A moving visit to Rwanda

In October 2008 a group of Sherborne boys, the School Chaplain and teachers visited the REACH project in Rwanda which is one of the School's nominated charities.

The boys recount a moving and disturbing story of the genocide in 1994 and the consequences for Rwanda and its people today.  Through the charity, the boys met with individuals from both Tutsi and Hutu sides who had been brought together and had been able to forgive.

The visit was also an opportunity for the boys to take part in digging foundations for a new Youth Centre and to help lay a football pitch.  A piece of Sherborne turf was transported from our own 'Upper' in Sherborne to start the pitch off.

Following is one Sherborne boy's account:

The highs and lows of the Reach Rwanda trip

"On our arrival, we were met by Philbert, the director of Reach, the charity Sherborne supports.  Philbert had escaped the genocide and was born in a refugee camp in 1966.  When Philbert visited Sherborne in 2005, he challenged Sherborne School to raise the money for ‘The Upper’ in Rwanda; a playing field and youth centre.

Our first afternoon was spent visiting the Genocide Memorial Museum in the capital, Kigali.  The museum is divided into three sections: the largest dealt with the Rwandan Genocide itself, another about genocides in general and the most disturbing one; larger than life pictures of children and facts on how they had been brutally killed. We all felt very shocked by what we saw and to witness how evil human beings can be. 

The next day we visited another memorial museum in Murambi, in the very south of Rwanda.  As we arrived a man and a woman came forward and told us their very moving story and accounts of what happened at the time of the Genocide.  The man had been shot in the head and been left for dead but somehow survived by hiding in a school (now a memorial) underneath loads of dead bodies for days on end.  When he finally had the strength he crawled away in the night into the valley.  He visits the memorial almost every day because his family are buried in one of the mass graves there, and he feels he should be with them.

We were then led outside; completely unprepared for what we were about to see. There was a row of class rooms which we entered, one by one.  Dead bodies (treated), skeletons (some still with clothes on the bones) were laid out.  The smell was awful. The worst room of all was one filled with the remains of children and babies.

We were all very stunned and shocked by what we had just seen.

Next we visited Kayonza. This is where ‘Reach’ has been building the football pitch.  Our task for the day was to dig the foundations for the Youth Centre which will be positioned next to the pitch.  After about half an hour of digging, Peter Lane, Cooke, Stephen Gray, the Chaplain, Gary Shackle, Brother John and Pete the photographer and myself left Kayonza to visit some perpetrators and survivors of the Genocide and to hear their stories.

We went to the house of a woman who had been badly beaten and tortured in '94. One of her more obvious injuries was her ear, which had been cut in half.  She told us how the Hutu's had come and killed all members of her extended family.  Luckily her brother had escaped to Tanzania but she had been caught before she was able to get away.  Then came the hardest and, what proved for us, the most emotional part of the day.  Philbert called out to two large and burly men who were inside the woman’s house.  We hugged them in greeting (as you do....) and shook hands.  We were then told that these men were members of a group who had murdered at least a hundred members of her family.  Never having knowingly met a killer, let alone a mass murderer, I found this very hard to come to terms with.  We were then told about their struggle in overcoming their guilt for what they had done and how they had sought and begged for forgiveness (they had been in prison for ten years).  For many years, the woman, unsurprisingly, had been unable to do this but eventually she decided that it was forgiving was the right thing to do and now they are comfortable in each others company.  We later discovered that, as the killers lived 12 miles away, they had walked, the day before, to where we were and had stayed with her that night, in her home. 
 
We then drove on to another house to talk to a former member of the government.  This woman had been responsible for issuing propaganda encouraging all Hutus to kill and destroy the Tutsi “crock croaches”.  She used her influence and instructed which Hutu to hunt which Tutsi.  She spent 6 and half years in prison) and when released, she received help from Reach which helped her realise that what she had done was horribly wrong.  She had to do many hours of community service and even though she is no longer obliged to do so, she still does.

Back to Kayonza again where we almost completed the foundations of the building – hard work and by the end of it our hands were blistered and some were bleeding.

That afternoon the official opening of the unfinished football pitch and the youth centre hall took place, attended by about 150 people.  A piece of our own Upper turf (the pitch in Rwanda will be called 'The Upper, Sherborne') was then laid at the base of the plaque.  It was a wonderful thought to know that now, there will always be a piece of Sherborne in Kayonza.  The Chaplain also laid the corner stone of the building and our work and visit were complete.

This trip was an incredible experience for all of us; one which will never be forgotten."

Harry Onslow (L6e)
 

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Posted: Tuesday, November 18, 2008