Memories

by Katherine

Having had a few days to recover from the emotional battering of the Kigali Memorial Centre, we decided to visit a rural genocide memorial in the village of Nyamata. Left largely as it was found, the roof of the empty church is riddled with bullet holes and the walls splattered with blackened blood. As we descend the purpose-built staircase into the mass grave, we are surrounded by human bones stacked neatly by the hundreds, next to rows of skulls bearing the obvious marks of the brutality experienced by those who were hoping they might be safe in this house of worship. Our emotions get the better of us, and we don’t linger long.

We decide we have had enough of genocide memorials, so we pass up the chance to visit the memorial at the technical college in Gikongoro in southwest Rwanda, for reasons that will become obvious from this description from our Lonely Planet travel guide: “This is one of the most graphic of the many genocide memorials, as hundreds of bodies have been preserved with powdered lime, left exactly as they looked when the killers struck. Wandering through the rooms at this former institute of learning, the scene becomes more and more macabre, beginning with the contorted corpses of adults and finishing with a room full of toddlers and babies, slashes from the machetes still visible on the shriveled bodies. This is horrific and not everyone can stomach it. It is, however, another poignant reminder to all of us what came to pass here and why it must never be allowed to happen again.”