The day after Murambi, I woke up and there seemed to be something thick in my sternum. I felt sick. It was the smell of Murambi.
The drive to Butare was beautiful. I tried to catch the passing scenes.
When we reached Butare, we went to the King's Palace and I took some pictures on my film camera. The guide led us through the king's hut and then to his palace. We stopped by a field and saw the longhorn cattle with glossy fur; a man in rain boots climbed into the pasture and chose one cow to demonstrate traditional cow singing. He began singing and led the cow to the fence; he sang praises in Kinyarwanda: "You are so beautiful; you give us precious milk." The cow's head sank to the ground and he stood hypnotized. When the man finished his praises, the cow lifted his head and grazed the man's face, first with his nose, then with his tongue.
After the king's palace, we went to the Ethnographic Museum of History. It was fascinating to see the developments of traditions through history.
Then, we went to Murambi.
Murambi is a technical school on a hill surrounded by many other hills. The mist was heavy that day, but I could see all the houses that enveloped this hiding place. This was not a hiding place at all. But more than 50,000 took refuge here and hoped to live. And those who lived in the surrounding hills kept count of who came to Murambi; genocide ideology was thick here -- in ministers, businessmen, farmers and political leaders. All were watching.
Like Nyamata, Murambi has kept the remains of those who were killed here; most of them have not been identified. There are 25 rooms of remains. Or, I should be more specific -- there are 25 rooms of remains that have been mummified. They were found in shallow graves; the dirt was cold, so their skin remains. And now, in those 25 rooms, you can see the figures of emaciated bodies, some with their mouths gaping in a scream. (For pictures: http://homepage.mac.com/stevesimonphoto/Murambi%20Memorial/index.html).
There is one room, The Children's Room, that is filled with infants and small children, their white skins dusty and rigid. In another room, two skins are latched together -- that of a mother and a child -- by a piercing spear.
To be killed holding your own child...to be killed trying to protect your child...
What happened here?
Murambi Technical School was painted to be a haven. The French Army told Tutsis they would be safe here, but when the school was full, they retreated. They cut off the water and electricity and waited for the Hutus to prey upon their fished victims. When these Tutsis realized their protectors had abandoned them, they gathered rocks to fight off the Hutus, but after a couple days the rocks were no more. They were overtaken and massacred.
There is a field behind the brick buildings where the bodies are kept. In the field, there is a sign about the French Army -- the army that felt nothing human, only villainous pride for their country and their language. After the Hutus had finished their "work," the French Army buried the mutilated and disfigured bodies in mass graves behind the school and played volleyball on top of the freshly planted graves.
Humanity, humanity, humanity, where did you go?
We felt overwhelmed in the presence of these ghosts that did not seem fully dead. Like Nyamata, again I wanted to sit with them. But I did not. Instead, we folded into each other and sobbed loudly. Our guide, a genocide survivor, was afraid of our noises and walked away, leaving us with the bodies. She witnessed genocide, yet she still cannot witness a vocal emotional response to the memory of massacre.
When we walked back to the front of the school, we sat on the steps and did not speak. We were all trying to swallow but there was some kind of obstruction. I did not know what to say. I did not know what to write. I opened my journal and bent to the ground; I pressed the blank, open page into the dirt and scraped and scraped until the sound of grainy dissonance seemed permanent. I did not know what to write. But I wanted to remember.
Now, the smell of air contacting dead skin is permanent in me.
Yanna
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