Memo from Rwanda

Kieran, our 18 year old son, visited the Rwanda Genocide Memorial yesterday during his short stay in Kigali. His gap year has already proven immensely valuable to him and it has certainly taught Liz and I a lot about parenting too. You have to let go, but let's not pretend that's easy!

Anyway, Kieran posted this message on Facebook yesterday. It demands from those of us who can remember these events, some hard thinking about what we didn't do then, and perhaps what we're not doing today....

Hi Guys!

I've made it to Rwanda after an 18 hour bus journey, which was a nightmare, and a night in a hellish seedy guesthouse, because it was the only place we could find, guarded by about 8 'street guys' smoking weed (one of who was kind enough to offer his presence as we went in search of a drink, so as to protect us from being mugged!) Anyway, it was a terrible place, with what we are convinced was blood stains on the wall..Anyway, the campsite where we are now, is much lovelier with everything we need so that's great!

I went to the Rwanda Genocide Memorial today, which is a fantastically informative memorial with an incredbily peaceful memorial garden, which was ideal to visit after the graphic exhibition inside. The exhibition starts all the way back in colonial times (it was the German, Belgian and French administrations that fucked the whole thing over by the way) and then travels all the way through the causes, events and repurcussions of the genocide.

The most graphic and moving parts of the exhibition have to be the videod retellings of the stories by some survivors, and the hundreds of pictures donated by families of lost ones, all hanging up in one room. Picture after picture of smiling happy being, not knowing, their llives were literally about to be hacked to pieces. There was one bit, where there was a chain and a padlock in a glass box - this was the chain that was used to tie two people together as they were buried alive. Then there was a room full of skulls and bones, of some victims.

The worst things about this was not simply the fact that there were about 50 skulls and 100s of bones in this room with me, it was the fact that on so many of the skulls, bits had been hacked off, the faces on some were shattered, and one skull was just a pile of fragments. That was pretty shocking. Then, there was a room full of clothes and what hit me about that, was how modern the clothes were, tracksuit bottoms, colourful Tshirts and so on - it was such a modern genocide, and this is really brought clear here. The children's memorial is probably the most heart wrenching. It's very simple, just a load of pictures of kids and then under the pictures it says things like their favourite food, sport, pasttime, friend whatever, but under that, it just says 'cause of death'.

The worst two for me, were favourite food: mother's milk, favourite friend: older sister, cause of death: stabbed in eyes and head and then aged 2 ,favourite whatevers, before cause of death, being smashed against a wall.So it was pretty tough, graphic emotional stuff, and the shear size of the mass graves, these huge concrete slabs indicating where they are - there's at least a dozen of them.

Tomorrow, we're going to go and visit two churches which saw about 50,000 killed in each, so that will be another lesson to learn all about.

Anyway, if you ever get the chance, you must come and see the memorials. Kieran xx