Nyamata memorial

Yesterday we made it to Nyamata, about an hour's drive from Kigali, to visit the site of one of the biggest massacres - a church turned memorial and resting place for 10,000 Tutsis.

It blows me away. No matter how much i know/ read/ hear about the genocide, any semblance of information and rationalization I muster up just crumbles the moment i enter these palces, blown away by the enormity and - this seems trite - the irrationality and intensity of evil.

In contrast with the memorial in Kigali which is filled with information, where the genocide is almost rationalized and presented in a single and consistent historical, cultural and political narrative, the guide at Nyamata (who was also a survivor) didn't speak any English or French and we barely managed to put together bits and pieces about what happened in those few hours. The "Greater Picture" disappears as it should, and you are left utterly confused and depressed.

As one survivor interviewed at the Kigali memorial put it - Rwanda was no longer of this earth. It's as if someone erased it from the map.

Paige and I talked about this into the night - she seemed mostly struck by the religious dynamic - that Rwanda can be such a religious country despite the events of 1994, when Churches were turned into sites of massacres as refugees mistakenly expected to find a sanctuary in these spaces they had all shared, nuns and pastors facilitated and sometimes even took part in the killings.
But now the country is spotted with churches like this one - big and empty, with splatters of blood on the walls and the roof, where the alter is decorated with the victims' belongings and where the benches are covered with dozens of bags of bones - 15 bodies per bag, these are only the ones that have been identified.


PS: Happy Valentine's Day.