RWANDA: HEALING MEMORIES

Abstract

Calvary is the holiest site on earth; approaching it on foot or in the mind is entering sacred ground. Calvary is one place, yet countless
calvaries are over the earth. One is Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands were killed in the 1994 genocide. To approach it, especially
as an outsider, I found myself ‘taking of my sandals’ (Ex 3:5). Asked to write a review of Marcel Uwineza’s Risen from the Ashes, theology as Autobiography in Post-Genocide Rwanda, I feel overwhelmed by the massacre which he experienced as a fourteen-year-old when several members of his close family were among the vast numbers who were slaughtered in the days and weeks that followed 6 April 1994. I prefer to stand in silent awe before the tomb that the whole country became and say nothing. The irrational frenzy that seized the killers went beyond words.