Rwanda...where do i even begin?

Sorry for my incredibly bad job at keeping up with this blog, the past week was pretty crazy. So! we left for western uganda last sunday in a very small and very crowded "taxi" which is really just a van. luckily i had many a song ot listen to on my ipod as well as monty python and the holy grail on a friends Ipod so of course it was a pretty great 5 hour journey to Mbarara Uganda. Plus, there were many cookies and chocolate involved which is always key. (I am really missing my daily pints of Ben and Jerrys ice cream though...hint hint, wink wink for when i return hehe) When we arrived in Mbarara we went to visit the Millenium Village Project, which are various villages across africa that are designed to achieve the millenium development goals. it was an interesting trip because they seemed to be doing so much good and really gettting alot done and the community seemed to be working hard on their own. but at the same time it was a strange concept because it almost felt like these communities were just a giant human experiment and the even stranger thing was those in charge of MVP really had to exit strategy or final measurable goal which i was not really into. We then went to a refugee camp but it was a very dissapointing trip because we were supposed to be able to talk to the refugees and finally get africans stories first hand instead of just hearing the same repetitive lectures everyday. but then unfortunately the Uganda government changed their rules about when visitng hours were and failed to inform us of that so we couldnt talk to any of the refugees after a 2 hours drive there. not cool. one thing that alot of the SIT students have been battling with is how we are doing all these really cool site visits, but it jsut feels like we are spectators or tourists and intruders and these peoples lives instead of learning from them or being activly engaged in the work they are doing. today we had a meeting with the dean of SIT whose in charge of all the africa and middle east programs so it was good we got to voice alot of our concerns about the program.

but back to the excursion!
While in Mbarara we watched Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April. Ive always loved the movie Hotel rwanda and i believe that was my third time watching, but after watching Sometime in April it really shed light on how hotel rwanda was sooooo hollywood and sometimes a little too dramatic or just after being in rwanda and hearing peoples stories it just really didnt give what actually happened much justice. and even though every time i watch that movie im disturbed, it still barely covers the absolute horrific events that took place for months and months and months and so forth. I liked sometimes in april because it seemed to cover more of what happened in rwanda as opposed to just at one hotel (but i guess the point of hotel rwanda was to focus on the milles collines so really how can i complain too much?). the only frustrating thing about watching sometimes in april was the movie kept on skipping what seemed to be very important parts of the story because the disk was badly scratched, but hopefully we'll get to watch the full version sometime and i bet we will view it even more differently after actually being in rwanda. which in itself was so strange.

so on tuesday we drove to rwanda. again, a very long car ride with many songs naps and cookies along the way. one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was just crossing the border from uganda to rwanda since i had never crossed a border before on foot! once in rwanda, it was literally the most beautiful place id ever seen. it was very ecuador like, but still there was just something so breath taking about it (dont worry i have many a picture, but am still having issues with uploading them on the computer). then we passed by many wetlands that have these crazy strange dr. seuss like plants that are very tallk green stalks with like the head of a peakock on top (big green fuzzy ball things) and all i could think about what how in sometimes in april, those marshes were literally where people lived for days on end to hide and thats when the reality of being in Rwanda set in. every where we went all i could think of was "oh, is that person tutsi?" "was that person a hutu?" "were they here for the genocide?" and so on and so on. it was just such a strange eerie feeling. the weirdest part of all was the main city of Kigali. Kampala is such a crowded, overwhelming, dusty, always traffic jammed, crazy busy, trash everywhere city, and Kigali was EXACTLY the opposite. There were traffic lights, there were crosswalks, there was no trash ANYWHERE, the drivers and even the passengers on the motorcycles or "boda bodas" (which are mad dangerous in kampala) were ALL wearing helmets and following traffic laws...such craziness, i know. it was just so weird that after all that the city of Kigali, let alone the entire country of Rwanda, went through and is STILL going through because of the genocide and just so much hate, that the city is doing far better than the capital of Uganda. it almost felt fake for some reason.

our next two days in kigali consisted mostly of visiting genocide memorial sites. the first one we went to was more of a museum. it was right in Kigali and there were three exhibits to go through. the first one was a history of the countless genocides that have taken place within the 20th century. All the information was a little overwhelming, especially since i felt like a total idiot that I didn't know about half of these genocides around the world that had happened. the second exhibit was the biggest and it focused solely on the rwandan genocide. from tis history to post-conflict, reconciliation. i already knew alot of the information they gave at the museum, but it was the images, videos of rwandans stories, and these three rooms that really just made it so much more real because the exhibit literally tried to put a face to the genocide. one of the three rooms were just walls and walls and walls of pictures of those who were killed in the genocide. men, women, elders, children, teenagers. i felt like we all tried to hard to go through every picture in the room, but after two walls you just couldn't look at each one anymore cause your head started to hurt or you felt as though you weren't giving each picture the time they deserved so instead many of us just sat down in the room for a bit. the next room were about five cases of skulls and various other bones and it just felt so weird to look at them and that they were on display because the last exhibit was putting a face to the genocide, but this part felt as though all these bones were just numbers and numbers of faceless people, but maybe i just wasn't able to effectively put those pictures to the bones, which in itself is a little overwhelming, but little did i know at the time that displays such as those get much worse and more intense (as i found out the following day). the last room was clothing hung from the ceiling so it looked as though there were people in these cases, but there were no bodies. that was the creepiest room for me because i felt as though there were all these ghosts or something looking at me since they looked like real people, but they were just clothing. the last part of the exhibit was the worst. it was a a hallway of huge pictures of individual infants and toddlers who had been killed in the genocide with information such as name, age, favorite food/activity, last memory, and how they were killed. it was just picture after picture and that exhibit upset me the most because you forget so easily at how children were treated and killed in the genocide. one interesting story that was in the second exhibit and i don't remember what made me think of this or how to analyze it, but i feel as though i should say what she said. it might have been about why people didn't do anything to stop it or why/how rwandans could kill rwandans when they have the same language, the same culture, they are such the same people, but still this happened, and the young women (maybe 20 years old?) said she thought that 90% of the population was just evil, 5% were neutral, and 5% were good and that's how she explained how this happened.

there was also exhibits outside that were mass graves but we didn't get enough time to really explore that part of the museum which was a bummer since it felt way more peaceful outside and you could process everything on your own more. a lot of the students talked a lot about how we felt as though we were being asked to compartmentalize so much of our experience not only in Rwanda, but in Uganda. We were given 30 minutes to look at this exhibit and deal with it, 10 minutes to walk around this mass grave, 20 minutes to be carted to another genocide site, and it was just all so disconnected when we al know how interconnected it all was. very frustrating position to be in.

that night we had a "processing session" which we're all still not really sure what it's supposed to entail, but basically it was just a set time where we all at down around a table and were supposed to just talk about our experience that day at the genocide. it was very forced unfortunatley but it ended up being an all right discusion, but we were all just exhausted cause it was 8:30 at night after a long day of traveling and intense stuff. i started off just saying how i had spoken to a man at the museum and he asked me why i was in africa and i said i wanted to learn about what it's really like here and he seemed to be very pleased that i wanted to learn from them and kept saying how we can learn alot from rwandans or africans in general. then he asked what we were doing while in rwanda and i explained we were mostly just going to genocide memorial sites and were supposed to go to a prison but that got cancelled. he said he wished we wouldn't just focus on the genocide and more on where Rwanda is now. Because even though the genocide is such a big part of Rwanda there is still alot of other aspects to the country which is totally valid after i said that we just talked alot about how we were ashamed of the west and many people were just so angry at how the "international community" acted. we also talked about how its so mind-boggling that this just keeps happening again and again and again. luckily, our academic director Charlotte is a brilliant lady and was a great facilitator in the discussion and kind of brought many of us back to reality in terms of how you really can't apportion blame because that's 1. not the point and 2. still doesn't truly resolve anything, which was a breath of freah air when many people were just on a major guilt trip slash anger rant, which is also valid at the same time. im totally for venting. we also learned that its rude now to ask someone if their hutu or tutsi and if you do ask them they will just say I'm Rwandan.

the next day we went to two more memorial sites outside of Rwanda but these were actual places where the genocide occurred and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. both places were churches but the first one was alot bigger than the second. i think somewhere around 15,000 people were killed there, but it could also be more than that. The church was preserved and the second you walked in this damp heavy feeling just took over. there were church benches everywhere pilled up with the clothes of those who were killed. all the clothes were covered in a damp mat of what looked like red clay. there were bullet holes throughout the entire tin roof. the moment we realized what atrocities took place there and how real it was, was when our guide abruptly pointed out that the faint stains on the alter cloth at the front of the church were drenched in blood. that really set the tone. at the back of the church was a little alcove where they apparently hide all the children there so that when the interhamwe would throw grenades into the church it would miss them. but apparently they were all still slaughtered and we were showed that there were stains on the walls where the children had been smashed against and that is how they were killed. again, how children were treated in the genocide is what disturbs me the most. we then went downstairs to a tomb like area where bones and skulls were on display as well as some of the tools used to carry out the killings. in the bottom of the encasement was one coffin where they had chosen to bury this women so they'd be able to tell the story of how she was killed. this women was young and also pregnant and they raped her then killed her, then tried to pull the fetus out of her from the bottom up, which i really can't go into any more detail than that because it is unimaginable. what i learned the most from the various memorial sites is how differently all these people were killed. it wasn't just machetes or guns it was soooo many ways both physically and mentally of torturing these people. some were thrown under piles of dead bodies, some were chained for days as they slowly chopped them away, some were rapped systematically and men who were known to have hiv/aids were the main perpetrators of the those cases, some were thrown into pit latrines many feet below ground while more and more people were piled onto them in the dark sewage pits. some were killed by hand. most were killed by their neighbors.

the second church was basically the same deal. the reason why so many of the genocide memorial sites in rwanda are churches is because that is where people went for refuge, but even the people they trusted most, such as the priests, turned their backs on them and killed. not to say though that there were not countless others who stood up and tried to stop the segregating and the killings at the expense of their own lives. again, the most chilling and disturbig part was when we went into a small childrens room at the second church and there was this huuuuugeee stained blob on the wall. im pretty sure i don't need to explain where it came from.

after that we were carted away to buy african fabric in the market...like i said, so compartmentalized. i did get some pretty sweet fabric though and can't wait to make many a dress and skirt out of them. i also had ice cream for the first time since ive been away and it was a glorious experience and only 50 cents! awesome. crossing the border back to Uganda though might have been the highlight of the trip. there was clearly a big storm a bruin and after handing in our declaration of departure from rwanda we had to walk across to the uganda side. as we were walking across though you could blatantly see a sheet of rain coming from behind us at an alarming rate. all of a sudden rwandans, ugandans, and i don't knwo who else were sprrriiiinnting across the border to reach the visa house and they all started yelling at us "muzungu run!!!!! muzungus run run!" so of course we did what we were told and it was SO MUCH FUN. ooohhh my lord. i felt like i was in a movie or something idk it was just ridiculous and fun AND, best of all, we beat the rain just as we got into the shelter. unfortunately though we had to go back out into the flood to get into the taxi and continue on the journey, so after all that running (and believe, it was alot considering ive done virtually NO exercise since ive been here) we still ended up getting soaked. o well! after rwanda we had a few more nights in western uganda. We went to Queen Elizabeth national park. saw some elephants next to the road just as we were arriving. went on a boat safari saw a bazillion birds, some crocodiles (shout out to sean, don't worry i took a pic of the first one i saw and named it sean naturally), buncha buffalos who decided it would be appropriate to "relieve themselves" quite vividly as we passed by. bunch of hippos that scared the blank out of me (apparently they're the most dangerous animal in africa), some warthogs, these animals that are basically gazelles and so beautiful and glorious and i want to be one so badly. unfortunately though we didn't see ANY lions on our 5 am safari (epic fail). but o well. still was a good trip. we also saw another development project site that was very environmentally inclined and all about conversing the envs and using traditional medicines and jewelry and making livelihoods out of that to finance the local children's education. it was a really cool system and it felt so genuine which was a nice change from some of the projects and lectures about development that we've had. it really reminded me of the reserve i stayed on in ecuador for two weeks.

then a long 7 hour drive back to kampal. yay cookies and dance parties (and acapella! shout out to mah q-notes, i got a fellow SIT students to literally listen to ALL our songs and thoroughly enjoy them as well haha).

photos still to come. so sorry for the delay.