Genocide Museum

How do you begin to talk about the tragedy that was the Rwandan Genocide? I have so many thoughts and questions in my head that I need to process, so this may not be very organized.

This morning we took a bus ride to one of the Rwandan genocide memorials in Kigali (there are many around the country, and more than one in this city). We were first shown the mass graves which are outside in a very pretty courtyard with flowers. The mass graves are big holes filled with hundreds of caskets. Each casket has around five bodies in it. They are covered with concrete slabs. Families that find the remains of a loved one can bring the bones to be buried here and give information to be collected by the researchers that work here.

Inside we walked through corridors and read about the history of the genocide. There was a mix of pictures and videos that had captions in Kinyarwandan, French and English. There was a room of bones and skulls on display. Another room had a collection of clothing, and a video of people talking about watching their families get killed. We saw long lines of photos of people who had died. All wonderful, valuable people, who were not given a chance to live long happy lives. Upstairs there was an exhibit dedicated to the children who were murdered. There was also an exhibit dedicated to every other genocide that has taken place in the world.


The hardest part of visiting the genocide museum in Kigali was the exhibit dedicated to the children killed. How does it happen that people who have their own children and brothers and sisters can see children and feel they have a right to brutally rape, torture and murder them? I was really emotionally affected by looking at the pictures of the children and reading their short biographies, especially their last words before they died. This is such a waste of human life. All of those beautiful children had futures and dreams that were cut short. It made me sick to think a human could do this to the young members of a society.

I think it was great that the museum had an exhibit for the other genocides that have happened around the world. It was chilling to see how many times throughout history one group has tried to eradicate the world of another. Race, age, and country have no affect on the ability of humans to do evil things to each other. It made me sick to see how the international community responded to the various genocides. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty, and nobody wants to admit guilt. There is nothing that should be able to justify not getting involved in stopping such atrocities. I was thankful to see that there are still good, loving people in the world. There was a wall dedicated to the stories of the people who risked their own lives to shelter Tutsis. These people set amazing examples of what it means to be part of them human community.
We were all completely silent on our bus ride home. Everyone was a little bit in shock and trying to process what we had seen. It is absolutely amazing to me that after such horrible acts of murder, the country has been able to forgive. The Rwandan government has been working to create unity. Rwandans are no longer allowed to identify themselves and Hutu or Tutsi. Everyone is Rwandan. Though the genocide will continue to haunt those that lived through it, it has only been 15 years and from the way it looks, people have forgiven each other enough to live peacefully together. I don't know how they do it. I keep asking myself if I would be able to forgive people that murdered my family and friends. I have no answer.

We got home and everyone needed space. We had to sit through our next class, when really, we should have been given time for personal reflection. On our ten minute break during class I laid down on my bed and and fell into a teary sleep. I really did not want to go back to class, I needed space and time to think, but I had to. after class I made myself some tea and listened to nice music while I did my homework and wrote this.