50,000 Bones Preview Installation Re-cap

August 27^th started out the way most Saturday mornings do on Central Avenue: quiet and calm.  While it ended up being a typical hot, crystalline blue summer day the morning was lovely, and cool.  At 8am or so volunteers in white started moving into the stillness and workers in trucks began barricading the street and setting up the canopy, everyone going about the work of getting ready to lay 50,000 Bones in the street at Central Avenue and Fourth Street.

By 10am, we were ready and a lone volunteer in a white dress walked up the empty street with two white bones in her hands.  She laid them in the street, bowed her head, and moved away, silently. We started slowly, a few volunteers moving up the street with bones, laying them down and walking back. Eventually, a quiet line of volunteers formed, everyone dressed in white, everyone still, everyone carrying bones.  For the next two hours, over 200 volunteers laid over 50,000 bones in the street, one at a time, until almost the entire block was covered. 

When the laying of the bones was finished, we all gathered under the shade of the trees outside Amy Biehl High School for short talks by survivors, Eric Ndaheba, Kigabo Mbazumutima and Yves Muya; anti-genocide advocates Carl Wilkens and JD Stier, heartfelt words from our MC, Hakim Bellamy, and for a performance by Albuquerque’s own Matunda Ya Yesu/South African Orion Duet. Every one of them spoke to our hearts, and we’ll share this quote from Carl Wilkens which captures the heart of One Million Bones,  “When we make something with our hands, it changes the way we feel, which changes the way we think, which changes the way we act.”

After the presentations, everyone was invited into Amy Biehl, a most generous partner in the event, for lunch and refreshments. We all had a chance to rest, to think about the day and what it meant, and to spend some time with others who worked along side us all day.

Around 2pm, we headed back out into the sun to start the reclaiming of the bones, and many, many of the volunteers, who had spent all morning working, spent the afternoon working as well.  By about 4pm, the bones were reclaimed and packed, ready for their next use in Washington, D.C.

By 5pm, all the tables and equipment, volunteers and boxes, bones and water jugs were gone, leaving the street as quiet, but never as empty again. I can’t walk past that intersection without seeing the expanse of white bones lying there in the sun, an accounting of crises around the world, and a tangible demand for actions to end them.