Our tour began at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. I was looking forward to my second trip there since I hadn't seen the elaborate gardens during my first trip because of the rain. Each province in Rwanda has its own memorial, but the one in Kigali is the largest. The Memorial is well done inside and out. It officially opened in 2004. It serves as the final resting place for >250,000 victims of the genocide, who are buried in mass graves, as well as a museum. We began with the beautiful gardens dedicated to the victims of the genocide. Each one laid out with a specific message in mind. There are also mass graves for the remains of victims in the Kigali area. The graves are marked by huge concrete slabs the size of two bowling lanes side-by-side. We didn't count how many were there, but we did notice that there is space for more. In the area still under construction, one of the slabs had a metal cover in the center with bouquets of flowers laid there that allows newly discovered remains to be added. The museum is divided into sections that first displays the history of events that led up to the genocide, the horrible period of April-July 1994 when nearly 1 million people were systematically slaughtered and the lack of international intervention. The aftermath of the genocide included some quotes from international leaders taking responsibility for not having done their part to help stop the horror. There is an area similar to Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in Israel) where some of the material and human remains of victims are displayed. An extremely well-produced section is dedicated to the various Holocausts, genocides, ethnic-cleansings, and other systematic mass murders that have occurred throughout history. The final section is dedicated to the children who did not survive this genocide and the hope that their memories, displayed in photographs, will light the future in a way that does not allow humanity to repeat its mistakes.
A continuously recurring thought I had during both my visits to the memorial was:
Humans must be the dumbest species on Earth, unable to learn the lessons of past generations.
After completing our visit to the memorial, Jamada took us on a short driving tour of some of the new neighborhoods in Kigali. There were beautiful modern mansions built behind ornate walls and a gated townhouse complex that could have been anywhere in an American suburb. We ended at at the home of Richard Kandt, a German explorer/naturalist who spent a significant amount of time in Rwanda cataloging the geography, ecology and people. Though the museum was small and many of the displays were only in German, French, or Kinyarwanda it was interesting and offered an amazing view of the city. We had lunch at Karibu restaurant before setting out from Kigali north toward Ruhengeri. Karibu has a wonderful buffet (similar to many restaurants in Kigali) offering many typical dishes. Erin and I were unable to stack as much food on our plate as Jamada and many of the other Kigali residents who were there. We filled up on saute`d beef over rice, stewed bananas (not the sweet kind), cassava leaf, roasted potatoes, beans, chips (french fries), roasted cassava, browned sweet bananas, and many salads with amazingly flavorful onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and carrot. One of my favorite dishes there, though, is simply avocado halves with a light sauce.
Our drive to Ruhengeri was as breathtaking as any drive through the mountains of Colorado. There are amazing vistas with lush green hillsides covered in banana trees, tea plantations and many other crops. I continuously marvel at plots of crops that create a quilt of patterns over every hillside, no matter how steep or high. As we climbed the mountains northward out of Kigali, the sky had the appearance Erin and I have come to know in the midwest--a severe thunderstorm approaching that would raise tornado alarms. Jamada insisted that there are no tornadoes in Rwanda, but it sure looked like we were driving into one. The rain and wind were ferocious which made the scenery hard to appreciate. Making the scene a little more difficult was the fact that the wipers on our Land Cruiser's windshield kept sliding past the normal stop point and off the driver's side where they would become stuck until Jamada could reach his hand out to get them moving again. After a while he got tired of straining his hand to reach the stuck wipers while driving and decided to pull off to fix the problem. Not only is Jamada an excellent driver and tour guide, he is a bit of a field mechanic keeping his Land Cruiser moving. He bent the wipers just enough that they would not fly off the side of the windshield yet still contact the windshield enough to clear his view.
Jamada's persistence in moving forward though the wipers weren't working and his fix are just 2 examples of what I've come to feel is the motto in Rwanda: It is what it is. We'll deal with it and make the best of it, but we won't stop moving forward.It took a couple hours of driving over winding, hilly, potholed 2-lane highway, but we arrived in Ruhengeri around 3pm. Unfortunately, the continued rain meant that we would not visit the Rwandan cultural village as scheduled. We missed out on a traditional dancing and drumming display.
We had African tea after we arrived at the Le Palme Hotel. African tea is an excellent way to warm up from the chilly rain. It is mostly milk with tea, ginger, and cardomon brewed in it. Each restaurant here makes it a little different, but it is always really tasty. The room at Le Palme was very nice and spacious. There was a queen-sized bed with an extremely firm foam mattress beside a twin-sized bed with a sagging, soft spring mattress, an amazing view of the volcanoes with the tops shrouded in clouds. Each bed had a mosquito net hanging above it from the ceiling which might have been 16 feet tall. After a short nap the rain stopped and we decided to walk into town before it got dark. Ruhengeri is not a large city, but it was busy. At the corner of a 2 main streets that seems to serve as the bus stop, we were approached by a group of teenagers who were interested to find out who the Mizunga were. We had a short conversation with a guy named Vernon who may have been the only one who spoke enough English to talk with us or maybe was just the least shy of the bunch. In typical fashion, we quickly found ourselves in a circle of many staring pairs of eyes. Vernon was curious if Chicago was similar to Ruhengeri. I told him it was very different, but that I thought he would like it. Knowing how dark Kigali is to walk around at night--where there are some streetlights--we decided to walk back to our hotel before it got too dark. But, we found ourselves walking back in pitch black night. When there was no passing traffic, it was dark enough that avoiding obstacles at your feet is very difficult. When cars, trucks and motorcylces zoomed by we were temporarily even more blind. But, it didn't seem to matter to the many residents walking with us in both directions. Erin and I wondered if our night vision never developed as well as it could living in a country where streetlights are always on. We made it back to the hotel without a problem and met Jamada for dinner. The food was excellent accompanied by cold Mutzig (a really good local beer that is similar to Heineken). We went to bed early, knowing we had to be ready to go by 6:30am so we could be at the Volcanoes National Park when it opened for out gorilla trek.
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