From April 7th to April 14th each year, Rwanda remembers the genocide, which officially began on April 7, 1994. I won’t go into detail about the genocide, so please click here for more information.
April 7th is a national holiday in Rwanda – everything is closed, nobody works, and ceremonies are held throughout the country. (As a side note, Peace Corps’ entire support staff in Nyanza had to work all day and miss the memorial events – it was not okay.) For the next five days, people work in the mornings and attend events in the afternoon, and the last day is a full holiday again.
On the first day of memorial week, we Trainees attended the events that took place in Nyanza. In the morning, basically everybody in Nyanza met on the edge of town and walked through town together behind a big purple banner. The walk through town ended at Nyanza’s genocide memorial, where everybody congregated and some laid flowers.
It was at the memorial that the traumatisms began. During genocide-related events, it is not unusual for people to suddenly begin wailing, screaming, even thrashing about, and eventually need to be carried out. That happened to several people at the memorial.
Next, the whole crowd moved to Nyanza’s small stadium (which seems to be the main gathering place for public events here) for the rest of the morning. Several government officials gave speeches (all in Kinyarwanda). Then, we waited until President Kagame’s speech came on the radio and was projected over the loudspeakers (I’m under the impression that it was played publicly in basically every town in Rwanda). Kagame spoke in both Kinyarwanda and English, and the English speech was fiery and intriguing – read about it here. Kagame’s speech was the last planned event, and the rest of the afternoon was a holiday.
Throughout the ceremony at the stadium, there were several more traumatisms. From time to time, people would also suddenly get up and sprint away from the crowd. Maybe to avoid a traumatism? I’m not really sure. It was quite shocking to us, but people seemed to find it fairly normal.
We also attended the memorial events on April 14th, the last day of memorial week. It similarly began with a massive march through town, which ended this time at the lake on the edge of Nyanza. The crowd sat on the hillside and listened to various speakers, mostly government officials. The speeches were all in Kinyarwanda again, but I was fortunate to be sitting near a Peace Corps staff member who provided some translation. The gist of the speeches was that this should never happen again, people should live together peacefully, and everybody should help those who were affected by the genocide.
It has been a really difficult week for most people in Rwanda, but I think it’s important that Rwandans take this time to talk openly about the past and to focus on peace and reconciliation.
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