Remembrance

Seventeen years ago today, the Rwandan genocide started. Seventeen years ago today, the killing would have already been going for nineteen hours. Thus, today, officially declared a national holiday, starts the nationwide Mourning Week to remember the genocide in Rwanda. On my walk to the memorial service at Amahoro (Peace) National Stadium, I witnessed an immediate change in the way Kigali went about its business. People looked more somber and did not greet each other like they did even yesterday. The once busy streets usually filled with moto taxis and crazy drivers, seemed passive and deserted. The city air felt heavy laden with grief, sobered up as if God had splashed a bucket of water into its inebriated countenance. Noise, once a mainstay of the capital city, had disappeared and was replaced with a grim and solemn silence. I am not lying when I report that the city had tangibly changed in observance of the holiday; every step further towards the stadium confirmed my uneasy sense that something was indeed amiss. On such an anniversary, how could it not be? I did not speak because I felt the need to respect the mournful atmosphere. 

At the stadium, I joined a long line of other Rwandans waiting for the armymen to search them so they could peacefully enter the stadium. We waited through the rain; a lady offered me refuge underneath her umbrella for the worst part of the storm. Thousands of people packed into the stadium stands and I quickly found out that I could not see the stage, I did not know what was happening, and I could not understand the proceedings because they said everything in kinyarwanda. At first, many of those around me wore smiles and even chatted a bit as the service started. Most people sported all forms of clothing in the color purple, even Boy Scout-esque bandanas around the neck, because purple signifies healing. All the signs and banners about the genocide were purple as well. 

As the service progressed, I noticed that people's moods changed. I could not understand the songs playing over the loud speakers or what the keynote speakers said, but I observed how the people around me now held their faces in their hands, or gripped their necks like those afflicted by worries or bad memories. Then, I heard a new sound. It confused me at first because it sounded so far away. But as it built its chilling crescendo, I perceived a heart-stopping scene. A woman, maybe a hundred rows away from me, was screaming her heart out, crying, visibly burdened and broken with remembering. The people around her tried to console her, but she did not listen to them. Instead her disturbing wails grew louder and more intense. Her exclamations sounded like what I would associate with a dying animal. It terrified me. Rwandans are usually quite composed in public and they hide their emotions/opinions well, so whatever was afflicting that woman's brain must have been dreadfully powerful and real. Her screams filled the empty air that hung around the stadium. Men came, some in white shirts, some in the uniform of the omnipresent Rwanda police, and they helped escort her limp and lamenting body out of the stadium. I heard her body-curdling screams fade as they carried her off. That poor lady set off a chain reaction that was perhaps fated to happen. All around the stadium, people, mostly women with the occasional man, would erupt suddenly and startlingly into bouts of piercing wails. They projected a terrifying sound. Many collapsed as they shrieked, hollered and yelped, physically encumbered with the horrors of yesteryear that managed to extend their terror into the world seventeen years later. 

The whole second half of the four hour long service, I heard these mournful and transfixing wails crescendo and decrescendo like a dirge. I watched as limp figures were carted like the deceased out of the stadium. These poor folks, probably survivors and/or victims, were completely overcome by the weight of remembering. As I did not know what was happening in the official service, the wailers of chilling exclamations captivated my attention. A couple times, people near me broke down and began screaming. I have never heard screams like those before. They echoed across the stadium. Even those who did not break down into shrieking were affected; a woman directly behind me sobbed the entire service. In remembering the genocide, a spirit of real terror still tormented many of those present. I cried too, for no other reason than I could see the sufferings of those in my immediate surroundings. I cried because I felt disturbed. I cried because life is tormented, tragic and heart-breakingly sad. Peering outside the bubble, life can be hell on earth.