Once, They Had Names

In the mass memorial graves we visited - the crypts at Nyamata and Ntarama, the cloisters at Nyarubuye, the corrugated steel shed at Bisesero, the classrooms in the former school at Murambi, I saw thousands and thousands and thousands of skulls and many, many more leg bones and arm bones. There were so many more dead people than names on the memorial walls at each site.  I suspect that this is because many of the people who might have been able to identify the dead people were dead themselves.  At Nyarubuye there were two mass graves: on one side of the cemetery were individuals whose identity was known, on the other side of the cemetery, the much larger side, were individuals whose identity was unknown.  At some memorials there were only partial lists of names, at others, no names at all. In some places people were listed simply as "boy" or "girl" or "Family".

They are anonymous, these bones. These stark displays of human remains are a touch macabre, and are made more so by the curious separation of the skulls from the long bones. Perhaps this is less a local style of arranging remains than it is an exigency caused by the manner of death, and the length of time between the death of the victim, and the placement of the victim in the memorial. Perhaps it was necessitated by the sheer numbers of the dead.

These were people: mothers, fathers, children, siblings, friends, neighbours. Once upon a time they probably thought their lives were unremarkable, and it would never have dawned on them that the world would be more interested in them when they were dead than when they were alive. That is the sad way of it, though.

Once, they were alive, they had dreams, passions, plans, a future.

Once, they had names.