Nyamata Church Memorial

Last Saturday I visited Nyamata, a town in southeastern Rwanda thirty minutes outside of Kigali. The bus ride there was beautiful, rolling hills quilted with lush farmland and whirling red roads. Arriving in Nyamata, I quickly became aware of how accustomed I had become to life in Kigali. A bustling, extraordinarily clean city, Kigali bears little to no resemblance to its neighboring towns. Nyamata “town” consists of a single street of concrete stores, restaurants and vacant spaces, stretching for approximately one kilometer.

The reason for this trip was to visit a genocide memorial in one of the churches in Nyamata. After a myriad of futile attempts asking for directions, we finally found a kind high school student named Moses, who led us to the church. Situated behind an elementary school, the memorial was enclosed by a painted metal gate and small garden.

We were immediately greeted by a soft-spoken guard who led us inside the church. On April 10, 1994, over the course of 5 days, 10,018 men, women and children were murdered here. Their clothing and personal belongings were resting on the pews, still arranged as if for worship; the mounds of clothing huddled together facing the altar.

The stillness in the air was one of the first things I noticed. Then the small hairbrush coated in dirt but still recognizably pink. As I walked through the pews toward the front of the church, the guard gently tapped my shoulder. “That is blood,” he whispered, pointing to the discolored white cloth draped gently over the altar.

Behind the church, a shaded veranda covered the remainder of the memorial. Several staircases led to cellars with floor to ceiling shelves of skulls, bones and crates holding up to fifty individuals.  A mass grave, wide enough for just one person to walk through.

10,018 men, women and children sought refuge in this church, a place customarily considered to be holy, sacred and safe. Yet where was god when these 10,018 men, women and children were killed? Faith aside, where was humanity? I think I will find myself returning to this question often during my time in Rwanda.