GENOCIDE MEMORIAL VISIT

Filming outside the memorial site- Rwanda

I know that as a media producer I shouldn't probably say this, but believe it or not, nothing in my life could possibly have prepared me for what I went through in that memorial site. In the shooting schedule I had seen that we would go to Nyamata Church and because we were filming Women for Women International Sponsor's Visit to Rwanda, I thought that we were off to a regular church.

The small holes in the roof are from grenade pieces that had been thrown inside the church

There was an optional 1 hour counseling session prior to the visit and it did not hit me even once to find out why that was the case. In fact, I had thought that the church was possibly located in a remote village with low-income housing units and that these sponsors had not been to such places in their lives. So we got to the Church, and I saw the sign saying Nyamata Church Memorial Site. I knew then that it was going to be an experience and now I understood why there was a counseling session before the tour.

From a distance I had seen the bullet holes on the door and the piles of clothes on the floor. I thought that was it. So we went on and walked in with the tour guide. As he kept on giving us the history of the church as if it was 100 years ago, I begun to feel chilly. He went on and on about how the believers had come to hide in church and the Italian priest had given them food for the night... Some sponsors in the team had respectfully begun pulling away and had walked out of the church. I should have done that but i did not.

I almost choked on my saliva when we were shown to the basement and I saw skulls: human skulls! I had barely made it down the stairs when the tour guide pointed to a casket and said that it belonged to a very beautiful young lady who had been gang raped by the rebels, and when they were done with her they killed her with a piece of wood that came right up to the skull... AND THE PIECE OF WOOD WAS STILL THERE!!! That did it for me. I couldn't finish the tour, I couldn't keep up appearances and still wear my professional amour... Work or no work, I bailed the tour!!! Good Lord!!!

I managed to get back to work. I am a press person after all, my job is to document and report

When I rushed back upstairs to get a private place to compose myself, I heard him say that they had put her body in a casket because it was traumatising to the earlier tourists. He had also said that her family willingly gave her remains to the church memorial. Call me a sissy but this is too much to take in. And as if this was not my worst experience of the day, I had rushed off to the back of the church and found myself in the middle of a graveyard and morgue!!! There were like piles and piles of caskets, gravestones and flowers at that place. I felt like I could PASS OUT!!!

I hate loosing my composure especially when I am at work. It is not a good feeling. I became helpless and emotionally weak. It is so draining!!! And yet this is life!!! I waited outside for the sponsors to finish the tour and got the mic ready to interview those who were strong enough to even talk after the tour. Margit (94) a very phenomenal woman was the only one who spoke and she said something that will remain in me forever, "Every human being has a latent spirit to commit evil..." Rwanda has healed.

Still shaken,

Nekoye