Hi. sorry about the appalling lack of communication we have had recently. we have been plagued by bad internet and power cuts!!!!
i'l tell you whats been going on as if it's the day we got back...
tuesday:
today we visited another memorial museum in Murambi which is in the very south of Rwanda. As we arrived a man and a woman came forward and through Philbert they told us a very moving story of their accounts of what happened at the time of the Genocide. The man had been shot in the head and been left for dead and somehow he survived hiding in a school (the school had been turned into the memorial afterwards) underneath lots of dead bodies for days on end. when he finally had the strength he crawled away in the night into the valley. he stays at the memorial almost everyday because he believes that is where his family is (they were buried in one of the mass graves there) and that he should be with them.
we were then led round the outside with no explanation of what we were going to see. there was a row of class rooms. we lined outsde them and people went in one by one. as they came out a look of horror was apparent in each face. as i went in i saw what was so sad. dead bodies (treated), skeletons (some still with clothes on the bones) were laid out. the smell was aweful and we could hardly bare to stay in there for very long. there were about 15 class rooms each with about 50 bodies. the worst room of all was one filled with the remains of children and babies.
after our tour we left the area and had a long 3 hour drive back. we had all been very very moved by what we saw and all felt slightly nauseus. we did not understand how such complete and utter cruelty could be felt in humans. how could one human do this to another????
wednesday:
today we drove to Kayonza. this is where Reach has been building the football pitch. our task for the day was to dig the foundations for the Youth Centre which will be positioned next the the pitch. After about half an hour of digging, Lane, Cooke, the Rev, Gary Shackle, Brother John and Pete the photographer and myself left Kayonza to visit some perpetrators and survivors of the Genocide and to hear their stories.
we went to the house of a woman who had been badly beaten and tortured in '94. one of the obvious injuries which we could see was that her ear had been cut in half. she said how the Hutu's had come and killed the whole of her extended family. luckily her brother had escaped to Tanzanier (we were not that far from the border) but she had been caught before she was able to get away. then came the hardest and most emotional part of the day for us. Philbert called into the house and two large and burly men came out. We hugged them (as you do....) and shook hands with them. we were then told that these men were the ones who, in a group, had murdered at least a hundred members of her family. i had never knowingly met a killer, let alone a mass murderer, and i found this very hard to come by. we were told about their struggle to get over what they had done and how they had sought and begged forgiveness for what they had done (they had been in prison for ten years). the woman had not been able to forgive them for many years and eventually she had realised that it was the right thing to do. now they are friends and are comfortable around one another. because the killers lived 12 miles away they walked to where we were, but they had arrived the evening before and stayed at her house.
i felt especially overpowered by the fact that if i were in her case i do not think it would be possible to forgive those men if they had killed my whole family, cousins, brothers, sisters and parents...
we drove to another house to talk to a former member of the government at district level. this mean she had influence over about 40 houses. she gave out propoganda telling all hutus to kill and destroy the Tutsi 'crock croaches'. she told which hutu should be hunting which tutsi. she spent 6 and half years in prison) and when she came out had help from Reach to realise what she had done was so so wrong. she had to do many hours of community service (like building houses and the like) and even though she is no longer obliged to do so, she still does.
then we drove back....
i'l tell you whats been going on as if it's the day we got back...
tuesday:
today we visited another memorial museum in Murambi which is in the very south of Rwanda. As we arrived a man and a woman came forward and through Philbert they told us a very moving story of their accounts of what happened at the time of the Genocide. The man had been shot in the head and been left for dead and somehow he survived hiding in a school (the school had been turned into the memorial afterwards) underneath lots of dead bodies for days on end. when he finally had the strength he crawled away in the night into the valley. he stays at the memorial almost everyday because he believes that is where his family is (they were buried in one of the mass graves there) and that he should be with them.
we were then led round the outside with no explanation of what we were going to see. there was a row of class rooms. we lined outsde them and people went in one by one. as they came out a look of horror was apparent in each face. as i went in i saw what was so sad. dead bodies (treated), skeletons (some still with clothes on the bones) were laid out. the smell was aweful and we could hardly bare to stay in there for very long. there were about 15 class rooms each with about 50 bodies. the worst room of all was one filled with the remains of children and babies.
after our tour we left the area and had a long 3 hour drive back. we had all been very very moved by what we saw and all felt slightly nauseus. we did not understand how such complete and utter cruelty could be felt in humans. how could one human do this to another????
wednesday:
today we drove to Kayonza. this is where Reach has been building the football pitch. our task for the day was to dig the foundations for the Youth Centre which will be positioned next the the pitch. After about half an hour of digging, Lane, Cooke, the Rev, Gary Shackle, Brother John and Pete the photographer and myself left Kayonza to visit some perpetrators and survivors of the Genocide and to hear their stories.
we went to the house of a woman who had been badly beaten and tortured in '94. one of the obvious injuries which we could see was that her ear had been cut in half. she said how the Hutu's had come and killed the whole of her extended family. luckily her brother had escaped to Tanzanier (we were not that far from the border) but she had been caught before she was able to get away. then came the hardest and most emotional part of the day for us. Philbert called into the house and two large and burly men came out. We hugged them (as you do....) and shook hands with them. we were then told that these men were the ones who, in a group, had murdered at least a hundred members of her family. i had never knowingly met a killer, let alone a mass murderer, and i found this very hard to come by. we were told about their struggle to get over what they had done and how they had sought and begged forgiveness for what they had done (they had been in prison for ten years). the woman had not been able to forgive them for many years and eventually she had realised that it was the right thing to do. now they are friends and are comfortable around one another. because the killers lived 12 miles away they walked to where we were, but they had arrived the evening before and stayed at her house.
i felt especially overpowered by the fact that if i were in her case i do not think it would be possible to forgive those men if they had killed my whole family, cousins, brothers, sisters and parents...
we drove to another house to talk to a former member of the government at district level. this mean she had influence over about 40 houses. she gave out propoganda telling all hutus to kill and destroy the Tutsi 'crock croaches'. she told which hutu should be hunting which tutsi. she spent 6 and half years in prison) and when she came out had help from Reach to realise what she had done was so so wrong. she had to do many hours of community service (like building houses and the like) and even though she is no longer obliged to do so, she still does.
then we drove back....
