Not the only Iowan in Rwanda...

For the past two weeks my parents have been periodically sending me links to aricles on the Des Moines Register's website by Perry Beeman, an environmental writer for the paper who also just arrived in Rwanda. For those of you who get the register, or visit the register's website, I'd invite you to follow his writings from Rwanda as well. This is his article from yesterday. It gave me chills to read it, both because of it's descriptions of the genocide memorials he visited, and because I quickly realized that out of hundreds of memorials in Rwanda, he visited the same two memorials I did.

Rwanda's genocide frozen in time at church memorials

by PERRY BEEMAN
pbeeman@dmreg.com

Kigali, Rwanda - Tuesday was my firstborn son's 26th birthday.

I spent it visiting spots in Rwanda where men and women and children of all ages were killed, some of them pregnant, simply because they were Tutsi. The ruling Hutu majority had issued the sickening order to "cut down the tall trees," a reference to many Tutsis' thin frames. Hutus wanted to end decades of conflict with Tutsis in an ethnic cleansing largely unrivaled outside of Nazi Germany.

I'm reporting in Rwanda through a fellowship with the International Reporting Project. I'm working on stories about the work Rwanda is doing to build an eco-friendly economy, 15 years after the genocide. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is heavily involved.

I've been here a couple of weeks, but this was my first chance to take in a genocide memorial.

There is a formal memorial in Kigali, the capital, which I also plan to see. But there are several other places, mostly churches, where the skulls, bones, and clothing of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in the 1994 genocide are on display at the spot the people perished.

When I first saw the piles of clothes that were removed from 10,000 people killed in a Catholic church in Nyamata, southeast of Kigali, I thought I might wretch. I've seen gruesome things, and I had read plenty about the 1994 genocide before arriving in Rwanda, but nothing prepares one for this.

My second thought: How fortunate that my son, Scott, is alive and well and celebrating a birthday with his wonderful wife, Sheryl. How blessed I am to have another son, Joel, also alive and thriving. And a beautiful and loving wife, Jane, back home, safe. And my faithful dog, Carly. And my large, extended family. Events like this make you take stock. In a hurry.

Rwanda lost 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a few months in early 1994, when the Hutu majority launched a genocide after the plane carrying one of their own, President Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down near the airport in Kigali.

You can watch "Sometimes in April" or "Hotel Rwanda," or read one of the many genocide books, but it's hard to imagine this event fully without seeing one of the rural churches where sanctuaries turned into mass graves.

Fresh from a couple of days of viewing some spectacular scenery and wildlife in Akagera National Park, I asked driver Jamada Muberuka about these church memorials. He offered to drive me to a couple.

First stop, Nyamata. The spot is quiet. Ribbons and flags of purple and white blow in the wind, the traditional colors used to mark observances of the genocide anniversaries. In 1990, Tutsis began moving here to escape threats elsewhere, said a memorial staffer, Martin Kalisa, through an interpreter. In 1992, two years before the genocide, 680 people were killed in this village, he said. Roadblocks ruled the day. The roaming Tutsis began dying of starvation. "There was no food. The soil was dry," Kalisa said. "Many starved."

Italian humanitarian Tonia Locatelli, who lived in a house next to the Catholic church, took to the international airwaves to tell the world of the starvation and suffering. "We must save these people. We must protect them," she pleaded. "It's the government itself which is doing this." It was 1992. On March 9, a soldier in a nearby tree shot Locatelli to death as she stood outside her home. She is buried outside the church.

In 1993, Tutsis were told that it was safe to return home, and they did. But as the war heated up and 1994 unfolded, they returned to the church, knowing they had survived there before. Kalisa isn't sure what day, but the Hutu forces showed up to find the church locked. They set off bombs that left holes in the concrete that are still there. They stormed in and killed 10,000 people hiding inside, with ponga knives (machetes), clubs and guns.

The clothes those people wore that day are stacked on the pews throughout the sanctuary. The altar stands clean and unblemished. Underground are the remains of 40,000 people, including many killed in the surrounding area. Above ground, the burial area is marked by a peaceful white tile with blue-tile crosses on top.

In one underground area is a display that includes the coffin of a pregnant woman who was raped, then stabbed to death. "This way, she is alone with her baby," Kalisa said.

Also on display are identification cards - left over from a system installed by Belgians that fanned the Tutsi and Hutu tensions - and jewelry. Rows of skulls, some missing pieces on top, are in a lit display surrounded by white tile.

We took steps down to an underground vault where neat rows of skulls and stacks of arm and leg bones were stacked on shelves. "Let us get out of here," said driver Jamada Muberuka. "Every time I come here, I get ..." He couldn't finish the sentence. "Those were tough times."

The tensions between Hutus and Tutsis went back decades, with several large outbreaks of violence from 1959 on. After 1990, tensions turned into rebel forces looking to throw the Hutus out of power. On July 4, 1994, current President Paul Kagame and his rebel forces took control and started building what they hoped would be a coalition government serving Rwandans, not Hutus and Tutsis. Much of the fighting shifted westward to the Democratic Republic of Congo next door, but Rwanda has kept peace.

We left this memorial and drove past the government-issue houses of genocide victims on our way to a second memorial, at Ntarama. The holes in the brick walls that were blown open with grenades are still there. The forces killed 5,000 here. The victims' clothes line the walls and hang from the rafters. The pongas and clubs used to kill those in the church are on display toward the front of the church, where a message, roughly translated, read, "If you had known about me and about yourself, you would not have killed me." It is a message still ringing with the disbelief that a human, a neighbor, a fellow villager, would kill another.

"People thought they would be safe here," driver Jamada said. "In our culture, our belief is that no one can do something wrong in a church."

The "wrong" here included storming into the kitchen-turned-mass-bedroom in a back building and setting mattresses on fire. The room still has cupboards and clothing scattered around.

A concrete wall sports an incomplete list of the dead. On this day, a breeze blew through, and the wide valley and hills presented a serene setting for such a disturbing place.

"It will not happen again," Jamada said. "Even those who were involved are regretting it."

It's an event that has consumed many people's vision of this country and its warm, friendly people. It's a beautiful, safe place with a lot to offer and, 15 years on, a growing economy and a sound government. Read the other items in my blog to get an idea of what this country is like now, with recovery well under way.

You might want to tell your family members something first. I'll go first: "I love you!"