I’m Emily Werness and in April 1994 I was 4 years old. I was alive, a world away, when all hell broke loose in Rwanda.
The history between the Hutus and Tutsis, two people groups in Rwanda, is a long and complicated one which I will not try to explain, as I am no expert. In April 1994 these tensions came to a head – the Hutus were determined to wipe out the Tutsis and began to execute their plan and the murders began.
As I walk the streets of Kigali and Rwanda today it is difficult to picture that just 20 years ago, these same, exact streets were covered with countless mutilated bodies of Tutsi people. Hacked by machetes…gunned down…slammed against walls…beaten with clubs…raped, beaten, and then hacked by machete…whatever would cause the most humiliation and pain…that was the aim of the Hutus – to destroy and dehumanize a group of people. It was genocide. There is no denying it or skirting around it. I don’t want to get into the politics or go off on some rant about the injustice, but my mind can’t help but go to this place: how could the world turn its back on Rwanda and leave them to exact a final solution in their own country and allow a million Tutsis (20% of the Rwandan population) to die at the hands of the Hutus? Especially after the Holocaust and adamant cries of “Never again”? And it happens again in Bosnia? We live in a fallen world, that’s for sure. I don’t have answers and I don’t have any profound thoughts to ease the pain this country experienced and all the people groups in this world that have faced it. It’s ugly and it’s horrible. We men are wretched things.
Walking through the Kigali Genocide Memorial, it was really difficult to find words to describe the thoughts, feelings, and questions that flooded my head. Over 80% of the children in Rwanda during the genocide witnessed the murder of at least one family member, usually one or both parents. I found myself staring longer than normal at several of the family photos of slaughtered innocent Tutsi people…I don’t know what I was doing, just trying to take a moment and remember them – that someone was seeing their face and not just another corpse. Seeing clothes found at some of the mass graves, crushed skulls and countless bones in their final resting place at the memorial…I have no words. I mean, are there any words that can be used to describe or commemorate or justify?
If you have not seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, I urge you to watch it. Granted, there are some inaccuracies and debate about how the main hotel manager was portrayed as a hero, and for financial/logistical reasons it was filmed in South Africa, but the terror and mass murders were very real. One of our first nights here in town, our Pastor took us to the real Hotel Rwanda, what is now called Hotel Des Mille Collines. We walked across the same grounds, through the same doors that many Tutsis did seeking refuge. We went and sat down by a lounge area and I looked up at the windows and rooms of the hotel, wondering how many Tutsis trembled with fear, hiding in corners or showers, terrified of the Hutus…and then wondering how many never walked out of the hotel again. It was eerie to say the least. Since the genocide, the hotel has been reconstructed, renovated, restored, and renewed. In the lounge area we sat in there was a live jazz band playing and singing, “How Great is Our God.” I had chills run up and down my spine. Such redemption has come to this hotel and this country since the days of the genocide.
But, it has left its scars, which we have seen since being here. One of our translators, Eric, was 8 years old during the genocide and witnessed murder and loss. Of the 1000 people he was hiding with, only 50 lived.
I’m Emily Werness I have no big revelations or life lessons to share here – just the scattered thoughts and burdened heart of an ordinary woman.
The real life Hotel Rwanda in Kigali
