{"id":6518,"date":"2020-04-17T19:27:06","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T18:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/?p=6518"},"modified":"2020-04-18T04:10:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T03:10:55","slug":"camera-machete-rwanda-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Camera Machete: Rwanda 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/h5>\n
The church at Nyamata is now a Rwandan Genocide Memorial, commemorating the deaths of<\/span>
\nthe 50,000 people laid to rest in its grounds.<\/span>
\nTinder dry, the marram road uncoils,<\/span>
\nclings to his skin, stains his hands red.<\/span>
\nHe walks through swarm dust clouds to Nyamata,<\/span>
\nwhere a church lies flat, symmetrical, its geometry exact.<\/span>
\nThe brickwork still has holes in it.<\/span>
\nInside he watches stale blood weave its path<\/span>
\nthrough walls and floorboards,<\/span>
\ncarve alter cloth to patchwork.<\/span>
\nHe feels the crypt\u2019s hollow like an impostor.<\/span>
\nTouches skulls, arms, feet, a single broken tooth.<\/span>
\nSmells death close, but tempered, papered into crevices,<\/span>
\ningrained beneath a socket, a strand of hair,<\/span>
\ntiny fingers divorced from a hand, like blades.<\/span>
\nTwelve years on he has bought cows,<\/span>
\ntilled the hillside into rows,<\/span>
\nwhich crack to rivulets in the dry season,<\/span>
\nplucked mangoes, oranges, ground coffee beans,<\/span>
\nsmoked bees from hives to make his honey.<\/span>
\nHe greets his neighbours \u2018Amarkuru, nemeize\u2019<\/span>
\nwe are all Rwandan.<\/span>
\nPlacid as Lake Kivu, before the rains come.<\/span>
\nWhen they arrive, they take him by surprise.<\/span>
\nA woman, white and blonde, a man with a beard,<\/span>
\nglasses perched on a beaked nose,<\/span>
\na girl, about twenty, with a notebook.<\/span>
\nThey stake him out like an exhibit.<\/span>
\nSwing cameras against the shelves of bones<\/span>
\nand flattened by light, he raises his arms,<\/span>
\nsurrenders to them, head lowered, hands splayed wide.<\/span>
\nI am Alphonse.<\/span>
\nAnd one dry season, I went back,<\/span>
\nto watch blood drain from red to brown,<\/span>
\nthe Interahamwe come, with cameras.<\/span>
\nI lay in the marram road outside,<\/span>
\nflat, face down, chewing dust,<\/span>
\ngrinding earth between my teeth like maize and waited<\/span>
\nfor photographs to colour into flesh, features,<\/span>
\ncurves, lines of cheeks and eyes and lips<\/span>
\nand even names of all the dead,<\/span>
\nin marshland, river beds and hollow crypts.<\/span>
\nGiving me the faces I remembered.
\n<\/span>This poem was Long Listed for the National Poetry Competition 2020<\/em><\/span><\/h6>\n
\"\"<\/h5>\n
I worked in Romania, then qualified as a social worker and have worked in China, Outer Mongolia, Canada, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Nepal and briefly in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea. That was with VSO, the French organisation Humanity and Inclusion, Relief International and the Red Cross.\u00a0<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The church at Nyamata is now a Rwandan Genocide Memorial, commemorating the deaths of the 50,000 people laid to rest in its grounds. Tinder dry, the marram road uncoils, clings to his skin, stains his hands red. He walks through swarm dust clouds to Nyamata, where a church lies flat, symmetrical, its geometry exact. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[511],"class_list":["post-6518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poety","category-the-arts","tag-helen-brown"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCamera Machete: Rwanda 2006 - Many Roads<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"108\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"108\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/#\/schema\/person\/b702436744d367c3b4e6ca9f727819fc\"},\"headline\":\"Camera Machete: Rwanda 2006\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-04-17T18:27:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-18T03:10:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/\"},\"wordCount\":370,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/files\/2020\/04\/Kigali.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Helen Brown\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Poetry\",\"The Arts\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/camera-machete-rwanda-2006\/\",\"name\":\"Camera Machete: Rwanda 2006 - 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Tinder dry, the marram road uncoils, clings to his skin, stains his hands red. He walks through swarm dust clouds to Nyamata, where a church lies flat, symmetrical, its geometry exact. The…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}