So, these past three days, I had the opportunity to go to Rwanda with the Nielson's and the Allred's. What an experience that was....
We left on Monday morning (I left the house at 5 to get to their house in Kampala at 6) and started the 10 hour drive. It was a very long day, being in a bus for that long is hard. My butt was about to fall of. Luckily, we did stop a couple of times. We crossed the Uganda-Rwanda border at about 4, and we drove for about 2 hours after that to reach Kigali. The scenery was amazing!! There is a reason it is called the land of 1000 hills. That last little stretch of the drive was probably my favorite, just because of the gorgeous view. The rest of the night was pretty chill, getting adjusted in our hotel and eating dinner.
Tuesday was definitely an emotional day. We started the day off by visiting a genocide memorial just outside of Kigali. It was a church that the people had gone to to be protected, but in the end, about 5,000 Tutsies were killed. We had a tour guide who did some explaining to us before going into the buildings. He was Tutsi and it was so interesting to have him talk about it. Through out the memorial, there was purple and white ribbons. So we asked him if there was a meaning for those two colours. He told us that purple stood for compassion and the white stood for hope. Those two words are the perfect words for Rwanda. They can have such a future if they can forgive and move on. Frankly, from what I saw, they are doing really well with that. Anyway, walking through the church was hard. You walk in and there are the some of the bones on some shelves. That in it's self was hard to look at. There was also cloths on the walls and some of the things the people had, like cups, plates etc. The one thing that about made me fall apart was when the tour guide picked up a machete and some of the other weapons some of the killers used. I about lost it. It is just so hard to think about how someone could become so inhuman enough to do such a horrible thing. I couldn't even go into the last two buildings there, I knew if I would have, I would have broken down right there. It is one thing to read about it in a text book, but to see it in person makes it all the more real.
After visiting that memorial, we went to another one. This memorial was a mass grave of just some of the people they had found. It was under construction at the time, so all of the bodies were up in the office building. I decided not to go in, I saw enough bones at the first memorial. So, some other people and I decided to go say hi to the kids from the primary school across the street. They were SO cute!! They would all crowd around you and want to shake your hand. We couldn't really understand them, but their smiles spoke words. We would take pictures with them, and you would literally be tackled by the little kids. So cute. I am so glad that we had that opportunity to be with them, they totally lifted the atmosphere for me. Mrs. Nielson made the comment about one of the students, “Peter looks more to the future than in the past.” That totally what these children are, the future of Rwanda.
After lunch, we went to the Parliament building, which they didn't fix the building after it was hit during the genocide. On our way there, we saw the President drive by. Pretty cool. Then, after taking some pictures, we went to the Kigali Memorial Centre. It was more like a museum, but it still had a mass grave of about 250,000 bodies. The museum was really cool, I learned a lot. It felt a lot like the Holocaust museum in D.C. It is just so wrong what happened. It is so hard to describe the true feelings felt there, or at any of the memorials. I don't think I will ever be able to forget them.
I did some thing really interesting about going to Rwanda. For one, the difference between Rwanda and Uganda. Even though they border each other, it is a night and day difference. They don't drive as crazy in Rwanda and the infrastructure is so much better even though they are poorer than Uganda. Another thing, all of the boda's wore helmets. They even had helmets for their passengers. I thought that was pretty sweet.
One thing that was hard, was to be driving along and see people you know were alive during the genocide and had to deal with all of the consequences of it. How hard it must be for them to deal with the thing that took place 16 years ago.
That night for dinner we ate at the des Mille Collines, the same hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda is based off of. That was pretty sweet. The hotel was super nice and food was really good. Even though it took about 2 hours to get our food, I guess they weren't prepared for 27 people (even though we made a reservation). I got chicken cordon bleu. Yummy. :)
Once we got back to the hotel, which was probably close to 10pm. I got ready for bed. As I was reading my scriptures, I came across a scripture that was so relevant to the entire day. It was in 3 Nephi 2:3. It says, “and Satan did go about leading away the hearts of the people tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land.” This totally applies to the people of Rwanda. It was Satan that implanted the hatred in the hearts of the people that lead to the genocide.
I am so glad that I was able to go to Rwanda, it definitely was an experience of a life time. Even though it was hard to see and hear some of the things, it definitely was something I will never forget.
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