Memorialization

Two Saturdays ago I did a day trip to Ntarama genocide memorial were 5,000 Tutsi were killed and Nyamata were 10,000 Tutsi lost their lives. Both memorial cites are churches were people fled for safety and solidarity in groups, consequently the mass deaths were perpetrated in the confines of the church walls.

Having visited Dachau concentration camp and the dungeons of Cape Coast castle were African slaves were held before walking through "the door of no return", I knew the potential  gravity of  memorials at the specific location were horrific violence was perpetrated. However, both cites were graphic and I left with residual uncertainty of the implications of the memorialization and the healing process of cumulative trauma. Essentially, at Ntarama the church is filled with the remains of everything that was found left after the execution everyone in the church. The far right wall is shelves ceiling to floor with skulls fractured, broken. The benches serving as pews are heaped in layers of clothing torn, blood stained. The far left wall is shelves with the belonging people brought with them "to wait out the violence" cook ware, school books, mattresses.

At Nyamata,  the second cite I visited 15k south of Ntarama, the church contained the bones and clothing of the victims, in addition, behind the church were to crypt that held grouped remains of families in coffins, their names typed out and tagged, some containing up to ten people, some whole families, gone. I was the only one there and after going through the first crypt the gravity of the mass loss and the trauma stories of survivors I have met since here began to play in my head. I walked over to the other crypt and peeked in, it contained endless rows of shelves filled with skulls and bones. I couldn't get myself to walk down the stairs into the collective burial of hundreds, I just stood there, overwhelmed. I heard a hissing sound, looked around, and outside the gate, on the road, a women was watching me and gestured for me to go down. She instructed me through hand gestures, I needed to see. I needed to witness. Witness what transpires when a global community negates to concede ethnic cleaning as genocide and genocide results in 10,000 in one rural community, 5,000 15k north, 800,000 nationally die in 100 days.

The historical trauma resides in mother to child transmitted HIV, in orphaned youth raised on the street  now impoverished young mothers selling sex to feed their child, in mother's who are fearful overtime their child leaves the house because they can not bare any more death. These are examples from the testimonies of a few.

Pictures were not allowed inside and to be honest I didn't want to take any overly graphic or exploitive of someone's loved one. This is a picture from the outside of the church in Ntarama. Explosives were used to blow holes in the barricaded building. The clothes are taken from the victims.