Trigger warnings: Genocide, death, murder, eugenics. Photos limited to ones personally taken and that of my teammates (used with permission). No photos of brutality included, however personal accounts of my visit to various genocide memorials are included.
For more information on the Rwanda National Memorial please visit, https://www.kgm.rw/
A country the size of Maryland, USA, 800,000 (give or take, some say as many as 1,000,000) deaths. Imagine if the US Civil War happened only in Maryland, in 100 days! That was the Rwandan genocide.
What happened? Eugenics happened. Racial profiling to an extreme, the only outcome would be hatred and tensions that explode into genocidal proportions. Eugenics is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a population to increase certain inheritable traits or features. Basically, take the best, more often, physically desirable traits for the hopes of better "breeding stock". The open practice of eugenics came to an end after World War II. Hitler and his regime took the idea of eugenics and pushed it further and in more horrific ways then then anyone could've imagined. Hitler used the tenants of eugenics to justify his slaughter of millions of Jews during the holocaust.
The National Genocide Memorial was a beautiful location. Many gardens and fountains, places of reflection and peace. A museum and the burial place of over 250,000 victims of the genocide. It is beautiful and at the same time a malaise overshadows the place. It's a memorial of horror and death. Important for visitors to see, see the photos of victims and their families. Stories and accounts of survival and hope for the future. If you ever have the opportunity, this would be a must visit location. Thankfully for me, it was our first of many genocide memorials that we visited. Get your toes wet, as they say, start small and then start to wade into the deep end.
On one of our stops was to see the Murambi Genocide Memorial (warning graphic images). It was a beautiful drive into the southern mountainous regions of Rwanda. It was a rainy, overcast and yet beautiful day. We arrive at the school. I asked, "school?", yes school. A new school was being built, in fact it was about 75% done, structures in place, just finishing work was needed.
During the genocide, some 65,000 Tutsi's (and sympathizers) gathered at the school for refuge. In short, they were surrounded, no food, no water. To leave the compound meant death by machete or spade. Staying meant death by starvation or worse. You'd be to weak to run and the kill would be quick. Some 45,000 people were killed at the school, others that escaped were killed within days as they sought refuge in a local church or while they were on the run. One thing that makes this memorial different than most, was that well meaning French military, figured they would help bury the bodies (that they were supposed to be protecting). They buried the bodies in lye, in hopes it would help the bodies decay quicker. It did the opposite and near perfectly preserved them, in a white cast of pain and death.
For me, this site was particularly traumatizing. See, for weeks before I went to Rwanda, I had a reoccurring dream. The dream was someone running, then falling to the ground with their achilles heel cut. I didn't know what that dream meant at the time. But when I visited the Murambi memorial, I heard the stories of the slaughter, I saw the preserved bodies of the victims. Heels cut, so they couldn't run, heels cut to easier go for the kill. Thankfully, I was one of many people in my group, counselors, pastors and friends. I was in good hands and they were able to help me out of that place of trauma. Helped me to understand that dream may have been a foreshadowing or warning about what I was about to witness. I am extremely thankful I was with the group of people.
One thing about that trauma that still gets me today, the smell of dried bones, the smell of death brings me back to the body filled class rooms of Murambi.
The final genocide memorial (of sorts) we went to was at the Rusumo Falls Tanzania border crossing. The falls are beautiful. Then you hear the story of bodies and blood stained water flowing during the genocide. Thankfully that wasn't the case the day we were there.
Page citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
https://www.kgm.rw/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murambi_Genocide_Memorial_Centre
Photo credits: Ian Dort & Gerry Gardner, used with permission