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.