Me - 3, Mosquitoes - 0

PS. I've been here 3 weeks and I have had zero mosquito bites. That's got to be a record.


And I'm sure I just cursed it.

The Walls of a Church should not have Bullet Holes

I have no feeling right now. I allowed the first genocide memorial to affect me. I allowed myself to feel the sadness (for the most part). But we went to two more today and while I took in the immensity of the sites, the bones at the sites and the clothing remains at the sites, I was unable to feel any emotion beside pure awe. The walls went up. I have no emotion to write about so I'll just put up some pictures I took. Feel for yourself.

A church's pews should have people in them. Not the clothes that the victims wore on the day of their death...

The Sacristy of a church should not be filled with stacks and stacks of bones.









Skulls should not have weapons left
or hammer holes in them.

























The Virgin Mary should look over joyous people, not a massacre.




















An alter should have gifts, not weapons.

No Church should ever look like this one.






(I spent about an hour trying to get the layout of the pictures right but no such luck. Blogger is not user friendly. Sorry).

Some Things I've Discovered

• Cars and motorcycles will not slow down if you are crossing the road. In fact, they will probably speed up.
• If someone calls "sista sista" they are neither imitating the Disney tv show nor confusing you with one of their family members.
  
• You're paying too much if lunch costs you more than 2,000 francs ($3.57).
• If someone at the market says they will give you a good price for an item - you're still going to pay the mzungu price.
  
• Nobody cares about the NFL.
• My feet will never again be clean.
• Aerobics class will have more men than women in attendence.
• You never know when you'll be walking down the street and you'll spot a man peeing in the corner.
• The locals will laugh when you attempt to speak their language.
• I am not cut out to have 15 children because the amount of dishes to do are outrageous!!
• Many bathrooms will not have toilet paper (bring your own).
  
• African Tea is amazing.
• Pineapple here is a million times better than pineapple at home!
  

Not always fun. But necessary.

I am finding it impossible to comprehend that one human being has the psychological capacity to kill another human. I know that there are instances of murder (even mass murder) everywhere but it's easy to blame the random instances on insanity or pure hatred for another person. But how is it possible to be human and take the lives of so many innocent people in separate occasions? People that were your neighbors last week? How could you possibly kill the children that your kids played with? How does this happen?

We went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial yesterday. There are almost 300,000 people buried in mass graves on this rather small plot of land. 300,000. I can't comprehend that many lives and it's only 30% of those who died. Each one brutally murdered. It wasn't a bomb that wiped them all out. Each one had its own killer and story.

The thing that got me the most was the children's memorial. I can understand that children are murdered. It happens But we look at those murders as ironic cases of insanity. But how were so many people able to do that? To look at a small child and then end their lives. And not just kill them quickly, but make them suffer before they finally died of loss of blood or some other cruel end.

They had a whole area for the children that died. Including this child one below. But the ones that got me most were this 7 year old who's last words were "mom where should I run?" and another who was killed by being stabbed in the eyes and then head. First off, imagine the human beings that could do that to each of them. And second, think about the mothers who had to helplessly watch before facing their own death.

Everyone says we're supposed to "process" experiences like this. But I'm not even sure how you process something like that. I'm not completely sure that you can.







On another note, the sketchy tickets that we bought for the football (soccer) game worked. We lucked into front row seats at about the 45 yard line. Nice, I know. Rwanda lost 1-0 to Egypt but it was an amazing experience. I think everyone should go to an international football (soccer - for you Americans) game at least once in their lives.

There is no TicketMaster in Rwanda

There's a soccer game today. Egypt vs. Rwanda. We all decided that it would be fun to go. Easy enough right? No. We stopped by the stadium (which is less than a half mile from our house) last week and asked when we could buy the tickets. They didn't know but said we should come the day of the game to get them. Soo, Rachel and I collected 5,000 Francs from everyone and headed up there this morning. We asked the men there where we could get them, and they sent us to the local super markets to get them. (Yeah we were confused too). Well the super markets we talked to all thought we were just whacked out Mzungus. So we headed back to the stadium, asked another security guard and proceeded to follow where he pointed. Ends up it was to a man with an open backpack at his feet with tickets falling out. Apparently he was the ticket vendor?

So we now have 17 tickets that we think are legit but that we aren't entirely sure about. I'll let you know!

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?

Church and Classes

Sundays in Rwanda. Busy. All morning our "paid friends" came at various times to pick up whoever they were with the night before and to take us to their church. I went with my "assistent," Ives, to a Christian Life Assembly church. The church service seemed rather Western, if I closed my eyes I could have easily tricked myself into thinking I was in an American church. However, there was an absolutely adorable little girl behind me that kept me entertained for the 2+ hour service.

That's another thing that's funny. It seems that Rwandans do not care at all about how long church is, in my experience people are constantly checking their watches and the minute that pastor (or priest) exceeds his hour they get upset. But here church can last all day and people love every second of it!

Anyhow that night I went with my other paid friend, Paul, to his church. Okay, I have never seen a place erupt like that building. Rwandans apparently like to jump when praising God, and dance and yell and do whatever. I LOVED IT and I think next week more go ed students will join us!

Enough about churches, we started class today! The first class is about peacekeeping and the Rwandan Genocide. It's taught by an amazing Rwandan man who has dedicated his life to helping women learn tasks like sewing and learning english. However, he does not teach like the normal science professors I'm used to. He does not get right down to the point and I'm not sure how to handle that!

The other class is about community development and it is taught by an American who has spent a majority of his life around Africa.

All of a sudden I have a TON of readings! What happened to the African vacation I was on??


Fact: 61% of Rwandans live on less than a dollar a day. I almost couldn't believe this, where I am in Kigali does NOT reflect this but we've only been here a few days and we will broaden our horizons and see more of this poverty as the weeks progress.