Hello friends and family!I get to write to you about our experience at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which was very informative as well as emotional. After we completed the workshop, we proceeded to tour the memorial with audio guides. We were split up depending on the language we spoke, so we ended up being apart from the Rwandan girls. We started out by touring the outside grounds, which included the mass graves. It was shocking to see the size and number of the mass graves; it was quite a lot to take in. We also went around to all of the separate gardens, which symbolized ideas, emotions, and structures connected to the Genocide. The mood was serious but also curious as we continued with our polite British audio instructor inside the memorial. Inside, we were presented with an enormous amount of information about the Genocide, the events and people surrounding it, and other genocides in history. I watched many short films that interviewed victims who had survived and retold the events that had happened to their families and friends. For me it made the information I was being given extremely more personal. To see these people relive the events when they were telling, even on film, was heartbreaking. We continued into the exhibit, faced with facts and images that displayed the horrors of the Genocide bluntly but respectfully. About halfway through, we heard heart-wrenching screams coming from somewhere in the building. We were all confused and stood shocked for a moment, and then rushed to help. The exhibits had been too much for one of our Nyamata girls, Claudine, to handle and she was lead out of the memorial. Shaken and worried about her, we kept on. There was one exhibit for the Rwandan Genocide that hit me the hardest. I was watching a silent film that was quite graphic, when a birds-eye camera view showed someone getting brutally attacked with a machete and falling to the ground. It was almost too much to handle. There was one room where many people had hung pictures of the family they lost in the Genocide, another ofclothes of victims, and another of the bones of the people who had died. It was overwhelming, and a couple more of the Nyamata girls broke down. They decided to end their tour short. I continued upstairs where I was met with the history of other genocides including the Holocaust and the killings in Cambodia. Some of them, I am very sad to say, I didn’t even know had happened in our history. I am very glad that I was able to learn about them even though it was extremely hard. We moved on to the final and most moving exhibit; the children’s’ room. In this exhibit, families had donated pictures and facts about their children that were killed. The pictures were blown up and the facts were underneath, showing their age and names, their favorite foods, activities and lastly, how they were killed. It was so hard to look at the pictures of smiling kids and babies and then hear about how they were brutally killed. I remember one the most vividly, it was a young, happy toddler girl and I cried when I read that she had been burned alive. I will always remember the memorials we visited because I am so in awe of how the people of Rwanda live with this personal story every day. I am deeply moved by the tragedies of the Genocide and I know my fellow RRI members are as well. I am overwhelmingly grateful to have learned about the horrors, because it has not only matured me, but also created much deeper bonds with the girls here in Rwanda. May all the victims rest in peace and all the survivors keep living with the strength I see in them everyday.
-Justice
