City Tour (5/13/08)

Since I haven't had internet, I will go back and make post and include the date. I am writing in Word and transferring, so I hope the format and wording is fine. I look forward to adding more each day.

Tuesday, May 13

After breakfast at the hotel we met our driver Aloys, a handsome 25 year old man who took us on a tour of the city. During our time in Rwanda we will have the same driver and we are wheeling and dealing in a Safari style, 9 passenger Land Rover.

Our city Tour included:

l Affluent areas of town,

l slums of the city,

beautiful views from the hilltops (Rwanda is called the “Land of a Thousand Hills” and now I see why,

l passing by numerous schools, government agencies/embassies and literally thousands of people in the street (I have never seen so many black people in my life),

l I saw everything from women carrying things on their heads and a baby on their back to prisoners doing community service in their pink short sets,

l There was a huge contrast between the classes of people. Large plots are being bought by the government to build decent housing for people in the city, but a lot of the huge homes are owned by business owners, and government workers.

l Along our journey we noticed a sign that read “Rwandan Women's Network” and decided to stop to see what type of work they do. After receiving clearance to enter the compound we learned that the organization helps women, many of them who are HIV positive. At this center they are taught to sew and do artwork for sale in a private market that they have. It was interesting to see that this organization was really teaching women young and old how to “fish” but they did not have a good way of marketing their products, because people have to gain clearance before entering for purchase of their goods. There was one female and one male there who taught classes at this award winning organization.

l We went to lunch at Bourbon coffee, a nice cafe that reminds you of Starbuck's. This was in the downtown area of Kigali.

l Off to UNDP, where I used a fake ID to enter the facility (I am now Dr. Leah C. Keino from Kenya :). I was hoping that they didn't stop me and put me in a pink prison suit on my second day in Rwanda. There we got to visit Dr. John Musemakweri's office (recent ISU graduate). He introduced us to his office mates and the director of UNV United Nations Volunteers. UNV is the equivalent of what Peace Corps is in the American government. We met with the director to get details about the program.

l From the UNDP we went to the Genocide Memorial where we were guided on an outside tour of the memorial and then a self-guided tour inside. This memorial has around 258,000 people buried in mass graves and only about 20,000 have been identified. This was a very eye opening experience. It is really hard to talk about or describe the things that we learned through this encounter. There is no admission fee for the museum, but they do accept donations. The bodies were brought to this site in 2001 and started with 5 mass graves, but now has 15, and is not the largest burial site. There are around 70 other mass graves across the country. The inside tour of the memorial started with the colonial times of Rwanda, moving to the introduction of identity cards by the Belgian authorities, which started to identification of certain groups of Rwandese (Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa). This imposes identity began to determine individual's opportunity in Belgium's reshaped Rwanda. There was much to see in the memorial, one of the things that was interesting to me was the Hutu 10 commandments written in 1990, which forbid the interaction with Tutsi's on many different levels. This country has been through hell. The 1994 Genocide was only one occasion where mass numbers of people were killed in this country. The most moving area of the museum was the children's room. I skipped the room which contained the skulls and clothes that the deceased were wearing. The children's room contained large photos of children who were murdered during the 1994 genocide. Below the pictures their name and age, among other things such as favorite sport, drink, best friend, and cause of death were listed. Most of these children's cause of death was “Killed by a machete”. They even listed that one small child had dreams of becoming a doctor. After this room I had to exit the facility and waited for the other's outside. The memorial also included information about other genocides across the world including the Holocaust. After leaving the memorial we rushed back across he hilly city to meet with Dominic (a volunteer at Gisimba Orphanage) to go to the orphanage.

l Although very dark when we arrived, we were greeted by tons of small children who pulled us from our vehicle. The children in this orphanage range in age from 2-24 or so they think, because the youngest child was left outside of the gate and they guessed his age upon arrival. We met with the head patron of this orphanage and were given a tour (in the DARK) of the compound, before being formally introduced to the students.

l John Musemakweri invited us to dinner at a restaurant called Africana where we had some traditional African chicken (Umm Umm good!) freshly killed right before we arrived I'm sure. Reminds me of my days as a child in Union, AL with my grandparents.

l After we returned to the hotel to find that there was no Internet connection again. We stayed up really late to catch up journaling, blogs, and other things.

l Whew!! This was only one day. Can you imagine we have fifteen or so more days to go? It is sooo late and I am typing this in word, hoping to post it on my blog when the Internet is available. It is 7:29pm in the US, so it is 2:00am here and I have to be up at 6:15.

--muramukeho or au revoir