Please note: This blog is all about the genocide in Rwanda.  We want to tell about what we saw, but some of it is graphic.

On to Kigali and the genocide museum.  This museum highlights the 1990s Rwandan genocide, as well as many other genocides around the world throughout history.  In Rwanda alone, approximately 800 000 were murdered, most in the infamous 100 days.  Tutsis were mutilated, beaten, raped and murdered by the Hutus, many by  the people they had lived next door to for most of their lives.  Women and children were especially targeted.  Many of the women were also raped by HIV positive men and left alive to prolong the suffering and “ensure that the race would not be propagated.” 

In one room we watched a video of a young female survivor whose family had all been killed.  She stood on the stage and recounted how her niece, who had been hiding her children, told her the story of their deaths.  The younger ones were killed with machetes and then tossed into a mass grave.  Then the older girl jumped into the grave, still alive, telling her cousin that she was sorry but she was afraid of the machetes.  The bodies falling on top of her suffocated her. 

Other rooms showed images of young children, descriptions of their favorite things, as well as how they died.  Though they all died horrific deaths, I was most shaken up by the baby girl whose cause of death had been “smashed into a wall.” 

During the 100 days, Kigali was literally covered in blood.  Bodies covered the lakes and damned the rivers.  Its streets were lined with the dead and dogs feasted on the flesh.

The museum was very well done and moved many of us to tears, frustration, anger and disbelief.