Ntarama Genocide Memorial

Yesterday, I woke up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday and caught up with the news through Google Reader and e-mail. Our water has not been working for several days now, but our friend and "housekeeper" Tete gathered some from the collection point in the middle of Nyamata. Amir and I spent most of the morning at our computers chatting about everything from politics to religion, with our front door and window wide open, letting in the warm Rwandan air. Our landlord's daughter Ange ran into town and bought some chapatti, which we filled with beans and rice in the spirit of a burrito. As we ate our makeshift burritos, we talked about homosexuality and religion, approaching the topics from different perspectives, but open in our views and gracious in our criticisms.

Later that afternoon, we left our cosy house for the wide-open spaces of the main road that runs through rural Rwanda. We ended up walking several miles down all the way down to Ntarama. As we came up on the town, we accepted rides from two bicycle taxis or "boda bodas" as they are called in Kenya. I had forgotten the joy of coasting along at a leisurely pace that allows you to take in the full scenery, while also enjoying a refreshing breeze that cools skin that has been assaulted by the equatorial sun all day. It sure beats cramming up next to smelly strangers in steamy matatu death traps or viewing terrain from inside a moto helmet that may or may not be giving you a fungal head disease. I actually love the thrill of motos, but enjoyed the slower pace of the bicycle on this particular day.

Our destination was the genocide memorial at Ntarama, a church where 5,000 people met their end from grenades, hammers, clubs, and machetes. Going to this site, I did not know this information and had no idea what to expect, especially after seeing two very different memorials as Gisosi and Nyamata. This one was strikingly similar to the church at Nyamata, although smaller in scale and nestled in a beautiful enclosure of hills and banana trees. 

When I entered the building from the back, the deafening silence of the place washed over me and I felt as if I were being swallowed by the dark sanctuary.  Rows of skulls and bones line a giant shelf that stretches to the ceiling, many indicating the cause of death: a machete gash in the skull, a bullet hole, puncture marks from nail-covered clubs. 

Looking forward to the altar reveals a chilling view partially obstructed by thousands of clothes hanging from the rafters and covering the walls, the actual clothes of the victims.  Parts of the pews are missing where people pried them up in an attempt to defend themselves.  There are huge grenade holes in several walls.  Dust swims slowly in thin streams of light beaming through shrapnel holes in the tin roof.

At the front of the church, our guide showed us weapons that had actually been used in the ghastly event. She physically picked them up one by one to show us. 

Nothing is behind glass, nothing is restored or repainted. The place seems to be exactly as it was at the time of the attack, save for the bodies which have been removed and whose bones have been organized on the shelves, whose clothes now fill the holy space with a sobering reminder of humanity's capability for evil.

A small classroom and a kitchen behind the church give a similar feeling. The classroom has nothing in it but pew-like benches which served as the desks, and the dried blood and brain matter of the small children who were picked up by the feet and slammed into the brick wall.

The kitchen floor is littered with parts of bones and a few large tufts of hair, likely burned from the victim’s heads by fire that was thrown into the building to kill its inhabitants. This structure is badly burned and is in the same disarray to which it was reduced 15 years ago.

Leaving this haunting, yet sacred place, Amir and I signed the guestbook. On the comments section, I wrote “Love is Truth is Power.” Amir wrote “Mankind is capable of extreme love and extreme hate. Let us choose love.”