Memorial Message
We’re told that the Rwandan genocide essentially touched EVERY Rwandan in some way. S and I struggle with how it’s to touch us.
Above, is a photograph taken from The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. Those long cement rectangles are mass graves for the remains of hundreds and hundreds of people who were killed in 1994.
Notice the young man in a white shirt, between the two images of W walking by. R was our companion during the visit, our guide for our last morning in Kigali. We learned once we arrived at the Centre that he’d lost both parents and two brothers in the genocide. In the photograph, he’s looking for their names on the Wall of Names.
So picture this: just prior to the scene pictured above, as we approached the rows and rows and rows of mass graves … one of our sons said: “What! Do we have to look at them all?!”
My first reaction was anger. Oh, the selfishness! Where is the respect, the empathy, the humility? Where is the sadness? Where is the heart that can say a thing like that?
S and I knew we’d be seeing hard things during our time in Rwanda, and we planned on letting our experiences take the lead on crafting the Message … not us. We do demand an appropriate level of respectful behavior … but in instances like the comment described above, we’ve chosen NOT to respond, and to let it go.
In the end, we asked R to tell us his story in a shaded part of the Centre’s gardens. His words were the last words any of us have spoken about the pain of the past — and the healing that goes on.
Whenever I think about this genocide, I remember that it happened the summer that we (Will and I, also J and S) were getting married, going on honeymoons, embarking on happy adventures while oblivious to the tragedy unfolding a world away. It is strange and unfair how joy and sorrow are unevenly distributed. R looks so young in the photo, as if he could be a big brother to your three. I hope they never forget his pain, and his joy.