Commemoration Week

So, I suppose I finally ought to post about this. Commemoration week marks the first 7 days of the genocide that occurred here in 1994. Of course, I'm officially supposed to call it "the genocide against the Tutsi," but I really hate sounding like I'm overlooking the fact that thousands of others were killed as well, so I'll find other ways to say it. The government *really* doesn't like you to deviate from their official version of history (read they'll accuse you of genocide denial and throw you in jail), so I'll try not to say too much about that til I'm back in America (you're welcome). Anyway, so commemoration week began on Saturday, April 7th. The Thursday and Friday before that, I noticed a lot of Peace Corps. volunteers leaving for their vacation time, which I thought was weird since they'd be leaving for one of the most defining weeks in Rwanda commemorating the most defining time in recent history. But now I understand. It's quite possibly the most ostracizing week a foreigner could experience in Rwanda.

On Saturday, my parents went to the stadium for the big remembrance ceremony. I almost went, but ended up waking up too late (plus I was a little discouraged given that it would all be in Kinyarwanda and I had just survived my mom's graduation ceremony). Later that afternoon, Ben, my brother Omar, and I went to the Walk to Remember  (not to be confused with the movie like I did)--a youth led walk from parliament to the stadium where more commemoration ceremonies took place. Thus begins my experience of feeling completely inadequate and out of place. We met up with the bazungu (the other SIT group here) and basically spent the entire walk catching up with them. Terribly inappropriate, I felt, but we hadn't seen each other in forever, and it was kind of awkward otherwise. At the stadium, we all sat together (a group of muzungus in a sea of Rwandans) and listened to the speeches and songs all in kinyarwanda, of course. I really felt that the language barrier was a huge inhibitor of us being able to truly grasp the magnitude of what was going on. Because we couldn't understand, we just sat there with our lit candles and played with the dripping wax until the one song in English caught our attention. It was this really mournful solo performed by this one guy calling out "no more genocide" over and over again. That was when I finally felt like I could grasp a fragment of the sadness of that week. Shortly thereafter, a lady started having a breakdown somewhere behind us. A bunch of ushers at the ready for instances like this, apparently, came and brought her down, gave her some water, and comforted/restrained her as best they could. Apparently this happened all over the stadium. In a country where so many people lived through so many horrific and traumatic events (to put it academically and abstractly), I could only imagine this being commonplace this week. Apparently hospitals are just clogged this week with people suffering from trauma.

And then Sunday was Easter. Talk about awkward. From what I gather, Easter is not a big deal in Rwanda. And even the small big deal that it could be is more than trumped by commemoration week. My family didn't even go to church together. I went with my sisters to English/American church, and it was kind of awkward for them to be playing such upbeat music with drums and guitars during such a somber week. That's not really supposed to happen. But it was Easter, I guess. They did talk about commemoration week and about the genocide though. And they worked the themes of death and rebirth into the sermon, linking the Easter story and the genocide. It was interesting.

During the week that week, work was the same. Life still goes on for the babies, I guess. The most noticeable differences were on my off hours. There are billboards up all over the city displaying the theme for commemoration week, "Learning from our past to build a bright future," and all the cafes and bars were playing either the news, commemoration events, or commemoration songs. That's right, genocide songs. During the genocide itself, there were pro-genocide songs. Now, there are unity, reconciliation, and commemoration songs. Music videos too, by the way. This country loves its music videos (your music is of no value here unless it's in video form), and apparently commemoration week is no exception. They're...interesting. They show the memorials, young people singing, skulls and bones, burial sites, etc. They were definitely sad. It was almost a relief to have them gone and replaced with the typical top 40 videos and Rwandan music videos (they're a whole 'nother post) the next week. That's all that was playing on the radio too. There's this one song that we dubbed the genocide anthem that played all the time. Again, these songs and videos probably would have had a much more profound impact on us were we able to understand, but because we can't, they unfortunately have no significance to us other than what we can ascribe to them given what we know of history and remembrance. It's terrible, but it's unfortunately true. We cannot relate to what these people have gone through at all, and so we're just left sitting here feeling inadequate and knowing that we should probably be sadder than we are.

My siblings, at least the younger ones, don't like this week. As my younger sister put it, "I hate memory genocide :(" Smiley (frowny?) added for effect. The kids all get that week and the following week off, but that week is filled with an imposed sadness, no music (top 40 music is their life, yall), and nothing to do (since you're not supposed to do fun things that week). And it's all about a history they know but never lived. I'm not sure how my two oldest siblings feel about it. I figured out that my sister was 4 years and my brother, 4 months. They lost their parents and now live with my parents, who are really their aunt and uncle. My brother knows no different really, and he loves his now parents and calls them mom and dad. My sister on the other hand, I don't know. It's not the sort of conversation you just strike up (especially given that I rarely see her), but I do know that she's rebellious by my parents' definition (just another contemporary 20 something by mine) and she never comes home.

I don't really know what happened to my family exactly. I know my dad was in Uganda (presumably meaning his parents fled an earlier "mini-genocide" in the 60s or 70s) and that my mom was living south of here near Butare and lost everyone but her sister (whom I've met and who has a deep machete scar on her forhead. There's also another guy from my dad's church that has a machete scar across one of his eyes from his forehead to his cheek. Evidence is everywhere). But that's all I have, really.

I don't know. It was an awkward, interesting, and alienating week. It's just so interesting/crazy to walk by people walking around with machetes (to cut the grass or something) and think that just 18 years ago, they would have been going to kill someone, to walk by a church everyday and think "oh, a massacre happened there" as people go in to pray, to go to a conference at the Mille Colline (Hotel Rwanda) and enjoy how nice it is, to read books referencing where something happened in 1994 and thinking "oh, yeah, I know where that is. I've been there." It's just...an odd time in Rwanda.