Our last day in Rwanda. I can’t believe it.
The last Saturday of every month the entire city of Kigali shuts downs, the busses, coffee shops, supermarkets, everything, and everyone is expected to do community service work. They clean the gutters, fix the gardens, etc. Rwanda has a lot of great systems like that. The men and woman who participated in the genocide can leave jail during the day, supervised of course, to help the widows with manual labor, build houses for orphans, tell family members where they threw the bodies of their loved ones so they can bury them and the like to lower their sentence, instead of just killing them with the death sentence. Also, they have reconciliation villages where people who killed live alongside the families they killed. Can you imagine introducing your new friend as the man that killed your family? They live alongside each other, help each other out with day to day things and work out the horrors of the past, killing evil with love, quite Jesus-like. JI think it’s a really great way to work out the justice system.
Speaking of the genocide… I’m sure you all are probably curious what I’ve learned about it since I’ve been here. There is a main genocide memorial center in Kigali that is beautifully put together and informs people, in raw detail, about what happened 17 years ago. They have a walk through time line that talks about the years leading up to the event and what happened throughout it, as well as after, a room full of bones that were found and have no names, a room full of thousands of pictures of victims, a room with clothing of victims, statues, monuments and mass graves. People find where the perpetrators threw the bodies of their family, pick out a few bones from the mass graves (just assuming it’s the ones they want, but you are never quite sure), washing them and bringing them to the site to be buried and their names recorded. I could barely handle walking through that place, it was so hard to read about and see what evils people are capable of. Neighbors were turning on family friends and raping the wives, forcing them to kill their own children, cutting off heads, crushing babies against trees and throwing bodies in gutters. What is extra sad is that since it was a genocide (wiping out a population) mothers and children were not only some of the killed, but they were TARGETED, so the next generation couldn’t continue. There was a room upstairs that talked about other genocides around the world as well as a room dedicated to the children killed. It had huge pictures of young children, some only weeks old, with their names, favorite food/sport/game, last words and how they were brutally murdered. I was bawling through the entire museum and happy Peggy and I shared the audio tour and so had someone to walk around with me for emotional support. One thing I hadn’t realized before I went to the museum was that the bodies really were just tossed to the side and left, there were hardly any burials besides a few mass graves (meaning just piles of carcasses). So when the genocide was finally over and the people of Rwanda began to return, there were decaying bodies everywhere, bodies that had been decomposing for months, if not a year. You would walk into households of old friends and find the entire body decomposing on their living room floor, I can’t even imagine what that would be like. The host family we lived with had fled to Uganda, where all of the children were born. They came back to Rwanda in 1995, the year after the genocide, and saw some of these bodies and lost a lot of friends and family members in the event. Our neighbor, Zolpha, had her whole paternal side of her family lost in the war and her father fought for the rebel army, the Tsutsis. Jennifer, the 3rd oldest daughter, told us stories of her friends from school that were here for the war that are the most horrifying stories I have ever heard. I do not have permission to publically post these stories, but if you would like to hear the horror that went on in more detail, you can email me or Facebook me and I have permission to share.
Jennifer also told us that the museum we went to was the big, pretty museum that they take the President to and all of the foreigners to learn about the genocide in a nice, neat way. I thought the museum was incredibly raw and hard to walk through as it was, but she laughed a little and told us about a memorial in a village a few kilometers away. There they have a frozen body of a woman who was killed with her baby on her back by having a spear shoved into her vagina and shot through the skull of her newborn baby. Sorry to write this so raw, but this is what really happened here, honestly the most disgusting and horribly creative ways to kill people that I could never imagine. This is the image the village showcases to remember the genocide and make sure that it will never happen again.
It’s crazy to me that this horrific even happened while I was alive; I was 7 years old. Sure I wasn’t super up on the news when I was 7, but I never learned about this even in school or had any idea it happened until Hotel Rwanda came out on DVD and even that movie doesn’t show the whole horror of what went on over here. Looking through the other genocides around the world and realizing how little I knew about was shocking. Armenians, Cambodia, Namibia and so many more, lots of these happening while I was alive and almost all of them within this century. As people we NEED to know what is going on around the world and what has happened in history so that we won’t be doomed to repeat it. I know it’s almost cliché, but it is hitting home more than it ever has been. I don’t quite trust American news sources anymore either. I read an article in the Rwandan paper the other day about how Facebook and Twitter could have stopped the genocide or even made it so it never would have happened. The main reason for this is because people didn’t know about it. News didn’t report it, UN didn’t come to stop it and never got the full story of what was going on. The Belgian general who was in Rwanda at the time estimated that 5,000 troops could have stopped the genocide in its tracks, but instead of sending in any troops at all, the UN withdrew its men, crazy to me.
Side Note: It is illegal to even mention the words Hutu or Tsutsi around Kigali now, in public. We were able to ask questions and hear stories from our contacts in the privacy of our own home, but any segregation will put you in jail. It is also illegal to carry a gun, that will also put you away in jail for a long time. The people here are still suffering from the events of 1994. I see people with scars on their scalps from being beaten, limbs lost, scars on their bodies, as well as deeper scars that although are healing, will take a long time to get close to being okay. The city itself though has come a LONG way! The president right now is a Christian and has taken great strides to reaching out to the people, trying to help them and making the city a great one. I in no way expected Kigali to be as advanced as it is, way more than Uganda or Kenya. Kigali is a beautiful place, as well as what else I've seen of Rwanda, but the people have a huge mar on their history that is still a shadow in their day to day lives.
Alright, I’ll step off of my soap box and tell you some fun details about the next few days. The city goes back into commission around noon today, so at 3pm some friends from the squad are going to a big soccer game at the main stadium and then at 6pm we are heading to the School of Finance and Banking (or of Finance and baking as I accidentally said yesterday) to watch the Rwandan Film Festival. Yesterday was Melissa Diehl’s birthday, so the entire squad got dolled up and went out to dinner! We had pizza, REAL PIZZA, and a REAL SALAD! It was so great! Tomorrow we leave bright and early for Uganda where we will spend a few days north of Kampala, have a Halloween party and then fly to Thailand, hopefully. Thailand is flooded, as I’m sure you know, but as far as I know, we are still on. We have yet to find out who our contacts are or where we will be, which is unusually late, but I’m really hoping it will work out. November in Thailand is when they have the big light festival/holiday and would be an awesome time to be there. Although, if we don’t end up in Thailand in November, I know if will be the Lord’s willing and I know it will work out in the best way possible, if I trust in Him (a hard lesson to learn ha). Have a wonderful day my friends! I hope this finds you well and I’m praying for you all at home J
