pictures

surviving murambi

Of all the landscapes I have seen, in all the places I have been, there is none as beautiful as the rolling tropical hills of Rwanda. I sat in the taxi in utter amazement of the scenes that I was taking in: patchwork fields of banana trees, cassava, and tea; women dressed in bold African prints bent at the waist as they tended the fields; borders of florescent forest; perfectly mounded hills mounted with tightly woven straw huts; a bright blue sky holding a few stacks of puffy-white clouds. It is hard to fathom that anything sinister could happen in a place so renascent of paradise.

The small clump of prisoners working on the side of the road, offered the only foreboding indication. On an April day in 1994, this seemingly peaceful place was engulfed in fear. The primarily Tutusi village had heard stories of terrible atrocities that had been carried out against their people by the Hutus. They heard whisperings of a war in the North, and of mass murder around the country. The people huddled into churches and schools for protection. The government (ran by Hutus) encouraged the people to gather at the large technical college that was currently under construction. They told the villagers that they would be better able to protect them if they were in one central location.

50,000 villagers anxiously assembled at the unfinished building. Hutu soldiers denied them food and water. The villagers were asked to count themselves and remain organized, under the pretense that this would make their protection easier. The sinister plot was to weaken the villagers while the sufficient amount of Hutu could be mobilized by local Hutu leaders and supplied weapons by French troops.

When we arrived at the technical school – turned memorial sight, we were greeted by a small handful of memorial sight workers. We were the only visitors and warmly received. They led us up the hill where there used to be a mass grave. Standing on that ground, we could look out and see the entire village stretching before us on a series of rolling mounts. Linda began to tell her story:

‘One night, they finally came. The army of Hutus descended upon us. All able-bodied men, boys, and young girls went out to fight. My husband kissed our young son, our baby, and me good-bye. I stayed in one of the classrooms pacing the floor with my baby and praying that my husband would return to me. From inside I could hear the screams of my Tutsi friends and neighbors. Four or five hours later, my husband came back to the classroom. He was exhausted and his spirit was broken.

He told me that he felt as though we all would be killed. “We are trying to keep them back, but whatever little we try to do, it will not work” he said, “Some of them have grenades and guns, others have machetes and knifes. We can only through bricks and rocks.” He told me to hold onto my identification card, so that the soldiers might take pity on me.

I am a Hutu. My husband is a Tutsi. Some of my family encouraged me to go stay with them once all this mess had begun, but I needed to stay with my husband. I could not leave him, and I could not leave my Tutsi children. My husband kept the hope that perhaps my Hutu identity could save me from the death around us. I had little faith in this hope, because a Hutu woman who married a Tutsi was seen as a traitor.

My husband left a second time to fight. Again, I was left with in the classroom comforting my tiny baby. The old women and the young children, even my son, fell asleep. At dawn, turmoil outside grew louder, and there was a sudden crack of brink against concrete. The Hutus had reached the classroom, and began throwing bricks at those who were sleeping. I shielded my children and watched in horror as skulls were crushed by incoming bricks.

My husband was able to reach me just as the Hutu began flooding into the classroom. They were executing people on my every side. My husband stepped between me and a Hutu soldier and held out my identification card. “Please” he strained, “You do not kill her. We are Tutsi, but she is a Hutu. You cannot kill your Hutu sister.” The soldiers yelled back a forth, a few in the room told the soldier just to kill me. My husband tried again, “You can kill me. You can kill us all. But, not this one. You let her live.” I stood paralyzed with fear. I could not comprehend what was happening, what the words my husband spoke could mean.

The soldier took my ID and let me leave the classroom. He told me he would let me live if I proved I were loyal to Hutu Power. He told me I must kill my Tutsi baby if I wanted to live. The terror of that moment was absolute. I all could do was pray. With all my energy from fear, with all my love for my baby, with all my hate for our enemies, with all my longing for my husband, I cried out to God. The Hutu soldier, scared by such an appeal to God, did not kill my baby or me. I was separated from the classroom and guarded by soldiers. I could do nothing but watch as the people I have lived with my whole life, were slaughtered. I do not wish to detail that evil. I could never explain what I saw. There was not humanity.

I was taken back to the Hutu camp, where I my baby and I were threatened throughout the night. One of the soldiers tried to cut my neck, but was stopped, by one of the soldiers who I had known before.

The following morning, that soldier took me to the classroom where I had been when the massacre began. I wanted to see if maybe my husband and son had survived. As we approached, I had to climb over dead bodies that had been heaped on the ground. I kept looking for moving bodies, hoping one would be that of my family. I entered the classroom and turned over a few of the bodies. In almost exactly the place I had left them, lay the broken and lifeless bodies of my son and my husband.

The shreds of purpose and hope that I had held onto to keep my baby and I alive slipped away. I had no reason to live. No hope. No emotion. I was just an empty thing waiting to be discarded. I asked the soldier to kill me. He look back at me with tired and pained eyes. “I have done enough killing,” he said, “I will not do it again.” After a moment paused, he continued, “what can I do for you?”

“Nothing” I replied. “The only place for me to go is back with my parents and family, but my ID was taken and I will be killed before I reach them.”

“I am going that way. I will use whatever influence I have to get you passed the roadblocks and check points.” He concluded.

I did reach my family as did my baby. That child is not is secondary school. As for me, I never truly left this place. As soon as the genocide was over I came back here.

There are no words in my language for such violence.‘

As Linda finished her story, I felt utterly overwhelmed. I have studied this genocide, read various accounts, seen documentaries, written about it extensively, but I had only felt an ambiguous sorrow. As I listened to Linda’s story, my heart was touched with an acute pain. Linda shared, at least to some small extent, the grief in her heart. What happened to her and her family is inconceivable. The inhumanity in it is only shadowed by the fact that there are millions of people in Rwanda with similar and even more horrific stories. Of the 50,000 at Murambi that day, only 4 survive. And even that number is nothing to the 1 million that were ruthlessly murdered during the Rwandan genocide.

cultural experience

Last Saturday, May 31^st, Amber, Natialie, Trent, and I went to Mukono to see our friend Lydia’s introduction ceremony. In Buganda culture, the women must present her boyfriend to her family before they get engaged. The man will bring cows, goats, furniture, food, ect as an offering to the family in exchange for their daughter. The girl’res family teases the man severely and makes him do many ritual proofs of affection for the woman. These rituals are different for every clan. In turn, the woman cooks for the man and his family. The most important dish that she cooks is matoke. All of the visitors scrutinize how efficiently she peels the matoke. It is a symbol of womanhood and maternal ability.

Trent and Amber have been working with Lydia on the accounting in the bakery she works in. We were told that the introduction would begin at 12. We figured that we would have just enough time to see a majority of the ceremony before we caught a taxi to meet the rest of our volunteers at the Uganda vs. Niger football game. Unfortunately, the whole thing was running on African time, and once we got to the venue of the introduction we learned that it would not be starting until four o’clock. Serendipitously, the taxi bringing the other group drove by us while we were wandering through town, and we were able to all travel to the game together.

We arrived at Mendel stadium and walked into an absolute circus. The entire crowd of people outside the game were buzzing with excitement. All of us bought shirts and a group of teenage boys ran up to us and painted our faces and bodies with. We only understood half of the cheers that they wrote on us. The other half were probably profane, but it is not like we were in danger of blending in anyway. The game really fun. Cranes won!

On Sunday, the mayor, Deo, took us to the village he grew up in. His villages was very isolated, but somehow more well off than any area in Uganda that I had seen so far. There was no electricity or water, but the people seemed well taken care of. In Lugazi almost all of the children run around naked, or in rags. In Deo’s village, the children were all dressed with shoes. Even more, all of the women were wearing elegant Gomezes (traditional Ugandan dress) of fancy and varying fabrics. We visited a Catholic church that Deo helped pay for. The youth group preformed for us. Typical of Deo, he put me on the spot and asked me to speak to the congregation. When I was finished, they asked me in front of everyone if my group would come back and help their community. Of course, I could not agree, so it was a pretty awkward moment.

Deo took us to a few different churches. At the last one, he was given two local chickens to take back to Lugazi. Heidi and Lauren do not like chickens. They told Deo not to bring the chickens in the car with us. I can not properly express the confusion on Deo face. First of all, I don’t think anyone has forbade him from doing something in a very long time. Let alone a young girl. More over, he couldn’t understand why someone would fear a chicken. He looked at them in utter amazement and then turned to me to explain. When I told him they were scared he burst out in a loud, robust laugh and stuffed the chickens in the back.

Later, we were brought to Deo’s father’s house and introduced to his family. When meeting elders and men, Buganda women kneel to show respect. Additionally, they sit on mats, instead of in chairs to show submission and admiration. I did both of these things and the family loved it. When it was time to go, they asked me to stay with them and told me they have many sons they would like to give me to. I told them I wasn’t very good at peeling matoke, so it might not work out. I am not going to lie, the house and the village were so utterly beautiful and peaceful, that it was hard to turn down the offer.

The drive home was incredibly long and uncomfortable. By the time we home, all I wanted to do was eat dinner and go to sleep. The town council members who had traveled with us, Auntie Peggy, Steven, and Zacha, decided they wanted to come inside and visit for a while. Peggy, noticing that I was not in a social mood, announced to everyone that I must be sick and she was sure I had malaria. As she made this diagnosis she pressed her hand on my chest, exactly where my left breast is. Feeling awkward, I backed up an inch. A few minutes later, she did the same thing to the other side. Trent saw the whole exchange and him and I exchanged amused glances. This was Buganda custom that we had not yet become aware of.

Deo and Auntie Peggy are two of the most eccentric people I have ever met. In the town of the Lugazi they are irrefutably the best dressed and the most popular. They walk through the streets larger than life, demanding respect and saying hello to anyone important enough to consider. Classic politicians. They don’t even seem like real people to me. I swear they were written and illustrated in a comic book before they gained human bodies.

Monday, Heidi and I went to Kampala so that we could met with Hamis. Hamis is the personal assistant to Honorable Fred, my contact in Parliament. Hamis is an invaluable resource. In spite of his political affiliation, he gives me what I feel is very unbiased insight to issues in Uganda. Every time we speak, I spend hours asking him questions. After talking business we all went to lunch and had a hilarious conversation about music, culture, and why black and white men like women with big butts. Heidi recited the lyrics of “Baby Got Back”. I about died of laughter.

Hamis introduced us to Honorable Betty, the Member of Parliament from Gulu. Gulu is a region in Northern Uganda that was particularly devastated by the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA is an insurgent group that has been fighting against the Ugandan government. Is it a semi-spiritual movement led by Joseph Kony. They run their army by kidnapping young children, torturing, and brainwashing them until they join the army and become child soldiers. They are then forced to abduct other children. The LRA absolutely decimated the Gulu region and sent hundreds of thousands of people to refugee camps. Some have lived in these camps for over ten years. Just recently, there has been a peace agreement and some of the refugees are resettling. The problem is, many of the children have been orphaned by violence, and no one is used to functioning in a market economy. Most haven’t had the opportunity for education. Betty is helping me take ten volunteers to Gulu to do a business seminar with some of the women there. It should be a powerful experience.

Tuesday, was Martyr’s Day. In the late 1800s, when the Kabaka (king) still ruled over the Buganda, he banned the practice of Christianity. When 25 refused to give up the practice of Christianity they were tortured and killed. Now, people make pilgrimages to Namengogo. We also made a pilgrimage there. Never in my life have I seen so many people. The cathedral was swarming with people, selling, praying, dancing, buying. An even more spectacular was the view from the bottom of the street where we had parked. From there, we saw the street stretch up the hill for about two miles absolutely packed with people. The whole day we only saw one other Muzungu.

It is now Friday, June 06, and I there is a torrential down-pour outside. It is as if someone is just continuously dumping buckets of water over us. You can’t even really distinguish rain drops. Water is seeping through the cracks in the walls and under the doors. It is pretty spectacular. We were going to build another stove today, but it looks like that will have to wait.