Never Again!

April 7, 1994… Under the relentless rain, Rwanda was entering the darkest age imaginable to mankind. The macabre history is out there for everyone to read. And learn from. And never repeat again!

The survivors and their personal stories are on the other hand very much around me, every single day. Although people are mostly restrained in talking about that nightmarish spring, it is still so very much on everyone’s mind. How could it not be, when pretty much all Rwandans have had many family members, friends or neighbors tortured and killed in the most cruel, brutal, bestial way ever conceivable...

And there is no harsher time to remember than every April. The rain pours down in what reminds me of Dickens’ “implacable November weather.” No sun rays for days, no hope for light. Add to that the deep silence, and it all becomes almost frightful. In a country where everyone is walking everywhere at all times, and where traffic is insanely busy, all of a sudden the streets are empty and sooo quiet. Apart for the genocide memorial gatherings, which are organized each day for a whole week, no one moves, no one talks. Surreal to have just the rain pounding down on an empty country, with haunting memories.

I spent April 7 alone in the house, somewhat unsure of how to even act around myself. For some half an hour around midday I stepped out on our side street and just sat there, in the rain. And then, last night, I joined my friend Bonny to the big gathering on the stadium. I lit a candle in the middle of a huge, silent crowd. And then the screams came. As one survivor was retelling his story (he was the only one to make it out alive from a church where 5,000 people were massacred – a church which I actually visited…), people were fainting around. The hysterical cries of the survivors and the emotional church music, all next to a huge bonfire, made for quite the most poignant, distressing night I have ever had in Africa... Still so hard to fathom how the victims and the killers now really live side by side...

As I walked home through the ghost-like town the rain began to come down again. And I felt blessed I had no memories to sift through on a night like that.