rwanda.

**this is a long and intense blog, as a heads up**  last weekend, i had the incredible opportunity to travel to rwanda with a group of four other girls.  we left kampala on a bus around 10:30 in the evening, ending up crammed across the five seats in the very back row.  although this was initially fun to be in the same row together, when all the seats in front of us reclined to give us  just inches of room, and when we hit the potholes the hardest, flying out of our seats, we realized that this back row was bad news.  those who know me know that i often have trouble falling asleep in a bed, let alone a crazy, swerving, bouncing kampala coach.  we arrived at the border between rwanda and uganda around 6 AM, making our way in the dark through immigration, stopping to pop a squat and pee behind a small tin fence with our allotted toilet paper squares (only two).  it was freezing cold, even with long pants and a fleece!  after waiting for an hour or so at the border, we rebounded the bus, grabbing some different seats this time, and were able to snooze for most of our drive between the border and kigali.  the sun seemed so bright when we got off the bus around 10 AM on friday after a long night, and we made our way to the center of town to hit up bourbon street cafe for breakfast and coffee.  i seriously felt like i was at tryst in DC, with similar food, drinks, and even crowd.  after some refueling, we checked into a small guest house and then headed by boda (motorcycle) to the kigali genocide memorial and museum.  it was truly amazing.  the museum is extremely well done, capturing the history of rwanda, the course of the build-up to and execution of the genocide, using art, images, words, and audiovisual media to communicate the facts and the stories.  one of the things that was most striking to me in the museum were that although the hutu and tutsi tribes existed before germany and belgium colonized rwanda, they pretty peacefully coexisted until the colonizers built up and further systematized the differences, making claims about differences of intelligence and skill, giving the tutsi people positions of power and influence.  it also blows my mind that i was nine years old when over a million tutsis and moderate hutus were murdered in the one hundred days, from april to july, 1994.  the brutality of the killings, neighbors and friends killing one another, killing tiny children, is heartbreaking.  the lack of the international community or the UN to intercede is also heartbreaking.  being in the museum also made me think about joseph's house, about what it means to remember well, even when it's incredibly painful.  there is a room full of pictures of those who were killed that family members brought to the museum.  there is a room full of bones where names are constantly read.  and there is a room full of clothing from victims.  the last piece of clothing in that room is a red cornell hoodie, another reminder that i am, that we are connected, especially in this global economy, and that the pain and violence and need for healing is in me just as it is in rwandans.  the museum also does a beautiful job of pointing out our connectedness by highlighting several other acts of genocide that have happened in the world. lastly, the museum contained an exhibit with the pictures of children killed in the genocide, ranging from teenagers to small babies.  the picture was accompanied by the child's favorite food, best friend, last known words or sight, and their means of death.  outside the museum are beautiful gardens, full of symbolic flowers, fountains, torches, and mass graves, containing the remains of hundreds of thousands of victims, remains that are still being discovered and brought to memorialize every year. 

after the heaviness of the museum, the five of us returned to town and searched for a place to eat dinner, which was full of miscommunication and long waits but ended up with a pretty yummy pizza.  we returned to bourbon st. for some ice cream, which was excellent.  we walked to see "hotel rwanda," actually called "Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines".  it is a beautiful hotel, but we were shocked to find that nowhere at or around the hotel is there any mention of the heroic acts of sheltering hundred of tutsi refugees there.  perhaps it is because the hotel owners were unsupportive of the housing of the refugees… but regardless, it was meaningful to visit the hotel.  heading to bed early seemed like a good idea, except that the guest house also contained a bar which blared a mix of east african and nineties dance music until 7:30 in the morning.  after a bit of sleep, some good conversation, and some more bourbon street coffee (yes, we were obsessed), we checked into a different hotel a bit further out of town near the bus station and hired a car to take us to one of the churches where thousands of people were killed after fleeing to the church for safety.  there were several churches where this took place, one in which a priest even collaborated with the killers and had the church full of fleeing tutsis bulldozed to the ground.  we drove about an hour outside of the city to nyamata.  this was the most heartwrenching part of the trip for me.  as you walk inside the church, the benches are covered in piles of clothing worn by the victims of the violence done in this church.  the ceiling and walls are smattered with bullet holes.  the cloth covering the altar, as well as parts of the ceiling, are still stained with blood.  four thousand people had packed into this small church, where it would be tight to have 200 people on a sunday morning, to seek safety, which had worked in an outbreak of violence several years earlier.  this time, however, there was no mercy.  walking around, seeing the piles of clothing, trying to imagine the horror in this holy place, it was impossible not to cry.  down underneath the church, there is a display of bones, mostly skulls, of men, women, and children killed.  the skulls show bullet holds, machete cuts, and broken pieces from beating.  our tour guide, a man whose parents and family were killed in that very church, shared with us that the soldiers asked if individuals had money.  if the person had money, he or she could pay the soldier to be killed by bullet.  if not, machetes or sticks were used.  imagine, paying your murderer to kill you?  this church also has a coffin displayed under a white and purple flag, the genocide memorial colors.  this coffin contains a woman who was gang raped and then killed by a spear that was thrust upward through her vagina to her skull.  she had a nine month old baby.  the coffin is there to pay a special tribute to the many, many women who were both raped and killed in the genocide.  outside of the church, there are more mass graves, altogether housing the remains of over ten thousand people who were killed inside and around the church.  when our tour guide shared that he had been twelve during the genocide and that his family had died there, i asked what it was like for him to be there, telling the story, seeing the bones, every day.  he shared that it was very difficult and traumatic at first, but it has also given him an outlet to tell the story and make a difference.  "although," he said, "we always say 'never again.' never again will there be another genocide.  but we still hate.  so i don't know if that is true, if we will ever reach never again." 

we stopped at one more site on our way back to town, a site housing the survivor support organization and memorializing thousands more victims who were killed after the UN peacekeeping troops, housed near a technical school, decided to pull out at the beginning of the genocide.  as soon as they did, the genocidiers rounded up the tutsi and moderate hutu in the area, but instead of killing them right at the former UN barracks, they marched them down the road to this memorial site.  there is a flame of hope and another series of name plaques and mass graves.  as we arrived, however, there was a large group of people around one of the mass graves.  the guide explained that the bodies had been buried so quickly after the massacre at this site that they had not been preserved, so the families of the victims killed here had come back to exhume and clean the remains before re-burying them in coffins in a new grave so they could be preserved.  what must it be like for those family members who came here for that task?  what is it like to have a whole country traumatized in such a severe way?  it seems as though the series of memorial sites have helped to really honor those who died and continue in the grieving process towards healing, although our guide spoke of the continued tension between neighbors, learning how to live with each other after living in such intense fear or hatred for so long, how to acknowledge the loss and still live.  seeing the genocide memorials, hearing the stories, seeing the remains, this was perhaps the most moving thing i have experienced in my time here.  to witness and hold such violence and loss, and to pray that healing and reconciliation and justice can come, not just to rwanda but to the world, everywhere there is subtle and not-so-subtle violence and hate.

after all this, we did a bit of shopping at a local market and then tried to find a restaurant with good rwandan food, chez john.  very few people in kigali spoke english, especially compared to kampala, and communicating directions proved to be difficult.  we traipsed up the hill where we thought the restaurant was, only to get lost and ask a boda driver.  he told us, "you need to march down the hill."  when we asked how far, he said 3 km… so, as we were totally lost, we had him go get four other drivers to take us to the restaurant.  which ended up being right around the corner.  we got majorly ripped off, but alas, the price to pay for being completely lost in a city and without even any french-speakers in our group.  chez john, though, was totally worth it.  we had delicious fish, plantains, peas, rice, and cassava leaves as early nineties hits from celine dion and others wafted through the air.  we got the giggles and enjoyed laughing, i'm sure in part to cope with the heaviness of the trip.  we then walked back to town, belting out more cheesy love songs and most certainly scaring over several rwandans who passed us on the road.  after one last ice cream and a failed attempt to find some live music, we rode back to our hotel on bodas for a short nights' sleep before getting up early for our bus back to kampala, where we most certainly did not sit in the back row.  i am grateful for these girls, for conversations that showed our differences, for laughter that showed how we are the same, and for holding the space for each other to experience the genocide memorials while not losing hope.  and i'm grateful to rwanda for remembering so well the story of the genocide and for sharing it.  i pray that the healing there will continue, and that each of us can see with new eyes the places and people we are taught to hate or degrade and to heal from this violence.


(pictures will be coming when the internet cooperates a bit more!)