Murambi: Rwanda 2
My dear friend, Felicien, ran one of the Guest Houses we stayed at in the south. Toward the end of my stay, I asked him, “How did you survive?” I can still feel the chill in his words; “I was not among the hunted.” While this meant he was a Hutu, it does not mean he was “safe”.
He told me how he would hide in the eaves of his home all day long and watch the war games unfold in the streets below. His father and uncles would awake early, have breakfast, and head out for work. In this case, a day of labor meant killing as many Tutsi’s as possible before dinner. Quite often, they would work the nightshift as well.
We visited one church that was essentially left as-is since the attacks. Many of the catholic priests, fearing for their own lives, were complicit in the slaughter. The priests would urge and gather the fleeing Tutsi’s to come and find refuge in their churches. Once the unholy temples were packed with terrified people, the priests would slip out the back door and lock it from the outside.
En queue, the Hutu bandits came in through the front and decimated every last Tutsi. This is a cataclysmic, real-life portrayal of what can happen when the church, intended to be the life-giving conduit of God’s goodness and love on the earth, becomes complicit in cultural deceptions and corruption. Its hard to fathom a more gruesome thing.
I could share scores of travesties I saw and learned about firsthand, but these next two have become part of me.
Murambi was home to a beautiful trade school set atop a circular plateau. A deep valley surrounded the campus with a single road leading in and out. It was a boarding school so there were countless single-floor dorms scattered across the tabletop.
As the genocide was in full frenzy, Hutu radio promised refuge at Murambi. Announcements were made around the clock as tens of thousands walked the plank down that single road in. Once there, the people were not given food, water or proper sanitation so the conditions quickly became unbearable. Yet, the inviting radio announcements continued.
Once every inch of the campus was swollen with over 65,000 weakened, dehydrated people, the systematic annihilation began. As our tour guide gave us his first-hand account, he explained that it took three days for the butchery to be completed.
After being shot in the head, he explained how he was tossed atop a mountain of dead and dying bodies. When nightfall came, he miraculously revived and slowly crawled his way down the steep ramparts, through the valley below and climbed up the other side. From his new vantage point, with a bullet lodged in his skull, he watched and listened. And listened and watched. As he talked to us, the banner on the side of the building over his dimpled forehead read, “Never Forget.”
The French military was stationed there yet did nothing to protect the innocent. In fact, they brought in the earth moving equipment to excavate the mass grave sites. To reduce the stench, lime was dumped on the bodies before the dirt was bulldozed back in. When peace had finally been restored and the bodies were exhumed, the skeletons were preserved with an eerie, chalky white finish.
As we walked from building to building viewing the endless skeletons, I was holding hands with a young man named Abel. It is very common for men to hold hands as they walk and talk in Rwanda, but this setting made the gesture all the more comforting.
Here I was, a “Christian missionary”, raging internally at the God who sent me here, yet somehow allowed this national massacre to happen.
The skeletons were organized for display by age. As we walked into one room with nothing but baby and toddler-sized skeletons arranged on the slats, I could no longer endure this tour of the macabre. Knowing both of Abel’s parents were killed in the genocide, I finally asked, “Why do you still believe in God?”
With very little pause, he replied, “God didn’t do this. Satan did this. You ask me why I believe in God? I tell you plainly; where else can I go? Jesus is pure love and I will spend the rest of my life serving Him.”
I will never forget that moment. The feel of his strong hand, the gentle surety in his voice, and the tear on my cheek. It was precisely then I realized, as the endless scaffolding of chalked skeletons beckoned me to see beyond what my rods and cones could capture; this Christian faith can not to be minimized to merely a code of conduct, a list of do’s and don’t’s or the occasional prayer for help.
We are in a battle. A physical and spiritual battle.
And while it may seem impossibly overwhelming to have been able to hold back the barbarous tsunami of a genocide — it didn’t start in one day. It took many, many years of good people allowing lies to displace truth and hate to displace love.
What was the first thing Rwanda did after the genocide? They eliminated the identity group distinction of Hutu and Tutsi from their vocabulary — and from every facet of their society.
Back here at home, I am deeply concerned at the growing list of labels reflective of the ever burgeoning identitarian collectives which are being used to shuffle and deal us into groups we never signed up to be in. Scrubbing these dreadful labels from our society sounds like a good next step to me.
