Probably not a bedtime story...

If you google images of Nyamata, you may see pictures of the little town, with dusty roads, red earth and a vibrantly blue sky. You may see pictures of the school where I will be working. But you will definitely see a picture of rows of skulls. Human skulls, just to clarify.

During the 1994 genocide, 10,000 Tutsis hid in the Catholic Church. And the Interahamwe(Hutu militia) used a grenade to open the iron doors. Then they proceeded to torture, rape and brutally kill the 10,000 people who had taken refuge there. Tragically, this was not the only church that that happened in. In fact, the radio encouraged Tutsis to seek safety there, because it made it easier for the killers to find them. What makes Nyamata unique is that they left the church as a memorial.

You walk through the door that has a hole in it, into a church. It’s so clearly a church, like most other Catholic Churches built in the late 1960s. It reminded me of the Church my parents attend in New Cumberland. And the pews are filled with the clothes the victims were wearing? Can you imagine the clothing and belongings of 10,000 people piled up? Such vibrant colors too! Just faded, with time, and dirt, and blood. Blood. The alter is stained red.

There is a crypt inside, with a single coffin. And there are bones it the neat rows that the pictures on the internet depicted. Outside more people are buried- coffins shared and more crypts, but I could only walk down the stairs of those, not into. In total 41,000 people are buried there. I’m not even entirely sure what that many people looks like…

I wanted to go to this particular memorial, because that story and so many like it affected me the most when I did my research. And I needed to see. But I was not prepared. How could I be? It was a place that was Hell. And it remembers.

I kept thinking, how could this happen? How could it have been stopped? I wanted to think “Never Again.” But I know that it is happening now, as I write this, about 4 hours away in the Congo. And I want to know how to stop it. I want “Never Again” to be the promise it wasn’t after WWII, and after Serbia, and after Rwanda; that it should be for DRC and Darfur and every other country where people know Hell.

Let me end positively, while I was in the crypt in the church I heard a group of school children sing their ABCs... and it made me smile Because there is joy so close to such a place now.