Commemoration.

(Wrote this a week or so ago)

April 7^th, the date of this past Sunday, marked 19 years since the genocide in Rwanda.  For what feels like the first time, I’ve witnessed just how much this atrocity still impacts Rwandans today.  Most of the time, you can barely tell that a genocide happened.  When I first arrived in Rwanda, I remember feeling surprised that people didn’t wear more evidence on their faces saying that something horrible had happened.  But now it’s a time of remembering—and how could you not?  If the date doesn’t initially get you—this was the day when the majority of my family was killed—the constant discussions about genocide on TV and the music videos of songs specifically written about the genocide will.  This week of mourning—of commemoration—makes you remember, forces you to relive the memories.  It must be horrible.

I went with some family members to the annual Walk to Remember, which started at the Parliament building, preserved in its bullet-ridden state as a reminder of those attacked there in 1994, and ended at the national stadium.  Lots of people showed up, mainly young people and wearing purple, the color of mourning.  Lots of foreigners were there too, providing an ironically large presence in contrast to their absence in 1994.  The president himself did the walk as well, and try as we might, we couldn’t walk fast enough to catch up to him.

Once at the stadium, which was packed with thousands of people, many people gave speeches and music performances.  My neighbor at the stadium told me that despite the difficult subject matter, many people attended the ceremony as source of comfort.  About half of the attendees were given candles so the whole stadium flickered—in hope and in memory.  The songs focused on messages of hope and believing in God to find strength.  One hundred names were read to represent just a tiny portion of those killed.  Youth in matching white shirts formed the shape of a candle on the stadium’s field to symbolize hope and faith in the young generation.  It was incredible.

But also incredibly hard.  In the middle of a song, we heard a scream from across the stadium.  Gut-wrenching, bone-chilling, a scream of terror and of absolute pain.  Bodies in neon jackets rushed to the surround the screaming woman and carried her out.  A few minutes later, there was another scream, closer to us this time.  The neon jackets carried her out.  This happened so many more times than I stopped counting.  The neon jackets were counselors, specifically hired for this event to help handle the re-living of trauma.  The screams were ones of remembrance, of seeing horrible images relived, of mourning lost family and friends.  At one point there were so many screaming people that it was hard to concentrate on the music.  And my neighbor told me that in earlier years, it was much worse.

It rains buckets everyday, as if the sky is mourning with this country, and every night the government turns the power off in our district so that we stay home and mourn.  The stores close in the afternoon for town-level genocide meetings, and every billboard in the city declares that it’s the 19^th year since genocide.

And still, as my sister says, “People just keep dying!”  Last week, our neighbor’s house collapsed, almost killing the whole family.  A close family friend, only 27 years old, was caught smoking pot by the night patrol and beaten so severely that he died, just meters from his house.  A classmate of our little neighbor, Danny, just died a few days ago of a failed liver.  So there’s mourning on top of mourning.  And still it rains.