Remembering the Past.

Kigali, Rwanda – “Children, you may have been our National heroes,” the plaque reads at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Behind it, light streams through large yellow picture windows of young children who perished during the massacres. Beneath each, a name and thumbnail biographical sketch that reads something like this:

Age: 3
Description: Mummy’s boy
Favourite pastime: Playing with friends
Favourite food: Chocolate
Last memory: Watching mum die
How killed: Stabbed in the eye. Or, Hacked with a machete in mother’s arms. Or, Grenade thrown in their shower.

I really hope my children are being given a big hug right now.

Elsewhere, cases of skulls, many in pieces, lie perfectly arranged. Like many say the genocide was. In other cases, femurs. Clubs, hoes and machetes. And bloodstained Superman sheets. And rosaries. How can there be a God in the Hell these people endured? Picture after picture, testimonial after testimonial. A toddler’s sandal. The very chain and lock that was wrapped around an entire family thrown into a mass grave.

Not to mention the memorial is built on a mass grave that is the final resting place for 150,000 people. Humankind is capable of atrocities I am simply unable to comprehend.

Of course, it is also capable of tremendous compassion and healing.

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