Hotel Rwanda

There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun...but there is a church in Rwanda that makes you wonder if that same sun ever even existed. It’s not some blockbuster hit with an Academy Award winning actor named Don Cheadle. It’s real, it’s raw, it happened. It has the power to grab your heart, rip it from your chest and tear your preconceived notions into a thousand different pieces.

It’s a beautiful city, Kigali; it’s a beautiful country, Rwanda. The hills are rolling, green and serene, and there is a peace and calm you wouldn’t expect when just a few years prior there was complete anarchy amidst genocide. This months marks the 15th year anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, and I’m here. I can’t really believe it, to be honest. I watched Hotel Rwanda for the first time about one year ago, and I never would have guessed that I’d bring myself to sit at a table in the Milles Collines, or stand facing thousands of bones in two of the churches that housed some of the largest mass killings of the genocide.

It began with the German, but ultimately the Belgian colonization that divided them in the first place. There were two tribes, Hutu and Tutsi. In most instances, the Tutsis were classified as those having less than ten cows, and Hutus were those with more. It was that simple. And so it came to be that the Tutsis made up the minority, the lower class. The first attempt at genocide was in 1992, and unsuccessful. It was during that time that the Tutsis were compiling the RPF and gaining strength, but the Hutus were always a stronger power, thus civil war. Then one day, 6th April 1994, the President’s plane (he was a Hutu) was shot down (said to be by the RPF), and utter insanity ensued. The order was given to kill all Tutsis; to kill those married to a Tutsi, those with Tutsi children, and those Hutus who were sympathetic to the Tutsis. Friends killing friends, family killing family, it was kill or be killed. The order was given by the government. Government got the common people to commit this genocide for them. Government supplied the weaponry. It lasted for 100 days. Those who fled stayed in the swamps for months. Some died merely because of the living conditions throughout their time of refuge.

Ntarama and Nyamata are the locations of the two churches where thousands of people were trapped and killed by the masses. Merely being inside takes one’s breath away. I came face to face with all the clothing left behind by the dead, strewn on the rafters and hung on the walls. There were skulls of children, men, and women. The smallest skulls were the hardest to bear. There is an eerie, cold, secluded feeling to it...forgotten almost, yet frozen in time. I could close my eyes and see the chaos, the destruction, hear the screams, taste the fear. There were school books, shoes, and shards of metal once used to kill the victims. In the front right corner there were shelves of plates, cups, and bowls found among the kitchen remains. In the front left corner was a chest full of school books. Some were in tact; some were splattered with brownish-red and burnt in half. As one of the guides picked up a book and flipped through it, we came across a date that read December, 1993. This was the math book of a child in 7th grade, and it became all too real. In the back of the church, rows and rows of skulls and bones were lined up and stacked on shelves on top of one another. Some of the skulls were crushed, and you could tell the way in which they died. Some had names written on them, those that had been identified. One of the skulls had a sharp shard of metal cleanly pierced through it and into the eye. This brutality is sickening.

The Rwandan President has recently warned Kenya: “Do you see what happened here, you should learn from us, you are going along this same path with your political violence!”

It was the second church that was the hardest. It was called Nyamata. Both of the boys acting as guides, 21 and 24 years respectively, were in the church when the Hutu army came to attack. They sought refuge there because back in 1992, the church was a safe haven, and they thought it would again be a false alarm. This time they weren’t so lucky. The boys were 6 and 9 years old at the time, yet they are still so raw with their recollections. The genocide began on a Tuesday, and the killers came on the second day. 10,000 Tutsis were killed within those walls. The first boy saw his mother killed with a panga (sword) and her limbs cut from her body. He showed us the underground catacombs where coffins held 30 bodies each. The other shelves held thousands upon thousands of bones, stacks and stacks of the nameless. The only way a new body is identified is if the killer comes forward to admit to the family the precise location in which he killed their beloved. He must ask for forgiveness. Piles of clothes were scattered, practically covering the floor. At the front was the altar, the once beige-colored cloth draped over the top was now stained with dark brown dried blood. A few identity cards were lying on top. And in the back were hundreds of bags. Carrier bags, shopping bags, they were filled with newly uncovered bones, mostly unidentified.

The second boy held his story within the weight of his eyes, the thick glassy shield over his irises, too numb for memories. They were bloodshot red, and most of his story was translated, the little English he could speak. He said he cries a lot, it’s difficult for him. He said it’s hard to tell, you can look at a person who dresses nicely, who walks and talks like a regular person, but they are dead inside...He said it was hard for him to tell such a personal account because it haunts him daily. I could have listened to him forever, I couldn’t speak because I wanted to absorb every syllable he spoke. I felt so incredibly fortunate to have had the honor to listen to a survivor of such a horrific and wrongful tragedy. I hung on every word, it was the most intense recollection I’d heard. He was trusting us with his life story. How could he confide in us, strangers, wazungu he barely knew? I was blown away at his courage and strength. He said there was guilt, the Why me? Why was I the one to survive? Out of 10,000 people killed in that church, he was one of only seven to survive. Seven. The church was so large, and the roof was littered with bullet holes from the grenade explosions. They threw a grenade in to kill as many as possible at first, then came in with spears and pangas. The killings were brutal. He told us the killers came thrrough the front and broke into the smaller room first, where his brother was hiding. They cut off his brother’s head. As they did the same to the others in the first room, they threw the heads into the crowd and made the Tutsis play with them like footballs. They cut off arms and legs and threw them into the crowd as well. They took the pregnant women, laid them on the altar and cut their stomachs open. They killed the unborn babies and threw them into the center of the church. This boy was hiding behind a cement statue. He took the blood from others around him and covered his face in it, to make it look like he was already dead...at nine years old. He was hiding at the bottom of a slant in the church, and because of all the cut bodies, the blood was draining down onto him. It got into his ears, his mouth, and he couldn’t make a sound or move. He asked us to imagine the smells he endured lying still amidst the dead bodies for two full days. He knew he had to get out because the Hutus would soon come back sneezing powder. They’d throw the powder over the bodies to identify and kill those that were still alive. He finally escaped and hid for the next three months. He said the sounds never leave him.

They kept asking us if we had to go, if they were taking up too much of our time. It killed me to hear him say that...My time? Nothing could possibly be worth more of my time. The boys pled with us to take pictures, to go back and show everyone what we saw, to tell their story. They asked us to do it so that no one could pretend the genocide didn’t happen, so that it will never be forgotten. To keep the dead alive, respected, and remembered. So this is for you, my friends. This is your story.