Nothing could have prepared me for the memorial at Murambi. The setting is idyllic; a small school campus set in the hills near Butare. In all directions, the hills are stunning – bespeckled with small clay homes with shining metal roofs. The Rwandans are currently building a memorial museum, which stands guard in front of the deserted school buildings. To the left of the museum are the mass graves, done in the manner we were slowly becoming accustomed to – large concrete slabs that cover the bodies of the dead, with large purple and white nylon banners that read “You are our loss – we shall not forget you."

Here it is estimated that 50,000 people were slaughtered by the Interahamwe. They were first relocated to a newly built school in the village of Murambi. They were then starved and denied water.  When they were weakened, 10,000 Interahamwe moved in and killed them - primarily with machetes.  The French, under the guise of Operation Turquoise, then moved in to "promote the peace." 

The school buildings are haunting. Several of them contain the bodies of the dead preserved in lime. The lime has a rather sickening smell, and I found myself unable to cross the threshold of the door-frame. The bodies are as they were found. Faces, fingers and feet as clear as if they were alive. It is clear that the memorial has the intent to shock.  It does. But at the same time, the memorial is so macabre that it was hard to feel any grief when seeing the bodies  - twisted and lying outstretched on wooden planks.

We were met by one of the four survivors of the massacre.  The bullet wound to his head a strong accusation against the Interahamwe perpetrators who committed the atrocity at Murambi. He walked us behind the school barracks to a place where clotheslines displayed the clothing of the dead. No identification of bodies had occurred here; with so few survivors, it would have been a pointless effort. Emmanuel showed us the large indentations in the earth which marked the mass grave.  It was here that we began to hear about the complicity of the French in the immediate post-genocide period. According to Emmanuel, the French had helped the Interahamwe to cover the bodies. Then, over the grave they erected a volleyball court.  Metal poles marked the place on the edge of the grave site where latrines had been dug.  The beginning of denial. The Tutsi government had been searching for survivors who could testify to the atrocity at Murambi. The Hutu argument was that the inhabitants had simply fled to neighboring Burundi. Emmanuel’s testimony about what he saw, his near-death experience, and his flight to Bujumburu through the forest, led to the search for the mass grave which was obfuscated by the French collusion.

We then were allowed to visit the not-yet-finished memorial museum, which has a very similar organization to the museum in Kigali.  Survivors and helpers give their testimonies on video screens to help the visitor begin to grasp the enormity of the crimes that happened here. It is being sponsored by the Aegis foundation in cooperation with the Rwandan government. It is designed along the lines of the USHMM (US Holocaust Memorial Museum), using video testimony to personalize what happened in Murambi so that visitors don't simply read a list of statistics, but put faces on those who were killed. It also focuses on those who risked their lives to help others. The striking part of the exhibit, however, is that there are several references in the testimonies to the president.  One of them literally says, The only way that we can avoid such tragedy in the future is to follow our president without question.  

The good news is that they are going to bury the bodies in a mass grave in the center of the museum.  I hope that it will be covered.  Somehow, I doubt it.