rwanda- a place that should not be missed

Hey,

So im still in Rwanda, leaving tomorrow morning down south to malawi. The journey will take about five days, and the thought of riding on long bus rides again is not enticing me right now.

Anyways, I would strongly recommend a visit to Rwanda if any of you ever make it to this part of the world. Although there isn't a lot to do, the visits to the memorials are extremely moving and I don't think you will ever be able to perceive the reality of the genocide until you visit some of these memorials.

On the first day of our arrival to Kigali, we went to visit the genocide memorial here in the city. At this site, 200, 000 bodies were buried in front of the museum and of those who were buried, only 10, 000 were identified. The part of this memorial that I found was the hardest to take was was the memorial on the children killed. Before you made your way into this part of the building, a sign was placed on the doorway that said "In memory of our beloved children, who should of been our future". Then as you walked through there were numerous pictures of beautiful children and in front of each child was an individual plaque that said something on the lines of: their name, favorite interest, best friend, ie 'daddy's girl', and then the most gruesome and difficult part to take, how they were killed, examples such as, smashed against the wall, tortured to death, or machete to head. I don't think any human could walk through this room and leave without feeling overwhelmed with emotion.

We did manage to visit some other memorials, and again it was hard to take. For instance, today we visited the church were 10, 000 people were murdered inside the church as they all ran there believing god would protect them. Inside the church the bodies were on display , and on the walls and the statue of the virgin mary was blood strains. It was wrong in every way.

Anyways, visiting these places was something i'll never forget. The images I saw have most definately left a lasting impression on what actually took place in this small country. However, despite their brutal history, I found the people of Rwanda to be very inspiring. The fact that they can continue on after all they have gone through and make peace with those who turned against them is something we can all learn from (it's only the authority figures who will be punished for the crimes, so currently in rwanda there are numerous people walking the streets who may have been involved in carrying out vast number of murders).

Other then the visits to the memorials, we went gorilla trekking which was amazing!! Our group lucked out and we got to see the gorilla's that Diane Fossey studied (38 of them in total). As well, today we splurged and spent the afternoon at Hotel des milles collines (aka, hotel rwanda) where we sat around the pool and had a few beers while we watched all the big shots in the UN and UNICEF mingle around the pool.

Gotta run, but ill update when we get to malawi