Murambi

On Tuesday, July 27, we went to visit the genocide memorial at Murambi. It was a sunny but windy day. I knew that this would be a difficult day. I had seen many pictures of Murambi, and I knew that last year Rich’s wife Kim had been completely overwhelmed at Murambi. I knew it had an unforgettable odour and I knew it was would be very disturbing.

The drive was fairly long, along the new, yet familiar twisting and turning mountain roads. This memorial is set at the top of a hill. So was Nyarubuye, and so also would be Bississero which we would visit later. We encountered some children by the roadside when we stopped at a place that had historic interest. I took a little video of them and I have posted it at the bottom of this post.

We arrived a little ahead of schedule. A guide came out to greet us, the ubiquitous armed guard was nearby. The guide said we could not go into the memorial until it had had about 30 minutes to air out. He said it smelled of death and decay. The memorial is locked up every night, and needs some time to air out in the morning. His words made me anxious. First the guard explained what had happened at Murambi: On April 16, just ten days after the genocide began, Tutsis from all around had gathered at the local church looking for sanctuary. This is a tale we have heard before. This time, instead of being welcomed into the church to be killed, the priest sent them to the school at the top of the mountain at Murambi. There he told them, they would be safe, that they would be protected by the French soldiers who were in the area. He was setting them up. There was an aid worker with CARITAS in the neighbourhood, a Catholic charity. She came to the mountain top to see about providing food to the Tutsis gathered there. She told them to count themselves so she would know how much food to bring. She said she only needed to know how many adults were there.

In the meantime, with all of the Tutsis gathered on the top of the hill, the Interahamwe and the Rwandan Army cut off the electricity and water supply to the top of the hill. Now there was no water at the school, no washrooms. When the aid worker returned the next day she was told that there were fifty two thousand adults at the site, and children on top of that. That is how we know how many people were killed.

There were intermittent skirmishes between the Tutsis on the hill and the Rwandan army. On April 21, with the French army nowhere to be seen, the killing started in earnest. When the Rwandan army attacked, they used grenades and machine guns and the Interahamwe joined in using those weapons too, plus traditional weapons. The people were all killed in one day, which is pretty hard to imagine - fifty-two thousand, plus children, in one day. The mind reels at the horror. The guide said some Tutsis, maybe as many as fifteen thousand managed to get away to a local church, but they were found and killed, all of them.

Of the people who remained on the hill, about twenty managed to escape, and four survived, hiding under the dead. One of those people was Emmanuel, who lost his entire family, wife, children and other relatives. He comes to the memorial every day. He has a bullet hole in his head. After the guide explained all of this, we started the tour. First we went to the mass memorial tombs. They were quite extensive, as you would expect they would be given the number of dead at the site. Typical of the mass tombs we had already encountered, they were covered in ceramic tiling, but they did not have stairs that you could go down to see the bones. Murambi is different. Finally after 30 minutes of airing, the rest of the memorial was ready to be visited.

This was a former school. There are four or five long buildings that were divided up into classrooms in happier days. Now these former-classrooms hold the preserved, but desiccated bodies of the people murdered at Murambi. In room after room, on low tables made of slotted wood, we saw body after body, covered in white powder, twisted into grotesque poses. The guides told us that these were the positions that the bodies were in when found. Some of the people had their arms up in defensive poses. Some had their feet cut off – this prevented them from running away so they could be killed later. One is still wearing a wedding ring. Some were children my little nephew’s size and smaller with their heads bashed in. One woman had a sizable piece of wood protruding still, sixteen years later, from her private parts. It was too much for some in our group.

The smell really does hit you like a wall when you first walk in, but this is not the smell of death, it is the smell of lime, a preservative. Still, it is unnerving. We were in groups of four because there is not much room in the classrooms for large groups with all of the dead people. I was in the first group. By the time we left the first classroom everyone was crying but me. I don’t say that because I am tough, far from it. I stood and took photos. In room after room, I took photos. While other people were crying, I felt myself getting angrier and angrier. Every time that I came out of one of the rooms with the bodies, I felt angrier. Yes it was sad, and horrifying.  But it made me angry to think that this evidence, these bodies, were here because of one group's genocidal intent, and because of the lack of international intervention. One of the guides was a woman, and she was following us along carrying a roll of toilet paper in her hand, and another roll under her arm. She was doling out the toilet paper to all of the people who were crying. By the end of this, there were many in the group who were completely undone. I just felt myself getting angrier by the minute. I felt like my head would explode.

An interesting note I should point out about Murambi was its effect on us as a group. Normally pictures that we had taken of the genocide memorials that had some or all of us in it, show us as a fairly cohesive group walking in smaller groups of two, three or four. One shot of us at Murambi has us all separated by a good bit of space. It was so hard to get one's head around that we must have all subconsciously sought solitude. If I can find the picture, I will post it here or in the photos of Murambi.

The guide showed us some open mass graves that the dead had been tossed into after the massacre. He said not all of the area had been excavated for bodies yet. It seemed hard to believe that there could be even more dead waiting to be found. Charles and I discussed this situation for a little bit and then we were called inside to the education centre to listen to the presentation there. We went upstairs to the education centre in the main building and the guide discussed the situation with us further. Then Emmanuel came in and told us his story, which as you can imagine, was harrowing, having lost his wife, children and other relatives.

Afterwards, standing by the bus, our wonderful, official government guide came up to talk to me. Charles, I said, this might be the most horrifying thing I have ever seen in my whole life, and while I am sad, I am also really angry. And he said he was angry too. We talked for some time about what had transpired here. It was a really windy day as anyone who listens to my audio memos that I recorded at Murambi can attest to. When I was talking with Charles after viewing the remains of the victims, I felt that the wind blowing on me was overwhelming. It felt like it was just one more piece of input and I couldn't handle it. I wanted the wind to lift me up and carry me away from there.

Emmanuel is interesting to me: he comes to this memorial every day. He lives in his town along side the people who killed his family and tried to kill him. I don’t know how he can do it, frankly. It is outside my ability to imagine. Emmanuel asked if we could give him a lift back down the hill into town as we were leaving. He had brought his bike up to the memorial but he left it behind. He said he would return later to get the bike. I wanted to ask him so many questions but I didn't think it was appropriate. I think he is a person of enormous strength of character. He left me speechless. Murambi left me speechless, and that says a great deal.