Update

Saturday, March 13, 2010

What a long day. It’s only 5pm and it feels like I should be in bed passed out. The day started with a 1am wake up and then up the rest of the night with stomach cramps… which just confirms what I was already thinking… I can’t eat the meat here. Whatever it is, I just can’t stomach it.

Then I was up and heading to breakfast before 7am this morning to prepare for our first language simulation tests that started at 7:30am… which I think I did ok on, but not great. Yay for Saturday morning stress! Then it was off to Butare, for lunch and some shopping! It’s a bigger city with some items available for muzungus! So I bought a chocolate bar, a couple of lollipops, some peanuts, nutella, and papaya jam… I’m set for weekend breakfasts now! And my sweet tooth will be temporarily calmed here in Rwanda, where for some odd reason they seriously lack sweet things!

After Butare, we headed out to the Genocide Memorial that was close by. After we visited the Kigali Memorial, we were warned that this one was difficult, and to be mentally prepared. However, nothing can prepare you for this place.

In April of 1994, the Tutsis in this area were told of this place where they could take refuge and would be safe from the genocidal killings that were underway. The authorities urged all the areas Tutsis to head here and they would be protected. So the Tutsis went… 50,000 of them. For two weeks they stayed there undisturbed. They had no food but felt that they were safe. So after two weeks, they were weakened… and the militia surrounded the hill. Armed with guns, grenades, clubs, knives, and machetes, the killers systematically killed all 50,000 Tutsis and after taking all of their valuables and clothes that could be used, the bodies were tossed into a mass grave. During Operation Turquoise, French soldiers set up volleyball courts on top of the mass graves while they provided protection for the killers to flee Rwanda. In September of 1995, Rwanda exhumed the bodies from the graves and went about creating the memorial. In multiple buildings, there is room after room of dead bodies, preserved with what I understood to be lime. Some still have hair, some children are still clinging to their parents. You walk into room after room of adults, children, and some rooms with nothing but skulls and bones where the bodies were not intact. You see skulls that were bashed in, children missing limbs, bones twisted in awful directions, mouths left wide open where you can only imagine the person died screaming for their life. After the initial shock of the first room, you continue to walk into each individual room and realize that you’re there to pay tribute to each of these people that was senselessly slaughtered in 1994. The massive amount of children is almost unbearable. The smell is indescribable. The bodies have dried, and the lime preserves them… but there is still a smell… and you don’t forget it.

I can’t describe the feeling of walking into a room of dead bodies, and then walking outside, where the sun is shining, and the view of the surrounding hills is beautiful, and children in the villages are laughing and playing… and then walking back into another room of people, and children, who were murdered in that same place just 16 years ago. And then another room, and another, and another… I saw hundreds of dead bodies today… and I just can’t describe what I felt.

The man at the memorial told us that he hopes we take our experience and share it with others in the hopes that people will become more aware of what happened in Rwanda… and hopefully another 800,000 people won’t have to be killed in order for the world to keep the next genocide from occurring.

The experience today really put into perspective something we saw today during our morning walk to the training center. We were walking along our dirt road, past the children that always greet us, and the women carrying their children on their backs and their loads on their heads, and we saw a pink piece of paper nailed to a tree. We went over to look, and the only word we recognized was Gacaca… which is the trials still held for the perpetrators of the genocide. There was also a list of nine names at the bottom of the paper. So in our community, nine people will be put on trial in the community for crimes committed 18 years ago. These nine people possibly took machetes and systematically killed their neighbors… children and brothers and sisters of the people still living here today. I simply can’t fathom how the people living in this country today deal with what they went through in 1994. Some of our Rwandan teachers will tell us little things during lessons. Like while we were learning how to talk about our families, one of our teachers, who lives at our house, told us that she only had one brother… but she used to have seven siblings. She took a deep breath and moved on. When you hear things like that here in Rwanda, it means they were lost in the genocide.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I think I’ll actually post some of this stuff today… forgive the long blog posts… I write everything while I’m at home on the computer and then copy it into a blog post when I actually bring my computer to the internet café.

For now I’ll update on what life’s like here for me on a daily basis… I live in one of the four separate houses they have for our group of trainees here. Our house is Laundry House, and it’s beautiful! We’re up on a hill, with a great view of the valley and mountains behind it. We can sit and watch the storms come in, and the mists over the mountain are amazing. Our huge front porch is a great place to just sit. We have a large living area, with just plain wooden chairs and tables, and then four rooms… one of six girls, one with two of the guys and two of our male Rwandan teachers (LCFs: Language and Cultural Facilitators), one with two of the female LCFs, and then the room I’m in, which has four girls in it. We each have our own bathroom, without running water, and then the pit latrine is out back. We have huge plastic bins that are filled with water out back when our water turns on between about 12am and 2am… so we take the buckets out there and fill them for our bucket baths.

Every morning we get up and walk a little over a mile to the training center along paved and dirt roads. Just about everyone walks here, so we a ton of people everyday… most stare at us and comment on the muzungus. But everyone is very friendly when you greet them in kinyarwanda, so it’s fun. We get to the training center, eat breakfast, and head to class all day. That consists of language, technical training in health and community development here, sessions on how to stay healthy and safe here, and cross cultural classes. Lunch is from noon until 2pm, and then class continues until 4 or 5, and then dinner is at 7. Most of my down time is spent studying the language… which is difficult to say the least. But we do know quite a bit for only being here two weeks I guess.

Saturdays we have class and sometimes fun ventures out into Rwanda. And Sundays are free. Last Sunday I went to church with my host family… four hours in a Pentecostal church. Not my idea of a good time, but it was a good community building experience. The singing is fun… but after four hours of sitting, nothing is really all that fun. So this Sunday I’m relaxing. Planning to head to the internet café, post this stuff… and just hang out. Do a little bit of studying later. I need to go see my host family more, but that’s always such a stressful experience with the language barrier, even though they are very nice and so sweet to me.

So that’s about it here. I miss people back home, but it’s great to be here and I’m still very excited about the experience. It is nice to hear from everyone though, so please send emails… when I do get time on the internet I like to hear what’s going on back in your world! Letters would be more than welcome, and packages… candy… most any kind of candy would be great as there’s very little that’s sweet here (I am partial to dove chocolate, nerds, gobstoppers, and any bag of sour gummi stuff)… mixed nuts (my protein intake is suffering)… wheat thins… peanut butter… baby wipes… double A and triple A batteries… small bottles of hand sanitizer… bottles of Calgon Morning Glory body spray from wal-mart (it’s nice to at least try and smell good here and feel like a girl sometimes)…and I’ll update as I think of other things! Everyone has asked what I want sent… so there it is! And remember to check the list on the left side of the blog on how to send things… and use flat rate boxes! They’re much cheaper to send here!

Miss everyone and hope all is well on your side of the world!