My heart aches. I feel as if I cannot breathe. I’m halfway through a tour of the Kigali Memorial Centre, which opened in 2004 on the site where 250,000 victims of the Rwanda genocide were buried in mass graves. I find myself so overwhelmed that I have to go outside to get some air.
Strolling among those graves in lovingly landscaped gardens filled with palms, roses, trellised vines and bamboo trees, I slowly regain my composure. But the devastating emotional impact of visiting the memorial still lingers now, a year later.