Travel

Nyamata Memorial and the Millennium Village

By Michael Eisinger • June 1, 2014 • 5 min read

One of the hardest days of the trip, and one of the most hopeful. A wide range of ground covered, both literally and in every other sense.

Nyamata Church Memorial

First stop: the Nyamata Church memorial. During the genocide, more than 10,000 people sought shelter inside this church. They believed they would be safe in a house of worship. They were not. The building was breached with grenades.

Original gate blasted with grenades during the genocide — The original gate, blasted open with grenades

The church has been preserved as a memorial. Walking inside, the first thing you notice is the clothing. Piles of it, draped over every pew, stacked along the walls. These are the clothes of the people who died here. Left exactly as they were found. The fabric is faded, worn by time, but the volume of it tells you immediately what happened in this one building. The scale doesn't require interpretation.

Other gate with piles of clothes and altar visible inside — The other gate, with piles of clothes and the altar visible inside

View through the church entrance into the dark interior where piles of victims' clothing are visible near the altar and stained glass window — Looking inside the church -- piles of victims' clothing visible near the altar

At the front, the altar cloth is still stained with blood. It has not been cleaned. It is not meant to be cleaned. It is evidence. It is a memorial in its own right.

Beneath the church is a mass grave containing more than 10,000 unidentified remains. We went down. The remains are arranged on shelves, row after row. The different methods of death are visible — bullet wounds, machete marks, blunt force trauma from hammers and clubs. Each skull, each bone, belonged to someone specific. Someone with a name and a family and a life, who came to this church looking for safety. None of them could be identified afterward. They remain anonymous in the basement of the place where they died.

Rows of skulls arranged on metal shelves in the mass grave beneath Nyamata Church, many showing visible fractures and damage — Skulls showing how each person was killed -- machete marks, bullet wounds, blunt force trauma

Skulls on an upper shelf with hundreds of long bones densely packed on shelves below in the Nyamata mass grave — Skulls and bones -- nobody could be identified

Narrow corridor between shelving units stacked floor to ceiling with skulls and bones in the underground mass grave at Nyamata Church — Half the bones you walk by in the mass grave

My academic training gives me language and context for this. It does not prepare you for the physical reality of it. The smell of the earth. The quiet. The weight of being in that room. Two years of graduate study in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and you are still not prepared. That gap is probably necessary. If you could prepare for it fully, something would be wrong.

The Millennium Village

After the memorial, we visited a UN-supported farm as part of the Millennium Village project. The farmer we spoke with explained what the support had changed. Before the program, subsistence farming — just enough to feed his family with nothing left. Now, with improved techniques and resources, he produces enough to sell at market. He has health insurance. His children are in school. Things that hadn't been possible before.

Harvested crops displayed in bowls on a table -- corn, beans, peanuts, and grains from the farm — The farmer's harvest on display -- corn, beans, peanuts, and grains

Large bunch of green bananas growing on a banana plant on the farm — A bunch of green bananas growing on the farm

Close-up of hands peeling a cassava root with a knife on the farm — Peeling cassava root for everyone to try

Straightforward conversation about practical progress. No speeches. Just a man describing what changed and what it meant for his kids. After the morning we'd had, that was exactly what I needed to hear.

School compound with long single-story classroom buildings, sandy grounds, and trees — The primary school compound

Visitors sitting at wooden desks inside a village classroom with a blackboard and educational posters on the walls — Inside a classroom -- sitting at the students' desks

The Mayange Health Center building, a brick structure with people outside the entrance — The Mayange Health Center

A traveler posing with local women and children at the Mayange Health Center — Posing with local women and children at the health center

The Reconciliation Village

Last stop: a reconciliation village. A community where genocide survivors and released perpetrators live as neighbors. Worth writing twice: people who survived the genocide and people who participated in it live side by side. They share a village. They share resources. They are building something together.

Nobody pretends this is simple. Perpetrators went through the gacaca court system — confessed their crimes, served their sentences, were released. The reconciliation villages are one model for what comes after that. The premise is that coexistence, however painful, is the only viable path forward in a small, densely populated country where everyone is already someone's neighbor.

Welcome dance and song on our arrival at the reconciliation village — A welcome dance and song on our arrival

Two men from the reconciliation village -- a genocide perpetrator and survivor who now live as neighbors — Two men from the reconciliation village -- a perpetrator and a survivor, now neighbors

Dancers making everyone get up and dance — The dancers making everyone get up and dance

Christina dancing with one of the dancers

Basket Weaving Cooperative

Within the village, there's a basket weaving cooperative where Hutu and Tutsi women work together. They sit side by side weaving traditional Rwandan baskets — sold locally and internationally, income supporting their families.

Watching them work, talking through a translator, you could see the weight beneath the ordinary action. These women sit next to someone who may have been involved in killing their family members. And they weave baskets together. The act is ordinary. The context is not. That tension keeps coming up on this trip — Rwanda holds the everyday and the unimaginable in the same space, and it asks you to hold both at the same time. No resolution offered. Just both things, simultaneously true.

Selfie with a growing crowd of kids — The love of a selfie -- a growing crowd of kids joins in

Selfie sequence - more kids joining in — More kids joining the selfie

Selfie sequence - even more kids — Even more kids piling in

Selfie sequence - can barely see Mike — Can barely see me at this point

Selfie sequence - kids everywhere — Kids everywhere

Selfie sequence continued — The selfie madness continues

Overhead view of the author surrounded by a large crowd of children all pressing in close, showing the full scale of the selfie crowd — What the selfie madness looks like from above

I need to sit with everything I saw today. Some of it I'm still processing, and I suspect I will be for a long time.

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Michael Eisinger

Program manager, nonprofit founder, and LGBTQ+ travel writer based in Silver Spring, MD. I’ve spent over a decade managing programs across nonprofit, healthcare, and medical education — and another decade finding out where the bears go. I write about travel that’s real, destinations that are genuinely queer-friendly, and the places that changed how I see things.

Filed under: Dark Tourism

About Michael LinkedIn

Nyamata Church Memorial

The Millennium Village

The Reconciliation Village

Basket Weaving Cooperative

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