Rwanda: Days 3 and 4

So, the morning of my third day in Rwanda, I woke up at 5:30am. Becky had invited me to visit her favorite of the two schools she works at: one is just a normal primary school, but the other serves deaf children and provides vocational training for children who are the heads of their households. The school is about an hour and a half outside of Musanze, so we had to meet at 6am to get there in time for the beginning of the school day.

The walk was uneventful. It was cold, and my legs were really sore from the hike the day before, and I gave myself a horrible blister. But other than that, uneventful. We made it to the school by 7:30, and we were greeted by the kids. The deaf kids are all younger than the CHH (child-headed household) participants, and they mostly greeted us by shaking our hands and then hugging us. They asked Becky in sign language what my name was, and I was thrilled that I could answer myself. My summer camp sign language classes were useful after all!

 

The kids all lined up and sang/signed the national anthem together. There's one deaf child there who Becky thinks is also autistic, and the school just lets him sort of do his own thing. He attached himself to me during the national anthem, holding my hands and not letting go for most of it. But he can apparently sign the entire national anthem, and I saw him doing part of it.

After the national anthem, the deaf kids and the CHH participants split up. The CHH participants go for morning prayer -- they sang some songs, prayed in Kinyarwanda, and then it was over. It only lasted about 20 minutes, although Becky said sometimes it can last an hour or more. After the morning prayers, the CHH participants split into their "modules": some are learning to weave baskets, some are learning to sew, some are learning electrical repair, etc. I ultimately joined the basket-weaving group, and they showed me how to wrap the colored raffia around the stronger material that makes up the core of the basket. I was pretty bad at it, and they definitely laughed at me. After a while, I asked if it was okay to take out my camera, and they said it was. I took some pictures, but then they wanted to see the camera, but they couldn't quite figure out how to work it. They got the hang of it eventually.

As the time neared when I had to leave, Becky took me to a little shop that sells the products the kids make. I bought a few things, including a basket made by a woman in a related widows' cooperative.

I said goodbye to the kids and went out onto the road to try to catch a bus back to Musanze. All the buses that went by were full and refused to stop -- we waited for an hour before I finally gave up and called Greg to ask him to tell Pascal to come pick me up at the school. Pascal did indeed come out to pick me up, then we swung back by the guest house to pick up my stuff and set off for Kigali.

The drive to Kigali was -- again -- uneventful. Pascal and I chatted for a while, and we listened to his music, and we drove in silence for part of the way. It took a lot longer when he drove it (2.5 hours) than when Greg did, because Pascal wasn't driving like a maniac. As we approached Kigali, we had some beautiful views of the city, so Pascal pulled over and we got out and took pictures.

When we got into Kigali, we went straight to the Genocide Memorial Centre. Pascal didn't come in with me, and understandably so. The exhibit didn't have any information I didn't already know, really. I did learn that the Hutu/Tutsi distinction is completely artificial in origin -- the colonial powers originally said that if your family had more than 10 cows, you were Tutsi, and if you had fewer than 10 cows, you were Hutu. (It might have been vice-versa, I wouldn't swear to this.) For a while, it was even malleable; as you gained or lost cows, you changed from being Hutu to Tutsi and back again. It's so frustrating to see the damage that such a thoughtless act of European arrogance can bring. You kind of want to go back in time and shout at people -- a million people in 90 days, you idiots, that is the price of what you're about to do.

I also learned that HIV-infected genocidaires would deliberately rape women and then leave them alive to deal with the consequences -- there is a whole wave of Rwandan women who were deliberately infected with HIV during the genocide and who are still dying today.

I couldn't help do a bit of comparing genocides, Rwanda's with the Holocaust. I guess it's inevitable that my brain would go there, although it seems so tacky to compare and contrast. The really remarkable thing about the Rwandan genocide is that it happened out in the open -- people were dragged into the streets and had machetes put through their skulls. This was a messy, violent genocide. It wasn't tucked away and done systematically in camps; people were taken from their hiding places and beaten, raped, and publicly executed. I don't know whether the degree of precision makes the Holocaust more or less horrifying. I think it's a judgment call that's impossible to make.

The really impressive part of the Memorial Centre is two circular rooms in the middle of the first floor. In one, the room is dark, and there are back-lit cases of skulls and bones from victims of the genocide; a woman's voice reads out the names of victims. It wasn't quite as awe-inspiring as I imagine the churches are in Kigali that are full of skulls (I didn't realize these were in Kigali until it was too late, or else I would have gone), but it was still quite sobering to think that every skull in the case was a person with a family and a story.

The other circular room in the center of the building had photos of victims lining the walls, with a video running of Rwandans talking about their lost loved ones. I sat and watched the video from beginning to end... it showed grieving fathers, sons and daughters, talking about their memories from before and during the genocide.

In the back of the building, there were mass graves, full of victims of the genocide. I think the closest I came to being overwhelmed was when I decided to try to put a stone on each of the slabs covering a mass grave. Even with dozens of bodies in each grave, there were too many for me to realistically place a stone on each one.

I went back to find Pascal waiting for me after I finished. He asked how it was, and we got into a conversation about his own experience during the genocide. He was 16 and living in the Western Province. His two sisters, mother and grandmother were all killed in the genocide; they had tried to hide under a bypass, but were discovered and killed early in the genocide. (He remembered the date: 15 April 1994, nine days after the genocide began.) Pascal's brother and father were smuggled into the DRC by Hutu friends, and Pascal himself stayed for two months with an elderly Hutu woman who lived in his neighborhood.

The other activity I had planned for Kigali was going to a craft market, although I admittedly didn't feel much like shopping after the genocide memorial. I went anyway, though, and it was a bit of superficial retail therapy -- I bought lots of things in a very short span of time, and then I had to stop because I was running out of Rwandan francs.

Pascal and I decided to do a driving city tour. We drove around Kigali and through the hills, but it was mostly looking and not a lot of "touring." Pascal ended up taking me to another genocide memorial, one he had never been to -- it's funded by the Belgian government, in memory of the 10 Belgian UN soldiers who were executed by the Rwandan army on the second day of the genocide, because they had been protecting the prime minister. After the President's plane was shot down on 6 April, the prime minister became the titular head of state. The Hutu militia executed her and her husband on 7 April, along with the 10 UN soldiers who were protecting her. The memorial is at the site where they were murdered, a former army barracks. One of the soldiers somehow had a gun with him and fought back, and you can still see all the bullet holes in the side of the building from the military shooting to kill him. The remaining 9 soldiers were chained together, put inside one of the buildings, and left with a grenade.

Thoroughly depressed again, we tried to find an internet cafe so I could get online for the first time in four days. We failed, so we ended up just going to the Step Motel, where Pascal helped me carry my things upstairs and then left me. I was seriously bummed out that my camera battery had died at the Belgian memorial, because the motel had beautiful views of the city.

That's really the end of my adventures. I called my dad and told him about my trip. I ordered dinner in the motel, and I had a long, involved conversation with John, who runs the motel, about different American accents. I watched CNN for a while, including catching the live verdict in the Casey Anthony trial -- that was cool/good timing. But then I just went to bed. I had gotten up so early the previous two mornings, I was exhausted.

I had breakfast the next morning and John drove me to the airport. The flight was uneventful, and I got back into Kampala without a problem. Thus ended my Rwandan saga...