The Kigali Memorial

I don't know how to describe our visit to the Kigali Memorial, built in remembrance of the genocide which decimated this tiny country in the spring of 1994. This was my second visit and I knew what to expect, yet some things hit me harder this time around and certainly many things affected me differently. The memorial/museum is beautifully done (if that is indeed the correct word) and despite there being many people there this time (last year we were nearly alone in the place), a silence which was both respectful and stunned pervaded the entire building. How else can one react in the face of the truth of the killing of nearly one million people by their own countrymen in a period of 100 days, while the rest of the world stood by and did nothing? Not our finest hour as a human family, surely.

At one point in the exhibit, there are three rooms which were, for me, especially poignant. All three are round, so you have the sensation of being surrounded...first, by hundreds and hundreds of photos of people killed in the genocide; second, by bones of people killed- skulls and leg bones and arm bones, some bearing the scars of machete wounds; third, by clothing of genocide victims, found in various places throughout the countryside. And in the third room, a video of survivors telling of their experiences...what they saw and heard, what happened to their family members, while several dozen of us sat, unmoving and moved, with tears running down our faces. And, as is my way, I wrote...

3 rooms...
surrounded by photos
of genocide victims..
walking among their bones...
staring at remnants
of their clothing...
I am overwhelmed...but why?
after all, not my brothers or sisters,
fathers or mothers-
     yet they are,
     they surely are...
the molecules from distant stars
dwelled in them as fully as in me...
their blood ran red, their laughter
echoed through these hills,
their lives were full & meaningful...
     until, untimely dead,
     they breathed their dreadful last,
     releasing star cells back
     into the universe to
     live in other souls, to bless
     other lives...
          even mine.