The bodies at Murambi

There are memorials for the genocide all over Rwanda. A mass grave here, a mass grave there. Churches, schools, backyards, you name it. There is a very famous and professional memorial in Kigali that has rows of flat, cement mass graves with 250,000 bodies in them. But the further you go outside of the capital, the more graphic and brutal the memorials become.

There is one church in Ntarama in the East, where 5,000 people were massacred. Tattered clothes hang from the church pews, stripped of their wearers. There is a room off to the side that was used for Sunday school. There’s still dried blood on the wall from children being slammed and thrown into it.

But nothing can compare to the bodies at Murambi.

Murambi is located in the Southern province, about 2 hours from the capital of Kigali. When the killing began in 1994, thousands of tutsis fled to the bishop for help. When they got there, however, the bishop and the mayor told them to go to the technical school, which was at that time still under construction. You’ll be safe there, they said.

The large school is located on the top of a hill, with views of valleys and the villages below on every side. It encompasses one large white, multi-story building in front, and a series of narrow brick classrooms in the back. Around 65,000 tutsi people started gathering inside, hopeful for protection in the building on the hill.

Instead, they were trapped. Their water and electric supply was cut off, and they sat inside starving, unable to leave because of the raggedy thugs yielding machetes that surrounded the property. Within five days, the technical school was attacked in waves. The people holed up inside tried to fight back. They gathered stones and sticks and staged a war against their attackers, but they were overpowered. Killing people with machetes and clubs is tiring business, so the perpetrators would come and kill thousands, wound and rape others, but would leave to rest after they’d had enough of sticks and stones being thrown at them. For five days the living lived among the dead, until eventually they couldn’t fight anymore. At the end, 50,000 people’s bodies were heaved into bulldozers and dumped in a shallow mass grave that the French helped them dig on the property. 

When I arrive, the place looks abandoned. Only a man with a truck sits in front of the white building, leaning up against the rusty door. He nods at me, and motions towards the entrance. 

The area is stunning. The school is perched just on top of a tall hill, surrounded by green valleys and endless skies. 

What an ironically beautiful place to die, I think.

I’m greeted by a guide who says he’ll walk me around the property. He is young and enthusiastic, which feels contradicting given the reason why we’re here. When we walk through the exhibition with the stories, photos and history of genocide on the walls, I am not surprised. There’s a quote from a survivor that says, “All I want is to be able to live.” But I’m not surprised. I’ve heard these stories before.

I immediately tell the guide that I work for Survivors Fund. I want him to know that I’m not just a tourist. I want him to know that I’m working against this too.  

After the exhibition and out of the large white building are the rows of red brick classrooms. The classrooms are now filled with 1,000 dead bodies. After they were killed, the mass graves they were thrown into were so densely packed that no oxygen or dirt could get in and assist in decomposition, so many of them remain in the same state they were in when they died. In 1995, the bodies were removed from the graves and properly preserved, and now they sit in the classrooms on dusty wooden tables. They sit on display as an example, and of proof.

When I walk into the first classroom, I’m immediately overwhelmed by the smell. It smells like death.  Like dry, stale death. It’s a smell I’ve never experienced before – one that infiltrates my skin and my clothes and my heart.

You can still see the expressions on their faces. One of them is reaching out, with one finger in the air, as if she was in the middle of telling them something. Others have their arms over their heads, their faces permanently distorted in pain; open mouths and crooked eyes. Some are holding babies, the little bundles still cradled on their chests.

One man is still wearing an old 49ers sweatshirt. It’s faded, but you can see the gold outline around the block letters.

We are more similar than we are different. We could’ve owned the same sweatshirt.

For many, their bodies are still completely intact. You know how they died only from the smooth, straight gashes in their bones from machetes. One of them is holding rosary beads in her hand, but from her expression you can tell that she had given up.  

The fourth classroom is dedicated solely to children. There is one who couldn’t have been more than two. His head is facing me, and his fist is balled up reaching over his head. His little clenched hand sits next to a giant gaping hole in his skull – he had obviously been killed with a nailed club. Blunt force trauma.

Sometimes it’s as if I feel everything, and other times I’m not sure I can feel anything at all. I walked away unsure if I was becoming numb to all of it. Which is better?

I’ve always disliked the slogan “Never Again", even though I know why we say it. We want to believe that this was a colossal mistake that won’t be repeated. We want to believe that someone would step in again and stop it. We want to have hope.

But to me, it feels like a lie. It feels like an empty promise. Because as much as we like to pretend there won’t ever again be another Rwanda, there already has been. What about what’s happening in Sudan, Syria, and Congo? 

It’s pretty common to see ribbons that say “Never Again” around Rwanda. These ribbons are identical to that of the one hanging from a dried basket of flowers in the children’s room at Murambi. It sits between two tiny bundles of bodies, mocking us. “Never again?” the killers laugh. Hate will persevere, they say. Ignorance will continue to permeate into the actions we choose not to make.

This ignorance being the belief that the world is the way it is, as it is. That it is not our place or time to intervene. That the consequences of these atrocities do not reach us, affect us, or alter us. Unbeknownst to us on the other side of the world, these acts of genocide and mass violence are swiftly and assuredly breaking down our humanity. And all the while, tangible solutions present themselves. They offer us the opportunity to intervene not because of altruism or obligation, but rather because it is simply the right thing to do.

When will we ever learn?

I work now with the living. I want to believe that their calls for justice, absolution and genocide prevention are actually heard. I want to believe that Never Again can be more of a reality and less of an empty promise. 

It may be too late for the people who fell at Murambi, but it’s not too late for others.