Bisesero

On Wednesday, July 28, we departed from the Centre Bethanie to visit the genocide memorial at Bisesero, also known as the Hill of Resistance.

The Bisesero story is a sad one, as tragic as the other massacres in the genocide. The Bisesero massacre has two extraordinary features: over 55,000 individuals were murdered at Bisesero, making it the largest single massacre in the genocide, and these brave Tutsis managed to hold off the Interahamwe and the Rwandan Army from April to July, when the killing was eventually over. This area had been, in the days before the genocide, predominately Tutsi, but a sizeable number of Hutu also lived in the area. Out of fear of their Hutu neighbours, the Tutsi from this prefecture gathered together for strength and to resist their killers. They gathered on a series of hills, one of those hills being the hill where the memorial now stands. The Tutsi people hid in holes and other secret spots during the day when the Hutu were more likely to attack, and that way the casualties were not so severe at the beginning, although they were bad enough.

The Tutsis held off their killers for a while using traditional weapons and rocks, which they threw down the hills at their attackers. Unable to make quick work of the Tutsis gathered on the hills, the Hutu made appeals to other Hutu living in the area, and a huge number of Hutu came from towns far and wide in the prefecture and made their way to Bisesero to participate in the killing of these people. The Hutu came with modern weapons, and the stones and traditional weapons of the Tutsi were no match for these.

The French were mixed up in this too. As we now know, Operation Turquoise, ostensibly an effort to help the embattled Tutsis, was really just a ruse to help the Hutu kill, and in July, to help them escape the country into neighbouring Congo. At one point, when there were only a few thousand Tutsis left alive on the hill, the French army came to the mountain. Thinking they were saved, the Tutsis came out of their hiding spots and came down to meet the French. The French said they would be back in three days. Who comes to help vicitims in a genocide and then disappears for three days? The remaining Tutsis were now in dire straits, having come out of hiding: now the Hutu knew where they were. There is evidence to suggest that this was the goal of the French, that they knew exactly what would happen to the Tutsis. The Hutu made short work of the people who were left. The French, of course, claim they did not know the Tutsi would be killed. I can’t quite believe that. There had to be thousands of dead people on those hills by the time the French arrived. Unburied dead people make themselves known very quickly.

Afterwards, after the genocide was over, a group of survivors gathered up the bones of the dead from the surrounding hills and made a memorial at Bisesero.

We arrived at the memorial a few hours after leaving the Centre Bethanie. Although the drive was a short one, no more than 30 kilometers, it was almost entirely on dirt roads once we were out of Kibuye, which is only about two kilometers from the Centre Bethanie. The trip took almost two hours. I don’t think we went at a normal speed at any point on the trip. The last five to ten kilometers were covered at a speed not much faster than a very brisk walk, because the road was so steep and rutted. My guide book says the prudent traveler would take a four-wheel drive or all-terrain vehicle up the mountain. We went in a bus with the intrepid Olivier at the wheel.

We arrived at the memorial, and two guides came out to meet us. Before we started up the hill, we were directed to go into a corrugated metal shed which was about as long as my house and about 15 feet wide. Inside this building, on slatted shelves were thousands of skulls, and below them, many more thousands of leg bones and arm bones. The guide told us that there were more remains than could be fit into the mass memorial graves and that these individuals would be kept here until more space was made available.

Back outside at the bottom of the path that went up the hill, the guides told us that the memorial itself tells the story of the struggle. The memorial consists of nine buildings, representing the nine districts or communes, as they called them, in the area. The path that connects the buildings starts off as a smooth wide path, but gets narrower, steeper and harder to negotiate (in some places there are huge stones cemented into the pathways and steps, meaning you practically have to climb over them) until you get to the very top of the hill, where there is a large memorial mass grave. The increasing difficulty of the climb up the hill represents the struggle of the Tutsis as they fended off the Hutu. It was quite windy at the top of the hill, giving us an idea of the type of weather conditions these brave people had to struggle with. In a number of buildings, there are semi-circular rooms which will eventually house some of the remains that we saw in the shed at the bottom of the hill, so that they can be seen and remembered by visitors.

At the top of the hill we were listening to our guides explain a few things to us. They were both survivors of the genocide and the attack at Bisesero. I felt extremely grateful and humbled that they would tell us their stories of survival. The younger chap, who was only 15 at the time of the genocide, had a huge machete scar on his leg. I noticed that there were many memorial wreaths hanging in the trees below the mass memorial grave. I mistakenly assumed that people had placed them there in memory of loved ones who had died on the hill. In actual fact, these wreathes had been placed on the mass memorial graves, but the wind is so strong on the hill that it blew the wreathes and flowers into the trees. Still, it was a poignant sight.

At some point during their talk I suddenly began to feel unwell, and had to walk over to a low stone wall and lean back against the fence. Graham, one of the fellows on the trip, came over and asked me if I felt ok. I said no (normally I don’t admit when I don’t feel well, but I have to say, I felt dreadful) I asked him if he had any water on him, because I didn’t and he said yes, and he gave it to me, and I found myself drinking someone else’s water. I took a gravol out of my purse and swallowed it down, and then hoped and prayed that it would have a chance to work because I was really afraid that I was going to pass out or something. I felt tingly all over, in a really scary way, but I do not believe I was having a heart attack. Graham said he thought it might be something like altitude sickness, and I agreed with him. As most people who know me know, I am a thorough hypochondriac, but I was pretty certain that I was not having a heart attack. After about 15 minutes, I was feeling better, Graham said I was pinker, and we headed back down the mountain, but down the other side. Olivier had driven the bus around to the other side to meet us. The trip down was easier than the trip up. I was initially a little apprehensive about going down because there was one more set of stairs to go up to get to the top to begin the descent, but there were not a lot of stairs and so I was ok.

On the way down, I was lost in my own thoughts about how terrible it must have been and how terrified the people on the hill must have been when two of the people on the trip asked if I would translate the words of one of the guides for them. We were all sort of spread out on our way down, and I found myself with my sister Linda, Colleen and Daniel, Heather, and the younger of the two guides. (The guides only spoke French and Kinyarwanda, and Shyrna had been translating on the hill.) Of course I said I would be happy to, and then the guide started telling his story. He said they would make new hiding places every day, and that they didn’t use the same place twice, that they could never be sure that everyone would make it through the day. He said he frequently dug holes and literally buried himself in the ground. I could barely believe my ears, and I thought, again, of the horror he must have faced. Finally, towards the end of the siege, he suffered a terrible machete slash wound on his leg. By this time, the French had returned from their “three day” absence. They wanted to cut his leg off right there and then, but he said no, and a lucky thing too, because he seemed to be walking just fine. He said that the French gave them a choice after it was all over, and the Hutu had left. They said that the survivors could stay with the French, or go with the RPF when they arrived. The French would not give food aid to the Tutsis who said they wanted to go with the RPF.

The French have a lot to answer for, I can tell you that.

At this point we said our goodbyes. I shook hands with that young man, and climbed back on the bus. We were kind of quiet as we drove back to the Centre Bethanie, but it didn’t seem to take as long to go back as it did to go up.

Graham had organized a boat tour of the lake (Lake Kivu, you will recall, the explosive lake). I still was feeling slightly wonky (but very much improved) by the time we got back, so I declined to go on the boat tour, which I have to say, I slightly regret. But given the fact that I had trouble on the hill at Bisesero, and that when the happy boaters returned they said they had had a huge hill to climb, I am satisfied with my decision to stay home. I sat on my lovely little verandah at the bottom of all the stairs and worked on my audio memos while things were still fresh in my mind. I am glad I did that.

By the way, when I was sitting on that low stone wall with my back to the fence, I knew for sure that I would not be able to go on the gorilla trek.