, their favorite food, favorite toys, and then, the way they died…

“Hacked with a machete. Age 6.”
“Buried alive in a pit latrine. Age 4.”
“Thrown against a wall. Age 2 months.”
“Raped and shot in front of her family. Age 11.”

This was my breaking point. Looking at the smiling faces of the children and trying to connect those faces with their incomprehensible means of death, I slumped against a wall and began crying. Anette picked me up and we went out together into the garden with its mass graves, looking out onto the city where just yesterday, streets were rivers of blood and dogs and rats feasted on the bodies of the dead.