June 17, 2009, Murambi Survivor Tells His Story
Posted on 6/24/2009
Reporting from Rwanda
Dispatch #7
June 17, 2009
By Samuel Totten
Last year, while I was on my Fulbright at the Centre for Conflict Management, National University of Rwanda, my colleague, Rafiki Ubaldo, and I conducted in-depth interviews (each was between seven and 15 hours in length) with survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rafiki is himself a survivor of the genocide and an aspiring scholar of genocide studies.
The interview project was in addition to the work I was doing in completing the curriculum for the master's degree in genocide studies and prevention, which I am currently implementing in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. One of the individuals we interviewed was a man named Emmanuel Murangira, who survived the horrific massacre perpetrated by the Hutu at a place called Murambi in southwest Rwanda.
Overwhelming Sight
From the moment I first met Emmanuel, I knew I needed to interview him. I had actually met him some three years before I approached him about conducting an interview with him. It was during my first visit to Rwanda in March 2006. Shortly after giving a talk on the crisis in Darfur to some 200 students at the National University of Rwanda, a major general in the Rwandan Army, Karenzie Karake, who had attended the talk, asked me if I would be interested in visiting a memorial site south of the university. I said I would be, and so he arranged for his driver and several of his soldiers to escort me there.
Photo by Rafiki Ubaldo, PGEF
Emmanuel Murangira
On the way, we stopped at an army base where the soldiers I was with picked up another truckload of soldiers, who then escorted our Land Cruiser up to the memorial site. What was particularly strange about the trip was that soldiers with automatic rifles strode in front and lagged behind us as we headed down toward a series of bungalows where the remains of victims were laid out. I knew there had been trouble along the Rwandan/Congo border, but we were still a good distance from the troubled area so I was not exactly clear as to why we had such armed escorts with us.
The bungalows, which had been erected to serve as a series of school classrooms but had not been completed by the time of the genocide, were situated behind the main memorial centre and overlooked a steep canyon beyond which were scores of hills. As we approached the closest bungalow, I noticed an older man was following us, listening in on what the director of the memorial site was telling me and listening to my questions and the answers I received from the director.
Upon entering the first classroom, I was taken aback by the sight before my eyes. Spread out on low-slung tables were the lime-covered skeletons of scores of individuals who had been killed during the genocidal attack on Murambi. Men, women and children were laid out in prone positions, some with tufts of hair still attached to their skulls, some with necklaces around their bony necks, many with huge chunks of bone missing from their skeletons or huge indentations where they had been attacked by machetes or impiris (wicked instruments with a handle and round heads with nails protruding from the heads). Amongst the larger skeletons were those of tiny children and babies.
For the next 20 minutes, we went from classroom to classroom and bungalow to bungalow, and in each and every classroom 30, 40, 50 and 60 skeletons covered the small tables. Halfway through the third bungalow, I said I was ready to see the exhibit in the memorial centre. I didn't say I had seen enough, as I felt that would have been rude, but the fact is I had. The sight of so many dead seemingly staring at you with wide eye sockets was unnerving, and the thought that there were five or six bungalows filled with the dead – who were simply a fraction of the thousands killed on this particular site – was overwhelming.
As we hiked back up the hill toward the memorial centre, the director pointed out an area where thousands of remains had been buried in a mass grave. We also entered a shed-like affair where ragged, filthy clothes of the victims were hanging from a series of ropes.
Lone Survivor
The exhibit in the main memorial hall is initially composed of a short overview of genocide in the 20th century, with information about the Armenian genocide, the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The information was general but informative for most audiences.
To reach the next section of the exhibit, one had to walk around a corner and enter a small room. In the room were life-size photographs of a woman and five children, the latter ranging in age from about 14 years old to 2 or 3 years old. The director explained that this entire family was killed at Murambi during the genocide.
As the director was telling me this, a soldier leaned over and said, "See the old man behind us? These are his family members. He was the only member of his family to survive. He comes to the memorial every single day and follows all of the visitors through the exhibit." Not only was I shocked to hear that, but it deepened the sadness I was feeling.
After we completed our tour of the exhibit, we stepped outside and as we did so I mentioned to the solider next to me that I wished to ask the old man a question. The soldier nodded and said that he would serve as my translator. Thanking him, I turned to the old man and said, "First, I wish to express my sorrow for your great loss. I know words don't ease the pain, but I needed to tell you that."
The old man nodded sadly. I then said, "I hope my question is not too intrusive, but how are you able to stand being around the memorial and …" Gently cutting me off, he said, "It is the only way I can remain in contact with my family. This is where my family is … buried, and being here makes me feel close to them, as if I am still with them." I will not attempt to convey the sorrow that I felt upon hearing those words.
Two years later, while working on the aforementioned oral history project, I decided to contact that old man up at Murambi to see if he would be willing to be interviewed. He agreed, and over the course of two months I interviewed him three times for a total of about 12 hours. The story that he told haunts me to this day. What follows is indicative of what Emmanuel experienced and witnessed and what he carries with him to this day:
Witness Account
On the 21st,, April, a major attack came, this time by soldiers [FAR]. The attack came at 3:00 in the morning, and they surrounded the whole school complex [a new school was in the process of being built in Murambi. The complex was to consist of about five long bungalows, with about four or five classrooms to a bungalow]. I have no idea what kind of weapons they had, but they were heavy and strong and made terrible sounds. And they began to shoot inside the compound and throwing grenades. This was three in the morning, and we couldn't defend ourselves because the women and girls were still sleeping and so nobody could pile the stones up for the men to throw.
Photo by Rafiki Ubaldo, PGEF
Hills of Murambi
During the attack, we, the men, were running around trying to find stones to throw, and as I was doing this, I was hit by fragments from a grenade that the killers were throwing at us. The fragments hit me in the leg [lower shin area]. [The interviewee pulled up his left pant leg and pointed out a large, deep scarred area where a huge chunk of flesh had been ripped out. The skin appeared as if it had been badly burned.] I continued to fight on, but [after a while], since we had no weapons, we just laid down and waited for death. You have to imagine, the entire area was surrounded and soldiers were shooting from every angle around the compound and throwing grenades.
There was no way to get away. There was nothing you could do. We stayed down to try not to be hit, but those who tried to get out by climbing the fence were killed by machetes. The shooting and killing went on for a long time.
I got shot in the head about 9:00 in the morning, and from that point on I could not remember anything. I finally recovered my senses about 3:00 in the afternoon, and I found myself naked. I somehow could not believe what was happening. I was somewhat stupid [beside himself and out of his head]. I hid myself under dead persons [so the killers couldn't see him as easily]. Although I did not see anyone trying to escape [because he was under the bodies], I heard many people crying and crying out due to their injuries and wounds.
That day I saw the apocalypse, the end of the world. God was not there.
Promise Kept
During the course of our interviewing Emmanuel (we interviewed him on three different occasions in order to obtain the most in-depth interview possible), he informed us that he had been interviewed dozens of times and each and every time interviewers promised they'd provide him with a copy of the interview but no one ever kept his/her promise. He also mentioned that he had heard that his story, the interview he had given, ended up being sold in Europe. He told us that he had not given his permission to sell the interview, and he bemoaned the fact that others were making money off his story.
I told him that, not only would we be sure to provide him with a hard copy of the interview, but also that I knew how to fix it so that he, and only he, would be remunerated for his story. More specifically, I told him that, once we had completed interviewing him and had edited and annotated his story, we would make copies for him so he could sell them at the memorial site in Murambi. He smiled brightly, and said, "That would be good. Very good. Thank you."
As luck would have it, I left Rwanda last July (2008) and did not return until this May (2009). Emmanuel, I assume, may have thought, "There's another promise unkept." But Rafiki and I kept reminding each other that when we returned to Rwanda we had to get the interview printed and delivered to Emmanuel. The second week we were in Rwanda we went to a printer and arranged to have 150 copies of the interview printed and bound. On the front cover we included a photo of Emmanuel and at the bottom of the cover we wrote: $10.00 USD or $7,500.00 Rwandan Francs. Ultimately, if Emmanuel sells each copy for $10.00, he will clear $1,500.00, a small fortune for a rural farmer.
About a week ago, Rafiki had an interview to conduct in Butåre and thus he asked Emmanuel to meet him there. Rafiki said that Emmanuel could not believe his eyes when he was handed the 150 copies of the interview, with his photo on the cover page of each of them. Rafiki told me that Emmanuel was not as ecstatic as he might have been as he and his second wife had recently had a baby and the baby boy had died shortly after birth.
This past week I was in Kigali town having lunch and as I was getting up to leave I bumped into a Rwandan fellow, Albert, I had first met back in 2006. He was sitting with a young woman from the U.S. and her parents. As I was exchanging greetings with Albert, the older woman, noticing my red U of A baseball cap, said, "Are you the man who interviewed Emmanuel up at Murambi?"
Surprised, I said, "Yes! Yes I am."
Before I could ask how she knew, she said, "We were just up there yesterday, and I purchased a copy of the interview you did, and I am donating it to the Genocide Center here in Kigali."
"That's great," I said. Sitting down, I explained why Rafiki and I had made copies of the interview for Emmanuel and the fact that we hoped it would provide him and his family with some badly needed income.
As I exited the restaurant, I mused on how pleased I was that Emmanuel was already making great use of the copies, and that Rafiki and I had kept our promise to him.
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