Off we go on Safari

On Friday, July 23rd we spent the morning at the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.   There was a very nice and very thorough presentation by several different departments of the commission.  It was very informative.   The fight against genocide is ongoing - there are many people who fled to Congo who would like to come back and finish what they started.  Many perpetrators are living next door to victims.  Approximately 60% of the population shows signs of post traumatic stress disorder, and countless others are traumatized.   The commission works hard to ensure that there is not a flare up of genocide or genocidal massacres again.

After lunch we headed off to go to Akagera Game park, on the east side of the country, next to the border with Tanzania.   The trip was fairly long, longer than | cared to be on a bus, and we had our first dreadful taste of what travel through mountainous terrain with no guard rails is like.  Not good.  The lodge itself was fantastic, a very welcome change from the horror that is the Centre St. Paul, where we are staying in Kigali.   I might have mentioned earlier that it is just appalling.   Our room at the lodge was big and clean,and it had a proper bathroom inside it, which was clean, and it had a bathtub and shower that worked, and which even had both hot and cold water.  And did I mention that it was clean?

We arrived fairly late so we only had time to go to dinner and then go to bed to be ready for our safari the next day.

The safari was fantastic.  We saw zebras and elephants and hippos, antelopes, cape buffalo, giraffes, all sorts of birds, and one dead eland.  No lions though.  Apparently there might only be one lioness in the park, and she has not been seen for years.

The safari took twelve hours.  We had an unfortunate interlude with a swarm of tsetse flies. I was surprised to discover that they can fly as fast as a bus can travel on bumpy ground.  We had to shut the windows and kill the ones that were in the bus: they bite hard!  Driving around with the windows closed turned the bus into a little easy bake oven.  And Linda and I did not have lunch: we had ordered vegan sandwiches, but we got ham and cheese.  Lucky we had Larabars with us, and nuts and apricots.  It was a long day and I have fantastic photos. Charles took many of the pictures for me, which was kind of him.   I hope to be able to post the photos shortly.

Nyamata and Ntarama

Later that same day (Thursday) we went to two other memorial sites. The first was at a place called Nyamata.

In previous massacres of the Tutsis by the Hutus, in 1959 and 1963, Tutsis would run to the churches and they always managed to find sanctuary. This time around, the churches were not places of sanctuary. The Catholic church did not prevent the Hutu from entering the churches, and in some instances, even turned over the Tutsis to the Hutu. The priests were no help and many of them were genocidaires, either participating in the killings or holding their congregations until the killers could arrive and massacre them. Some priests did not actively participate, but looked the other way when the killers came. I must add that Anglican and Protestant church leaders were no better. Due to quotas on how many could be Tutsi, most clergy of all churches were Hutu, and most participated in the genocide either actively or passively. This includes nuns.

The massacre at Nyamata happened on April 14, a week after the genocide began. At Nyamata there were about 10,000 Tutsis seeking refuge in the church and church grounds. There were about 2,500 people, mostly women and children in the church sanctuary, which was not a huge church by any standards, certainly not the size of St. James in Toronto which could easily hold that many people. I would say that it was only double or two and half times the size of my church, which is just a normal-sized suburban church. People were jammed in there like sardines. They crowded in and then locked the steel gates to the building, hoping that would stop the killers. A few grenades thrown at the church made short work of the door and then more grenades were thrown into the crowded church. It seems impossible to imagine but there are bullet holes and grenade holes in the metal roof of the church, the statue of Our Lady was damaged and bloodied by the injuries of the victims, and the fair linen on the altar, which has remained there all these years, is blood-stained. The tabernacle is also badly damaged. But that damage was insignificant compared to what happened to the people: they were all killed. Some were killed by grenades and bullets, and some by machetes. Two thousand five hundred people were killed in the actual church building and a further seven thousand five hundred were killed in the compound around the church building. Down in the crypt of the church, in a display case were several hundred skulls and countless leg bones. The rest of the people who perished are buried in mass memorial graves behind the church.

On the pews of the church were piled the belongings of all of the victims - all of the shoes and clothes and school books and rosaries and everything that they carried with them when they looked for sanctuary.

The skeletal remains of these victims were placed in an underground crypt behind the church.  Also in that same crypt are the remains of people who were killed in the surrounding area, for a total of 50,000 people in the crypt. 

At the back of the church we noticed several very large opaque plastic bags. One member of our group asked the memorial site guide if there were more belongings in the bags. There were all sorts of clothes piled on the floor around the bags. The man said that the bags contained the remains of people: skulls and bones. He said they ran out of room in the mass memorial grave outside, that they had under-estimated how much space would be needed for all the dead people. They were keeping the bones in the church because they had to be treated with respect, but because there was no place to properly display them or lay them to rest, they were in bags. That was an eye-opener.


Our next stop was at Ntarama. The story at this church is similar to the previous one, although there were about five thousand people killed here. Behind the church, in a series of huge underground mass tombs, are the remains of these individuals. Visitors can go into theses crypts where the skulls are arranged on shelves, as are the other bones of the victims.  The stairs were very steep leading down into the crypt, but Linda and I went down.  It really was quite overwhelming, seeing all the skulls and bones of the victims.  Linda took many photos.

There was a small room at this church that had been where the Sunday School classes were held, and this is where the children were taken to be killed. There is a dark stain on the wall at one end of the building. This is where children had their heads smashed against the wall to kill them. The blood stain remains.

An interesting twist to the genocide at this church was that there were also nuns at this location. Our guide told us that the Hutu nuns gave over their Tutsi sister nuns to the killers.

As we were getting ready to leave, a woman came up to me and said, "Toute ma famille est ici. Il est fini pour moi." (All my family is here. It is over for me.) I asked what she meant and she said she lost every one - her parents, her husband, her children and her siblings, and she repeated that it was over for her.  I asked her how she could carry on her life, under the circumstances.  She shrugged and lifter her hands, palms up in a gesture of futility and said, "This is Rwanda." Her words and gestures left me feeling utterly bereft. My sadness was, I suppose, the culmination of three days of viewing the remains of horror: the Belgian soldiers memorial, the Kigali Genocide Museum, the Ecole Polytechnique, the church at Nyamata and then Ntarama, not to mention the material poverty of the Village of Hope.  I looked around me at the once-beautiful church, this serene, if sad, woman, the gorgeous landscape, little kids looking through the fence at us, and felt the tears welling up. The woman hugged me to comfort me.  But I could leave this place and she could not.  She hugged Linda, too.  We didn't know it but we would find out, as we went from memorial to memorial, that the survivors would come to comfort the visitors.  That is the kind of place Rwanda is, and the kind of people that the survivors are.

Between our visits to Nyamata and Ntarama, went to a small village called the Nelson Mandella Village of Hope. This was a village that had genocide widows as its matriarchs. We met at the village school and they filed in to meet us. Wearing beautiful African print skirts and headwraps, they were very dignified and thanked us (through an interpreter, the mayor) for coming. We brought school supplies and soccer balls, although these were not the supplies that I had brought. We will be giving our things away later in the trip.

The school was fairly large, about the size of about two or three regular-sized Ontario classrooms put together, but only had one room. The desks were crudely made of 1 x 6 inch planks. The room had a good roof, but walls on three sides only. The fourth wall was made of bamboo matting and steel bars (I have to say that for a place with not much crime, the windows and doors everywhere are barred, like in a jail). Linda took a wonderful picture of one of the local lads looking through the matting at us. His smile is delightful and I have included his picture here. I am also including a picture of another little boy at the village. He is holding a balloon that our group gave him, and some school supplies.

Speciose's Story

On Thursday, July 22 we picked up a woman named Speciose, who was an aunt of Leo, a chap who came to speak to us during the orientation weekend. Speciose was a survivor of the genocide. She directed us to the places that she was when she experienced the genocide first-hand.

She was gathered with about two thousand people at the U.N. compound at the Don Bosco school in Kagali, that was run by the Belgians. Unbeknownst to the refugees who had gathered there, the Belgians were in the middle of packing up to leave Rwanda. The didn't want to stay around after their soldiers were killed, just as Dallaire's informant had said would happen. So with thousands of frightened, desperate people in the compound, the Belgians just packed up and left, with the Rwandan army and Interahamwe standing at the gates. After the Belgians took off, the Rwandans and interahamwe rounded up all of the people and force marched them ten kilometers to the Ecole Polytechnique in Kicukiro. There were elderly people in the group and women who had just given birth, and if they fell behind, they were shot on the side of the road. Once they arrived at the school they were instructed to lay down on the ground. The soldiers tossed some hand grenades into the crowd and then started shooting. They ran out of bullets before they had killed everyone, so they resorted to using traditional weapons such as clubs and spears and machetes. Speciose survived but was badly injured. Her husband was killed. He had been the leader of a human rights group in Kigali, so he was singled out for special attention, and the killers made sure that he was finished off.

When the genocide was over in July, Speciose lobbied to have a memorial erected at the site, but it took years before this happened. Many of the bodies were badly damaged and were destroyed before they could be properly buried.

Kigali Genocide Memorial

Today we went to the genocide memorial here in Kigali.  The museum is about six years old and is very beautiful.  The grounds are quite lovely with beautiful flowers and palm trees.   Like just about everything in Rwanda, it is perched on the side of a very steep hill, so the view down the valley and up the next hill was interesting.

We started outside.  We toured the gardens and saw the mass grave sites, which are huge concrete structures with a terrazzo coating.  Approximately 250,000 people are interred here.  Some are whole bodies (i.e. intact skeletons), but other people were interred not intact, but with only the parts of them that were found.

Later we toured the museum.  It was terrifically moving, and I found myself fighting back tears the whole way.   I came undone in the upstairs part of the museum, which was devoted to the children who lost their lives.  It made me really angry.

We had lunch at the museum and spent the afternoon in a workshop run by two young teachers at the museum.  They explained how they provide genocide information to students and teachers across their country.  It was very interesting.  One person in our group was not feeling well, and she flew back to Canada today.

Memorial to the Belgian Soldiers killed at the start of the Genocide

Yesterday we went to the Memorial to the Belgian Soldiers killed at the start of the genocide.  It was a very sad place, indeed.

Unfortunately this internet cafe does not have the facility for me to upload the photos I took, so I will have to wait until I find a more blog-friendly cafe, or I get home.  I do hope I can post the pictures with my written entries, because it will make the entries more powerful.

The building where they were killed  has been left untouched, except for a few plaques on the inside with the names of the dead soldiers listed.

The outside of the building is pock-marked by bullets and grenade fire, ditto for the inside.  There are still blood stains on the walls.

There is a blackboard on one wall of of the two rooms in the memorial.  At the tenth anniversary of the genocide, families of the Belgian soldiers wrote notes and comments on the blackboard which has since been covered by protective glass to preserve these comments.  Unfortunately, some of the comments are very critical of Romeo Dallaire, and I felt myself become very angry when reading them.  I did take some photos, and hopefully can post them later.

Stage one of the trip is done

We landed in London this morning.  I did not sleep on the flight so I was pretty tired by the time we landed.  We had about ten hours between flights, so we had some time to kill.

We had booked a room in a pod-style hotel at Heathrow.  We landed at Terminal Three and the hotel and our flight to Nairobi were leaving from Terminal Fours, so it was convenient for us.  We wandered over to Terminal Four, and we had a bit of brekkie/lunch and then had a snooze. I was able to have a shower after my nap, and Linda did too, so when we met up with our chums in the departure lounge, we were quite relaxed and refreshed.  (Some people spent the day in the departure lounge (there is one that you can pay extra to stay in, but it is still a departure lounge) and others went into London for a bit of a jaunt.)

The picture above, is our room at the yotel. The beds were quite comfy And the room was very quiet. Having our own room (we had it for five hours) meant that we had our own bathroom for that long, and were able to avoid the problems of public toilets for the better part of the day.  I have a bit of a headache so I will make a point of drinking a lot of water.

I hope I can sleep on the flight to Nairobi.

One Week To Go!

We leave for Rwanda in one week.

Yesterday I went downtown for a haircut first thing in the morning. I met Leslie afterwards to go looking for some summer pants for me to wear while away.  I am not completely pants-less, but the ones I do have were described as “clown pants” by my sisters, so I felt obliged to get some trouserage more appropriate for travelling than what I had in stock.   But I am bringing the clown pants anyways: they are cool, temp-wise if not fashion-wise.

We found some pants had some lunch and then returned home.

I have all my Rwanda stuff in two boxes, having outgrown the original banker’s box and now I have to get it all into one bag. The people at my church have been quite generous and I have fifty pounds of school supplies to pack as well.

Linda has done a test pack and she says her bag weighs forty pounds.

The following is our trip itinerary taken from Rich's Facebook page:

Rich Hitchens
TUESDAY, JULY 20

We will arrive, as you all know, early in the morning. We will make our way to the Centre Saint-Paul - our homebase - in downtown Kigali. We will check into our rooms and get ourselves cleaned up a little before we make our way on foot to the nearby shopping area, which you can see on the Google Earth photo I posted some time ago. There, we will point out some important services that you will be able to avail yourself of. There is an Internet cafe that many of us headed straight to each evening last summer, and there is a nice cafe right there where you can enjoy a drink and some good food - perhaps while you are waiting for a computer to come free. There is also a bank where you can exchange money and a major grocery store-plus where you can get all of your needs met. There is also a marvellous craft market across the street. You will have a chance to avail yourselves of the services, including getting something to eat, then you will be on your own to march back down the hill to the Centre Saint-Paul. This will be your first test – getting home.

Some of you may wish to take a power-nap. We will, however, reconvene in time to get up to our dinner at perhaps the most marvellous restaurant in Kigali – great food and even better location.

Then, early to bed!!!

Notes:

Lunch: Kigali – On Own
Dinner: Kigali – Group Dinner (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu).

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

WEDNESDAY, JULY 21

We will make our way to the Kigali Memorial Center, the first of our genocide sites. We will visit the memorial grounds and the exhibit, then we will debrief with an educator there at the Center. After a lunch at the Center, we will learn more about the programming offered by the Center and then meet with some young global citizens from the Aegis Trust, a British-based organization.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: Kigali – Kigali Memorial Center (Lunch will be a buffet; cost will be announced the day prior.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
over a year ago · Report


THURSDAY, JULY 22

We will make our way to the memorial sites in Bugesera. We will begin with a couple of sites on the edge of Kigali - including the site of the Ecole Polytechnique, the school where terrified civilians, under the protection of Belgian peacekeepers, were abandoned to the killers when those peacekeepers withdrew - before moving on to Nyamata and then Ntarama, two churches that were sites of massacres. These two sites will be our first introduction to the raw nature of the memorials in Rwanda. There, we will see the property and remains of the victims. We will end our day on the road at the Nelson Mandela Village of Hope, which is located near Ntarama.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: En Route (Lunch will be a buffet; cost will be annoucned the day prior.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul


FRIDAY, JULY 23

We will begin our day - after breakfast - at the Centre Saint-Paul with a debrief after our visits to Ntarama and Nyamata. Thereafter, we will make our way to the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide, our hosts, where we will meet with the Commission. No doubt, by that point, we will have lots to discuss. We will lunch at nearby Chez Lando, which itself featured prominently in the genocide. After lunch, we will meet with a women's survivor group (AVEGA) that is located near the Commission.

In the late afternoon, we will make our way to Akagera Game Lodge in Akagera Park – i.e. those of us who are going on the safari.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: Kigali – Chez Lando (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Dinner: Akagera Game Lodge (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)

Overnight: Akagera Game Lodge

Those in Kigali will be on their own for dinner and overnight at the Centre Saint-Paul. No meals will be scheduled for the Centre Saint-Paul for the weekend for those who do not participate in the safari and who stay in Kigali at the Centre Saint-Paul.

More information to follow about the cost of the accommodations at the Akagera Game Lodge and about the costs for the safari.

Laundry can be left for cleaning at the Centre Saint-Paul; cost to be announced.


SATURDAY, JULY 24

We will safari.

Breakfast: Akagera Game Lodge (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Lunch: Akagera Game Lodge (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Dinner: Akagera Game Lodge (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)

Overnight: Akagera Game Lodge


SUNDAY, JULY 25

Those of us on the safari will have breakfast and make our way to Nyarabuye, perhaps the most famous - infamous, I guess - of the killing sites in that it has been the site of contrition for many world leaders. Thereafter, we will make our way back to Kigali.

Notes:

Breakfast: Akagera Game Lodge (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Lunch: En Route (Lunch will be a buffet; cost will be announced the day prior.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

Laundry will be available for pick-up.


MONDAY, JULY 26

We are off to Butare. En route, we will stop in Nyanza at the imperial palace, which is now a museum. When we reach Butare, we will visit the National Museum and then have an audience with Rwanda's national dancers.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: En Route (Lunch will be a buffet; cost will be announced the day prior.)
Dinner: Butare - On Own

Overnight: Butare - TBA

TUESDAY, JULY 27

We are off to Murambi, the "Auschwitz" of Rwanda. Here, the bodies of the victims are intact. After visiting hell, we will take you to heaven, so to speak, on a visit to a lakeside resort at Kibuye. En route, we will stop again - for a break - at Nyanza, where we will visit another former palace, which is now an art gallery.

Notes:

Breakfast: Butare - TBA
Lunch: En Route (Lunch will be a buffet; cost will be announced the day prior.)
Dinner: Kibuye (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)

Overnight: Kibuye - Centre Bethanie

WEDNESDAY, JULY 28

We will make our way to Bisesero, where victims held off their killers for some time before ultimately succumbing. Bisesero has become like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for the Rwandan Genocide. We will then make our return to Kigali.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kibuye - Centre Bethanie (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Lunch: Kibuye - Centre Bethanie (You will be able to purchase whatever you like from the menu.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

THURSDAY, JULY 29

This is a free day. Those of you who wish to visit the gorillas will have this day to do so. The rest of us will be free in Kigali.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – On Own
Lunch: Kigali – On Own
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

FRIDAY, JULY 30

We will begin our discussion of the post-genocide period with a meeting with the Ministry to discuss justice and reconciliation.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: Kigali – Chez Lando (You will be able to purchase whatever you want from the menu.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

Rich Hitchens
SATURDAY, JULY 31

This is a free day.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – On Own
Lunch: Kigali – On Own
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

Sunday, August 1

This is a free day.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – On Own
Lunch: Kigali – On Own
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul


MONDAY, AUGUST 2

We will meet with the Ministry of Health to discuss HIV / AIDS and other health initiatives.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: Kigali – Chez Lando (You will be able to purchase whatever you want from the menu.)
Dinner: Kigali – On Own

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

TUESDAY, AUGUST 3

We will meet with the Ministry of Education.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul
Lunch: Kigali – Chez Lando (You will be able to purchase whatever you want from the menu.)
Dinner: Kigali – Group Dinner (You will be able to purchase whatever you want from the menu.)

Overnight: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul


WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4

We will meet with the National Elections Commission to discuss the pending presidential election. Then, we will depart for the airport.

Notes:

Breakfast: Kigali – Centre Saint-Paul

Lunch: Kigali – On Own

As alluded to earlier, this itinerary is a tentative one, and it should be thought of more as a to-do list and a hopeful schedule. We will have to adjust accordingly.

There will be additions throughout that will enable us to take advantage of opportunities offered to us. We will be able to provide you with a better sense of the exact timing of each day the day prior. This information about the following day will be provided when we disembark the day prior. We will maintain, however, the ample down-time and free-time that we envision in the schedule.

We anticipate that there will be extra activities available - for those interested - on the second weekend; Saturday and Sunday are listed as free days as it currently stands.
over a year ago · Report
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I have had all my vaccinations - I'm good to go.

I have just finished my second and final dose of the Dukoral vaccine, which purports to protect people against cholera and Montezuma’s Revenge for two years. I am not going to be reckless when I eat while in Africa, and I am bringing a lot of my own snacks, and I will be purchasing packaged snacks while there. Not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t want to get sick while I am away. I have heard that the breakfast that is supplied by the nuns is quite meager: a penance breakfast, if you will. I am bringing dried fruit and almonds. I can have a bit of that for brekkie every day, and then go forth with a sunny disposition to greet my new Rwandan friends.

And Sunblock too!

Linda is also in charge of getting the sunblock that we will need while we are there.

Our E-Tickets have Arrived!

After months of waiting, our e-tickets have finally arrived. Apparently the delay in receiving them was caused by some members of the group who were slow in paying. Because we are getting a group rate, the tickets could not be issued until everyone had paid. So now we are all set and our e-tickets are in hand.


I have given Linda the job of being in charge of the tickets and our at-the-airport-stuff, because she is good at that. Plus, I want to give her a job to do so that she doesn’t feel like her role in this escapade is unimportant. She is also in charge of my clothes and equipment packing (including the number of socks I can bring), getting a room for us for the day at Heathrow (she’s so efficient she’s already done this), getting us some gaiters for the gorilla trek, and generally keeping me out of trouble while en route.