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Christian Living

africamatters 04/07/08

The Lives of Ntarama

I simply had to be a witness. In between writing, editing and sending stories back to CBN Center, I simply had to make it to Ntarama.

On this day fourteen years ago, a demonic and vicious genocide was unleashed. At the end of 100 days, nearly one million people had been slaughtered in Rwanda...a large number of them in the churches that dot the countryside.

Ntarama is one of those churches. And I needed to pay my respects.

On the road outside Kigali, "Modest" the driver and I passed a small group of men in pink jumpsuits.

"They are criminals. They did the genocide. They are prisoners," he said.

Right there, mere yards away from the church where more than five thousand men, women and children were slaughtered were men who may have perpetrated the crime.

And yet life went on around the group of prisoners. No one was screaming or beating them up. Remarkable.

Just around the bend and there it was.

A small compound; much smaller than I would have imagined for containing thousands of people.

And yet, they had been there. Tutsies and moderate Hutus huddled together on the church grounds for three days seeking asylum during the genocide.

And then they came...the Interahamwe.

Throwing grenades in to the church, the Sunday School room, the kitchen, the rectory. Then they came in with their machetes to finish off the rest.

Only ten souls survived the attack.

Today, like so much of Rwanda, the church has been swept clean. So clean that there isn't even dust on the concrete floor.

All around, dirty, bloody clothes hang over the walls. Many families come here and look through the clothes to see a shirt, a dress, a scarf that might link their loved ones to the massacre.

Along the back wall are bones. So many bones. Skulls of every shape and size, but mainly they are small. Some have deep machete gashes. Some have nails sticking out of them. Each tells a tale of how he met his end.

The Sunday School room has also been swept clean. The bones of children taken out. But on the wall, a very large dark splotch.

"It is the dried blood of the children," my guide tells me.

Outside the room remains a chalkboard with a little song written on it.

My guide took me to the kitchen. I walked in after her in my sandaled feet on the dirt floor. Everything has been left pretty close to the way it was the day of the attack.

"See the bones," my guide asked me.

I looked down and noticed bits of bone and spinal vertebrae mere inches from my feet.

In a visceral reaction, I leapt back not knowing where to step. There were tiny bone shards everywhere.

And there it was...a very small little arm bone.

In a flash, the genocide was very real to me.

I could imagine a young woman laughing over the fire pit, stirring a pot of beans with a little baby sleeping lazily on her back.

That one little bone had been a human being. He was loved.

In my travels around the world, I have visited several places of tragedy...

Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Ground Zero, Virginia Tech

Each place is unique in its sadness. Each has its way of healing.

But the church at Ntarama is different somehow in a way I cannot adequately describe.

I call this blog entry the "Lives of Ntarama," because I hope we can all remember their lives. Not just their bones.

And never let anything like this happen again. And yet...genocide continues to occur.

Most recently in Kenya a couple of months ago.

In Darfur, Sudan it is a slow-motion genocide. Hundreds of thousands killed over the past few years.

It is the words of Psalm 27:13 & 14 that give me comfort:

"I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage."

And it is Romans 12:21 that gives me action:

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

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