Nyarubuye is about 4 hours away to the southeast in the
Eastern Province and just near the border of Tanzania. It is near a place on the map I have
added: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=218037317429791892563.0004e6e7d564c628a1eb9
First, we got up to go and left at about 8:30am. I went with Nicole and D, the taxi driver who
only takes calls, he isn’t hailed from the street, and does a lot of tours of
different kinds all over Rwanda with students and others, but usually expats. He is a very nice man. He drives a Toyota Corolla but it's long and
looks like one of those Subaru station wagons that are so popular among the
hipster crowd in the USA. The trip cost,
for about 10 hours of D’s time and 8 hours of driving gas, 100$ total which
Nicole and I split. We took off and I
enjoyed riding in this smaller car more that the big car Damas drives (which,
btw, I have found is called a Prado whatever that means).
Rwanda is so beautiful.
Pictures, as any of you who have been to the Grand Canyon know, in no way capture what you are seeing. Pictures are flat with no depth and no sense of the distance or proportion of dramatic landscapes.
This is the Akagera national reserve where there are giraffes and hippos and crocodiles and monkeys and baboons and zebras, etc. They are about to reintroduce lions and rhinos which were poached almost to extinction.
So dramatic the drop offs on the other side of the car...terrifying and majestic.
I got about halfway through interspersing the photos as I promised and this blogger interface is just too cumbersome. So, there will be some more later, but here are the rest of them for now.
About an hour into the drive, I have a bathroom emergency. There are not really any public bathrooms in Rwanda. I don’t know what people on buses do when they have to go. How does this work? We stopped finally at a hotel where I used the bathroom. In another addition to a continuing and future post of mine that will be entitled, “You Might be a Muzungu” I found that if you really, really have to go, you do not care about the general state of the place you intend to make your deposit. No seat? Doesn’t matter. Filthy or stained? Don’t care which. Smells peculiar? Doesn’t bother me. Has a big window that everyone can see in? I’m no muzungu when experiencing that kind of urgency.
Here I try to take a picture of the terrifying downward grade of the steep decline we are driving down away from Nyarubuye later. It doesn't really capture well.
After D and Nicole had waited for me for an embarrassingly
long amount of time, we were back on the road.
Conclusion, my stomach problems, from birth, do not care if I am in
Rwanda.
Nicole and I noticed these really really beautiful trees
here. We ask D about them who says that
they are really important to Rwandan culture.
They are called the protector tree or umuko umurinzi in
Kinyarwandan. They have the most
absolutely brilliantly red flower on them.
Just LOOK AT THAT OMG I WANT TO TOUCH IT AND I WANT THEM ALL
HANGING OVER MY BED SO THAT THEY ARE THE LAST THING I SEE AT NIGHT AND THE
FIRST THING I SEE IN THE MORNING….pant..pant…pant….flower.
D then begins to tell us the mostly lovely story. This music can go with it if you care to
listen:
One of those words for the tree is the name of the
tree. The other one is the name the tree
is now called, protector or guardian.
There is a folklore story in Rwanda, that there was once a hunter and a
very important man named Ryoangombe. He
was a very important spiritual man that D describes as a Rwandan prophet on par
with Jesus. He says, in the time before
the missionaries, the Rwandan people knew there was a god but that they didn’t
know him and were afraid of him. But,
this Ryoangombe was very special and he could communicate with god and so he
facilitates the relationship between the people and god. Thus, he is similar to Jesus. If you would like to read more on the Bantu
religious stuff, here you go, it's interesting:
Anyway, this story.
Ryoangombe went out hunting one time.
Then there was this buffalo and the buffalo charged him and was chasing
him and he didn’t know where to go. He
was trying to climb some trees but the trees wouldn’t let him. Then, this tree, the protector tree, offered
itself and he climbed up and was saved.
Thus, the tree is now named the protector tree. And most Rwandans plant them either at the
entrance to their land from the road or in front of their front door or both to
guard them. I don’t recall having seen
any of them in Kigali, but the further away from the big city we went, the more
and more and more of them we saw.
At this moment, D was expounding very seriously on how the
relationship with god was finally facililitated and Nicole and I were
completely enraptured (he has a very big sticker on his windshield that says
“JESUS!”). We were following the soft
tones of his lilting voice just loud enough over the hum and thrum of the
engine and the sound of rocks splashing around us when….BAM!!!
It took us a few seconds to figure out what happened. Here is the order of events. D first saw the bird coming microseconds
before it hit the side window frame of Nicole’s front passenger side open
window. We all heard the crack. There it smashed itself and died instantly
and was promptly deposited into Nicole’s empty lap where her hands were lying
open and up facing. The dead bird landed
in nicole’s hands. At this moment
feathers exploded into the car and flew back straight between the two front
seats and into my face where I had been eagerly leaning forward to listen to
D’s story. A few microseconds later,
Nicole registers the dead fluffy thing in her hands and shrieks and throws it
out the window. D begins to pull
over. Nicole holds up her open palms and
regards the large amount of spattered blood all over them. I begin to laugh quietly while trying to ask
if Nicole was OK. D hears me start to
giggle as he regards the look of abject horror on Nicole’s face and begins to
laugh also. Just as we pull off the
road, D and I begin to, verily, HOWL with laughter while Nicole starts to make
disgusted and flabbergasted noises. She
opens the door and cleans her hands off this a bottle of water and some tissues. Children come running to the car door
screaming, with the absolute elation of having seen Elvis Presley alive again,
MUZUNGU MUZUNGU! Minutes pass before D
and I can stop laughing before we are able to begin driving again.
After a while, D attempts to finish is spiritual exploration
but cannot pick up the strain again because I continue laughing in fits and
spurts as the event replays in my head again and again. Quietly Nicole says, “I hope that wasn’t a
sign…”
The drive continues.
You know, Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills. I thought, from looking at Rwanda and because
Kigali is at altitude, yes, I can see that exactly. Some people here, when they try to say in
English this statement, land of a thousand…sometimes instead say mountains. I thought that they were making a mistake of
translation. But as we were driving
further into the heart of rural Rwanda, I am convinced that mountains is the
right word. It is so breathtaking and so
infinitely dramatic. There are rice
paddies in every valley and banana and potato and other produce growing all
over the terraced slopes. It is so
freaking green. And they are SO
STEEP. Closer to Tanzania, they get more
rolling and, apart from the red soil, could almost be mistaken for Ireland.
So, if you know me then you also know that this trip was
very tiring for me because driving around corners up high in a place with no
speed limits with lot's of people and motos and bicycles (though increasingly
less of all of these) and buses and trucks and goats and stuff was a very tense
day for me indeed. D was kind enough to
go slow on the turns after I asked him and I was much more comfortable. Also, on the way home I found myself getting
used to it.
The dirt road we turned down to get to the memorial off the main road.
We eventually arrived at Nyarubuye. I cannot show you photos from the museum
because it is not finished. Nicole took
some with special permission from CNLG because this is her research. After I come back I can show you the pictures
in person but I cannot post them online.
If you would like to see some photos from after the
genocide, when the bodies were mostly cleaned up, but before the compound had
begun renovations to become a memorial, go here and click on the image to start
the slide show:
We met with a tour guide that did not speak English very
well and Nicole and I speak very little French.
D was obliged to come on the tour with us and translate which was nice
of him because he would liked to have stayed at the car, I think. He was visibly uncomfortable. I have heard that he lost a lot of family and
that he sometimes gets emotional at sites.
For a short write up on Nyarubuye to get a feel for what
happened, you can read this:
We compound includes what was a convent, mass graves, and
the church itself. The convent is being
turned into the memorial museum and the church, while under heavy construction,
is still in use. We first go to the mass
graves. There are 35,000 people buried
there who were killed at Nyarubuye in just a few short days starting on April 13th
1994. An additional 16,000 were also
interred here from the surrounding rural area.
That is a total of an estimated 51,000 people right under the garden we
were standing on. The guide asks us to
observe a minute of silence out of respect for their pain and their souls. We do.
We then walk inside the convent area.
There a lot's of empty rooms whose floors and walls are being
redone. The gardens are being redone.
Often churches and priests and nuns were either complicit or
they downright instigated the killing in their areas. Officially, the church locally supported the Hutu
power movement as did many governments having switched from officially
supporting the Tutsi decades before. But
that is for a history lesson another time.
We walk into a long hallway.
At the beginning of this hallway are moldering items made of wood that
look mildly like canoes. We are told
that this is equipment normally used for making banana bear but, since the
sides are of a certain shape, lend themselves nicely to beheading. Almost all of the implements of death in this
region were not bullets because they could not get the guns and
ammunition. So they are the implements
of life turned to atrocity. These wooden
items were buried because of their use and because they were so thoroughly
soiled that they could not be used again for their original purposes. And these in particular because apart from
their use for beheading, they were used to collect the blood of the Tutsi. The locals had a theory that because the
Tutsi had so many cows and drank so much milk, that there blood was part
milk. They collected the blood and
waiting hoping that it would turn to milk.
Further down the hallway was a pile of equipment of all
types. Mostly the heads of hoes that
were used to kill people. But there,
right in the center, is a meat grinder.
D explains to us that they would cut out the heart of the Tutsi and
grind them up, cook them, and eat them.
They thought that eating the hearts would make them taller and lighter
skinned with longer noses and therefore would have better lives.
Behind the table of iron equipment there are very large
tables, tables and tables, of clothing and shoes etc that were on the victims’
persons when they died. The difference
between the memorial sites in Rwanda and those concerning the Holocaust is
primarily the distance observed between visitor and memorial items. You can touch these items. They are right there. They are not behind glass. You can smell them.
When all the masses of bodies lay mangled and broken and
shot and sliced and bleeding and covered in blood, the rebels were concerned
that people may still be alive and would survive with some injuries. They then took those delicious hot peppers
that I adore so much here in Rwanda and they mixed them with water and poured
them on the bodies so that those that were still alive would awaken to the burn
in their eyes and on their faces and in their wounds.
D later says that this was the only area in which eating of
the Tutsi occurred. He later said,
quietly and thoughtfully, that the people of this area especially turned to
animals during the genocide. He wondered
aloud what was wrong with them.
Further down the hallway are tables, and tables and tables
of bones. In front of them, in open top
glass cases, are tables and tables of skulls.
Each bone piece seems to bear witness to the violence that its previous
owner enduring. There are machete slices
in the faces, in the sides, on the top, in the femurs, in the tibias, and so
on. The skulls of children are the
worst. In almost every case, their
fragile little faces are completely crushed in along with crushing at the back
or top.
Lest you slide into racist thinking, don’t. There is nothing special about the Rwandans
that is not a mere product of circumstance and history. You too would likely have smashed a child as
well if you were in their place. The
guilt that most of them feel over their behavior is tremendous.
I read an interview recently from a man who started an
organization after he was released from prison building houses for the orphans
and widows of the men that he killed.
They often feel intensely about what they have done. In this interview the man said, “God and my
victims had so much mercy where I had none.
They have forgiven me. But still,
I will sin no more washed in their mercy.
I must stay clean and harm no one again in all my life. I would rather die myself and should have
died myself instead of doing what I did.”
At the end of the site was a small guest book filled with
names. I didn’t want to be rude and look
them over, but now I wish I had. There
was space for name, where you are from, etc.
There was also a space for comments.
Many had written things like “powerful” or “moving”. Nicole and I didn’t know what to write so we
didn’t write anything.
Strangely, the guest book was before the rest of the
tour. On the outside corner of this
building there are a number of large stones sitting, out of place, in a
corner. Additionally, the striation
pattern on the rocks made me think of something in Alaska and not something in
Rwanda. I soon find out why. They tell us that these are the stones on
which the rebels sharpened their hoes and machetes as they got dull from slicing
people. They said there used to be blood
but it has been washed by the rain after 20 years. Next, there is a small room next to the four
latrine rooms. This small room, we are
told, is the place where they took all of the women to violate them before they
were killed. They say that mostly they
were raped but some of them were also violated with the wood used in some part
of brewing banana beer.
Nyarubuye is an important site for Nicole to visit as she is
studying the mass rape and gendered aspect of the genocide. This is the place where the most rapes
occurred in one place. Here in the room
of a bloody convent. After they were
violated and killed, they were thrown into the deep holes under the latrines
just next door. Up to last year they
were still finding bodies in the deep sewage holes under the latrines. We are told that the excavation is done and
they believe that they have finally found all the women.
The last stop on this horrid tour is the outdoor brick
oven. The convent here was renowned
previously for its bread. But the oven
will never be used again and the recipe is lost because this oven was used to
cook the bodies and the hearts of the Tutsi.
It will never be used again…
After this, we go into the church. Just outside the door is a statue of Jesus
with his arms open as in the last supper beckoning all who can see or hear to
enter into a state of shalom within the arms of the mother church and the
umukiza (savior). This statue of Jesus
is lying on its side. It has no head, no
arms, and no legs. It was chopped to
bits by the rebels because it looked Tutsi.
Do you see the harm of racism? You must feel pity for both the perpetrator
and the victim. In almost every case, a
perpetrator was previously a victim of something and this caused their
behavior. The Hutu previously felt left
out even of spirituality and forgiveness and heaven because they didn’t look
right to those with power, both ideological and material.
Even as I write this I am so sad for Rwanda and its
history. Even as I write this I can hear
the singers at a local church singing traditional Rwandan religious music. It is so moving and powerful. I didn’t really think of Nyarubuye as
powerful or moving. I thought it was
sad, unassuming in its incomplete state.
Outside there were children playing and following our every move with
their eyes, or just following our every move.
There were workers working and banana beer is still being made.
Here is a house of a person with moderate wealth in rural Rwanda.
So, this was over. We
drove away in relative silence back down the dirt road for an hour towards the
main paved road and back towards Kigali.
The clothes get less and less shabby and dirty, the shoes less often
flipflops. Out there in the country the
taxis are not motos. They are
bicycles. We often saw a bicycle with
three people on the back or like, seriously, 200 or 300 pounds of bananas. I saw someone ferrying someone sitting on the
back holding two goats. I saw someone
ferrying a very, very large, and it looked heavy and hard to balance, wooden
chest of drawers.
I think that’s enough for now. There are a few more observations from the
trip, but that can wait for tomorrow.
This was a bit of a weight I think.
Love you all and I am so grateful not to have been so
oppressed and not have had the amount of division and trauma and slavery and
terrible terribly suffering that the Rwandan people have endured on top of such
continued prejudice in the world. Did
you hear, the US recently suspended aid to Rwanda on account of child
soldiers? This is patently wrong. There are no and have never been any child
soldiers in Rwanda. There were very,
very isolated incidents during the genocide but no child soldiers in the
RPF. There are some suspicions still
about the role that Rwanda is playing in the conflict with rebel groups in the
DRC, but that is definitely another post.
Small mud brick homes that are pretty ubiquitous in rural Rwanda.
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