Sanctuary

After our return to Kigali, we took the new road south to the town of Nyamata. It was in this village parish church that 2500 people took refuge, hoping to find sanctuary from the Interahamwe. As we walked in through the front gate, purple banners remembering the loss contrasted with the dusty terrain. A survivor accompanied us into the church; she had escaped by hiding among the dead until it was safe to come out.

The church is empty; unlike other churches we had visited where massacres had taken place, it has been decided that Nyamata will not be used as a place of worship. The blood stains are still on the walls. As in other places, clothing of the victims was stacked in one of the vestibules of the church, recalling the vibrant and varied lives of the victims. The altar cloth is stained, the tabernacle is ridden with bullet holes, and the wall of the church has been opened by a grenade. Bullet holes pockmark the ceiling. The building has lost all of its sanctity.

As we walked down into the crypt of the church, we saw the typical rows of skulls and a casket. The casket held the body of a young woman who had been raped and murdered by the Interahamwe. Apparently, not too long ago the body had been on display. Now, it is mercifully covered.

Behind the church are the large mass graves. Like in other places, they are covered with large slabs of marble. Unlike in other sites, we were able to walk down into the graves - where the skulls and long bones of the victims are stored, draped with purple banners declaring that they shall never be forgotten.

Since I have returned from Rwanda, I have thought often of Serene. She was so young when she witnessed so much. And now she spends her day guarding the memory of the event which changed her life. She walks the tourists through the church and tells her story in a painful staccato. When the tour is finished, she smiles and then asks you to sign the guest book. I am sure that we were not the first visitors who found that words failed in trying to write some expression of the sympathy we have for those who suffered here. But I wonder if she will be able to break away from this church. Will she ever be able to have a life unconnected to the events of the past? Her well-worn desk that sits outside the entry of the site was a metaphor for so many who are unable to separate themselves from the horror of genocide and develop an identify independent of it.