Remembering

And we’re back! On Monday we left Musanze and the north of Rwanda for good, down the winding roads of so many hills and once again to the bustling city of Kigali.  

After settling into the hotel we went to see the genocide museum located in the city. The museum is dedicated to the remembrance of the Rwandan genocide twenty years ago so that people can understand all that happened and learn from the mistakes of the past.  It was truly a deep and heavy experience to be able to see it. Inside we walked a timeline of the history of Rwanda leading up to and through the genocide, outlining some of the reasons it occurred and telling about the effects afterwards. We saw stories of survivors, their emotions about everything and what they were thinking while it was happening. The acts of many of the perpetrators were described graphically. Some of the heroes were also recorded; those who sheltered many people, those who hid a few, those who saved one.

It was especially infuriating to see the reactions of the other nations of the world and to see just how little could have been done to stop the genocide. They had a room dedicated to pictures of the victims and a room dedicated to the children killed. Another exhibit covered many of the other genocides that have happened in the world, a scary statistic of how many there are with one clear message; please don’t let it happen again. Don’t let history repeat itself as it has in the past. In the end it was heart wrenching to see all of what had happened and to think that a few people could start such a horrible event. The hill that the museum is located on is a burial site for 250,000 of the victims. Seeing Rwanda now, it is remarkable how they have recovered in just twenty years. They truly are an amazing people. If you are ever in Kigali you should definitely go and see the museum.

After a little while to contemplate everything, we went to dinner at Sol E Luna for trivia night. We feasted on pizza and met with Meagan, a recent graduate who is working with an NGO in Rwanda and wants to work with our team in the future. The restaurant was filled with people from around the world and trivia questions ranging from identification of places in pictures to naming serial killers based on when and where they were arrested. Out of 60 questions our group scored 20 correctly, the winner being a competitive table that only wrote out their thoughts for fear of others hearing them, yet only beat us by 13 points. 

The day was interesting and marks one of our last. Work, work, work for the next few.

That's all from me.

Michael Swartz