It’s genocide memorial day, although that’s the wrong way to think about it. Today is the day they’ve chosen to commemorate the beginning of the genocide, though really how do you peg the exact time? The president’s plane went down in the evening; the soldiers in his army and the militias they had trained put up road blocks in Kigali; and by morning, the remarkably efficient and well-coordinated horror had begun.
The man who keeps watch over the house where I stay has the radio on. They’ve just started playing formal addresses. There was, I think, a moment of silence called for — the Kinyarwanda voice stopped; our guard put his head down on a desk, arms stretched out before him, and laid quietly for a minute. Then he sat up, and as if on cue, the radio began again. Our guard’s eyes were red.
Then they started playing what I came to think of last year as “the sad genocide songs.” You can tell songs of mourning, like songs of God, pretty much anywhere, even if you don’t understand the words. These mourning songs I do not understand make me cry, and I had to walk away from the radio.
I say “genocide memorial day” is the wrong way to think about it because this will last a week, these formal remembrances. There will be afternoon lectures, there will be other programs in other places. But over the next three months, community after community will mark the day the slaughter came to them. Genocide memorial day is really, really long.
I don’t know how I’ll mark the day. Two years ago, I went to Gisozi, where the national memorial and the country’s largest mass grave is. I’m torn, this year, between the feeling an obligation to attend something and feeling the urge to stay away. Attending one of the formal programs on memorial day, at least in Kigali, feels like a civic duty. The entire city shuts down in a way it never otherwise does, and everyone, it seems goes.
Many are marking something they know from memory; others are remembering the loss of family, even if they were abroad and did not face genocide themselves. But this is not my memory. Without a doubt, I will spend the better part of today thinking of my friends who are survivors, and thinking of the family they lost who, through my friends’ stories, feel almost like people I knew, too. Perhaps I will mark some part of the day with those friends. Perhaps not.
There is often discussion among the mzungus here of whether it’s intrusive of us to go to these programs, or on the other hand whether it’s disrespectful not to. I don’t think there’s a rule. I think we should each go where we feel we belong, where we feel right bearing witness. In 2008, that was at the memorial. This year, it may be on my own, with my young guard and his radio, and my quiet reflection on where I am.
Here’s what I observed and felt at Gisozi in 2008.
And here’s a story about image that first comes to mind for me when I think about memorial day in Rwanda.
And here are a few disassociated tidbits on the topic:
–It seems this year that there’s theme to the memorial period (is there always? I don’t remember that in ’08), and this year, it’s “Let’s join together in fighting trauma.” Which leads me to observe that there’s quite a bit of fighting involved in genocide remembrance here. The country has been fighting, so the English language papers have said for awhile, “genocide ideology,” “negationism” (revisionism, I think?) and just plain old genocide itself. Last year, they opened the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide. This year, the commission is taking the lead in fighting trauma.
I’m not sure trauma is something you can “fight” per se. My Dart time makes me wonder. The commission website says the country wants to do a better job of managing trauma cases, and who could not agree with the importance of that? I’m interested to see what happens.
–The national broadcasting outlet here has decided to cut back on the graphic images of the genocide. The general consensus is that the images retraumatize; it’s said that they wanted to make this change last year, but that a survivors’ association objected that deliberately avoiding graphic images would minimize the genocide. This year, though, the New Times says everyone is on board.
–The national police say they’ve put a plan in force that will help protect survivors this week, the New Times says. They’ve even “mapped out” those “most at risk.” They’re also providing trauma counseling at the police hospital.
