Sunday, March 14, 2010

Genocide Memorial

On Thursday, I went to the genocide memorial here in Kigali. I think it was good for me to go to this one first... it's more of an informational memorial and not so much an emotional. It reminded me a lot of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. It even had a floor dedicated to different genocides around the world.
These are ladies who are widows and sometimes the only survivors in their families. Most of them were raped and now are HIV positive.
This is the part that killed me. All of these pictures are of kids who were killed during the genocide. 
The four above were tortured in different ways before dying. 
Aren't they precious? 
This little sweet girl broke my heart. She was Giovanni's age. She was burnt alive. How can someone do something like this? To this sweet little girl? I kept thinking of how blessed we are to live somewhere where we don't have to worry about if our baby will live or not. After a while, I imagine the parents started praying for their kids just to die quickly and not suffer. Isn't that awful that they would even have to think that?

2 comments:

  1. SAD!!!!!!!! love ans

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  2. Hi, Bronwyn. I'm in grad school at UT in Austin; the Benson library here has all of the digital records from the Kigali Memorial Centre archived so that they will be preserved in more than one place. I just heard one of their librarians speak about it (at an event talking about their other archived collection from the Free Burma Rangers, whose work is also amazing). The little bit I saw from their collection was unspeakable. I'm praying for you as you see so many things while in Rwanda. I know that, once you've seen such atrocities, your life is changed. I'll pray that God continues to give you healthy and viable ways to turn your sadness and indignation into action.

    Blessings,
    Jessica Goudeau

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