Musanze, Gisenyi, Huye, Nyamata, Ntarama, Kigali (Mar. 18-24)
I had totally forgotten about Holi festival in India and I suddenly realized that I had a week to get through Rwanda to make it to India in time. I hopped on a bus and headed to my first stop in Musanze to see the caves.
I discovered almost immediately upon arriving in Musanze that the caves were closed for construction. This is one of the hardest parts about travelling in Rwanda because there is just so little tourist information. You just need time to figure things out, which I definitely didn't have. The guide suggested that I opt to go to some other caves in Bukoba so we hopped on a matatu and headed out.
We had to take a boda for the last little bit of the way. I have been on some pretty scary and probably quite dangerous boda rides before, but this was the first time I ever screamed "let me off!" The roads were just piles of rocks and the hills were steep. At the end, we were just riding through the thin dirt walking pathways through a farmers field. It was slightly horrifying.
As we drove in to the village, the children kept screaming something that sounded like "Cathy!" I was used to hearing Mzungu, but I couldn't figure out what this word was. I finally asked my guide and he said there had been an English teacher from the west there a few years earlier and since I was white, they thought I was her so they were screaming her name, Cathy. It was a very strange coincidence because Cathy is a pretty uncommon name.
When we got off the bikes, we were immediately surrounded by about 30 children. I actually tried counting them, but I kept losing track. As I pulled out my running shoes and put them on, they just all stood there in silence staring at me. It was very strange. The caves were awful because they were destroyed by the rain, so I decided not to stay there very long. We also visited a pit where they had thrown the Tutsi bodies during the genocide.
As we went from cave to cave and walked around the city, the group following us got larger and larger. By the time I was getting on the bike to leave, I think the whole village had congregrated outside to stare at me. I must have been surrounded by at least a hundred people, all just staring at me. It is really hard to explain what that feels like, but it was very weird.
From the caves, I headed straight to Gisenyi. The next morning I went to visit the hot springs and played in the water with a bunch of kids that were there. A guy I met there offered to show me the women's hot springs so we made the 20 minute walk through the field to get there. They were muddy and filled with garbage, the men's were much better obviously, so we headed back. On the way, I stopped to watch some fishermen pulling in a net and one of them let me try the fish. They were these tiny little silver fish that you eat whole.
Despite the fact that I told the guy I was married, he kept finding weird ways to touch me, like pointing to some birds and then putting his arm around me. I felt like he was stealing moves from a cheezy movie. Finally, after I had told him twice to keep his hands off me, he did it again and I stormed away. In the process, I stubbed my toe really hard on a rock. The next day the entire thing was purple and swollen and it has now been about a month and it still hurts, so I am going to say I definitely broke it.
I don't know why I gave him another chance after that, probably boredom because there were no tourists and so few people spoke english, but he offered to show me a nearby restaurant where I could get food. He ordered a massive beer that held about a litre and a meal which he took one bite of and said he was full. He said almost proudly that he wasn't hungry because he never ate lunch. I knew from our conversation what was coming, but I said it anyways to get his reaction, "Well you are just wasting your money on the food." "Oh I don't have any money," he said. It wasn't even just the fact that he didn't ask if I would buy his food before he ordered, or the fact that he ordered food he didn't want, or the fact that he didn't eat it, it was the complete lack of respect for my money because I knew he would never waste good food like that at home. After I scolded him for a bit, something occurred to me and when I asked, he confirmed that he had never met a mzungu before. It sounds stupid now that I am writing it, but yet again I forgave him and we asked for a bag so he could take the food home to his brother. Our conversation got normal again and we were joking around and then he said something about coming back to my hotel room to sleep with me. I stood up, pointed to the food and said "don't you dare throw that out" then walked out. Honestly. Why do I even try?
I wanted to do this fishing trip that sounded cool, but they didn't have anyone who spoke English so I got dinner with a friend from Kigali and we spent the night playing scrabble with some Swedish girls.
That night when I went to sleep, I could hear this drumming and music coming from next door, I went to go check it out but the gate was locked and it was late so I just went to sleep. I woke up in the morning to pack because I was planning on leaving for Huye that morning. I could hear the music again so I looked at my watch: I still had time. I put down my bag and headed out the gate and around the corner, following the mysterious music. As usual, people didn't really speak English but I managed to figure out that it was a mass and I could go in after the prayers were done.
It was a small room about the size of my living room in Toronto and all along the walls were people seated on the floor. It was pretty hot outside already but you could feel the heaviness in the air of the heat from all of the bodies jammed into this small room. In one corner was a drummer and by the door was a preacher who was missing half of his left leg. Some people welcomed me over and covered my legs with a kanga. Explaining to them that I was already dying of the heat, I realized, would be futile since they didn't understand english, so I accepted the kind gesture and suffered in silence. One at a time, people would begin yelling out and twitching spastically as they screamed to the sky. After some time, everyone stood up and the drumming began again. Some people picked up some metal shakers and the rest of us began dancing and clapping. After seeing the Masaai's dance in Tanzania and seeing a dance show in Uganda, I can honestly say that this was the best dancing I saw in all of Africa. I followed their lead and began clapping and dancing with them. Every so often, someone would raise their arms and shout an enthusiastic "Hallelujah!" which was followed by an equally enthusiastic "Amen" from the rest of the room.
After a few more prayers and flailing limbs accompanied by wild screams, they motioned for me to stand along with three or four others. I had no idea what was going on, because up until this point I had not heard one word of English, but each person began speaking one at a time down the line towards me. Finally, the girl next to me finished talking and her eyes turned towards me, followed by the eyes of every person in the room. So there I was, back under the gaze, with no idea what their expectation was and no ability to ask. I tried an enthusiastic "Hallelujah," which got an "Amen" but no wavering of the gaze like I was hoping. I just stood there like an idiot, waiting for them to give up whatever plan they had for me. Finally, someone shouted from the corner "My name is...". "OH, Cathy!", I said. They kept staring, but eventually realized that was the best they were gonna get from me. I sat down. We continued with singing and prayers. The singing was difficult to keep up with since I was reading it in Kiyarwanda, but I somehow managed. At around 10:45 I realized I had 15 minutes left to check out and quietly snuck out. An hour later I was on the bus heading to Huye.
In Huye, almost no one spoke English and my French is horrible so I started speaking this strange hybrid language of English, French, and Swahili, with the occasional kiyarwanda word thrown in. I got by and managed to find this ice cream store run by a women's group. It was pineapple soft-serve and the first good ice cream I had in four months. It was amazing.
The next morning I took a short bus ride to the Murambi genocide memorial. There is a lot of controversy about this memorial and the way the bodies are displayed, but it is certainly a life-changing experience to visit it. You begin in the main museum where you have a short walk around for some historical background on the genocide, then a guide escorts you to the buildings at the back. Some of the buildings are unused, filled with holes, and have grass and trees growing out of them, which gives the place a really haunting feeling when you know what happened there so recently.
The story goes that many of the Tutsis, fleeing for their lives, were told by the authorities that the school building there was a place where they could find safety. They trusted the government authorities so eventually, about 27,000 men, women, and children gathered there. At first, they just weren't allowed to leave and anyone who went out to try and get food was killed. Then, they began a systematic slaughter, first by showering them with grenades, then going in with machetes to kill the survivors. I think something like 2 people made it out alive in the end.
My guide led me into each building: the first one was filled with display cases full of skulls. Some, you could tell, were children and many had cracks or holes where you could see they were hit with a hammer or machete. The next room, for some reason, was the one that got me. There was just this massive pile of leg bones about 4 metres long by one metre wide along both walls. Just the sheer number of them was so shocking that I started tearing up. The next three rooms are the most controversial and were the ones I expected to really hit me, but there was something way too unbelievable about it. They were just piles of bodies that had been dug up and preserved in lime to prove that the genocide happened. They are just sitting there in piles on wooden tables inside these concrete buildings. Every so often you can see a tuft of hair or a shirt that looks still wearable, which reminds you that these were once people. However, for the most part they just looks like shriveled, stark white dolls rather than the remains of the living, breathing people that they once were. The thing that disturbed me the most was the position one body was in that made it obvious that she was raped just before she died. There she was, tossed on that table on display and preserved in lime in that humiliating position for who knows how long. The worst moment of her life frozen there in time for the world to see. Since likely her entire family was killed, that is the only thing left to pay homage to her life.
Next to that row of buildings, my guide showed me the place where the French flag used to fly, where the soldiers slept, and where they had moved the bodies to make a volleyball court. Apparently, the soldiers were complaining that there were random limbs sticking out of the ground in the place where they were trying to play. It is pretty shocking and disturbing when you realize how complacent the French were with everything that was going on.
My next stop was the ethnographic museum, which went through the history and culture of the Rwandan people. It is funny to see artefacts in the museum that you know the people are still using all over east Africa. At the museum I saw, what I believe, to be the ugliest man to have ever existed. King Musinga was the second-last king of Rwanda and a real beauty. That didn't stop him from having plenty of wives though.
Nyamata is only a few hours from Huye, but I spent almost the entire day travelling since all of the transportation goes through Kigali. By the time I got there and found a dingy, but cheap hotel, the memorial was closed to I had a full evening to kill. I met this guy at the restaurant next door, so I chilled out and drank some beer with him and his friend. After a while, I was told that his wife was sitting at the bar and I called her over, wondering why she had been sitting there by herself in the first place. Every feminist bone in my body cringed when she insisted that her husband be the one to introduce her. "Michelle," he said. I felt like I was world's apart from this girl.
The two guys started talking about some devil-worshipping cult that they said Jay-Z and Beyonce had used to earn fame and fortune. Apparently Jay-Z killed Beyonce and now she is possessed and her alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, is proof. They argued incensantly that it was true and no amount of logic would stand in their way. Michelle finally said to me that they were idiots and believed everything they read on the internet. Being my partner against this nonsense somehow bonded us and I realized that we weren't as different as I thought. We had an amazing night drinking and dancing and Michelle taught me some Ethiopian dancing. Anytime the power went out, we all made our own music by drumming on tables, clapping, and singing.
When I got back to my hotel room that night, I suddenly wasn't so sure that the bed sheets had been changed previously. I decided it was best not to think about it. Worse, was the co-ed bathrooms without a door that locks and with only an old and haggard shower curtain to cover you. It was a very quick night-time pee as I ran out of the dingy, black washroom terrified at running into a creepy man. I resolved that taking a bucket shower there would probably leave me dirtier so I waited for my next stop.
In a sick way I feel like I look for these places not necessarily because I need to go that cheap, but because I thrive on the challenge of finding the cheapest possible place and the adventure of what happens when I stay there. It certainly makes you appreciate how much we really NEED in life and how much we have just grown to think we need.
Early the next morning I went to the Nyamata memorial, where Tutsis seeking shelter at the church had been killed. In previous killings, they had been able to seek shelter there so they thought they would be safe there again. The holes in the door and walls where the Hutus threw the grenades are still there to see. The church benches are piled two feet high with bloody clothes and the blood stains are still there on the altar table cloth so you can see how deep it was. In the basement is the grave of a women who was repeatedly raped and then killed by plunging a sword into her, all the way to her head. In back are more piles of skulls and leg bones and two individually marked graves. My guide pointed out one grave as that of a nun who was killed trying to protect the Tutsis there. I didn't really look at the other grave, but a friend who does research on the topic told me later that he was actually one of the major instigators and encouragers of the Tutsi killings. Apparently, there is a lot of evidence that the Catholic church actually played a major role in inciting the genocide and the original Hutu commandments that were later revised and used to incite the violence, were originally written by a member of the Catholic church. I still haven't been able to figure out what the motivation was for their support of such a horrific cause, but I want to read more about it.
After the memorial, I managed to get in contact with the Millenium Reconcilliation Village to get a tour. This is a village where they have taken Rwandans who were left with nothing after the genocide (survivors who returned to destroyed homes and no remaining families; and perpetrators who came out of jail and were shunned) and put them together in a community. I met with the members of one household. Things started out lighthearted with some joking around and I looked around the living room at the old army photos and a poster of the local king decorating the walls. Across from me sat two women, one man, and several children that were running around. The man began by explaining that he had been a member of the army and a perpetrator in the genocide. As he told his story, one of the women next to him sat in silence, but I thought I saw tears welling up in her eyes. After he finished his story, she began. She was 14 when she escaped Rwanda with her brother and fled to Burundi. They were the only ones in her family that survived.
I can't explain what it was like to sit in the room with these people. So many questions were floating in my head later, but at the time I was too overwhelmed to ask any of them. I just sat there and sobbed. I can't imagine what kind of tremendous strength it would take to spend every day living with someone who potentially killed almost your entire family. When I think of my family, I just don't think I would be able to do it. I believe it is what Rwanda needs right now and the current generation's sufferring is necessary to find peace for future generations, but I wouldn't wish to be in that woman's shoes for a second.
I think, above all, travelling gives you perspective. You only see the grossest bathroom, dirtiest hotel room, most uncomfortable bus, or the biggest cockroach once in your life, everything else is just secondary. I felt guilty sitting in that room and comparing the life I have led, guilty for making them relive that for me. I think that is why I couldn't ask anything; I felt like it was asking too much. But whenever I think things in my life are bad, I will forever remember the face of this woman and realize how incredibly blessed I am to have led the life I have. For that, I will be forever grateful.
On my way back to Kigali, I stopped in the last memorial on my list. I knew immediately that I was done. I was emotionally exhausted and saw nothing but meaningless piles of skulls. I respectfully hurried through and got out as quick as I could. I don't think it is good to get to a point where you look at a place where hundreds of children were slaughtered and feel nothing.
Back in Kigali, it was nice to relax after an emotional day with familiar people, a burritto, and a night with Al Jazerra.
On my last day in Kigali, I visited the Presidential Palace Museum, which is where Habyariamana and later Bizimungu lived before and during the genocide. It was strange to know that a lot of the planning took place in that house with pink carpets and green 80s sofas. The coolest part of the house was the upstairs where a remote control opened, what looked like an entertainment station, into a secret stairway. Upstairs was a sort of safe house where the family could hide out if there was danger. It is a bit funny to think that after all of that effort, he died in a plane crash. The weirdest part for me was the crash site. You climb the fence to the lookout point and there it is. His plane landed almost directly on his own property. What are the odds of that?
He also had a snake that he really loved and kept in an open pit in the yard. Legend has it, the snake mysteriously disappeared after his death. I hate to ruin the mystique, but I don't think it is that unbelievable that an animal in an open pit disappeared after a plane crashed right next to it. I would have run too.
The next morning I packed my bags and headed to the airport, trying to prepare myself mentally for a brand new continent. It sounds weird, but even after 4 1/2 months of travelling I was nervous. Africa was insane, but it was familiarly insane. I had heard so many crazy stories and I just had no idea what to expect in India. But ready or not, I was going.
I had totally forgotten about Holi festival in India and I suddenly realized that I had a week to get through Rwanda to make it to India in time. I hopped on a bus and headed to my first stop in Musanze to see the caves.
I discovered almost immediately upon arriving in Musanze that the caves were closed for construction. This is one of the hardest parts about travelling in Rwanda because there is just so little tourist information. You just need time to figure things out, which I definitely didn't have. The guide suggested that I opt to go to some other caves in Bukoba so we hopped on a matatu and headed out.
We had to take a boda for the last little bit of the way. I have been on some pretty scary and probably quite dangerous boda rides before, but this was the first time I ever screamed "let me off!" The roads were just piles of rocks and the hills were steep. At the end, we were just riding through the thin dirt walking pathways through a farmers field. It was slightly horrifying.
As we drove in to the village, the children kept screaming something that sounded like "Cathy!" I was used to hearing Mzungu, but I couldn't figure out what this word was. I finally asked my guide and he said there had been an English teacher from the west there a few years earlier and since I was white, they thought I was her so they were screaming her name, Cathy. It was a very strange coincidence because Cathy is a pretty uncommon name.
When we got off the bikes, we were immediately surrounded by about 30 children. I actually tried counting them, but I kept losing track. As I pulled out my running shoes and put them on, they just all stood there in silence staring at me. It was very strange. The caves were awful because they were destroyed by the rain, so I decided not to stay there very long. We also visited a pit where they had thrown the Tutsi bodies during the genocide.
As we went from cave to cave and walked around the city, the group following us got larger and larger. By the time I was getting on the bike to leave, I think the whole village had congregrated outside to stare at me. I must have been surrounded by at least a hundred people, all just staring at me. It is really hard to explain what that feels like, but it was very weird.
From the caves, I headed straight to Gisenyi. The next morning I went to visit the hot springs and played in the water with a bunch of kids that were there. A guy I met there offered to show me the women's hot springs so we made the 20 minute walk through the field to get there. They were muddy and filled with garbage, the men's were much better obviously, so we headed back. On the way, I stopped to watch some fishermen pulling in a net and one of them let me try the fish. They were these tiny little silver fish that you eat whole.
I don't know why I gave him another chance after that, probably boredom because there were no tourists and so few people spoke english, but he offered to show me a nearby restaurant where I could get food. He ordered a massive beer that held about a litre and a meal which he took one bite of and said he was full. He said almost proudly that he wasn't hungry because he never ate lunch. I knew from our conversation what was coming, but I said it anyways to get his reaction, "Well you are just wasting your money on the food." "Oh I don't have any money," he said. It wasn't even just the fact that he didn't ask if I would buy his food before he ordered, or the fact that he ordered food he didn't want, or the fact that he didn't eat it, it was the complete lack of respect for my money because I knew he would never waste good food like that at home. After I scolded him for a bit, something occurred to me and when I asked, he confirmed that he had never met a mzungu before. It sounds stupid now that I am writing it, but yet again I forgave him and we asked for a bag so he could take the food home to his brother. Our conversation got normal again and we were joking around and then he said something about coming back to my hotel room to sleep with me. I stood up, pointed to the food and said "don't you dare throw that out" then walked out. Honestly. Why do I even try?
I wanted to do this fishing trip that sounded cool, but they didn't have anyone who spoke English so I got dinner with a friend from Kigali and we spent the night playing scrabble with some Swedish girls.
That night when I went to sleep, I could hear this drumming and music coming from next door, I went to go check it out but the gate was locked and it was late so I just went to sleep. I woke up in the morning to pack because I was planning on leaving for Huye that morning. I could hear the music again so I looked at my watch: I still had time. I put down my bag and headed out the gate and around the corner, following the mysterious music. As usual, people didn't really speak English but I managed to figure out that it was a mass and I could go in after the prayers were done.
It was a small room about the size of my living room in Toronto and all along the walls were people seated on the floor. It was pretty hot outside already but you could feel the heaviness in the air of the heat from all of the bodies jammed into this small room. In one corner was a drummer and by the door was a preacher who was missing half of his left leg. Some people welcomed me over and covered my legs with a kanga. Explaining to them that I was already dying of the heat, I realized, would be futile since they didn't understand english, so I accepted the kind gesture and suffered in silence. One at a time, people would begin yelling out and twitching spastically as they screamed to the sky. After some time, everyone stood up and the drumming began again. Some people picked up some metal shakers and the rest of us began dancing and clapping. After seeing the Masaai's dance in Tanzania and seeing a dance show in Uganda, I can honestly say that this was the best dancing I saw in all of Africa. I followed their lead and began clapping and dancing with them. Every so often, someone would raise their arms and shout an enthusiastic "Hallelujah!" which was followed by an equally enthusiastic "Amen" from the rest of the room.
After a few more prayers and flailing limbs accompanied by wild screams, they motioned for me to stand along with three or four others. I had no idea what was going on, because up until this point I had not heard one word of English, but each person began speaking one at a time down the line towards me. Finally, the girl next to me finished talking and her eyes turned towards me, followed by the eyes of every person in the room. So there I was, back under the gaze, with no idea what their expectation was and no ability to ask. I tried an enthusiastic "Hallelujah," which got an "Amen" but no wavering of the gaze like I was hoping. I just stood there like an idiot, waiting for them to give up whatever plan they had for me. Finally, someone shouted from the corner "My name is...". "OH, Cathy!", I said. They kept staring, but eventually realized that was the best they were gonna get from me. I sat down. We continued with singing and prayers. The singing was difficult to keep up with since I was reading it in Kiyarwanda, but I somehow managed. At around 10:45 I realized I had 15 minutes left to check out and quietly snuck out. An hour later I was on the bus heading to Huye.
In Huye, almost no one spoke English and my French is horrible so I started speaking this strange hybrid language of English, French, and Swahili, with the occasional kiyarwanda word thrown in. I got by and managed to find this ice cream store run by a women's group. It was pineapple soft-serve and the first good ice cream I had in four months. It was amazing.
The next morning I took a short bus ride to the Murambi genocide memorial. There is a lot of controversy about this memorial and the way the bodies are displayed, but it is certainly a life-changing experience to visit it. You begin in the main museum where you have a short walk around for some historical background on the genocide, then a guide escorts you to the buildings at the back. Some of the buildings are unused, filled with holes, and have grass and trees growing out of them, which gives the place a really haunting feeling when you know what happened there so recently.
The story goes that many of the Tutsis, fleeing for their lives, were told by the authorities that the school building there was a place where they could find safety. They trusted the government authorities so eventually, about 27,000 men, women, and children gathered there. At first, they just weren't allowed to leave and anyone who went out to try and get food was killed. Then, they began a systematic slaughter, first by showering them with grenades, then going in with machetes to kill the survivors. I think something like 2 people made it out alive in the end.
My guide led me into each building: the first one was filled with display cases full of skulls. Some, you could tell, were children and many had cracks or holes where you could see they were hit with a hammer or machete. The next room, for some reason, was the one that got me. There was just this massive pile of leg bones about 4 metres long by one metre wide along both walls. Just the sheer number of them was so shocking that I started tearing up. The next three rooms are the most controversial and were the ones I expected to really hit me, but there was something way too unbelievable about it. They were just piles of bodies that had been dug up and preserved in lime to prove that the genocide happened. They are just sitting there in piles on wooden tables inside these concrete buildings. Every so often you can see a tuft of hair or a shirt that looks still wearable, which reminds you that these were once people. However, for the most part they just looks like shriveled, stark white dolls rather than the remains of the living, breathing people that they once were. The thing that disturbed me the most was the position one body was in that made it obvious that she was raped just before she died. There she was, tossed on that table on display and preserved in lime in that humiliating position for who knows how long. The worst moment of her life frozen there in time for the world to see. Since likely her entire family was killed, that is the only thing left to pay homage to her life.
Next to that row of buildings, my guide showed me the place where the French flag used to fly, where the soldiers slept, and where they had moved the bodies to make a volleyball court. Apparently, the soldiers were complaining that there were random limbs sticking out of the ground in the place where they were trying to play. It is pretty shocking and disturbing when you realize how complacent the French were with everything that was going on.
My next stop was the ethnographic museum, which went through the history and culture of the Rwandan people. It is funny to see artefacts in the museum that you know the people are still using all over east Africa. At the museum I saw, what I believe, to be the ugliest man to have ever existed. King Musinga was the second-last king of Rwanda and a real beauty. That didn't stop him from having plenty of wives though.
Nyamata is only a few hours from Huye, but I spent almost the entire day travelling since all of the transportation goes through Kigali. By the time I got there and found a dingy, but cheap hotel, the memorial was closed to I had a full evening to kill. I met this guy at the restaurant next door, so I chilled out and drank some beer with him and his friend. After a while, I was told that his wife was sitting at the bar and I called her over, wondering why she had been sitting there by herself in the first place. Every feminist bone in my body cringed when she insisted that her husband be the one to introduce her. "Michelle," he said. I felt like I was world's apart from this girl.
The two guys started talking about some devil-worshipping cult that they said Jay-Z and Beyonce had used to earn fame and fortune. Apparently Jay-Z killed Beyonce and now she is possessed and her alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, is proof. They argued incensantly that it was true and no amount of logic would stand in their way. Michelle finally said to me that they were idiots and believed everything they read on the internet. Being my partner against this nonsense somehow bonded us and I realized that we weren't as different as I thought. We had an amazing night drinking and dancing and Michelle taught me some Ethiopian dancing. Anytime the power went out, we all made our own music by drumming on tables, clapping, and singing.
When I got back to my hotel room that night, I suddenly wasn't so sure that the bed sheets had been changed previously. I decided it was best not to think about it. Worse, was the co-ed bathrooms without a door that locks and with only an old and haggard shower curtain to cover you. It was a very quick night-time pee as I ran out of the dingy, black washroom terrified at running into a creepy man. I resolved that taking a bucket shower there would probably leave me dirtier so I waited for my next stop.
In a sick way I feel like I look for these places not necessarily because I need to go that cheap, but because I thrive on the challenge of finding the cheapest possible place and the adventure of what happens when I stay there. It certainly makes you appreciate how much we really NEED in life and how much we have just grown to think we need.
Early the next morning I went to the Nyamata memorial, where Tutsis seeking shelter at the church had been killed. In previous killings, they had been able to seek shelter there so they thought they would be safe there again. The holes in the door and walls where the Hutus threw the grenades are still there to see. The church benches are piled two feet high with bloody clothes and the blood stains are still there on the altar table cloth so you can see how deep it was. In the basement is the grave of a women who was repeatedly raped and then killed by plunging a sword into her, all the way to her head. In back are more piles of skulls and leg bones and two individually marked graves. My guide pointed out one grave as that of a nun who was killed trying to protect the Tutsis there. I didn't really look at the other grave, but a friend who does research on the topic told me later that he was actually one of the major instigators and encouragers of the Tutsi killings. Apparently, there is a lot of evidence that the Catholic church actually played a major role in inciting the genocide and the original Hutu commandments that were later revised and used to incite the violence, were originally written by a member of the Catholic church. I still haven't been able to figure out what the motivation was for their support of such a horrific cause, but I want to read more about it.
After the memorial, I managed to get in contact with the Millenium Reconcilliation Village to get a tour. This is a village where they have taken Rwandans who were left with nothing after the genocide (survivors who returned to destroyed homes and no remaining families; and perpetrators who came out of jail and were shunned) and put them together in a community. I met with the members of one household. Things started out lighthearted with some joking around and I looked around the living room at the old army photos and a poster of the local king decorating the walls. Across from me sat two women, one man, and several children that were running around. The man began by explaining that he had been a member of the army and a perpetrator in the genocide. As he told his story, one of the women next to him sat in silence, but I thought I saw tears welling up in her eyes. After he finished his story, she began. She was 14 when she escaped Rwanda with her brother and fled to Burundi. They were the only ones in her family that survived.
I can't explain what it was like to sit in the room with these people. So many questions were floating in my head later, but at the time I was too overwhelmed to ask any of them. I just sat there and sobbed. I can't imagine what kind of tremendous strength it would take to spend every day living with someone who potentially killed almost your entire family. When I think of my family, I just don't think I would be able to do it. I believe it is what Rwanda needs right now and the current generation's sufferring is necessary to find peace for future generations, but I wouldn't wish to be in that woman's shoes for a second.
I think, above all, travelling gives you perspective. You only see the grossest bathroom, dirtiest hotel room, most uncomfortable bus, or the biggest cockroach once in your life, everything else is just secondary. I felt guilty sitting in that room and comparing the life I have led, guilty for making them relive that for me. I think that is why I couldn't ask anything; I felt like it was asking too much. But whenever I think things in my life are bad, I will forever remember the face of this woman and realize how incredibly blessed I am to have led the life I have. For that, I will be forever grateful.
On my way back to Kigali, I stopped in the last memorial on my list. I knew immediately that I was done. I was emotionally exhausted and saw nothing but meaningless piles of skulls. I respectfully hurried through and got out as quick as I could. I don't think it is good to get to a point where you look at a place where hundreds of children were slaughtered and feel nothing.
Back in Kigali, it was nice to relax after an emotional day with familiar people, a burritto, and a night with Al Jazerra.
On my last day in Kigali, I visited the Presidential Palace Museum, which is where Habyariamana and later Bizimungu lived before and during the genocide. It was strange to know that a lot of the planning took place in that house with pink carpets and green 80s sofas. The coolest part of the house was the upstairs where a remote control opened, what looked like an entertainment station, into a secret stairway. Upstairs was a sort of safe house where the family could hide out if there was danger. It is a bit funny to think that after all of that effort, he died in a plane crash. The weirdest part for me was the crash site. You climb the fence to the lookout point and there it is. His plane landed almost directly on his own property. What are the odds of that?
He also had a snake that he really loved and kept in an open pit in the yard. Legend has it, the snake mysteriously disappeared after his death. I hate to ruin the mystique, but I don't think it is that unbelievable that an animal in an open pit disappeared after a plane crashed right next to it. I would have run too.
The next morning I packed my bags and headed to the airport, trying to prepare myself mentally for a brand new continent. It sounds weird, but even after 4 1/2 months of travelling I was nervous. Africa was insane, but it was familiarly insane. I had heard so many crazy stories and I just had no idea what to expect in India. But ready or not, I was going.
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