The Land of 1000 Hills...

**WARNING: some of the genocide information discussed here is not suitable for children to read**

We made it to the Rwandan border and after filling out an exit Uganda card we walked across "no mans zone" to get into Rwanda- it was quite funny to cross the border with a herd of goats. After filling out my Rwandan entry card, the customs officer asked for our visas.
" We don't have one" we replied, "our book told us Canadians don't require one."
He just looked at us and sarcastically said "was it Lonely Planet East Africa? Because its wrong."
Oh-oh. I did ask the other girls if we needed one earlier on- should have looked into it myself- oh well, lesson learned. He let us pass eventually so it worked out anyways.

As we were surrounded by bus, matatu and special hire drivers trying to give us a muzungu deal, we bargained our way into a special hire car and set off for Kigali. Rwanda, "the land of a thousand hills" is unbelievably beautiful. I couldn't get over the gorgeous landscape. I would have felt even more immersed in African culture were it not for the Backstreet Boys songs our driver thought us "Americans" would enjoy. Nevertheless, the drive was fantastic and the city of Kigali is much nicer (and WAY cleaner) than Kampala. I found out that at the end of every month, the citizens do a mass cleaning up of the city. No wonder there is no litter on the ground and garbage cans are found everywhere (unlike Kampala- no offense my Ug friends! Luv ya's!)

Kigali reminds me of Toronto- but nicer! We only spent two days in Rwanda exploring the city, talking to locals and visiting the Kigali Memorial Centre as well as a memorial church in the village of Nyamata. Needless to say, these visits were very upsetting, disturbing and depressing- telling the story of the Rwandan genocide- that human beings could do this to one another is beyond imaginable. It has only been 17 years after the genocide and one could hardly tell that anything as horrific as the 1994 slaughter of over 1 million Tutsi's in 100 days ever happened. The memorial at Kigali is very informative as visitors are led through the before, during and aftermath story of the genocide. Rooms full of skulls, bones, clothes, weapons, and pictures of countless lost lives litter the memorial site. One floor is contributed to some of the children who died. Their remaining family members donated a picture of them and a short description of their child, indicating their age, personality and likes, and ending with the way that they died. There wasn't a dry eye in this area of the memorial.

The church that we visited in Nyamata was for me, even more upsetting. Partly because everything was still preserved and therefore, so authentic in its presence which seemed to remain frozen in time. Inside and around this church, 10 000 people sought refuge from the Interahamwe (a Hutu youth militia). The Interahamwe used some sort of a bomb at the doorway of the church, broke through the gates (you can still see the cement blown in and the mangled iron gate) and they made sure that every single person who was not burning to death inside the church was slaughtered- by being hacked to death with machetes, or having their skulls crushed with spiked clubs, etc. In fact, the Interahamwe stayed there for two whole days to make sure that no one was left alive.

Walking into the church, I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me, I could barely walk through the church. I had to focus on what the guide was saying and try my best to detach myself from what I was seeing and hearing (if that makes any sense). Our guide retold the story of the gruesome fate of these people. Piles upon piles of clothes, ID cards, etc of the dead filled the small church. The worst part (and its hard to imagine there is a worse part) was the area where parents had put their young children behind a brick wall in the church because they thought they would have been better protected there. However, when the rebels found them, one by one, they picked the children up by their feet and swung them into the brick walls- their blood stains still scattered across the walls. There is a mass grave below the church and outside of the church housing all of the dead. Here, thousands of bones and skulls are on display. You can see how the people died by looking at their skulls: bullet holes, machete slashes, chunks of skull missing. The casket of one woman remains there. The story goes that she was the most brutalized of all the people in the church. Amost nine months with child, she was raped by 15 Interahamwe, then a long spiked club was stuck up inside of her and pushed through her body towards her head. Disgusting- my stomach still turns recalling this. I'm going to stop here...