Genocide Museum to Musanze

Days 5 Monday Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, bustles and zooms along like most urban centers of business and development. Digital billboards line the streets, banks and hotels and office strip malls are jammed next to each other, and everywhere - EVERYWHERE - there are people. Rwandans walking, running, riding "taxi motos" (motor scooter taxis) - all of them busy. Their traffic mostly ignores the white painted lines on the road, using those lane guides as mere suggestions for how to drive. In Kigali, the old traditions of Rwanda and the new influences of the West walk side by side, and the result is a stark contrast of what Rwanda is at its heart and what it is striving toward in its future. Women wearing everything from really nice dress suits and heels to the traditional Rwandan clothing- a brightly colored mixture of layered fabrics that meet and are tied at the waist- crowd the busy sidewalks. Suit-wearing men carrying briefcases and cell phones hurry past weary farmers in sweat-stained clothes who are pushing bicycles laden with sugar cane or sacks of potatoes to sell at the market. Rich and poor, city and mountain, traditional and progressive- they all swirl together in Kigali. If we were to just visit Kigali and not venture further into Rwanda, this would be an extremely limited view of what the country has to offer. That's why we were so excited when it was time to leave Kigali and start our journey north, to a region called Musanze. First though, before leaving Kigali, we got the opportunity to visit the Cupping Lab and export site for ALL RWANDAN COFFEE!!! This was a huge opportunity, since it's an extremely secure place and not many are granted access. All coffee beans that are exported from Rwanda go through this one location. This ensures consistent standards and accountability. The cupping staff take a sample of the beans, roast them, and then cup them (a process much like wine tasting, where the coffee is slurped and tasted and rated for quality). It is a really strict test of quality, and it made us feel SO PROUD as we spent a few hours learning everything the coffee beans go through before they can be exported to the U.S. The last thing we did before leaving Kigali was to visit the Genocide Museum. After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the motto became "Never Again." The genocide killed 1 million people in 100 days in a country that is so small it is roughly 10,000 sq miles. By contrast, the WW2 Holocaust killed 6 million Jews in 12 years in 22 different countries. Now, OF COURSE the Holocaust was a horrific tragedy, so just imagine the landscape of the tiny country of Rwanda as 10,000 bodies A DAY were killed, mostly by machetes wielded by ordinary citizens, and dumped in front yards, on sidewalks, in ditches, in strip mall parking lots, churches, school classrooms...10,000 a day for 100 days. When we visited the Genocide Museum, the flame in the lamp at the front, standing tall on a pole over a rectangular pool, stood burning. The lamp burns every year from April 4 (when the genocide began) to July 17, when the conquering army (the RPF) was able to end the genocide. It burns every day that the genocide was going on. It was June 11 when we visited the museum. To see the lamp still burning and to think about how far away from April 4 we already were...the 100 days must have seemed like an eternity of nightmares for those living through it. Kris and I didn't go through the museum this year. We went last year, and the intensity of it is enough to last many years, maybe a lifetime, I don't know. We've experienced it once. It taught us lessons, gave us a new perspective on many things, and let us into the world of the victims so we could pay our respects. The knowledge of what humans can do to each other, what we are capable of...it just becomes so real when you see it presented in that light. It's been one year since we went through it, and I'm still processing things I learned and saw. The rest of our team went inside, and we waited for them in a beautiful outdoor cafe built in the midst of the museum's gardens. We were given a few hours to sit and reflect while our team went through the museum, and the quiet, peaceful surroundings of the banana trees and fountains encouraged and refreshed me. I got briefly excited, too, when the menu showed chocolate shakes, but it turned out to be a scoop of ice cream dropped into a glass of chocolate milk. So, I stirred it really fast and frothed it up and made the best of things! One by one, the team came out of the museum. We sat in the cafe for a while later...processing and discussing...and then it was time to travel to Musanze. *(This next part might seem just political, but it's really important to understand the lives of those we go to visit on Wednesday and Thursday). Musanze is a region formerly known as Ruhengeri. After the genocide, the government had most of the districts renamed to encourage a fresh outlook and new start for the country. Ruhengeri / Musanze was one of the worst battles when the army (the RPF) came to stop the genocide. It's near Uganda, and when the RPF took the distric many of the genocide perpetrators fled across the border. For years after, bands of these genocide perpetrators would sneak back into Rwanda on raids that killed or raped or maimed thousands more Rwandans in the area until Rwandan President Kagame's army finally got control of the border and put an end to the raids. In these areas we saw a lot more disabled children and many, many orphans. Tomorrow and Wednesday we get to visit the regions in the mountains, Bukonya and Kiryamo. After the intense air of the Genocide Museum, playing with the kids and worshiping in Pastor Ildephonse's church will be freeing.