And I thought I had no sense of direction!

We started the morning with a trip to the CNLG (National Centre for the Fight Against Genocide).

We listened to two chaps from CNLG as they talked about the work that this organization does.  They talked about reconciliation efforts and how the government was helping perpetrators and victims live and work in close proximity.  They also explained about plans for new projects to itemize and catalogue items left behind by victims at some of the massacre sites. Listening to these two fellow was at times fascinating, sad, and enraging, but ultimately, I felt a sense of hope for Rwanda..

We left CNLG and went to the National Genocide Memorial in Kigali.  There a buffet lunch was waiting for us.  As you know, Linda and I are vegans, and sometimes it's hard to find food that we care to eat.  Luckily the buffet had a mix of beans and veg and we had that on rice, so everything was grand.

Our room-mate Heather fosters a child (the girl is an orphan -both of her parents are dead) in Kigali and had arranged to meet up with the child, her house mother and the priest who directs the foster child program in the country.  They came to the museum.  Heather was very happy to meet them.  I offered my services as a translator.  Heather had brought along some gifts for her child, as well as 1,000 dehydrated dinners donated by the farmers of Alberta.  These dinners were in the form of a mix of dehydrated veggies, beans, lentils etc.  The family would just have to take a scoop of the mix, put it in water over night, and then next day they would mix it with rice and there you go, a dinner high in protein and fibre.  Also, Heather's students put together packages of colouring books, pencils, pencils sharpeners, toys etc for the other 50 children that this program serves in Rwanda.

The priest, Father Faustin, said they had arrived by taxi, and we told him we would pay for him to take a taxi back to the village where the girl (Latifa was her name) lived.  Plus Linda and I had donated a soccer ball.   When Linda went to tell our program leader that we would be leaving in a taxi, he suggested that we take the team bus, considering that Father Faustin insisted that Latifa lived in Kigali, and that her house was very close by.

Well!  I was becoming increasingly worried as we got farther and farther from town, since we had to have the bus back by a certain time.  We were on rutted dirt roads, and kept going farther and farther up the hills - so far in fact, that my ears were popping with the pressure changes.  Finally we came to the girl's home - a mud hut on the top of a hill in a grove of banana trees.  No electricity, no running water, no nothing.  They cook, eat and socialize outside. People tend to stay outside all day except for sleeping, except, of course during the two rainy seasons of the year.

Despite the little that they had, these kind people,  who spoke no English, welcomed us to their home and offered us food and banana beer.  My Kinyarwanda lessons took me no farther than greetings and food that I did and didn't like, but was adequate for the purposes of this visit.  A baby was given to me to hold, a tradition apparently, to make a person feel like part of a family.  

The gift of one thousand meals was met with wonder and wide smiles all around.  Father Faustin explained how the dried meals worked and the mother of the house ventured the opinion that the food would last for much longer than one thousand meals.  That's more than a year and a half of nutritious, high protein meals.  By the time we left, some of the children were playing with soccer ball among the banana trees. 

I felt a little weepy as we were leaving - sad for Latifa who had no parents, and sad for this family who lived in a hut made of mud and cow manure and sad for this nation that is trying so hard to move forward.



We made it back to the museum by 3:20, in time to pick up the gang and then wait for two hours for our Liberation day credentials.




 

Kigali Genocide Memorial and Memorials at Nyamata and Ntarama

On Wednesday we had an early start to the day, and we were happy that we had taken the time to get ready the night before.

We left the hotel and drove through Kigali to pick up a gentleman who was a survivor of the massacre at the Ecole Polytechniqe.  He told us his story, which was desperately sad, and several times he had to stop talking because he was overwhelmed.   He survived, and so did his wife and daughter and son, but they were all injured: he had an arm hacked off, his son was was shot in the head, and his daughter was clubbed in the head with a nail-studded club.  She has residual brain damage.  His oldest child was killed - he had sent her to stay with his mother, thinking they would both be safe, but they were both killed by being thrown into a latrine.  Stories like this fill me with an unspeakable sadness, but also a barely controllable rage.  Seeing this man tell his story, reduced to tears, was very, very moving.

Our second stop of the day was the church at Nyamata.   At this church there were approximately 10,000 people killed in the first week of the genocide.  The church has shrapnel damage in the ceiling, and dried blood on the walls and altar cloth.  People's belongings are piled on the pews.  Our guide, who is himself a genocide survivor, and who had sought, and received sanctuary at this same church during the mini-genocide in 1992, says that the clothes will be catalogued and preserved shortly, that the group that deals with these things was just waiting to have enough money to do this.

At the back of the church there are two huge mass memorial graves in the form of fairly deep crypts, and visitors can go down to pay their respects.  In these graves are thousands of skulls and bones.  and hundreds of coffins.

Our guide told us that approximately 72,000 people were killed in the area, but 10,000 were killed in and around the church.

Our next stop was the church at Ntarama.  Again, this was a place were thousands of people gathered to find safety, as they had done in 1992.  This time, there was no refuge.   The church was blasted with grenades to get at the people inside, and then the people inside were killed, ruthlessly.   There were children in the church school - they were killed by being smashed against the back wall of the room where the church school was held.  The wall where this was done is stained black with the blood of these children.  How does this happen?  Who sees the murder of children as right and necessary?  These are questions that are very difficult to answer, but answer them we must if we are to prevent such a thing from happening again.

A Busy Day

I'm going to put a number of days' activities together in one blog entry.

I will start with the flights: in a word - terrible!   The captain announced that there would be some turbulence, and there was, but "some" suggests a little.  In effect he should have said there would be some periods of relative smooth flying.  I have never been on a rougher flight in my life.  There was turbulence from beginning to end, so much so that on several occasions, food service had to be interrupted and the flight attendants were directed to sit down and put their seat belts on. One member of our group, a young man from Fanshaw college, had never flown before and I was thinking of him from time to time as we bounced across the Atlantic Ocean.  I was also thinking of myself and how much I'm not a fan of flying.

We landed at Heathrow, surprisingly after such a rough flight, the landing was the smoothest ever, and made our way over to the Yotel where we spent a quiet and refreshing 5 and a half hours.  We had a nap, were able to stretch out on comfy beds and get our feet back down to size, and also  have a shower.

We met up with another of our travel-mates, Heather (she was on the previous trip) and we made our way over to the security area and had really only just arrived through the check when we were called to  board the plane.  Unfortunately I had a middle seat, and although the person beside me was nice, it still feels awkward to ask a person to move every time I needed to use the washroom.   Impossible to sleep.

The flight from Nairobi was rough but thankfully short.  We spent about thirty minutes on the ground at Bujumbura picking up some people and Linda and I spent a moment or two standing on the landing outside the rear door of the plane looking around.  We asked one of our seat mates to take a picture of us with the Bujumbura airport in the background.

When we arrived at Kigali we were met by our bus driver (Olivier again - we were very happy to see him again!) and our official guide from CNLG, Martin.  We ditched our stuff in our hotel, and we were off and running.  Our hotel, by the way, is fantastic and so far removed from the St. Paul - not in  distance but in every other manner.  We are sharing a room with Heather - it has three beds and a really nice ensuite washroom.  It's a really nice refuge at the end of the day.  The hotel has a terraced eating/sitting area, and it's where I am sitting as I write this blog. I have a lovely view down a valley and up the other side of the valley to one of Kigali's many huge hills.

After we stowed our stuff, we set off to the site of the memorial for the Belgian soldiers who were killed by the Presidential Guard on April 7, 1994.  The men were guarding the Prime Minister, along with some Ghanian peace-keepers when the Presidential Guard arrived.  They sent the Ghanaian peacekeepers away and captured the Belgians, took them to the school where the memorial is, where the Belgians made an attempt for freedom.  There are bullet holes and grenade marks on the walls.  The Belgians were eventually tortured and killed.

We walked from there to the Nakumat mall and found a foreign exchange office that was open.  I exchanged $300US for 230,000 rwandan francs.

Later we had dinner at the New Cactus restaurant, which is a western style resto in Kigali and didn't make it  back to our hotel until about eleven o'clock.  We were totally exhausted and we had to get our stuff ready for the next day before we went to bed.

Eventually, we made it to bed.   I fell asleep immediately.











 

There Might Be Some Turbulence

We are currently have a brief relax at the Yotel in Heathrow Airport.  The room is pleasant and cool and very quiet.  We have bunk beds, a double bed on the bottom for me, and a single on top for Linda.  The bathroom is nice and modern-looking.

I have never had a flight so bumpy in my life, and it wasn't slightly bumpy, it was dreadfully bumpy.  A Fanshaw student who is travelling with us had never flown before in his life - not a very good intro to flying.  It was so bad at a number of times that the flight attendants had to stop serving dinner - and these were prepackaged dinners, not something that could spill.

I didn't sleep well on the trip at all.   What I can say was that the landing was the smoothest landing I have ever had, no bump, no jarring brakes, just a nice glide to a stop.

I sat beside some nice people - a couple from Sarnia going to London for a vacation.

Some of the Things I Hate about Air Travel, Part II

It has been four years and five days since I wrote Some of the Things I Hate about Air Travel, Part I.

Here is Part II.

I always have a time, shortly before I leave on any vacation, whether it's to the family cottage, or to visit cousins in Rochester, or going to Buffalo with my sisters, or overseas, that I wish I had never agreed to go on a vacation in the first place.  I guess I'm a bona fide homebody.  I like to stay home.  I like to be in my house or garden.   I am not an agoraphobic person - I just prefer to be home and to avoid the hustle and bustle of travel.

For overseas trips, the hustle and bustle of travel starts way before I even put my bags in my car for the drive across town (that I will save for another post!) to make my way to the airport.   There is hidden H&B (hustle and bustle) in a number of pre-trip activities: getting new shoes, finding clothes that fit, decisions that must be made about packing (how many shirts, sox, gidgies, etc), decisions about where to sit on the airplane, letting the airlines know that I am a vegan, etc.

My sister is taking care of most of this for me, and I am grateful, but it still occupies a significant amount of headspace, this H&B.

Then when we get to the airport, there is the H&B of getting the bags out at the departure stop - Dave will drop us off - going in to the departures level, finding our flight, hooking up with our gang (hope to have dinner with Heather, and friend from the previous trip), and then redistributing everyones soccer stuff among each other's bags.

The capper has to be the part where we must pass through security.  Off come the shoes, the belt if wearing one, the jewellery, the money belt, etc.   Then the metal detector, then the pat down (last time I got felt up pretty thoroughly right in front of everyone), then standing and waiting as the security person swabs the handles of my bag looking for gun powder residue.   I am certain that airport security could be more efficient if they engaged in some serious profiling.   A sixty year old nearly-retired school teacher - not much of a security risk.   Then there is the H&B of putting your shoes on while your stuff is coming through the x-ray machine, and you fear you are holding others up.

This year I will be taking my travel cane through, and now that I have a healed-but-still-awkward-to-walk-on-formerly-broken foot, I will be limping and slow.  And I won't give a rat's ass if I hold up the line!

The Generosity of Scarborough Blizzard

Long-time readers of my blog will know that before my previous trip to Rwanda I wrote to several local soccer clubs asking for donations of used soccer equipment and used balls etc.  Of all of the clubs I wrote to, only the Scarborough Blizzard club replied.   The generosity of the head of that club, Michelle Cole-Kennedy, was utterly overwhelming.  She gave me uniforms and balls and shin-guards to give away to children in Rwanda.   We gave the equipment to a local priest, who gave it to his sister who runs an orphanage.  I have posted pictures of two soccer teams wearing the uniforms on an earlier post.

Well, Michelle came through again!   Last night I went to meet her at the Blizzard's club headquarters.  Again, such generosity from Michelle!   She gave me uniforms( jerseys, shorts, socks and goal keeper shirt), balls, shin guards, adult-size  polo-shirts (great for gifts for our hosts and for soccer coaches), and some extra child-sized shirts.  I was, again, totally overwhelmed.

I might add that I wrote to Nike as well, to see if they had any soccer balls they could donate to the cause, even used equipment.    I didn't hear back from Nike, not even a note to say that they could not help.

Another Genocidaire is Convicted

There was an article in the Toronto Star on March 18, 2014, regarding the conviction yesterday of Pascal Simbikangwa for his role in the genocide in Rwanda. He was tried in France but Rwanda wants him to serve his sentence in Rwanda.

Perhaps of particular interest to those who have read my earlier posts about my trip to Rwada in 2010, one of the witnesses against him was Valerie Bemeriki, whom we met when we spent an afternoon at the federal prison in Kigali. Bemeriki worked for Radio Mille Collines, and although she was eager to point out to us that she was a journalist and hadn't actually killed anyone, I found out later from a book that Kate W-E had, that her job at Radio Milles Collines was to broadcast the location of Tutsis wherever they were hiding, and to exhort killers to step up their efforts.

The other thing that was interesting about Bemeriki was her assertion that most of the genocidaires who were in prison were farmers and regular folks, while the real criminals had managed to get away to France or Belgium. I recall that she had a sense of outrage at this, while at the same time, I felt she was minimizing her participation. I am not surprised then, given her anger at those who managed to get away with it, that she testified against him at his trial.

Lisa Turner

There's A New Twist in Our Travel Plans

It turns out that Rwanda now requires entrance visas from Canadians, and considering that Canada requires visas from Rwandans, I imagine this is a tit for tat visa situation.

We must now apply for a visa.  They aren't expensive, just another thing to do.

We've had our trip to the travel clinic

Linda and I went to the travel clinic today after work.  The Albany clinic is a model of efficiency: we were in and out in forty-five minutes.  We had to have a typhoid vaccination, because they only last for three years, and we have a prescription for a booster of the cholera vaccine and the malaria meds, and some antibiotics in case we become unwell while we were away.

So that's one more thing out of the way.

Next Step: The Travel Medicine Clinic

Linda has made our appointment at the medical clinic that deals with travel issues.

Our appointment is for next Wednesday at 3:00 pm at the Albany Clinic, which by the way, has no parking, and I will have my car, having come from school.  I will have to ask the VP if I can leave school a little early that day - I have an prep period at that time, so it should be ok, and I have had only one absence all year so far.

We will need malaria meds, the cholera vaccine and likely a typhoid fever vaccine.   We had the typhoid vaccine the last time we went to Rwanda, but I've read that it only lasts four years.   The doctor will know for sure of course, but definitely we will want to be covered.   Our yellow fever vaccinations are good for a few more years.   I will keep these shots up to date because you never know when you are going to get the chance to travel some place where they are needed.

Linda says she wants to ask the doctor for exactly the same type of malaria meds that we had before - we know that we won't have a reaction to them like some people did.  I did not experience bad dreams (a potential side effect) nor nausea, and that's a huge plus for me: I have a sensitive stomach, and it doesn't seem to take much to make me feel queasy.   Don't want that at all.

.

I'm going back!

I will be returning to Rwanda this summer!

I paid my deposit today, and now I have to start the other preparations (visit the travel doctor, worry about shoes, what to pack, etc) for the trip.

I'm very excited!