In the book Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey, Fergal Keane recounts how a fellow journalist called the madness "soul murder." In the documentary about his experiences as the head of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1994, Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire reminisces how even years later he can still walk up to specific buildings in Kigali and see the dead bodies. He remarks that for him it is not that he is remembering that they were there...he can still see them. 800,000 people dead in 100 days.


As we land in Kigali you realize that you are flying the same flight path as doomed President Juvenal Habyarimana, shot down over the city during the same approach.  His death began the blood bath.  You land and can see the national stadium from the plane. There, 18 years ago, a small contingent of UN peacekeepers protected thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus from certain extinction.  The driver of the taxi asks you, while stopped at a stoplight, if you have seen Hotel Rwanda. Yes, I have. He points at the compound to your left and says, That is Hotel Rwanda. On the ride back from dinner another driver goes by the same hotel, Hotel Des Mille Collines, this time driving by the entrance. It is really there. UN guards stood right by that gate, right there, and stood nervously as interahamwe militiamen drove by with threats and the desire to kill the Tutsis inside. 


And then I realize this Hotel Des Mille Collines, this Hotel Rwanda, is just around the corner from where we are staying. And then I realize that during the Genocide here there were bodies everywhere and we have been driving on streets with ghosts. I do feel shaken because this only happened 18 years ago and I remember hearing news reports about the massacres. This is not in my Grandparents' generation. I was alive. There's the hotel. There's the stadium. You see a man walking around with no arm who appears to be in his forties. You are not crazy for wondering if his arm was hacked off. 


And now I am here and I feel as I imagine I would at Auschwitz, or in Sarajevo and Darfur. Yet this happened throughout the entirety of this tiny nation.  Soul Murder. And I am here and I can feel the weight of memory and I want to understand but at the same time I know that I never will.  I was not here and cannot grasp what I did not see.  I am only feeling the weight of collective memory. 


I am wondering how in these few short days in Rwanda, this Friday to Monday morning, I can be a responsible human here. Forgive me if this sounds overly dramatic. But I want to tread respectfully in this place just as one would do at a concentration camp site, or near a mass grave. I do not want to ignore the vast array of other ways to describe Rwanda, such as the fact that Kigali is the most beautiful  African city I have ever seen, and that it seems there really are a thousand hills. But nor do I want to ignore history. I want to honor the memory of what happened. To say I recognize this occurred in my lifetime.  Maybe there will be a fountain to throw a coin in, or a book in which to put my name. Or maybe I will arrive to a spot and realize that this, this is the place for my prayer:


Oh Dear Jesus, Lord and Savior, help me. For I know that the evil that did this is an evil more powerful than I. Save me Lord. Kill my pride and my contempt and my beliefs that say I am better than any others for any reason. Heal me. Forgive me.  Oh "Repairer of Broken walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings," heal us. May we never go down this road again. Amiin