Kigali

Hello fellow readers. I had the opportunity to spend a long weekend in Kigali, Rwanda. We left Friday at one in the morning, but before we left we spent Thursday in a rural village called Burundi. The village is right on the Nile river and is absolutely gorgeous. We spent the day helping the community build a school entirely made of bamboo sticks, plants, and a mud mixture which most likely contained animal fecal matter (luckily I didn’t have to touch that). The mzungus learned how to construct the walls out of bamboo and then the children filled the walls in with the mud mixture. After the construction they fed us millet porridge, which was disgusting, then we began our journey to Kigali, Rwanda.
Most tourists take a plane or even a private hire car to get to Kigali, but not us. It’s over a tenth of the price to take public transportation. So we got bus tickets for a mere fifteen US dollars and hopped on for a long ride. The roads everywhere are terrible and the bus driver, like the rest of the drivers in Uganda, drove like a crazy man so the bus ride felt once again like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland that lasted over ten hours. They only stopped once on the trip and I luckily monitored my water intake so I didn’t have to use the restroom on the way. Unfortunately, the Ugandans didn’t have the same idea. Lets just say when we got off the bus there were approximately twelve water bottles filled with urine stuck behind the seats. All I can say is, thank good it was dark.
Kigali is surprisingly a lot like Los Angeles. I know that sounds crazy, but it really is so much like LA. The weather and vegetation is similar and it really is a developed city with sidewalks and tall buildings. They drive on the correct side of the road and no one drives like a maniac. The bota bota drivers wear helmets and even have a helmet for you to wear. There are trash cans all over the city, and therefore is so much cleaner than anywhere in Uganda. The surroundings truly made me feel like I was on vacation. Along with the developed feel of the country came the increased price in food, transport, and lodging. So we booked half the number of necessary rooms and shared beds.
One of the most amazing things about Rwanda, is that its only been fifteen years since the genocide and the government has done an incredible job rebuilding the country. We met with a man from the local government and we learned why Rwanda is where it is on the road to development due to the infrastructure of the higher governments. In Uganda, most local governments are really doing a fairly good job with the funds they have in building their communities, the issue is with the corrupt government officials at the top of the Ugandan leadership totem pole. Another absolutely amazing thing about Rwanda is how after only fifteen years since the genocide, the Rwandies live together in peace. No longer as Hutus and Tutsis, but as fellow Rwandies. There system isn’t perfect, there are still many Hutus who participated in the Intrahamwe army who were never convicted and still walk the streets of Kigali. One of the men who told us about his story with the genocide said he has passed the killer of his parents on the streets many of times and just passes him without saying a word. Even after such a terrible genocide, many of the Rwandies have remained in their native land.
On Friday, we went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. It was a beautiful museum and it was air conditioned! The majority of the museum is composed of information and memorials on the Rwanda genocide and then one of the exhibits was of a few other genocides. We also went to Hotel Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda). We had tentatively planned to swim in their pool, but it was unfortunately being renovated.
On Saturday we got up early and went to a small town called Neamata. It’s about thirty minutes outside of the main city and was the third hardest hit village during the genocide. Over half of the population of the village was killed. Most of the Tutsis fled to the church in Neamata for refuge and were then killed. The church is no longer functioning and now acts as a memorial. Inside the large meeting room of the church are piles and piles of clothes of the victims who were killed stacked up on the pews. There are still bullet holes in the ceiling and holes in the ground from where grenades landed. Outside of church are mass graves that you can walk down into and are filled from floor to ceiling with coffins and bones. The underground graves had no artificial lighting and therefore were dimly lit with the natural light that shone in from a small window. The underground graves were a little eerie and I opted not to go all the way in.
Before going to Rwanda I did some of my own research on the genocide and I thought I had an understanding of the sheer number of deaths, until I saw the piles and piles of clothes. There was a man at the church who is one of seven survivors from that particular church and we were blessed to hear him tell his story. He, along with seventeen others, hid among the piles of rotting corpses for a few days and then hid in the swamps for over a month. During that months time ten of them were killed by the Intrahamewa and only seven survived the genocide. That evening, we went and saw a guest speaker back at the museum and then a screening of the movie, “Shooting Dogs.” In the US the movie is called, “Beyond the Gates.” It’s based on a true story about a secondary school in Kigali where troops of the UN were stationed. The guest speaker told us of how he fled to a local church with his family and was also one of few survivors.
Sunday, we went to church at the only LDS branch in all of Rwanda, which was held in a conference room at the basement of a hotel. The church is small in Rwanda, but it is growing. Elder Holland will be here just a few short weeks after I leave to open Rwanda to missionary work. Monday, we got up early and left for our ten hour journey back to Kampala, Uganda. We stopped on our way to take a picture at the Equator, and then slowly made it back to our home in Lugazi. The trip was definitely such a great learning experience and it was great to see and learn about how Rwanda has really come so far from where they were after the genocide.
I plan on teaching family planning every Monday and Wednesday at the hospital until the Wednesday I head home. Our first batch of 83 cycle beads have already been sold for one hundred shillings to the women who attend a class on family planning. We just got another batch of fifty and I’m hoping to sell most of them before I leave. I’ll also continue helping one of the other volunteers with her project with persons with disabilities. Today we painted, “Thank you for washing your hands,” on the inside of the latrines at Kawolo hospital to further promote the use of the hand washing stations. I unfortunately stepped in a pile of human feces while I was painting…yuck! Until next time…..Hill