This is my first post in Rwanda and I've already seen a lot.Post flight (written two days ago):
The flight was long and I slept intermittently, but mostly wandered around talking to people, including Tufts people and an optometrist from West St. Paul on his way to give eye care to people in Cameroon (awesome). I'm finally starting to get excited (I know that should have started sooner). The best part so far was getting to see the sun rise over Chad.
Now:
So, we got into Kigali on Tuesday at 3. Then we went to the hostel, had dinner at an Italian restaurant and everyone conked out as soon as they hit their beds at about 8. Yesterday we woke up, had an amazing breakfast of all sorts of new fruit (Japanese plum/tomato, passion fruit, and green oranges) and went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum (THE Rwandan genocide museum). I found the museum thoroughly disappointing. First off, it was very small, only requiring 2.5 hours for me to read everything. Secondly, the museum only gave the very basic "Tutsi party line" account of the genocide. IT gave pretty much the very broad overview of the genocide, probably the equivalent of a one class high school history lesson. And, in that vain, it managed to leave out a lot of crucial things I would surely expect at THE Rwandan Genocide Museum. Things like the problem of having 100,000 convicted Rwandans in prison, that around 20% of those killed were moderate Hutus, or the war crimes of the genocide-ending Tutsi RPF , who happen to be in power( and have been since 1994). On that last note, the museu
m was very politically charged, exaggerating numbers and really portraying the genocide as a purely "Tutsi as victim" event. (my fellow PJSWhile I disliked the muesum aspect, the memorial part made me quite emotional. I have enclosed a picture of it here. This is a concrete slab containing the remains of 100,000 people. ( I put a rock on it at a measly attempt to try and show respect for those lives lost. I think the aspect that made me emotional was not the event itself, but that there were so many people killed/buried there and it was impossible for me to give respect to all of them. By killing so many people the genocidaires managed to dehumanized all of the victims.)
Another interesting factoid is that in Rwanda history education ends after 1990. The genocide is not talked about almost at all in the country. (I think this is a great way to ensure it happens again, similar to Yugoslavia exploding after Tito died, as the current President of Rwanda is really holding the county together "while I don't want to, if President Kagame says to live peacefully with the Hutus, I will")
After the Museum we had lunch and drove to the Youth Village (ASYV). The drive was beautiful and seeing the village for the first time was as well. We had dinner with the students, had a meeting reflecting about our day, and went to bed early. Talking with the kids is sometimes difficult because of the language barrier (the language of instruction in Rwandan schools was switched from French to English in 2008). However, the kids and everyone in Rwanda are incredibly friendly and welcoming. The confident students come up to us and introduce themselves and a majority of the students tell us how glad they are that we are here. Even driving around Kigali most everyone would wave at us (we're white and, therefore, very strange) and if they didn't I could wave and I would always get a wave and a smile back (It was so fantastic).
Today we took a tour of the village, started work on the soccer field seating (I was carrying cement) (the seats need to be ready by the time the Rwandan national soccer team comes to play the school's team in a month), sorted the 250+ pairs of shoes we collectively brought, played volleyball and then basketball with the students, discussed the moral issue of who to serve, and went to family time with a group of 16 students (a family). The day was mostly good, I feel I am getting to know some students better and I had fun playing sports and going to family time. However, while sorting the shoes, a group of kids from Rabona stopped at the fence around the village and asked a few other Tufts students if they could have some shoes. But the answer was "no" due to the nature of the situation. This really broke the hearts of some Tufts students and resulting in the question of "how to decide who to serve." This question had reared it's head the previous night after viewing the poverty of Kigali and the cleanliness and wealth of the village. I still feel conflicted about this, I know that you can only do so much and help so many people with limited resources, but when you have a kid simply ask you for shoes, it is almost impossible for me to say no. My current thoughts are that the village is a great place, but that it goes a little to far. Anne Heyman's (the founder of ASYV) philosophy is that you need to educate some students "completely" and they will have a ripple effect on the county, becoming leaders of a future Rwanda. However, this "completely" includes really nice landscaping, multiple outside theater venues, village-wide wifi, and a recording studio. While I want everyone to have the very best, given Anne's mission of creating leaders and helping to solve Rwanda's orphan crisis (1.5 million of 10 million in the country) I think her limited resources might be put into better use by using the money for some of the things I view as frivolus to put them towards creating another youth village.
That is my journey and feelings for now. Tomorrow we will work on the soccer seats some more, go into the village of Rabona, and have shabbat. I would have put more pictures, but the upload feature has stopped working though the shaky ASYV wifi (sorry).
Hope all is well wherever you are,
Howie
