First week (almost gone...)

Mirewa! (pronounced “milli-way”) That’s hello in Kinyarwanda! We’re trying like crazy to learn some of the local language, and I must say that Alex is having better progress at it than I am. I think that is because I’m trying to learn some French as well which is just making things messy… But its a lot of fun! It is now Friday afternoon here at the Center and today is a holiday, so there is nobody else here with us besides the volunteers and the boys. We’re all relaxing after having spent the morning and early afternoon down in the village watching the Victory Day presentations. Yes, the holiday being celebrated today is called Victory Day! Celebrating the RPF’s reclamation of Rwanda, officially ending the genocide. We stood among the locals to watch men and women dancing and singing, various musical presentations and speeches, including one we think that was a radio broadcast from the President (Paul Kagame). It was amazing. The presentations also served to help put into perspective the genocide aftermath as a whole. Yesterday Alex, myself and some of the Center staff went to the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. It took us about 3 hours to get through the entire memorial, a very emotional 3 hours. Words cannot begin to describe the atrocities we read, listened to and viewed. We came prepared with tissues, and they were used. The memorial took us through the historical context of the events that lead up to the genocide, we read about Romeo Delair, the now President Kagame, and many others. The memorial took us through the genocide itself, with images and descriptions of what I believe to be a literal Hell on Earth. And then, to make things all the more real, we found ourselves in a silent room filled with skulls and bones of 50 or so of the victims, where in the background there was a voice in a hidden stereo listing their names… after name after name after name… Next we found ourselves upstairs in rooms dedicated to the children, of those whose futures were stolen…
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It was rough.
In terms of the layout of the memorial itself, everything was presented in a very artful, very respectful manner, also not only talking about the Rwandan Genocide but in the end touching on other historical events of genocide including the Holocaust, the Armenians, Cambodia, Bosnia and others.
Following our trip to the memorial we went to a “mall” to get ourselves some supper (burgers and fries! comfort food I suppose…), where we discussed the day’s events. After our supper, with our moods substantially lightened, we went to a little out-door night club tucked in the hills of Kigali where we met with one of the founders of the Center and his friends. We talked about Rwanda, its progress and all in all had a great time. So much fun in fact, we didn’t make it back to the village to go to bed until 2 AM! Good times… Tomorrow we’re all meeting together first thing in the morning to go on a little Safari where we can hopefully see some savannah animals. We’re very excited!
We hope this new post finds you all well! As I’m writing this my computer tells me that its 8:45 AM in High River and here its 4:45 PM. Crazy!!
Much love
Jo and Al