Murambi. One of the worst crimes in history.

I awoke this morning around 5am, to the city-wide call to the mosque. In cities where there is a large Muslim population there is an early morning prayer call that sounds like something between a song and a speech. This is the second one I’ve woken up to in Africa, and I always wonder what’s going on for a second before I remember. After a stellar freezing “shower” (read: drip from a tap) we headed out for breakfast and off to Murambi Memorial.

Murambi was a technical school where over 50,000 were killed. The Tutsis in the region were hiding in churches but became too numerous and were told by the town leaders to go to the school where they would be protected. They were attacked 4 times, but it was the last attack that destroyed the resistance. The Tutsis were suffering starvation and dehydration, and at 3am late in April, the Interhamwe slaughtered the refugees.

We were guided by a Hutu woman whose Tutsi husband and two sons were killed at this site. She saved her daughter by carrying her on her back and fleeing to her hometown after the massacre. It strikes me each time we go to one of these sites and the guides have almost universally survived the savagery themselves and lost everyone they loved.Yet, they are there. They are walking through the bones and the bodies and sharing the site with tourists taking pictures. I don’t know if I, despite how much I would want the events remembered across the world, would be able to do that. Murambi is a particularly difficult site, with many buildings holding the full remains of people. They have been preserved with a type of paint or thin plaster and the looks of horror and pain are still etched on their face.s I don’t have any pictures… I felt similar to how I did in Majdanek, Poland, in that I felt like I was violating something sacred.It was heartbreaking.

I don’t really have anything else to say at the moment…. It’s very bright today and I think I’ve got sunstroke. Again. Feeling not so hot…we’re going for lunch and a few liters of water right now. Maybe I’ll be able to reconcile some of these events and have something more insightful to say later on… but I don’t expect much. Today I felt like I really saw the genocide. And now I feel empty.

-Candace