Rwanda

Well hello, time for another entry in the chronicles of Tanessa in Africa! Hee hee that makes me sound like a super hero. If I WAS a super hero trust me I would have flown home from Rwanda instead of going on the Gasso bus from hell!! Haha well it wasn’t soo bad. But let me backtrack. This entry is about my trip to Kigali, Rwanda. We had 5 days off as we do at the end of every month, to allow our Ugandan co-workers to go home and see their families. Well all of us 11 interns decided to take a little trip to the capital city of Rwanda which isn’t very far away (check out a map I can’t explain). On the way down we hired our own personal van for all of us but on the way back decided to take the bus line as it was cheaper, and we had also heard that they were quite comfortable with large cushy seats, like a greyhound. So we DID get on the bus back home but failed to realize that buying a ticket on the bus is not synonymous with a seat on the bus. Apparently the other Ugandans sitting on the floor had known the bus was full when they bought their tickets but as we were expecting a seat and comfortable ride home we were slightly annoyed. Plus we never know what is going on so we weren’t sure what was supposed to happen. Luckily some kind people from Burundi let me squeeze into their seat for most of the 6 hr + ride home. The funniest thing was Graeme, he was feeling ill so downed Gravol before we got on the bus and expected to sleep all the way home. He was barely keeping himself upright while squeezed into the aisle with his bum on FIRE from sitting over the engine!! Anyways we all eventually got home…another lesson learned….clarify a “seat” on the bus in the future.
All in all the weekend in Rwanda was great. Kigali is a nice city, much cleaner and more organized than Kampala, the capital of Uganda. People tell us that is because there are fewer people living there but also because the police presence is strong and they appear to be quite strict. They have newly implemented reforms such as mandatory helmets on the motorcycle taxis and garbage cans in the streets!! Might not sound like a revolution but if you have ever walked down to street in Kampala, or most of the towns here in Uganda you would understand my excitement. Anyways there was also a lot of pavement on the roads which was strange to see and felt quite a lot like home!
Highlights of the trip: splurging and spending one night at the infamous Hotel des Milles Collines (think Hotel Rwanda…it all happened here!!). Nice pool, hot water, and flushable toilet!! Woohoo. Another highlight was our visit to two genocide memorials around Kigali, though it seems strange to call it a highlight. We visited the Kigali Memorial Center and the Ntarama Genocide memorial site outside of Kigali. It was a sobering, surreal and saddening…yet educational experience to learn more about the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
The Kigali Memorial Center was opened in 2004 for the 10th anniversary commemoration of the genocide. It is now the burial place of over 256,000 people who were murdered in Kigali. They are buried in mass graves at the memorial, many with no names. The site has an educational center as well as displays. The centre has three permanent exhibitions that use video/pictures/and words. One of them documents the genocide of 1994, the second is a children’s memorial, and the third shows a history of genocide around the world. Almost all the information contained in the exhibit can be found on their website so take a look: www.kigalimemorialcentre.org
Ntarama is a church site about a 45 minute drive from the city centre. Even after the memorial centre visiting this site was an experience like I have never had before. Ntarama is a church. During the genocide people fled to churches for sanctuary in large numbers. In Ntarama 5,000 people were killed, hacked or shot to death after grenades were thrown into the church building. This memorial doesn’t have exhibits, it is its own exhibit. Virtually untouched, everything has remained on the site since the day it occurred. The bones of the vicitims remain, scattered throughout the church and surrounding buildings. One room contains all the clothes of the victims, another their personal belongings, remaining in time since the day their lives ended. Row upon row of human skulls line the sanctuary. Though I have seen someone die I have never been near the human remains of so many lives. Many of the skulls were crushed or broken, many small in size, painfully reminding of the innocent children. The smell of death still lingered in the large piles of bones, a variety of shapes and sizes. It is surreal to be in Kigali and realize that this is the place where what I had only heard of…actually occurred. To look around the city you see no signs of it’s history but when you start to realize that anyone you encounter, over the age of 12, probably has some kind of experience with the genocide, you begin to wonder what sort of long term consequences it has on so many people. I feel very privileged to be able to visit this city and see/learn what I did. It is definitely an experience I will never forget.

Until next time…











This is the Senior, our sweet "special hire" mini-van we paid to drive us to Rwanda. Check out the faux fur interior.

A view of one of the many hills that Kigali is spread out on.

Me outside the hotel

Bryony, me and Katie, chillin and relaxing round the pool at the Hotel Des Milles Collines.