When two elephants fight, the grass suffers the most.

(From my safari)

We've started looking into the genocide that happened here in Rwanda. The funny thing is that if nobody told you it happened here, you wouldn't know that over 800,000 people were massacred in three months only 15 years ago. But if you look hard enough it becomes quite clear. Two elephants fought here (the Hutus and the Tutsis) and the children, the future and the country suffered the most. A few of us watched a documentary on the genocide last night. It's ridiculous that the footage they have of dead bodies sprawled out on the roads could easily be the very same roads that we are living on now. It's powerful when you think about that. That where I step could be where someone took their last breath before being destroyed by a machete.

What also got me going was the fact that America did absolutely NOTHING during this crisis! America had a large embassy here, the UN had forces as did other countries and when the killings started all they did was gather up their own people and get the heck out of here! They would go to hospitals where Rwandans were taking refuge and pick out the white people while telling all the Tutsi men, women and children that they had to fend for themselves. As soon as the ex-pats were out the Hutus would go in and kill every living thing as "we" drove away. After the holocaust we said "never again!" Well guess what? We knew it was happening from the start this time and we let it happen again.

Onto a brighter note.. This morning two other girls and I went to PHARP to teach some girls a little bit of English. These 18-21 year old girls have been orphaned and have also experienced some sort of trauma (other than the genocide) in their lives. They know only a few words in English (and I know only a handful in Kinyarwanda) so it was fun because we both got to laugh at each other for completely messing up the others language. Hopefully more of us will be able to go there before class and teach them throughout the next few weeks!

FACT: Before the genocide over 90% of the Rwandan population claimed that they were Christians!! 90%! As you've probably realized, this means that Christians were killing Christians, inside churches no less. Am I the only one that thinks this is absolutely insane?