The Murambi Genocide Memorial

This is the second entry about my trip to Rwanda. You may want to start at the beginning.

This entry is very disturbing and has photos of corpses. Don't read it unless you're prepared to see them (Mom, you should skip this one). Instead, you can read about my journey home (coming soon).

My last day in Rwanda. I decided to go see the Murambi Memorial, which is in the southwest part of the country. I woke up early again, around 6:30, and was surprised to find that Kigali was almost deserted. The streets of Kampala are packed the moment the sun rises, but I guess people sleep later in Kigali. I couldn't find a place for breakfast until seven.

I decided to try Atraco Bus, went to the station and bought a ticket to Butare. The bus started empty, but we picked up a full load at Nyabugogo Bus Station. The drive was fine until a boy down the row started vomiting. Also his mother, sitting next to me, kept spitting into a plastic bag (and plastic bags are illegal in Rwanda -- they seize them at the airport). That was pleasant. I insisted on having the window wide open so I could breathe fresh air, and that caused some friction with other passengers, who apparently wanted to breathe horrible vomit air. The window stayed open.

Butare was about two hours away -- it took a little longer than that because we stopped in a number of small towns to pick up and discharge passengers. Finally we arrived and I hopped out. The taxi park was basically a big dirt field with a bunch of minibuses in it.

Outside of Kigali, not many people speak English. A lot of people were curious about why there was a white dude standing around. I wandered a bit asking for the taxi to Gikongoro before I found someone whose English was good enough to correct my pronunciation -- it's "ji-KONG-or-o", it turns out. He showed me which minibus to take and suggested it would be slow, but I wasn't in a hurry. When the share taxi was half-full, we started out, driving to another dirt lot behind a gas station where a bunch more share taxis were waiting. We all climbed out and into another one and we were off.

It was about a thirty minute ride in this one to the Gikongoro. The Gikongoro bus station was a bit nicer, with a big fence around it, though the town is much smaller. Outside of the bus station I took a boda to the Murambi Memorial. It was about a mile or two downhill on a dirt road. At the memorial, I took the driver's number so I could call him when I was done.

When I walked up to the memorial, a woman wordlessly came out to meet me and gestured for me to follow. We walked around the new museum building to the older technical college buildings behind it. She unlocked a room and gestured for me to enter.

Inside were two large tables. Spread out on the tables were dozens of corpses that had been soaked in lye to preserve them. The lye had leached out all the color, so the corpses were a dull matte white. The air was still. The sour smell of lye pervaded the room. An angry wasp was buzzing in the corner.

Murambi used to be a technical school. In 1994, when the genocide started, Tutsis in the region fled to the local church. The bishop and the mayor met with them and told them that they would be safe in Murambi, where troops that were stationed in the region would protect them. Tens of thousands of Tutsis went to the school and barricaded themselves in.

The government immediately cut the water and power and the soldiers disappeared. The people tried to defend themselves with stones, but after a few days without water they were too weak to hold out. The militias overran the school and killed fifty thousand people, most of whom were buried in mass graves surrounding the school.

After the genocide, some of the bodies that had been buried here were exhumed. The clothing was removed and the bodies were soaked in lye. The lye leached the water out of the tissue but preserved the skeletons and much of the rest of the bodies. The effect was to dry them out and preserve them. The rooms of the college are filled with the preserved corpses.

I wasn't going to take photos. I wasn't even really going to do anything except stand there horrified. But as I stood in the room, the woman gestured toward my camera. I looked at her and she gestured more forcefully. In retrospect, I guess it makes sense -- they did this so it would be seen. Anyway, thinking about them as photographic subjects was easier than thinking about them as people.

Most of the corpses were adults, but some were children. In many cases the cause of death was clear: Many of the skulls had large gashes in them. Some of the ribcages had what were probably machete wounds. Others looked like they had been killed with masu, which are clubs studded with nails. A few of the children were missing large pieces of their skulls.

I staggered out of the room and the woman nodded at me and led me to the next room, which she unlocked. The layout was similar, two large tables covered in preserved corpses. More of these were children. Most were naked, but some of them were wearing shreds of clothing. I'm not sure if they were preserved and then dressed again, or if the clothing survived the preservation process.

The involvement of the pastor in the massacre at Murambi is typical of what happened across the country. Church officials in Rwanda mostly supported the genocide. One famous story involves two thousand refugees who had taken shelter at a hospital in Mugonero. They heard that the hospital would be attacked the next day, and seven pastors wrote a letter to the president of their local church, Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, which said:

How are you! We wish you to be strong in all these problems we are facing. We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. We therefore request you to intervene on our behalf and talk with the Mayor. We believe that, with the help of God who entrusted you the leadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your intervention will be highly appreciated, the same way as the Jews were saved by Esther. We give honour to you.

Ntakirutimana replied, "There is nothing I can do for you. All you can do is prepare to die, for your time has come."

Rwandans all over the country sought sanctuary in churches, and all over the country they were killed. More Tutsis were killed in churches than anywhere else. In some churches so many people were gathered that the militias had to spread the killings over many days, cutting the victims' Achilles tendons so they couldn't run away in the interim. Several church officials were brought up on war crimes charges.

A man walked over and took the job of unlocking the doors for me. He led me to four more rooms similar to the first two. Although the preservation process changed the form of their bodies, their personhood wasn't suppressed or concealed. There was more than just skull and bones, and in the flesh that was left you could clearly see the shape of the face, the expression frozen in death. And there were little touches of humanity. One of the bodies was still wearing a rosary; she held it in her hand as she died.

The lye had left most of the bodies bald, though a few here and there still had a little hair left.

Most of the victims of the genocide were bludgeoned to death or were cut with machetes or bashed with clubs. The militias generally tortured their victims before killing them, often amputating limbs one at a time. Soldiers began offering to shoot Tutsis in the head for a price, to spare them the torture. Many who could afford it accepted.

After the sixth room, the guide led me to the second building. The first room had on one side a table with preserved corpses, but on the other was a different layout. One side of the table was covered in a very large pile of bones. I think they were femurs -- they were fairly large and regular. The other side was covered in skulls. As with the bodies, the fatal wounds were often obvious. He indicated that the rest of the rooms were similar to the ones before, and he wasn't inclined to show them to me. I didn't argue.

Churches were not the only places where people failed to find sanctuary. In hospitals, doctors killed their colleagues, patients, and refugees as they arrived. Some of the most horrible massacres were in maternity wards, where people fled thinking that no one would kill newborn babies. Schoolchildren ran to their schools only to be killed by their teachers. The chairman of a human rights organization was charged with complicity in the murder of twelve thousand people.

The guide then led me into a large room with bookshelves full of clothing and explained that it was the clothing of the victims. Then we went out back. The museum had markers to show the spot where the French flag had been planted, and this sign indicated the spot where the French soldiers played "volley". I was a bit confused because France didn't send troops in until two months after the massacres here and I didn't realize they reached this far south.

Then he led me to the mass graves. As with everywhere in Rwanda, the scenery here was beautiful. This was probably the most incongruous experience I've ever had -- looking at a mass grave with beautiful rolling hills fading into the mist beyond it, listening to the sounds of children laughing and playing. After, he led me to room with a guest book and donation jar.

When the RPF took over Rwanda and stopped the genocide, they had to shoot all the dogs. They had developed a taste for human flesh.

This picture shows one of the mass graves after excavation. Across the country, Rwanda exhumed the bodies and reburied them in consecrated graves.

Article XIII of the Rwandan Constitution provides that "Revisionism, negationism and trivialisation of genocide are punishable by the law." In other words, it is illegal to question the government's version of the facts. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Articles LXXVI and LXXXII require that thirty percent of Rwanda's parliament and senate be female. It was felt by the drafters that women would not allow similar atrocities to occur again. Rwanda recently became the first country in history to elect a parliament that's more than fifty percent female.

I called my driver and sat to wait. The guide asked if I could wait while my moto took him to grab lunch, and of course I didn't mind, but then another visitor showed up and he had to abandon his lunch plans.

The rest of my trip to Butare is coming soon.

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