The power of a hymn: YNWA

kwibuku
'remember' in Kinyarwandan

At 8am on Sunday 06^th June, I joined over 100 members of the Rwandan Overseas Liverpool Supporters Club (OLSC Rwanda) to set out on a pilgrimage to mark 28 years of the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi people, where nearly 1 million Tutsis were murdered over just 100 days.

There was joyous singing, chanting, boozing, football (obviously), and reflection, anger, anguish and sorrow, bound up in an act of collective remembrance and solidarity, and all through a mutual support of an 130 year old English football club based over 6500km to the north north-west. 

 What followed over the next 12 hours was one of the most extraordinary days of my life.

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

PART 1: Kwibuku

We were headed to the Nyange Parish in Ngororero District, 100km west of Kigali, high up in the stunning forested hills of the Western Sector of Rwanda. It was in Nyange Parish that saw perhaps one of the most extreme events of the genocide.

Over 100 of us, all donned in LFC shirts, flags and scarfs from over the years, piled into several buses at Iwacu +250, the Kigali bar that the Rwandan Reds have adopted and renamed the Anfield Road End/Kigali Branch. And almost immediately the singing started; a glorious combination of tradition tribal songs in Kinyarwandan, the local Rwandan language, that soared between the buses, and an outing of the modern-day LFC hymnbook: Virgil van Dyke, Mo Salah the Egyptian King, Andy Robbo, Allez Allez Allez (Bob Paisley and Bill Shankly, The fields of Anfield Road, We are loyal supporters, And we come from Kigali), and of course, You’ll Never Walk Alone.

It wouldn’t be the last time we’d sing the latter today.  

Our buses weaved their way up the mountain passes, rocking and rolling like the buses I used to get with my dad to the football when I was a kid. The beer was already flowing (10am!), everyone was smiling and singing, and after the driver revealed himself to be a Man United fan was enduring a constant friendly barrage. But the contrast between the solemnity of our destination and the joyousness of my new friends was, to someone used to the western expression of sorrow and remembrance as a private, insular undertaking, jarring. My neighbour on the bus, Claude Romeo, explained: ‘We want to be happy and talk about Liverpool FC and football and sing our songs. We will never forget why we are here, but we talk about Liverpool FC because to talk about what happened is too awful.’

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

I experienced this quite alien dichotomy time and again after we arrived at the Nyange Genocide Memorial when, waiting to enter, the group, as one, struck up LFC songs – ‘We love you Liverpool, we do!’ I stood to one side, curious about this odd dynamic and also deeply uncomfortable about singing football songs at a place of massacre and remembrance.

Inside the Memorial we listened to a survivor of the massacre tell the story of what happened on the site we were standing on, and how she escaped the slaughter, one of the very few Tutsis who did.

While we were listening to her harrowing testimony, spoken in Kinyarwandan, a chap from the group, a man I'd never met before, strolled over to me and, unprompted, asked if I spoke English, and so began quietly translating. Albert, an English teacher in Kigali, in a low voice, whispered into my ear: 'She is saying that on April 11, during the genocide, the local mayor convened a security meeting of the area’s chiefs, which included a Catholic priest called Father Athanase Seromba. The chiefs were given directives to bring all Tutsis hiding in the area to the Priest’s church to be safe. The Tutsi people came expecting…’ he struggled for the right word in English… ‘sanctuary? Yes, sanctuary in the church.’

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

I glanced around at the faces in the crowd, each one lost in this small woman’s gentle testimony.

Albert continued in my ear: ‘But she says the Tutsis in the Church were attacked by the Hutu extremists who arrived, they had been invited by the mayor. So the thousands of Tutsis locked themselves into the church, hoping that the church and the Catholic clergy would save them.

‘But Father Seromba ordered the Hutus to drive a bulldozer into the church, collapsing the stone walls and ceiling onto the people inside.’

At this, several people in the crowd collapsed onto the hot ground, crying out in anguish and horror, unable to comprehend how humans could commit such atrocities, their bodies seemingly shutting down in the face of a truth impossible to accept. They were helped away by compassionate friends until their cries no longer drowned out the survivor’s story.

Albert continued when the guide did. ‘Those who survived the collapse were shot by militiamen when they tried to escape. The bodies were loaded onto trucks and dumped in the nearby pits.’

Most of the crowd had tears in their eyes now, gripping each other’s hands as this kindly woman finished her story about how she had escaped. For others it had become too much, and they quietly walked away from the group back towards the buses. I realised suddenly that all this – the murder, the genocide, the hatred – all this was still so fresh in the nation’s collective psyche, was woven into the DNA of the country, that the country of my wonderful new friends had, within living memory, collapsed into levels of unimaginable barbarism, and that this simply cannot but strike the deepest of scars into the heart of every single Rwandan. And I felt a fool for only just realising that .

We were then led down into the basement of the Memorial, to the 50 coffins of preserved victims, to the piles of clothes that the victims were wearing as they were being murdered, some of the weapons used for the massacre. In one of the glass cabinets lay a few piles of dirty, misshapen coins. Albert, his voice breaking, whispered ‘This is money paid by some of the Tutsis to ensure their quick death.’

As we made our way back up, many of the group were physically supporting each other away from the basement as their strength deserted them.

(I later looked up what became of Father Seromba. He fled Rwanda after the genocide, and Catholic monks in Italy helped him change his name and find work in a town by Florence. Eight years later he gave himself up to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and was found guilty of charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity. He was eventually given a life sentence, and will die in Akpro-Missérété prison in Benin.)

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

Back into the bright sunlight, OLSC Rwanda officials laid wreaths at the monument to the mass grave.

I asked Albert if it was fair to assume that people in our group might have had relatives who had died here. In a trembling voice he told me his family was from this area, and three of his uncles perished in the church. When we were later chatting about our families, he told me that he has two children. He used to have five, but lost the other three to the genocide.

After a massive hug with this stranger I had only met an hour ago, we silently filed back onto the buses with the others.

PART 2: Imfashanyo

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

Perhaps a kilometre from the Memorial, along a dirt track, the buses pulled up again. Several survivors of genocide still lived in this little village. One was Aloys Rwamasirabo (right), who continues to tell his story at the Memorial, and who acts as a spokesperson for the other survivors in the area. He was 18 at the time. He says that he was immediately suspicious of the mayor’s call for all Tutsis to go to the church, but he wasn’t able to stop his wife and family in time from going. Instead, he fled and hid in the hills surrounding Nyange. He says that the murderers promised to spare his wife’s life if she gave him up, but she didn’t know where he was, and he could do nothing as his wife and 5 children were murdered in the church. After the genocide, he was part of the crew that transported the bodies to be buried, including those of his wife and children.

We also listened to the story of Adrian (right), one of our number from Kigali. Adrian described how a national government radio station urged Rwandan Hutus daily to get to ‘work’, the work being to kill Tutsi neighbours and friends. On his elderly parents’ orders he left his home and travelled to some remote part of Rwanda, and stayed hidden. His parents were murdered not long after he left.

These testimonies were, are, devastating, but it’s absolutely crucial that they continue to be told so people like my new Red friends, mostly in their 20s and early 30s and were either not born or were young children in 1994, can listen and bear witness. After the testimonies, the Rwandan Reds, as one, stood up and began singing to the survivors. Singing You’ll Never Walk Alone. It was singularly the most affecting, heart-breaking moment; that hoary old Carousel musical number, refashioned by Gerry & the Pacemakers to become a Liverpool FC stadium anthem, a song that had taken on new life in 1989 when the club, fans and the city of Liverpool struggled together in the appalling aftermath of the Hillsborough devastation, had become, in the voices of over 100 Rwandan LFC fans, once again a form of solidarity, of collective sorrow and support, of a determination that what they heard and saw today must never happen again, will never happen again, on their watch.

I will never sing You’ll Never Walk Alone again without remembering that moment or these people.

Cows bought & donated by OLSC Rwanda

Every May OLSC Rwanda does this, the only football club-based supporters group in Rwanda to do so. It’s not just an act of remembrance, but also one of moral and physical support. The club fundraise to buy and donate dairy cows to genocide survivors who live in poverty in remote, rural villages. A cow can give someone who has nothing a valuable and sustained income from sales of milk, manure and husbandry, and as a regenerative commodity can theoretically generate income for the rest of their life. Also, to own cattle in rural Rwandan communities places the owner further up the community hierarchy, such is the prestige of ownership.

Photo: Cedric Ujeneza

Each cow costs some $4-500 to buy and have transported to where it’s needed. The Rwandan Reds donated four cows today to four men today (right), men who looked both grateful and bemused by the whole spectacle: 100 young Kigali folk, dressed as one in the blood red of Liverpool FC, singing strange songs and giving them cows.

You can donate to the Rwandan Reds cattle fundraiser here.

 And then it was back onto the buses, and an hour drive to the splendidly-named Splendid Hotel for a buffet of curried chicken, spinach, chips and rice. And more booze. After eating, and after long discussions about Mane leaving, possible replacements, Trent at rightback vs in the midfield, the glory of Robbie Fowler, we moved to the pool area and hijacked the evening of the hotel guests enjoying a quiet late-afternoon swim, and of the poor band of a singer with an acoustic and his pianist accompaniment. 

The dancing and singing again felt therapeutic, like they/we were dancing away the memories of the day, together one last time in a united front of love, friendship and song.

Me and Albert listening to the survivor's story

As the light faded, the pianist eventually relented, pulled up Gerry on his phone, wedged his microphone up against the speaker, and turned up the volume. And for the final time of the day, before dragging our weary bodies back onto the bus for the final journey back to Kigali and to our individual, atomised lives, we sang our hymn together.

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You can read how the day unrolled on my Twitter story

Me and Romeo