Look around you. Whether you are at a bus stop in Kimironko, in a café in Kimihurura, walking the trails of Nyandungu Eco-Wetland Park, or scrolling on a bench in central Kigali, the ground beneath your feet has a story. Often, a very sad story. ALSO READ: Kwibuka32: Rwanda will not die twice, says Kagame Most of the time, you will see no trace of it. No sign. No plaque. No hint of what may have happened there in April, May, June or July 1994, during the Genocide against the Tutsi. ALSO READ: Genocide commemoration: Why we remember That silence is not neutral. And I believe it is time we begin — urgently, respectfully, and thoughtfully — to fill it. I know this land because I have walked it. Literally. During the 25th commemoration, I spent 100 days crossing Rwanda in what I called the #BeThePeaceWalk. From hill to valley, from church ruins to dusty roadsides, I felt one simple, difficult truth: everything in Rwanda remembers. ALSO READ: Echoes of remembrance: Nurturing mental wellness during Kwibuka Every road, every tree, every schoolyard and bus stop once witnessed either killing, escape, hiding, or survival. A rock someone hid behind. A house that sheltered a neighbour. A roadblock that decided who lived and who died. Our memorials hold part of that story. The landscape holds the rest. ALSO READ: Kwibuka: Our role to preserve the memory remains Yet for many people today — Rwandans and visitors alike — the Genocide against the Tutsi “lives” mainly in one place: the museum. Kigali Genocide Memorial, Ntarama, Nyamata, Murambi and others are vital, sacred spaces. But the museum closes at five o’clock. Memory never does. ALSO READ: Trans-generational trauma: Why we should be on the lookout If we truly mean “Never Forget”, then remembrance must step outside museum walls and meet us where we actually live, work and travel. That is why I believe Rwanda’s most visited public spaces — eco-parks, main roads, bus stops, urban squares — should gradually become a quiet, living memorial through simple, artistic metal plaques: not giant monuments, but small “memory markers” in the landscape. ALSO READ: The enduring legacy of Rwanda's genocide survivors Imagine sitting on a bench in an eco-park and reading: “In memory of the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. Here, where you sit, a family may once have sought refuge or lost their lives. Every blade of grass remembers.” Or by the water: “In memory of the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. This water flows where their story flows. They are not forgotten.” Or waiting at a bus stop in Kigali and seeing, in Kinyarwanda, French and English: “While you wait — in memory of the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. In 1994, roadblocks stood on roads like this. People were stopped here. Some did not pass. Remember them.” These plaques would not be there to shock. They would be there to tell the truth gently, and to acknowledge that our beauty stands on ground that once witnessed unimaginable horror. During Kwibuka 30, in my #Urumuri performance, I sat for three hours every evening for 100 days and read the names and details of victims of the genocide. Not statistics. Names. Ages. Occupations. How they were killed. Where their bodies were thrown. Again and again, one detail struck me: “...body thrown into the valley of—” “...killed near the road to—” “...last seen at the church of—” “...disappeared near the river at—” Today, those valleys are farms and footpaths. Those roads are tarmacked highways. Those churches host weddings. Those rivers flow past picnic sites. Children wait for school buses at places where, thirty years ago, people were separated to live or die. There are still victims whose bodies have not been found, not been buried, not been named on any wall. Their blood lies beneath land that has been paved over, planted, repurposed. To walk over them in complete ignorance is a second silence we can no longer afford. Rwanda has done extraordinary work in memorialisation. But so far, we largely ask people to go to the memory. We have not fully brought the memory to where people already are. This also shapes how outsiders read us. In 2024, I co-hosted “Romesh’s Misadventures in Rwanda” with Romesh Ranganathan, a show that aired on BBC iPlayer and introduced Rwanda to millions. We travelled, we laughed, and we faced hard questions. Around the same time, from Bogotá to Bangkok, Windhoek to Reykjavik, and in lectures at Cambridge, Yale and Harvard, I kept hearing the same thing: “Why are Rwandans so quiet about identity and politics? Are they afraid? Is it repression?” My answer is always the same, and it is simple but difficult for many to grasp: in Rwanda, almost everything can be a trigger. Almost every hill, every junction, every ordinary corner can hold a memory of killing. That bus stop where you scroll your phone? It might be where someone last saw their family alive. That eco-park where you take photos for Instagram? It might sit on land where people once hid, or where bodies were dumped. That roadside where you buy grilled maize? It might be where a roadblock stood in 1994. When Rwandans fall silent, very often it is not fear. It is respect. Respect for the losses of the person standing next to you. Respect for wounds so deep that one careless sentence can reopen them. It is not that we cannot speak. It is that we know that everything already speaks — the trees, the stones, the rivers, the roads. This is trauma, not censorship. And it is also a sophisticated form of communal empathy. But here lies the paradox: trauma is everywhere; public markers are almost nowhere. Memory lives intensely inside people and in a few formal sites, while most of our everyday spaces say nothing at all. A grandmother crossing a road remembers exactly what happened there. A young student walking the same road may have no idea. A simple plaque does not force anyone to relive pain. It quietly states: we know; we remember; this place has a story. For a survivor waiting for a bus in the rain, that quiet acknowledgement can mean everything. This is not only emotional intuition. Research on trauma and post-conflict societies consistently shows that when societies publicly acknowledge violent histories — in streets and neighbourhoods, not only in museums — long-term community healing and resilience are stronger. Germany’s Stolpersteine project is a powerful example: small brass plaques placed in pavements outside former homes of Holocaust victims, now over 100,000 across Europe. Ordinary people meet that memory not on school trips, but on their daily commute. History becomes part of the living city. Rwanda, too, welcomes many international visitors who come for our gorillas, our parks, our clean cities and our thousand hills. They may visit one memorial, but much of what they see can feel disconnected from our recent history. A plaque at the entrance to Nyandungu or in a Kigali bus terminal does not “ruin” the trip. It deepens it. It makes our story of survival and reconciliation honest, and inseparable from the beauty visitors admire. Rwanda is not just a country. Rwanda is a testimony. Metal plaques alone will not heal every wound or answer every question. But they will say, in a clear, quiet voice to survivors, to young Rwandans and to every visitor: we remember the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi here, and everywhere. We carry them not only in museums, but in our streets, our parks, our daily lives. It is time to let the landscape speak. Let us make the memory as permanent as the hills themselves. The writer is a scholar, author, and peacebuilder who is the founder and director of Be The Peace, a global movement to halt the intergenerational transmission of hate.
