Around Kigali, Rwanda and then to Kinigi, Rwanda

  Kinigi, Rwanda
Saturday, June 7, 2008

Around Kigali, Rwanda and then to Kinigi, Rwanda

Saturday June 7th, 2008. Around Kigali, Rwanda and then to Kinigi, Rwanda.

Today's entry may be a  little more serious than most primarily due to the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath. Lest anyone forget.

I woke up early but while I was working out if I wanted to go back to sleep or not we heard a bunch of people singing in unison. It turned out to be locals (maybe 30 or more) running together and singing like you see soldiers doing in the movies but this time it was traditional Rwandan songs. Our first morning. Very cool. Welcome to Africa! Then the Serena Inn, Kigali surprised us somewhat with its breakfast buffet. The food was great. It was all fresh. And there were plenty of options. All in all a perfect start to the day.

Overall I thought the Serena Inn, Kigali was excellent. Great food, great room (including wifi), great value and a perfect start to trip like this.

After breakfast the plan was to meet Martin in the foyer and head to the Hotel des Milles Collines (Hotel Rwanda from the movie), then spend time at the Genocide Museum and then head out of Kigali en route to the lodge where we would spend the next three nights whilst trekking for the gorillas during the day time.

The first thing we noticed about Kigali was how clean and orderly everything looked. Martin was telling us that when cars and trucks come over the border into Rwanda they have all their plastic bags confiscated. There simply aren't any of those useless, wasted plastic bags lying around everywhere like in Asia. Once you work out why things look a little different you then realise how amazingly clean the streets really are. Sure there's dirt and dust around the place but no man made mess at all, not even food scraps. I would actually say its even cleaner than Singapore! 

Hotel Rwanda

Hotel des Milles Collines was a short drive away but when we arrived I didn't recognise it at all from the movie. I didn't want to say something and possibly offend any of the staff but I am sure I was told the movie was filmed at the actual hotel. I will have to go back and watch it again to double check but I am pretty sure its not the same place. Regardless what happened in the movie, this is the place where it all happened.

(stop press: a quick check showed that the movie was filmed in South Africa so this isn't the hotel in the movie, but it is the actual place where it all happened)

Anyway, the guards told Martin the only place that was open for us check out was the 4th floor so up we went. The lift itself was one of those classic lifts where you manually open and close a hinged door. The difference was that it had no inside door which meant as you stepped in and closed the outside door, the walls and doors flashed by as the lift made its way to the desired location....watch your fingers! On top of this, the lift also had a mind of its own. We pressed 4 and were dropped off on 3. And then as we were heading down from the 4th floor (the top) we opened the doors to find a guy standing there waiting to go down. He got in on the 3rd and the lift took him up before he could go down to reception as was his first plan.

Side Note: apparently some do not believe that the General Manager did what is claimed in the Hollywood movie and that he was not the hero portrayed in the movie. Therefore he is not mentioned anywhere in the genocide museum nor does he seem to be revered as some sort of hero within Rwanda. Apparently he now lives in Belgium (don't quote me on that though).

We got a few snaps at the Milles des Colline and then headed to the Genocide Museum - actually its official name is a little confusing. The road signs and books call it the Genocide Museum but when you arrive there are signs that say the Rwanda Memorial Museum and then when you get the intro from the guide inside it is called the Rwandan Genocide Memorial Museum. Confused? Don't worry, no one really cares what you call it. They are not sensitive to the whole event in a way they you might expect. Of course they are concerned about what happened but they want to talk about it, they want to get it all out in the open. And most importantly, they want to let bygones be bygones.

Genocide Museum

The national consciousness has been turned from hatred to forgiveness. Even the ones that perpetrated the most horrific crimes against innocent children are slowly being forgiven. The guilty are being given light sentences in return for confessing their sins and actions in front of an audience of the affected. A quick history lesson on what made this all happen; the Europeans created an artificial racial definition of Hutu and Tutsi - something the Hutu and Tutsi had never done before in their centuries old history. The Europeans told the population that the minority Tutsi (defined by some arbitrary head and eye measurements) were smarter than the Hutu and therefore the Tutsi were given better jobs and prospects in return for their support of the colonial government. People were issued cards where it had to state if they were Hutu or Tutsi - none of them had ever considered themselves either Hutu or Tutsi before the Europeans made them put it down on paper. If they didn't know, they were told after some ridiculous measurements of their head shape and eye colour.

After decades of this nonsense hate groups began to form within the so-called Hutu population and over time that lead to the attempted ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi by the Hutu. In the end well over 1million people were killed, ten's of thousands were severely injured and many thousands of children were orphaned. The Genocide Museum is actually built on the site of a mass grave and it apparently has around 250,000 buried underneath it.

One very strange thing that comes from this visit is the bizarre sensation that any person you see walking down the street could easily have been part of the murdering mobs and could have easily been involved in the killing of innocent people. I guess this is part of the reason why the nation is so forgiving. So many people were involved in some way or another that if the guilty were ostracised there would be few left behind. It seems everyone in the country was directly and severely affected by the genocide so it is clear that everyone has to get it all out in the open and it seems that they are.

Next we were off for about a three hour road trip to the Gorilla Nest Lodge (and Golf Resort?!) on the outskirts of Kinigi, Rwanda. This is the home base from which Dian Fossey started researching the mountain gorillas. About 130km of winding mountain road but the main thing you notice is that there are no flat sections. Rwanda is not called "The Land of a Thousand Hills" for nothing. It is relentless. There are people walking all over the place along this drive. You could be 50kms from the nearest town or junction and there will be a steady stream of people walking to and from all sorts of places. But then its like that all over Africa.

Every now and then we spot local mass graves. They are highlighted and painted in bright colours and very close to the road so that the tourists can see them, but I suspect it is to make sure the dead are remembered as well.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful but plenty to see and ask questions about as we drive along. We arrive at the Lodge in the mid-afternoon and get the briefing on what to prepare for the early start the next day when we go trekking for gorillas!!! It looks pretty wet so we're expecting some mud and wet forest. Rina is very nervous and I am very anxious. Both of us have wanted to do this for many years and now we are less than 12hrs away!