Day 5

We returned to PHARP in the morning to allow people to finish shopping and to watch the women work on their sewing machines. While they were working we sang to them and they said they wished to learn an English song. So, we taught them a short chorus, praise yee the lord. After we left PHARP we went for lunch in Kigali. After leaving the restaurant we went to two Genocide memorials. The first one we visited was at Nyamata. We all feel that coming here was very emotional and is too hard to explain in words, but we will try. We drove up a long dusty dirt track to the building which was yards from a local junior school. The gates surrounding the site were draped in purple and white material. The purple represents mourning and white is a representation of peace and hope.
The area was much more basic than the Kigali museum that we previously visited, which made the experience ever more real. The memorial at Nyamata was a Roman Catholic Church where thousands of people went to seek refuge during the genocide, thinking it was safe. As we walked towards the building the first thing that stuck us were the sheer number of bullet holes that were in the shelter above the entrance. On entering we could see how the perpetrators had forced their way into the building. The remains of the two large steel gates still stood from the damage of the grenades, also leaving a crater in the floor. Inside the church lay masses of the victims clothes as they had fallen and blood stains still remained on them. 45,000 innocent victims. At the alter they displayed some of the weapons used. All over the ceiling were bullet and shrapnel holes. In the basement of the church there was display of victims remains and their possessions. One lady in particular whose coffin lay at rest here was brutally raped and killed by the insertion of a spear through the length of her body. She still remains like this today. There were a number of mass graves outside, one of which we went down to see. Bodies that had been identified were placed in coffins, while others bones were on display, most of which were incomplete. An Italian missionary was also burried in the site in a separate grave. She was killed before the start of the genocide in 1992 because she attempted to alert the media in the rest of the world of what was about to happen. The government saw her as a threat and so shot her on her doorstep.
The second memorial at Ntarama was also in a Roman Catholic Church. 5,000 died here. From the outside we could see where grenades were used as a mode of entry into the building and to smash the walls. Like the last church there were endless amounts of clothes piled up alongside bones and skulls. Surrounding this there were two other buildings which were used as torture rooms for children, babies and foetuses. In the sunday school building there was a large bloodstain on the wall where they were smashed against the wall. In the kitchens they tortured the children before burning them by setting mattresses on fire then throwing them in alive. They have removed the larger bones but left the smaller ones as there were too many. As you look around it looks like debris, however as we looked we realised it was hair, teeth and belongings.
After visiting these two memorials we all felt emotionally drained as it had an effect on every one of us. As we drove home the red sandy tracks were a constant reminder of the blood that was spilt. Everyone felt they needed some time to reflect on what they had seen as the sights were so horrific.