Trip To Kigali and The Start of The Interviews

On Monday we traveled to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, to tour the city. Someone on our tour bus commented that Kigali is one of the cleanest cities in Africa. Yay Rwanda! On the tour we saw Hotel Rwanda, the new trade center, and the Prison. The prisoners often work on the side of the road maintaining the landscape. Prisoners convicted of Genocide crimes wear pink and the other prisoners orange. It was quite striking. We also visited the Belgium soldier memorial (right before the genocide Rwandan rebels killed Belgium guards in hopes that the UN would leave the country so they could start the massive killings… Unfortunately their plan worked perfectly and after the soldiers were killed, the international presence in Rwanda left at the very time they were needed). After, we visited the Genocide Memorial and Museum, which was predictably immensely upsetting. It explained the events in detail. It had remains of victims, and a mass burial of over 200,000 murdered. The part of the memorial that really got to me were the rooms with stories about children. It would display a life-size picture of a child and have a small poster with the child’s name, favorite food, pastime, dream, and the way he or she was murdered. There are two that I remember.

Name: Sarah
Age: 5
Enjoyed: Playing with her sisters and cousins
Last Word: “Where is my mom?”
Cause of death: Killed by machetes


Name: David Mugiraneza
Age: 10
Favorite Sport: Football
Enjoyed: Making people laugh
Dream: Becoming a doctor
Last Word: “UNAMIR will come for us.”
Cause of death: Tourtured to death

I don’t mean to put these up to upset anyone, but they are just a small glimpse at how powerful the Genocide Museum was and what people in Rwanda have witnessed. There were hundreds of stories and pictures of children, and they are all 100% real.

After the Genocide Museum and memorial we visited what Rwandans call the “New Kigali.” It is a hill with huge, nice houses freshly built. These houses are beautiful and capture the growth and positive change Rwanda is experiencing. Unfortunately, they also show the gap between the insanely wealthy and the dirt poor (there is practically no middle class here).

Olivier came with us to Kigali and we had fun with him after the tour. We went out to eat at a restaurant. Sad to report restaurants serve just rice, beans, potatoes, etc. as well… no change ☹ But they do have Coca Cola and Fanta!


Tuesday and Wednesday we started interviewing children. Maddie and I each have our own translator and we interview 3 children each a day. Their stories are heartbreaking, but because these children have been working with ZOE Ministry for over 3 years, their quality of life has improved greatly! I passed out candy and small gifts for their younger siblings (obviously my favorite part of the day). It is interesting how they respond to questions… If they tell you one of their parents died from an “unknown illness” or were “poisoned to death” it means they died from HIV/AIDS. If they say they have a toilet it means they have a hole in the back yard instead of just going anywhere. If they eat every-day, their meal 99% of the time consists of beans and potatoes. So both days went well, and the kids were great, so nice. They smiled, and were so excited when we brought out treats. Today the girls especially enjoyed the red, blue, and white Hawaiian lays (flower necklaces) I gave them.

OKAY SO after work, Chantelle, an orphan our age that works at the guest house where we are living, wanted to take us to market with her. Although she woke us up from our nap (this happens frequently), we were excited to join her. WHAT AN ADVENTURE… Well we thought we would find some variety in foods that we could buy BUT NO same items… Oh well. As we walked into a section of the market, Maddie took out her camera to take a picture of me walking through the market BAD IDEA… About 10 people rushed over to look at her camera, everyone started staring and pointing. This angry lady walks over to her and starts demanding money. I guess she jumped in the picture and thought she deserved some sort of payment? It seemed ridiculous at the time and Maddie was understandably flustered. But later when I thought about it… If you were barely making enough to feed your kids and some Mazungus (white people) walk in with their nice clothes, shoes, and backpacks, and take a picture of your livlihood… In her shoes (wait she didn’t have any), I may feel the same way. So after that Maddie and I stayed close together. As we were leaving the market, a motorcycle 5 feet from us runs straight into a man. They all go flying and the motorcycle lands on top of all of them. I saw the accident, but before crowds started to rush to see what happened, Maddie saw blood on the dirt road. We high-tailed out of there. Now we walk on the very edge of the road, and we are completely attentive… The accident was SO close to us! And the guy on the motorcycle was completely at fault.
CONCLUSION: NO MORE MARKET FOR MADDIE AND I

We are now counting down the days until my family sends us Nutella…

Love,
Jessica

PS. So Maddie and I are all about sharing… But its really hard to explain to someone who doesn’t speak your language that the liquid you spray ALL OVER your body is not perfume, it’s HARD CORE bug spray… Yea so they take it from us and use it as if its perfume and smile and signal that it smells nice… ☺