Rwanda journal, December 2003
On the day of the funeral, the entire village appears to be there to participate in the ceremony. The open hut is filled except for the two rows behind where the caskets will be, and people are already standing and sitting on the hill that faces the hut. There seem to be no boundaries, no outsiders here, and I don't feel them myself even though I am not Rwandan. I am reminded of a Xhosa college graduation I attended with a colleague in South Africa. People lined up outside the tent, ate the food and celebrated with the family—whether they knew them or not was not the point, they were part of the family.

It’s a sunny day and the banana trees are lush and high. People are happy to see each other. A choir from the local church is singing.

I am seated with Richard and his cousins, his friends Andrew and Leopold and a couple who have become adopted parents. There are four caskets instead of one. The priest explains that because of the confessions, a mass grave has been found, so we are burying 57 extra people, including a father and his seven children. Andrew is standing next to me translating and when he hears this, he falters. He repeats what he hears to himself before he says it to me. The village is small, and I look around and wonder how 58 people could be missing.

The caskets are covered in white cloth with a purple cross sewn on top. Family members and friends in the back row are given a swatch of the purple cloth to connect them to the person who has died and to each other. Some people tie the cloth around their wrists. Richard's cousin Innocent ties his around his neck. I hold mine and stare at it.

After the funeral, we walk behind the casket and up a small hill. A large square hole has been dug. Richard speaks. He tells the story of learning about his father's death. He makes no accusations. There is no bitterness in his voice. He says that every child wants to give their parent a peaceful burial. He hopes to bury his mother one day, and he is pained by the fact that they have not found his two younger brothers. They are out there, somewhere, alone. After Richard speaks, I am pulled up the hill and along the ledge and given flower petals to throw down.

The funeral arrangements themselves offer another example of communal responsibility. Richard lives in Canada, so when he learned that his father's bones were found, he had to call on help from friends in Rwanda. They arranged the ceremony, found a priest, bought flowers, contacted the choir and requested songs, invited friends, chose the casket and arranged for the burial.....Richard says that even though he has lost his family, he is encouraged by the plans for the funeral and then our presence there. One time I heard him talking to a group of students who were asking about surviving the genocide. He told them that he continues to survive, that the genocide itself was the easiest part of survival. Burying his father and returning to Rwanda and the community that has gathered around him has brought him some measure of peace.

At the funeral I find myself in tremendous conflict. I want to celebrate the traditions I am witnessing and am a part of, but I am also stuck. Because the fact is that some of the people who are at the funeral were witnesses to the murders and some of the people here participated. I want the killers to somehow look different. I actually want to see some physical mark on them so that I can differentiate them from the rest of the mourners. I notice who takes communion and who does not. I try to catch people's expressions to see if they can look Richard in the eyes. I ask Andrew how they can be there and he says that they have to be there—some people are truly there to offer Richard's father a peaceful and proper burial and others are there because if they are not, people will notice. Leopold says the same thing. I keep asking my friends because I want some other kind of answer. Later, when Richard and I are driving to Gisenyi, I ask him. He says it is tradition and moral obligation.

I've been struggling with the contradictions of Rwanda's traditions of communal responsibility and inclusiveness and the facts of the genocide. I ask Richard why these traditions did not transcend and contain the propaganda or the government's demands. Richard says that the genocide is a unique time in Rwanda's history and while it is tied to previous massacres and to Belgian colonization, there is no rational answer. He politely says, “people looking for rational answers are looking for them for their own understanding.” We both know he means me, but he cares about me too much to sound judgmental. I persist anyway because I wonder if Rwandans have been taught to be obedient to whatever authority is most powerful—when it was a genocidal regime, they were obedient to that. Now it is Kagame and a fledgling democracy, they are obedient to that. Andrew says that the communal traditions were poisoned by the authority of the previous regime.

But here we are nine and a half years later. Though some people at the funeral sat on the hill with their hoes and machetes next to them, it was not threatening. They had taken a break in their day and walked over to the funeral from their work. There was nothing about the ceremony or the gathering that felt risky. Richard's family was a “minority” in the community, and I assume that is still true, but I don't know and can't tell and don't want to ask. I don't even know how to ask.¹

• The traditions and customs of a Rwandan funeral such as the one described by Murphy call for the community members to fulfill a “moral obligation” to attend, even if they themselves were perpetrators of the genocide. Although such a contradiction might seem outrageous to someone outside Rwandan society, Richard, Andrew and Leopold seem to fully accept this reality. How might such an event aid in the healing process for both an individual and a community? How might it be an obstacle toward reconciliation?
  
  
• Richard tells Karen, “people looking for rational answers are looking for them for their own understanding.” Do you think Richard is telling us that it is pointless to search for rational answers to the horrors of genocide? Is he calling on us to move on without looking back?