I have to be honest

It's getting harder to write blog posts. In fact, I've avoided doing it for a couple days now. The pictures I want to show you don't entirely match the feelings I've been experiencing. So, I don't know how to break it up. I don't know what to say. I don't even know who's reading this.

I was hoping to document all aspects of my days, but that is hard. First of all, when we go to memorial sites and visit survivors and perpetrators, I am listening and observing, and in most instances, I feel disrespectful taking a picture. I don't know what this blog is. It's not just me posting a picture with a caption, "Pic of the memorial site. Had fun today!" Even just joking about that makes me uncomfortable. What I am experiencing is important, and I believe every single person should experience this. But, on that note, I am finding it hard to communicate. Usually, I find that I am best with words. But this is hard. I don't know what else to say. It's hard.

But I'll try.

I don't want you to read this and look at my pictures and feel sorry for any of the people I tell you about. I don't want you to feel pity. That's not what this is about. This is about humanity. This is about communication. And this is about truth. This is not only about opening oneself up to the traditions of a culture and understanding the political, economic and social constructs of a society, but also remembering the core of being. What happens when part of a population fails at maintaining its humanity? What happens when someone loses part of their being? That's what this is about. There is no pity in that. There is no egocentrism. There is no ethnocentrism in that, and in fact, if there is, that is one of the elements that propels this sort of behavior. We are not invincible. We are not better. As an international community, we cut clear distinctions and divisions; we do not wish to connect, truly. And because of this, we fail when humanity challenges us.

We are not invincible.

Armenia, 1915 - 1918.

Eastern Europe, 1941 - 1945.

Cambodia, 1975 - 1979.

Argentina, 1976 - 1983.

Bosnia, 1992 - 1995.

Rwanda, 1994.

How did this happen? How did it all happen? You cannot ignore it.

Even now, I am facing a wall. I have so many thoughts; I don't know how to continue. I will start with yesterday.

We drove to Nyamata, a village about 30 minutes south of Kigali, and during the ride I just wanted to be silent. Ellen was snapping pictures because she's good at catching the right moment of passing trees and scenery. Me, I just looked. I wish I could show you. We tried to catch all the evanescent hills while Emmanuel told us the story of how and where his family had been killed and how he had pretended to be Hutu in order to survive as he traveled through the bush. There was a dichotomy of vision as we traveled; I imagined the farms, river, hills, fields, cows, goats and homes as they were in the present, and I imagined them as they were in 1994. That is how I feel when we travel or walk through Kigali. That is how I feel when we pass over the bridge where the UN Senegalese officer Captain Mbaye Diagne was killed by a random mortar shell that landed near his Jeep. Although Diagne worked for the UN, he ignored their commands to not intervene and conducted solo missions to save Tutsis. It is unknown how many Tutsis he saved, but no matter the exact number, he was one of the just.

I am always thinking of 1994.

When we reached Nyamata, we pulled up to the gates of a church. It was the Nyamata memorial site (http://www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/old/centre/other/nymata.html). A young woman with braids gave us a tour; it actually went quite quickly. Everyone was silent. We walked into the church to heavy piles of clothing sitting on the pews, bullet holes casting tiny openings of dusty light onto the floor and remnants of blood on the walls. This church is where approximately 2500 people were trapped and murdered after being separated into groups. The children were forced into one corner of the church and they watched as their parents, siblings, relatives and friends were killed with machetes and clubs; they thought they might be spared. But they were killed last; many of the infants were killed after being smashed or thrown against the wall. Downstairs, the remains of the bodies have been maintained in glass cases. There are skulls lined up one after another to show the brutality of the murders and the way the machetes were used to massacre. On many skulls, you can see the swiping scar of a deadly machete blow. It looks much like a crescent moon that has been pulled tightly at both ends. Underneath the glass cases, there is one coffin that is decorated with a silk covering and a brown cross. It is a woman who was raped and then horrifically mutilated; the perpetrators inserted a spike into her vagina and left her for dead. Outside of the church there are burial sites. Under the burial sites are more remains -- this time skulls, bones and other coffins.

These people trusted a higher spirit, they trusted their priest, they trusted the church. And they were not safe.

When the tour was over, I went back inside the church and sat on a ledge where I could see all of the pews. There were striped shirts, torn hats, sneakers -- all overwhelmed with dust. I cried. No matter my spiritual beliefs, I felt that I needed to sit with them for awhile. I could feel them in the church with me, and I cringed and cringed to see their faces. I wanted to know them and see them there with me. I wanted to shake their hands and tell them I that I am sorry. I wanted to take full responsibility for their deaths, even though I did not kill them, because I know that their justice is slow and nonexistent. Even so, they calmed me when I was sitting in the church with them, and I did not want to leave.

And here I am again, I think I've hit another wall. I feel the gravity. And there is dissonance within me when I think about now, the post-genocide society, and the memory and reality of sitting in the Nyamata church.

How can we reconcile this? How can we rebuild ourselves? How can we prove that we are really doing this, and not just moving on?

Thank you for reading this, whoever you are. I think your eyes are important. But please remember to not forget.

I will leave you with a simple thought one of our lecturers said today when discussing reconciliation politics.

"We have trees all over these hills that we cut down, but we do not extract the roots. If we do not extract these roots, we are in trouble. But we do not think this way. But we must."

Yanna