“In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.” - Kofi Annan
I have never desired to step inside a mass grave, but the white marble top covering a piece of the ground like a band-aid on a wound silently invites me in with an open staircase. The closer I move toward the entrance, the more I am reminded of hate. The hate lingers on the ground around the grave, humming a ballad reserved for attempted extinction. Machetes, guns, and axes were the instruments in the orchestra that played the tune of death on this piece of land. The screams of children, gunshots piercing flesh, bone breaking under blunt force. I enter the grave not knowing what to feel. My heart beats consciously as I control the flow of air in and out of my body, trying to play life’s song amid the loud lingering hum of hate that has seeped from the ground above. The light that enters does not brighten my feelings; it only reveals the moments of death on the walls which are shelved with skulls, some with bullet holes, some with fractures from machetes. I move through the thin corridor fearful of making eye contact with the skulls for I do not want to stare into the empty eye sockets to see individual death. Femurs and humeri lay like ***** clothes thrown into the corner of a room. No longer do they represent one human. Outside the light warms my skin and directs my heart to beat unconsciously, my breath to rise and fall in unison with my steps. It shines upon a new tune being played. Children laughing, mothers yelling, hymns being sung. It spotlights a beauty of humanity: Reconciliation.