Fun with Mom in Kigali.

Sunday, July 17

Today was my first full day with Mom in Rwanda! When she found out I had been accepted to the study abroad program in March, she mentioned wanting to visit Africa and the possibility of meeting up with me somewhere on the continent. It took a while for us to nail down our plans, but we finally decided she would come to Kigali for a few days, then we would fly to Kenya to spend some time at a safari lodge in Amboseli National Park. That way, I could get my meaningful, educational experience in Rwanda, but I could still do the "touristy" things like look at animals!

After breakfast, we went to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center. We also took Kiela (who didn't get to go with us the first Sunday) and Tyler and Lauren, who just wanted to revisit and spend some more time at the memorial. I didn't think I would want to go back inside, so I brought my book (No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu that I checked out of the IGSC library) to sit outside and read. But once I got there, I ended up walking through the exhibits again because I wanted to point some things out to my mom (like the chain that Bea's brother had been buried with). I'm glad I went through it again because I noticed some different things this time.

Apparently, the first the time I went through, I missed all the good stories. There was not much good that occurred during the genocide (obviously), but the memorial center did have a room dedicated to honoring those people who had saved lives during the genocide. One of the most memorable stories was about Frodouald Karuhije, a Hutu who thought the RPF was going to kill him. He dug a trench to hide in, but once he realized the genocide was being committed against the Tutsi, not the Hutu, he used it to hide 14 Tutsis from the genocidaires. His daughter and niece also helped by preparing meals and taking them to the Tutsis in their hiding spot. Similarly, Damas Mutezintare Gisimba saved people who had been left alive in the mass graves.

I was so thankful I went back through the center after I read these stories, considering they were the only comforting part of the enter memorial. I also noticed more tragedy this time, however. Did you know the number of foreign troops used in the evacuation of diplomatic staff and foreign workers would have been sufficient to stop the genocide? Neither did I. Or that after the Security Council agreed to established UNAMIR II on May 17 (about seven weeks before the genocide finally ended), the U.S. took over a month to provide the 50 armored personnel carriers it had promised? The French weren’t blameless, either (as we well know). In fact, they were partially responsible for the massacre at Bisesero. Over 50,000 Tutsis were hiding in these hills, until the French troops told them it was safe to come out. The interahamwe were waiting for them, and only 1,000 Tutsis survived.

I lost my mom somewhere in the memorial rooms at the end of the timeline. When I found her outside, she was pretty ready to leave. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing this for two weeks,” she said. I assured her we were not always surrounded by so many gloomy memories. We had been visiting cultural centers, learning about the government and enjoying our new friendships with the Rwandan students. But it’s true; the two weeks were hard, especially after we got to hear the personal stories of our own acquaintances there, including one IGSC student whose parents and six brothers and sisters were murdered during the genocide.

It was time to move on, then, so we went back into the city in the hopes of finding Aroma Café, a small shop we had visited one night for dinner. Tyler remembered its general location, so we had the cab drop us off at a familiar hotel and we walked until we found it. On the way, we passed the open market, which I had promised to show my mother. After lunch (samosas and a milkshake for me – yum!), the other students walked back to the apartments while I took my mom to the market. The kids loved her blonde hair. They followed us constantly, asking us to visit their stalls and holding up vegetables and other goods for us to evaluate. My mom wasn’t as timid as I was when it came to taking pictures, so I finally got some good shots of the market:

We (and by we, I mean Mom) purchased some decorative baskets to hang on the wall at home and a couple wooden bangles for ourselves. (I chose yellow and black, to show my Mizzou spirit during the upcoming fall semester.) By then, the time difference (nine hours from San Francisco) was starting to hit Mom, so we headed back to the hotel for a short nap before the closing ceremony that night.

The closing ceremony had been changed to earlier (originally it was the end of the third week), so Kiela and I got out our fabric to fashion some togas. Unfortunately, my fabric was not two yards. I guess I got swindled at the market! I found a couple wrap styles that could have worked, but then I learned the girls who had gotten traditional clothes made hadn’t received the finished products yet. I went with a sundress instead, as it was easier to wear and I wouldn’t be the only one not in “African” clothing.

Dinner was at a nice outdoor restaurant – wine included. After eating, all the students shared a little bit of their experience in Rwanda. I kept it short and simple: “I am one of those people who’s leaving early, on Tuesday, but had I known the wonderful experiences I would have and all the people I would meet and how much I learn, I would have scheduled to stay a little bit longer. But I am grateful for everything I have learned so far, and thank you all for being a part of that. And I can’t wait to come back some day.”

And we got T-shirts!

Ours loosely say: "How are you?" and "I'm fine."

Country of a thousand hills.

Sunday, July 3

I thought Sunday would be a free day to get settled in, rest and prepare for the busy program ahead of us. Not so. The bus picked us up at 8 a.m. for a tour of Kigali, which included visits to the Memorial of Belgian Soldiers and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center. It was a very educational day, but it was also emotional because it was the first real glimpse of how difficult studying the genocide will be.

History of Kigali

According to our tour guide, the capital of Rwanda used to be very close to the Burundi border. However, a governor in the early 20th century thought the capital should be more centralized and far away from other nations. While looking for a new capital location, he fell in love with Kigali because of its beautiful hills. The city of Kigali is actually named after Mount Kigali, and the word means "big" or "wide."

"It is not a country of a thousand hills," our tour guide joked. "It is a country of many hills. Too many to count."

The view of the city from the Kigali Memorial Center.

Genocide Memorial of Belgian Soldiers at Camp Kigali

We actually drove by the Hotel des Mille Collines (featured in Hotel Rwanda) on the way to this site. We also learned about the various inaccuracies presented in the film, but I'll get into that in a later post. The Belgian Memorial commemorates some of the first deaths of the genocide, those of ten United Nations Blue Berets who were executed at Camp Kigali.

One solider was able to escape, but he came back to rescue the others who were bound inside. He was shot down outside the door (hence all the bullet holes in the above picture). The other nine were later killed with two grenades thrown inside the building, indicative of the overkill and torture methods used against the Tutsi during the genocide.

These ten pillars (above) memorialize the ten Belgian soldiers who lost their lives at Camp Kigali. If you look closely, the notches on each pillar represent the age of each solider. The camp now houses educational displays about genocide in Rwanda and around the world.

Kigali Genocide Memorial Center

The Kigali Memorial Center is the largest genocide memorial site in Rwanda. It is the home of 14 mass graves for over 259,000 victims, all from Kigali. Even now, Rwandans can bring the remains of their relatives to the center and have them buried in the graves. Visiting the center was my first powerful realization that some of my experiences in Rwanda would be difficult - very difficult.

Many of the flowers on the mass graves bear the phrase "Never Again."

Inside the memorial center, I was able to walk through a timeline of the genocide from the tensions caused by colonization to the end of the genocide on July 4, 1994. The exhibit included pictures and captions that expressed the immense tragedy of 1994. While reading about the atrocious acts committed during the genocide, words such as these came up quite often: humiliated, sliced, smashed, pulverized, discarded, mutilated, clubbed.

I also read horrendous stories about specific events. For example, a Catholic priest gave the order for his church to be bulldozed ... with over 2,000 members of his own congregation hiding inside. There was also a chain on display that had been used to tie two Tutsi together before they were buried alive. The chain was recovered when the bodies were exhumed.

"If you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me." - Felicien Ntagengwa
 

After reaching the end of the timeline, there were small circular rooms containing personal effects of victims, photographs of victims provided by their families, and even a room with over 100 human skulls and various other bones. Perhaps even more difficult than the ground floor of the center was the upstairs level, where there was a hallway devoted to commemorating children of the genocide.

The hallway contained large photographs of many young victims of the genocide. Next to biographical facts like "Favorite Food" and "Best Friend," there were categories such as "Last Words" and "Cause of Death." Some of these heartbreaking details included a child whose last words were, "Mum, where can I run to?" A pair of sisters, aged 6 and 7, were killed by "a grenade thrown in their shower," and a 9-month-old's cause of death was listed as, "machete in his mother's arms."

 

"Education has become our way forward.... We need to learn about the past; we also need to learn from it." - Kigali Memorial Center

Avega Service

After lunch and a short rest, we attended a memorial service at Avega, an organization for widows, widowers and orphans of the genocide. It was all in Kinyarwanda (the Rwandan language), so we had to depend on the IGSC students for translation, but there was one part that could cross any language barrier:

A group of children went on stage and sat talking in little circles. After a minute, another group of children ran up to the stage, yelling and wielding their arms like machetes. The first group of children screamed and scrambled and crawled on the floor trying to escape. Eventually, the boys from the second group picked the children up over their shoulders and ran out of the room. There was only one girl left on stage, and she took the mike and began speaking quickly in Kinyarwanda, like slam poetry. 

Obviously, I knew from watching that the skit was a reenactment of the 1994 genocide, but a Rwandan student from IGSC added that all the children in the skit were orphans of the genocide. 

Conclusion

Overall, Sunday was a profound experience. It really set the pace for the type of things we would be seeing during our two to three weeks here. I am so glad I had the opportunity to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, but I would probably never go again. I've been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C., but this experience was completely different. I don't know if that's because the Kigali Memorial Center is actually located where the genocide took place, or because the Rwandan tragedy is much more recent, or because I've been able to actually meet and speak with Tutsi survivors since I have arrived in the country, but I definitely felt a stronger reaction to the memorial sites here.