The land of 1000 rolling hills...

I have returned from my wonderful journey to Rwanda. The capital of Rwanda is Kigali and is 575 Km southwest of Kampala, Uganda. The bus ride took around 8 hours and was very scenic, especially after the equator in Uganda as the vegetation changed and the terrain became more mountainous.
Upon entering Kigali I was amazed at the cleanliness and organization. The roads were paved; there were crosswalks that people actually respected, there were flower gardens and water sprinklers and people walking around with brooms and garbage bags. It is very obvious to see that Rwandans care deeply about the appearance of their country.

I arrive on Sunday the 6th of April. The second week of April is reserved for the national week of mourning in which Monday is a public holiday and then the rest of the week people began work later and finishes work earlier. Contrary to American popularization Rwanda was plagued with genocides. Beginning early in history and increasing. There were genocides in 87, 90, 92, 94, and 97. Millions of people were murdered over the years and the results of those genocides are very evident as the population of Rwanda is quite small.

The country as I said is very beautiful, but as for tourism there is not that much to see. There is of course the genocide memorials, which are sad to view, but necessary if one wants to understand their history deeper, and then they have gorilla trekking; however, that is at least $600 and in my opinion sad because it destroys their habitat.

I did a complete tour of the country. Starting in the north and traveling south to Ntarama and Nyamata to see the genocide memorials, then south again to Butare which is the educational center of Rwanda-it houses the national museum and national university, from there I did a day trip into Burundi to see a completely different country that is still recovering from its numerous genocides and wars, then west to Cyangugu, a town used mainly for trading between Rwanda and D.R. Congo, and then North to Kibyue on Lake Kivu. A stunningly beautiful town situated on a lake and hugged by rolling hills. It was in this town that the largest numbers of Tutsi were killed…almost 90% of the killings took place in this town. It was hard for me to believe that such a small isolated beauty witnessed such horrors.

A little over a week later I arrived back in Kigali. I wanted to spend half the day at the genocide museum since I had heard that it was quite amazing. I spent three hours there that Monday and shed a lot of tears. The museum is spectacular and is quite honest in its depictions. Every year thousands of saviors visit the memorial to remember their loved ones that were killed in the genocides. There are films that visitors can watch about the survivors who tell their stories, there is a room devoted to the victims of the genocides and you can view their pictures that were donated by their family member. Also there were pictures of children that were murdered and for me that was one of the hardest things, it gave a small story about some of the children telling what kind of food, drink, activity, sport, that they liked and at the bottom explained how they were killed. Maybe you could guess if you used your most vivid imagination.

In the other memorials that I visited you can still view the clothing that the victims were wearing. The clothing is a very important momentums and the United Nations used the clothing to identify the remains back in 1994. During the killings people used to flock to churches because they believed that such murder could never take place in the house of god, but sadly the murderers waited and butchered everyone that was inside. Some of the family members never went to the churches and hid in trenches, woods, gardens, toilets, etc…so after the 100 days of killings and after things settled down when the United Nations came in the began to exhume the bodies from mass graves, fields, churches, schools, and so on they use to remove the clothing and number them and their accompanying body then they would place the clothing outside on the street and the survivors would come and look at the clothing. If the survivors would recognize the clothing they would know that their family member was killed and there were free to take the body and give it a proper burial. The clothing can still be seen hanging in the churches today. It is terrifying.

While I was in museum I learned about a different weapon that was used to kill. I understand that rape is used as a weapon of war, but in Rwanda they used it on a whole new level that still makes me stick to my stomach. Murderers with HIV and AIDS raped women to infect them and left them to die a slow and painful death. Because of the way the international community treated the genocide the women were not able to get anti retroviral drugs in time and therefore cant be helped.

Rwanda today appears to be at peace with Hutu’s and Tutsi’s living peacefully together, however, in my opinion if such a hatred was conditioned for hundreds of years then there has to be an underlying hatred still alive today. I think the government is very competent and working hard to recover from the past and its important for the world to know what happened and help Rwanda spread their words of “NEVER AGAIN”.

I will be uploading photos as soon as I can get a good enough connection.

I also attended a Rotary meeting in Rwanda at Hotel de Milles Collines…(otherwise known as Hotel Rwanda!)