83 was ignored and is latent, waiting for the proper moment to re-appear. When a baby boy is born, people congratulate the family, saying, yabyaye umuhozi, which means that the baby boy will take vengeance if anybody shows aggression toward or attacks his family. This gives more social power to the baby boy than the baby girl. What is pointed out here is not to show the inequality between boy and girl but to focus awareness that, given the high sensitivity of the genocide memorials‘ message, this kind of thinking can jeopardize the process of restoring community social relationships and the whole of unity and reconciliation in the post-1994 Rwanda.
Nevertheless, in spite of this sensitive situation of the post-1994 genocide, proverbs and sayings are essential in social communication; they are silent factors that influence how the community views their environment. Some other proverbs, sayings or adages will be discussed in the next sections.
3.6 Rwandans‟ broad understanding of the living and the dead in the context of memory
84 However, some people tend to argue that remembering is suffused with emotion, and is closely involved in both extended affective states such as love and grief, and socially significant practices such as promising and commemorating. It is essential for much reasoning and decision- making, both individual and collective. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming. Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral and social life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.
The capacity of human beings to reason about the world is complex. This is because of the relationship that exists between experience and understanding. The rationality of human beings is influenced by different constraints that exercise forces upon the community. The definition of the social surroundings in which individuals live plays an important role in viewing the worldwide environment. The individual value of liberty to interpret events is embedded in the beliefs, the culture, the social and the political environment (Ashe 1999: 89).
The definition of the world takes root in a specific cultural context that the tangible and intangible aspects of the milieu influence the way people understand events. Similarly, Rwanda views the world by coupling the visible and invisible world. The invisible world receives individuals coming from the visible world. Nevertheless, there is a supernatural power attributed to the inhabitants of the invisible world that organizes or influences the lifestyle of both. This power is rooted in values.
Within the Rwandan tradition the ‗me‘ is more often ignored and gives way to the ‗we‘. The individual is more often regarded as belonging to the ‗clan‘ as a reference of identity (Vansina 2001: 45). This collectivization is still influential in the community. Realizations are evaluated in terms of the group and the individual is forgotten. There is a socialization of activities and behaviours (Byiringiro 2002: 48, Muzungu 1975: 25).
85 This attitude of behaviour collectivization reflects a traditional form of identity that will orient the way the population is divided into categories characterised by ethnicity. A social phenomenon regarding the people who are socialized within a political orientation is a process for changing or replacing their dark side. This is an issue to stress within this study, since it may affect how the local community will use the genocide memorials. Their definitions will be biased by how they relate to the ‗me‘, the person who takes the responsibility of analyzing the situation.
This person‘s responsibility does not take into account the consequences or the ‗we‘ that the reliability belongs to the group. This includes the individuals who are innocent even though they live in the same community as those who committed atrocities.
This collectiveness is not defined by public law. It is rather identified by the shared values within the community and it is these values that can define daily life. This is crucial to community life, since even stereotypes can be admired if they are shared by the local community and challenge the real definition of any phenomenon. The consideration of the two worlds is very sensitive in daily life. All activities are organized in order to build good relations in a particular way within those who believe they are world citizens.
However, the above understanding is the framework of the relationship between the living and the dead. In addition, the way people perform funeral rites as a passage to the metaphysical or invisible world is fundamentally influenced by those considerations, which frame the definition of ‗genocide memorials‘. The illustration of this behaviour is the common response to the reason why Rwandans have agreed to rebury with dignity the corpses of the people who were killed during the genocide.
This ritual was performed in the early and previous period before and after the genocide. Some survivors buried their dead in their own compounds, but when the government decided to build provincial and district genocide memorials, the population accepted the decision without any
86 resistance. In spite of this, one reason was identified: the population expressed their desire to see the people who were killed during the genocide buried in the same place and to see people continuing to comfort one another, which is more helpful than isolation. This is a surprising but deep desire in the hearts of Rwandans. The understanding of this philosophy requires that one analyzes the death rituals and popular thoughts in the Rwandan context.
The supernatural authority given to those who live in the invisible world has become a constraint. When living people perform rituals related to death, they are seeking harmony with the dead. This is due to the fear that living people have toward the dead, ‗abazimu‘ or
‗abakurambere‘, who may come back to visit their living family. This is the major constraint that pushes the living family to perform the rituals related to death delicately.
There are many stories expressing how the invisible abazimu or abakurambere come back to bless or harm the living family (Muzungu 1974: 127-8). Within this atmosphere, remembrance will be emphasized to entertain the social relationship between the two worlds. To underline the power of the metaphysical world, there is a popular saying in Kinyarwanda that reads that the death of anybody in the family is announced by a bird of ill omen or by a natural sign that is known to be the channel of those announcements in the community.
From the physical world to the metaphysical one, funeral rites are major events that the Rwandan tradition considers as ‗the last nuptial ceremony‘. The tradition reveals that death becomes imminent with the presence of some birds like owls. If an owl comes to a village and people hear its sound, they immediately conclude that somebody is going to die. In the event of the owl staying permanently in the compound of a family, the family starts performing rituals to eschew the expected sad news (Bigirumwami 2004: 212). The tragic event is always announced so that the community keeps watching, because nature and gods never surprise the community. If something bad or strange happens surprisingly, it means that there is a curse within the
87 community. These beliefs can be analyzed as not rational as they depict everyday life, which is shaped by value-constraining aspects. In the present context, this brings the aspect of trauma and cultural consideration that are expressed through modern symbols into the genocide memorials.