As soon as I walked into church yesterday morning, I knew that this day was greatly respected – the church was adorned in a deep purple as opposed to the green or white that regularly dresses the altar. Though there wasn’t much dialogue that I could understand in the mass itself, I could feel that the air was different from usual – more melancholy, more responsive. The customary songs were substituted for songs that I’d not heard and the whole congregation sang and moved along to the music even more than usual. The mass itself was not too much longer than standard duration and practice, but it was after we left the church that ¬¬the spirit of the day truly hit me.
Instead of processing back down the side aisle to the sacristy, the altar servers collected holy water, incense, and numerous bouquets of flowers and led the procession out through the center aisle of the church and out the double doors. Row by row, the congregation peeled into the center aisle behind this holy procession. I had some idea that going to the cemetery after mass is common in Rwanda on All Souls Day, but I never would have imagined the emotions that ran through me that morning. I had locked in that this was a day to celebrate our loved ones who had passed on, but I myself had the image of Grammy in my head and was blind to all else.
Walking between two friends on the way towards the ceremony, we watched as children and adults alike picked flowers from the side of the road to bring as offerings.
“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Caliste.
“Yes,” I responded, somberly, “we’re going to the cemetery.”
“This is where they put the people who died in the Genocide,” Prosper told me. “My mother is there.”
I was completely at a loss for words. How was I supposed to respond to that? My friend, now 23 years old just as I am, lost his mother at the age of SEVEN years old. To make the things worse, she didn’t die of a malady but was maliciously slaughtered. Who knows, Prosper may even have been there and witnessed the scene. HOW does someone react to a statement like that? Though I’ve heard those in my community speak of “the War” and sometimes call it the Genocide, it was in this moment that I first physically felt pain talking about the War.
It is said that the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was counted on their hands, and not in statistics. “Historians often make comparisons: 43,000 dead in the London blitz; 100,000 dead in Tokyo in 1945; 200,000 perished in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Still, the mind has trouble counting to 800,000, twice the number of civilians who died in the Vietnam War” (Dina Temple-Raston). In a country the size of Maryland, 800,000 people were killed in a period of about 100 days. So many perished in this short window of time that government figures had to use abstract ways to count the losses – “if there were this many people in this town before and there are this many now…” The Rwandan people lost sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, children, friends, counting on their fingers their personal losses.
So what am I to say to my friend about loss? Yes, I recently lost my grandmother and though we miss her terribly, she was able to lead a full and beautiful life and passed away peacefully surrounded by her loved ones. Do you realize how much of a blessing that is?
Standing in the small cemetery encircled by a painted brick wall, we joined hands and prayed. We sang. Here I was, this naïve American girl who has only read about tragedy, surrounded by one hundred or more Rwandan people mourning the loss of their closest friends and family members whose lives were taken away mercilessly. Being my nature, I wanted to hug each and every one of them, namely my dear friend who had just disclosed this news to me. I’m Little Miss Kairos – I see people hurting and I hurt for them, with them. I find comfort in comforting others, whether through hugging, listening, consoling, or just being there. But what was the appropriate reaction to this moment? I’m a newcomer to this culture and am unaware of customs in such a time, and I was the only person standing there who was not personally effected by the Genocide. Why, then, was I fighting back tears? I saw the tears well up in the eyes of my proud friend, trying not to let his pain show. I saw the wisdom in the eyes of the adults around me who lost their innocence overnight. I saw little children playing and clapping, unaware, children who maybe have never known their older brother or sister. I had no right to be mourning. I had no right to let my tears fall in such a moment of inner turmoil.
At breakfast afterwards, I asked Sister Josephine how people can go on living when they have gone through such a horrifying experience. I explained to her that I had grieved the loss of my grandmother this past June (telling her for the first time, too, why the name Josephine is so dear to me), though she had led a full and beautiful life. I had hurt in that situation, how does one who loses a child or parent inhumanly come to grips with reality? I think, too, that she took the few tears rolling down my face as a sign of grieving Gram, though while I miss her I had alternative motives to cry. Oh, I had quite a few.
In the afternoon, when it was about 7h EST, I called my mother. I told her how happy I was to have her, to be able to share my life with her, to have the opportunity to tell her I love her when I want to. I’m thousands of miles away and will be for a long period of time, however she is there. There are people I know here in Rwanda that lost their whole families to the War – were orphaned by this war. I told her of the “fluffy” life that I’ve led, that most Americans lead. How do I have the right to complain about anything? I don’t know true pain.
I’m looking forward to having one-on-one conversations with friends and those in my community in the coming months, and hoping to gain an understanding of how this small country has been able to bear such pain, how they were able to move on. It has been almost 17 years since the Rwandan Genocide, though deep scars remain. Her people have moved on, but of course they still hurt. This terrible tragedy was something that most cannot comprehend, and thankfully most of the world doesn’t have to. How, then, have they been able to cope? Through their faith and leaning on one another.
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