Rwanda Day 1

They day started off beautiful, I pulled back the curtains a light haze of fog, filled the hills of Rwanda (this is where the crazy weird lights began to all make sense). The scenery was beautiful, the temperature brisk and so refreshing. Went downstairs to breakfast, which was lovely. Because everything thus far as been lovely. I order a ginger tea, and let me tell you. Thats not something to mess with, that stuff is PO-tent. My throat burns the entire time, but damn it's good. The fruit salad for breakfast was this beautiful concoction of god knows what, but let me tell ya folks- Best. Damn. Fruit. Salad. Ever.

We do our assignments and presentations, the last one is about the genocide. They are all simply slides and numbers and horrible statistics, but it wasn't until the boy from yesterday with the happy smile stood up and told us his story. And suddenly it wasn't just numbers and statistics. I won't get into that here because it's his story to tell, but to stand in front of him and to imagine the horrors he endured hurt, my eyes burned the entire time. Yet has horrible as his story was, he grew from it and it astonished me how big his smile was and had grown to be since the horrible events. He told us how he chased after a different life and how if you want something bad enough it can happen. He absolutely became my hero. And for all of you that don't have the privilege of meeting him, his name is Willy and he is the kindest soul you will ever meet.

So we're off the memorial in a giant bus, it is in fact a giant Camel bus.

No, not like the middle eastern camel. I'm talking sunglass wearing, smoking nicotine camel. It's full of so much irony, but alas it is our caravan for the trip. We make our way down the crazy dirt roads, eyes glued to us because well frankly in a 20 minute bus trip I did not see a single white person and quickly learned how much we stuck out.

The city in daytime is stunning, I mean "stop your breath beautiful, no picture will ever do it justice" stunning.

 It's called the city of a thousand hills for a reason. 

To read about my experience at the memorial center simply find my other entry "Genocide Memorial". 

After leaving the museum the most bizarre occurrence started happening. I mean I knew Africa had weird bugs big bugs, you name it. But sitting under a tree I and another girl began to feel something fall on us. Me thinking it was a leaf ignored it.. Low and behold it was an ant. The tree above us just had ants, casually falling front the sky on to us.  No. Big. Deal….

We were approached by this group of Rwandans our ages, asking if we wanted to tell a message to the youth about the genocide- to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. I wrote "We all have two eyes, a mouth, arms, legs and a heart. They should be used for nothing but love never hate. We are all human. We are all one. Love one another. Always" It was beautiful watching this and am very excited seeing it come together. Originally it was suppose to be just 13,000 but after such a high demand they are capping it off at 1 million. Keep an eye out!

Driving home we saw little kids yelling "Bite" (accent on the e) meaning "Hi!" and they were waving, jumping up and down blowing kisses. I fell in love.

We got home and I was so excited for a nice shower to find out….*drum roll* NO hot water! Not even like a luke warm, or anything of the sort. I'm talking, someone put ice in the shower head and are trickling colds after through the ice. I never thought I was a baby until this moment. I was forced to wash each body part separately no more that .8 seconds per limb, wrap myself up in towels to prevent what I was convinced was going to be hypothermia and wash my hair. 

Crawling into bed excited, I start to realize this hotel is not sound proof, that I was convinced little hippos were gallivanting in the halls and sleep was not in my agenda for awhile. 

Genocide Memorial

 Today was hard, I'm not going to lie. I don't remember feeling so much sorrow in my heart in a long time as I did today. I want to give this prelude because, while my first true day in Africa was beautiful, awe inspiring it was also a very emotionally draining one.

Caution: graphic and sad

We arrived at the memorial, it the location was beautiful. We entered and viewed each exhibit divided into three. One into the start and actual parts of the genocide, the second about other genocides and the third was called the "Children's Room". Every room broke your heart, the raping, slaughtering, dismembering, acts of hatred were terrible, pictures of people dead, dismembered, mutilated. Stories of the survivors playing on the walls with subtitles. My heart felt broken. We walked into rooms off old photographs of people lost, and I felt as someone in my group did that I needed to look at every pictures because I believed every life needed to be acknowledged. The last room in the building I wandered into was all the belongings found at the massacre sights. The one item that seemed so difficult to look at was a child's spiderman bed sheet hanging like a ghost in a glass room. Seeing it, I thought of a little boy probably running around pretending to be a superhero-now slaughtered. 

The 2nd part talked about other genocides, and the quote that hit me reading was.. 

The room that truly shattered my heard was the "Children's Room", in each room was a picture of a child, some infants some toddlers, some siblings. Underneath each photo listed their name, favorite food, game, hero, something cute or funny and the last bit, how they were murdered.

 A picture of a precious little girl in a white dress and big doe eyes smiling stared at me, underneath written favorite food milk, favorite toy her doll, loved playing with her father and lastly "smashed against wall". I remember my world pause in that moment tears flooding my eyes. And no pictures, no murders easier "stabbed in eyes", "machete in mothers arms", "shot in the head", "drown", "buried alive". And looking at these innocent eyes I just couldn't grasp, how anyone could kill something so pure so innocent. I had to leave. I felt my heart my shatter with one more victims face, one more child's smiling face.

The difference between this genocide and the Holocaust and why I find this almost worse was the use of close contact killing with machetes. The Holocaust, while horrific and massive, dehumanized people, killing them with machines, guns, gas, etc. But this genocide the killings, the people did not dehumanize anything. This genocide was not blind killings, but this was Hutus killing Tutsis, neighbors killing neighbors, wives being forced to kill their family before being killed themselves. Humans staring into the other eyes of humans with such hate and slaughtering them with machetes. 

Yet there is something so beautiful about the Rwandan people, their ability to move on, not forget of course, but keep living. And not just living, but surviving. To look out into a crowd of people and know that nearly everyone over the age of 20 has their own story. Yet are able to still manage and function as a society, to not hate, not let revenge killings happen. They are far better people than I.

The whole world failed Rwanda…

 Someone in my group today told a story of her experience flying over to Rwanda. A man asked her first if it was her first time visiting Rwanda, she said yes. He responded to her "Why do you come now? Not 20 years ago." And walked off into the plane. And the truth is we as a country stood by and did nothing. No one really did. In total towards the end we sent 50 troops.. Over 1 million lives lost and we sent 50 people.

Arrival

This trip started of as a NIGHTMARE. We arrived to the airport in Amsterdam to be told by a lady at KLM (bless her little heart..) that our ticket for Kigali had in fact never been purchased, that something went wrong and we never actually bought the ticket. Had you had to tell my mom or stepdad what she had to tell them, I would have been terrified- they can be a bit "Assertive/protective. Something about the name of the credit card not matching mine? Who knows… but luckily thanks to a lovely man named Taha, I was still getting on that plane and making it to Kigali.

The flight was miserable, screaming babies, a elbow hog sitting next to me and a seat kicker behind me. Not only that but since my original ticket no longer existed, my request for gluten free food had been null and void. Thus began an 8 hour battle with my stomach, and a ridiculous about of consumption of gluten free bars..Being "hangry" became real. At one point one flight attendant took pity on me and gave me some cheese- much appreciated let me tell you. A little cube of cheese had never tasted so good in my life.

Well, I have official arrived. My two feet are on the beautiful homeland of all human evolution- Africa. In truth I had no ideas what this would entail. If people would be friendly to an outsider, if Kigali was beautiful or not, if the food would be good (really a big one for me). And when first arriving to Kigali, I was convinced I had wondered into a foreign land, either one of magical fairies or one of alien space invasion. Outside the window, scatted high and low, close and far were little LED looking lights. What I learned in the daytime is Kigali is built on hills. Which accounted for what seemed like un organized  array of tiny fairies or space ships scattered in the sky (but really hills high and low). I got picked up by two Rwandan boys and a classmate, the boys were wonderfully nice and curious and insisted on carrying my bag up two flights of stairs- which let me tell you I did not complain about. He had the most beautiful and heart felt smile and as corny as this sounds his whole being was just so happy. The streets of Rwanda lined with militia every 40 feet or so.

The hotel is beautiful, it was nothing like I anticipated. At first I believed the mosquito netting was just a beautiful touch, but then I realized that there was nothing about it but function. Believe me..