My flight to Kilimanjaro airport is at 11:10am so I had to hustle to get ready and grab a cab to get to the Rwanda Genocide Memorial Museum which opens at 8:00am. Everything I read said this is a must see in Kigali and I’d be remiss to skip it. I knew I wouldn’t have much time but wanted to see as much as possible. It was a quick drive with traffic being light on a Sunday. It is a very somber place and one requiring a lot of respect. I felt guilty having to rush through – you can easily spend two or three hours here to fully grasp the depth of what happened in this country but I only had an hour. The introduction movie was told by actual survivors and was touching, bringing tears to the eye. The self-guided audio tour consisted of several stops outside before heading into the museum. The building is surrounded by gardens, one of which is the site of a mass grave – over 250,000 people are buried here. More than one million Tutsis, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed in less than four months during the genocide – how horrific! Inside, the tour goes through excellent exhibits explaining how the country's colonial background set the stage for separating Africans based on ethnicity “in their zeal for anthropological research” and how subsequent power struggles ensued after the Europeans left. Then the displays describe the building blocks for genocide – a fight for power, the creation of an “us vs. them” mentality, use of dehumanizing tactics, and the essential role of propaganda.
It is almost unbelievable how it can lead to genocide but the exhibit ends with other examples throughout history – Nazi Germany, Armenia, the Balkans, Cambodia, and Namibia. So sad. A very important place. As heavy as the museum was, the Rwandans I met seem like a happy, kind and industrious people. They wave and smile as you pass and, all in all, the country seems well healed, at least on the surface, and they seem determined not to forget what happened here.
In a rush, I met my taxi driver who
agreed to wait (why do I always feel like I’m on the Amazing Race when I’m rushing around foreign countries?!?) We
stopped at the hotel to check out and get my bag, then sped off to the airport. Lots of security just to drive into the airport
– search car, put bags through a scanner, have dogs sniff the luggage… then through the
actual airport security inside.
The flight was fine on the small turbo
prop plane and I was picked up by a Kandoo Adventures rep and driven to Moshi,
about an hour away. I saw the Big Five
on the way (well, the domestic big five – cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and
chickens!). Lots of farms on the flat
plains along the road with a cloudy glimpse of the slopes up Kilimanjaro in the
distance. Checked into the Bristol Cottages
and met the gang for our orientation: a couple from England, Chris and his
Polish wife Ursula; an American, Steve, who works for the US Embassy in Nairobi,
and his two daughters, Emma and Sophia; and two college friends, Clara, from Australia,
and Aylet from Israel. Looks like a good
group! I hung out with the Americans and
had a couple beers with Steve before dinner and bed (under the mosquito net!).
2025-02-10