Never Again--don't ever let yourself forget those words

On Monday we went to the Rwandan Genocide Memorial in Kigali in the morning and then in the afternoon we went to the Genocide site Nyamata, about a half an hour outside of Kigali.

The Genocide Memorial is comprised of a museum section, a rose garden section, and then the burial sections. The museum's first floor is about the Rwandan genocide while the second floor features an exhibit on other historic genocides that have taken place around the world. The numerous rose gardens are maticulously taken care of and look great.There are also several fountain sitting areas that really reflect a serenity that is much needed. The museum itself is very well done.
I had known going in that it would be hard to make my way through the museum, but I am happy that I did. Knowing how emotional I get I had tried to prepare myself as much as possbile, but as expected it was hard to get through. I greatly appreciated the gardens and fountains so that after I had gone through the museum I was able to go and sit and just be by myself.
I will admit that the burial sites were hard to walk by just because in knowing how many people were buried right in front of me was just very difficult to handle.

As I said earlier, in the afternoon we went to Nyamata, which is a town outside of Kigali. The site that we specifically went to is one of their churches. Behind the church there is another burial site. For those of you who do not know, the church in Nyamata is where 10,000 people were killed. They had been in the church for roughly a week before they were killed. Only 5 survived. Currently inside the church is piles of all the clothing of the people killed there. Literally there is clothing piled all over the floor. It was very hard to walk in and see that right away and just know what it signified. No placecards or history was needed, one only needs to look at the clothing and know.
When we had walked from the bus station in Nyamata to the church it was erie because a group of children walked with us and were hugging us and holding our hands[they were just soo happy] and they walked us straight to the church gates and then let us all pass through as they just stood there..

I think many of you can guess what kind of emotions I had on Monday and what emotions I have just rethinking about it and writing about it. Hopefully you can understand why I am not even going to attempt to put them into words; but know that they are there and that they are very strong.

I want to leave you with 3 quotes that I found had touched me when I was going through the museum:

"Igiti Kigororwa Kikiri gito"-Imigani ijy anyen'umuco
and in English
"A tree can only be straightened when it is young"- Traditional


"There will be no humanity without forgivenes.
There will be no forgiveness without justice.
But justice will be impossible without humanity."
-Yolande Mukagasana

"If you must remember, remember this..
The Nazis did not kill 6 million Jews..
nor the Interahamwe kill a million Tutsis,
they killed one and then another, then another...
Genocide is not a signle act of murder, it is millions of acts of murder."
-Stephen D. Smith, Executive Director, Aegis Trust, 2004.