Yesterday was very moving - I had been invited by Louis to accompany him to a genocide memorial service in a small rural community called Ruhanga, about 45 minutes from here. He first took me there in 2000 on my first visit to Rwanda.and I was deeply affected by that first visit. The village centre at that time consisted of a badly damaged and deserted church building, some simple graves with an inscription nearby stating that George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, had visited a year or two earlier. Then Louis took me into a school building next door to meet the 200 orphans that had survived the genocide. He explained to me that 5,000 people had been locked inside the church building and then killed by the Interahamwe militia. These children had somehow escaped death. many had been babies strapped to their mothers' backs and had been pulled out from under the bodies. Others had hidden or been injured and left for dead. Now they were living in the school being cared for as best he could by the village pastor and his wife.
I was keen to go back with Louis and see what had happened since then. When we arrived there were thousands of people there - all gathered under awnings in the open air on top of a mountain - close to the village of Ruhanga. The church where the massacre took place has been converted into a genocide memorial site and a new church building for the village has been put up.
Apart from Louis there were five other bishops and the archbishop all in their purple robes. Louis did the opening prayer as the parish is in his diocese. The whole thing took all morning. It was set out like a stadium with a large central space. A big truck appeared at one point and parked in the middle. Then the men started unloading coffins. They were lined up opposite where we were sitting on small benches to keep them off the wet ground. Each one was draped in purple and white cloth coverings and people kept coming forward and placing bouquets, framed photographs and huge flower arrangements on them. Some of these coffins were very large and only one or two were normal size. Some were group remains and some were whole families. I counted nine coffins in all but was told that they contained the remains of 159 people who had recently been dug up from a mass grave.
Some of the orphans stood and gave testimonies. One young woman (around 24 years) was very moving. She was old enough (about 6 years old at the time) to remember what happened. She witnessed her parents being murdered and then she was struck by a machete on the back of her neck and left for dead. Somehow, she survived and got away. She knew the man who had done this and he was eventually tried and sent to prison. Now he is out and back in the community. She witnessed to the love of Jesus in her life and that she had forgiven the man. She even called his name to ask him to come forward - but he either did not respond or maybe was not even there. People were in tears all around me - even the men. Crying is so against the Rwandese culture - they never normally would do this in public, if at all. Other people got up and sang mournful songs of great beauty and expressiveness. By this time the rain was pouring down in torrents, mud was everywhere and people were crowding in under the awnings. They said they welcomed the rain because it was like this in April 1994 and the heavy rain had meant that many people had been able to escape because the killers did not like "working" when it was raining so hard.
Finally the coffins were all loaded back onto the truck to be removed to the memorial church for final burial. This was about 3/4 mile from the meeting place, the mud was deep and so Louis wisely told me to get in the car and wait. I am so pleased he did. I was out of the rain, I could observe the people and have a time of reflection about what I had witnessed. About 45 minutes later Noel, the driver got a signal from Louis to come and find him. The state of the track was appalling - there were vehicles everywhere - up to their axles in mud - but we found Louis and got on the way back fairly quickly. The ride down the mountain was interesting to say the least - a traffic jam in mud at an angle of 45 degrees - thank goodness we were in Louis's big 4 x 4 and not my small one! Louis told me on the way home that the church burial place was now completely full. The remains of 35,000 people are buried there.
What a day! I was the only 'mzungu' there - but no-one made me feel an outsider. In fact I met several clergy who had been my students at KATC a few years ago. It was a privilege to have been invited and to be with the people at this time.
