Charles tells his story inside Nyamata Church

Charles tells his story inside Nyamata Church

“They cut my brother with a machete.  He was bleeding everywhere.  He came to me, and said, ‘You are so very young,’ – I was eight – ‘I am going to die.  Take my blood and put it on your face and all over your body so they will take you for dead.  Lie underneath my dead body.  Pretend you are dead.’  So I did.”

Charles spoke with little emotion as he stood in the church where all of his family and friends were murdered in the first few days of the 1994 genocide.  When the genocide began, thousands of Tutsis took refuge in the church.  In 1992, during some smaller scale killings, the Tutsis saved themselves by hiding in the church.  They thought they would be safe there again.

Nyamata Church: From the outside looking in

Nyamata Church: From the outside looking in

Pointing to a small hole underneath a pew Charles said,  “I hid my head in here, and the rest of my body under my brother.  I also hid a small baby whose mother had been killed.  Everything was very chaotic.  There was so much killing and screaming and pain, but I remember his mother dying very clearly.  She put the baby with me and when she walked away, an Interhamwe chopped off her head with one whack of his machete.  Her head rolled on the floor.  I have flashbacks to this very often.”

Charles’ story – and the Nyamata Church – was one of the most difficult and graphic stories I have heard since I arrived in Rwanda. While many survivors have shared their stories, none have done so with such vivid imagery, in the exact location where the killings took place.

Nyamata Church

Nyamata Church

Charles’ facial expressions did not change as he calmly explained that the Interhamwe began by killing everyone outside of the church first, and then started on those inside with grenades.  When they blew open the doors, they chopped off arms and used them to wave goodbye to the other Tutsis, telling them that this was their fate as well.  Children were separated from their parents and thrown against walls.  Heads were tossed into the crowd as the Interhamwe instructed their captives to play soccer with their neighbor’s faces.  Babies were ripped from their mother’s stomachs so that the mothers were forced to watch their unborn children be killed before they too met the same fate.

I couldn’t help but reflect on what I learned while working at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to be the “appropriate way to memorialize victims of genocide.”  The Museum uses privacy walls to ensure that gruesome photos are only seen by those who choose to view them, and these scenes are quite limited in number.  The emphasis is on the individual and his or her story, with the hope that people are remembered for who they were, not as simply another number in a calculated mass killing.

In Nyamata, the church benches are littered with victims’ clothing, decaying from blood and time.   The ceiling is full of holes and bloodstains, remnants of the lives destroyed by the Interhamwe’s grenades.  Below and behind the church, skulls and bones line the walls; coffins of the few identified bodies occupy the remaining space.

Skulls of Nyamata

Skulls of Nyamata

Charles survived because his dying brother shared his blood.  “The blood smelled very bad.  And after four days of hiding, the smell of decaying bodies was unbearable.  But I had no choice.”  He escaped into the swamps where he hid for four weeks until rescued by RPF soldiers.  Five others (out of thousands) from the church survived, one of which is the baby Charles hid; today the two are very close friends.  “While I don’t suffer from trauma, it is very difficult to have no family.  I am most sad when I remember my brothers, my twin brother and my brother who used his blood to save me.  I really miss them.”

I can’t help but wonder how and why Charles gives these tours through his family’s graveyard.  “For me, I have no trauma,” he tells me.  “I am lucky.  I barely even cry.  But I like to tell my story.  I know you have come a long way to hear it and I hope that you will share it with everyone.  Please tell them to visit to hear my story.  This way, if we keep talking, and if we keep telling our story, it will not happen again.”

Charles tells his story

Charles tells his story

On Wednesday, Kabera invited me to join him on a site visit to the Lycee de Kigali (LDK), a prominent boarding school that President Bush stopped by during his one-day visit to Rwanda in February 2008.  The members of the AERG Managing Committee (MC) – Kabera and other university student leaders – dedicate the hours that they are not in class and not doing other work for AERG to visiting local AERG chapters at high schools and universities around the country.

AERG site visit to Lycee de Kigali

During a three-hour meeting in the school’s gymnasium, Kabera and his team held the attention of an audience of about 75 high school students members.  Kabera speaks with confidence and maturity, and it is immediately clear that everyone in the audience has great respect for him. The goals of the meetings are to inform members about AERG’s progress and latest activities, to discuss any problems in the chapter, and to provide general support for one another.

AERG families are introduced at the meeting

AERG families are introduced at the meeting

The meeting began after a prayer and a one-minute moment of silence in commemoration of the members of their families that died during the genocide.  Constance, the coordinator of the LDK chapter called out the names of each family (groups of about ten students who provide the kinship of a family to one another, since many of AERG’s members have no other family), and as the family name was called, the members stood up to be acknowledged by the MC.  Following family introductions, the AERG MC discussed recent developments and each member gave lectures on various topics: how to get good grades and the importance of studying, proper behavior during school and during the holidays (many students don’t have families to go to during the holidays, so the AERG MC provides their addresses and phone numbers for those who do not have a place to go or anyone to contact), and not fighting with fellow classmates.

“As members of AERG, you have responsibilities,” Kabera tells the students.  “You must help one another and be each other’s families, you must have love for each other, and you have to struggle to ensure that genocide never takes place again.  To do these things, we must study hard, behave well, and protect one another from disease, AIDS, and violence.  We must create a friendship.  We must have a kinship among AERG and among all Rwandans.”

Kabera addresses the Lycee de Kigali AERG members

Kabera addresses the Lycee de Kigali AERG members

All of the students rise and begin clapping as they break into song.  “It means, ‘we want to rebuild our country’,” Amos, one of the members of the MC whispers in my ear.