Ortpn Resthouse Butare

... is a country based on agriculture and they have developed a system of creating step-like terraces to cultivate those many hills and avoid erosion. Very smart and so pretty. Yet this country is freezing! Ah, and here I thought Lyantonde is cold, well compared to Kampala or Benin City, but Rwanda…brrr! (What will Gun do when she returns to winter in Denmark next month?)

Now, we went southwards to Butare, which is Rwanda’s second largest city ...

... sont fait refouler a la frontiere, mais le consul de france en ouganda ne les pas aider poyur avoir leur visa en ouganda et ils ont du faire une croix le Rwanda.

Sinon le site de ginkongoro pres d hutare et l un des plus difficile que j ai vu. Ceratines des corps des 50 000 victimes du site ont ete preserves et remis en scene. Absolument affreux. Et avec bebe a profusion et coup a la machete encore visible.

... walking around town, sipping Primus (local beer) lakeside, and catching up on some reading. In case you're wondering, right now I'm reading "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families", an account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide written by journalist Philip Gourevitch. My next stop was Gitarama. Unfortunately, there's no direct bus from Gisenyi, so I had to return to Kigali (2 hours) and hop right back on a ...

... to via the listserv "Dan Moses' Thoughts on Racism and Non-Latex Condom Choices", run by Ms. Amy H.), Rwanda is doing pretty darn good. Fact A: Haiti is much poorer. Fact B: Haiti is the standard by which Dan Moses judges poorness. Case closed. The second note, here indicated by the number two is 2) Rwanda might actually be a tad boring. Boring, really? That can't be true... your mind is probably screaming for me to stop with this nonsense. Well, okay, not ...

... have been dug up and preserved in lime and placed in rooms in the college. There is currently no writing or information or anything about this at the site, it looks like they are in the process of thinking about it. So we were taken by a man around the back of the main building to rooms which were opened to see the bodies ranging from babies to adults laid on metal beds in 20 rooms and another room that contained bones ...

... for disgruntled civic workers. During our winding ride Paul gave us an in-depth commentary on the nuances of Rwandan society. Outside of the large cities, Rwanda is comprised of rural villages organized around a local market, schools and usually a Catholic church. The villagers work and farm the undulating hills of the countryside and grow mainly "Irish" potatoes, bananas, tea, coffee and a white flower exported to ...

... afternoon we leave for a 4-days trip through the country to see some lovely places we've been previously. This is the itinerary we will follow: Kigali, Butare, Nyungwe forest, Cyangugu, Kibuye, Gisenyi, Ruhengeri and finally we return to Kigali First we visit Butare, here we stay at hotel Ibis. Butare once was "the" university town of Rwanda. . Today the site of several academic institutions, including the country's ...

... are hard to accept, but are devastatingly effective in their presentation. After the displays telling the story of the genocide, there are a series of rooms branching off a central common space. One of the rooms is filled with thousands of photos of people. These are all victims of the genocide. In many cases, families gave up their only surviving photographs of loved ones, so they could be remembered here. Another room has a collection of bones and skulls taken from ...

... Rwandans, it seems, are not yet ready to talk abut what happened, and whenever the subject is broached they seem to clam up, or talk vaguely or generally about things, and then fall silent. Several times, with Yves and Simba, it seemed as if they almost wanted to talk about it, but just couldn't bring themselves to do it. Anything they did say was usually said when after a beer too many. Yves was in Kigali when it happened, and said to me once that he had seen people killing ...

... scale of what I witnesses." -- Fergal Keane, Season of Blood. This quote is at the beginning of a fictional book describing a photojournalist who went to Rwanda and has trouble re-integrating into life in London. I've always admired people who can read a book without putting it down. For once, I was that person. I read "The Optimists" by Andrew Miller in 11 hours - the quickest 308 pages ever. I have yet to find the ...