Rwandan Genocide
Trip Start
Jul 16, 2008
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18
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Trip End
Aug 12, 2008
We visited the Genocide Memorial in Kigali and the church in Nymata today. After that we drove approximately 2 hours north of Kigali to Ruhengeri and stayed at the Gorillas Nest Hotel. The Genocide Memorial is modern and very well done. It has mass graves for about 250,000, beautiful gardens and a moving somber museum. It explains, as well as anyone can, the history of the genocide. 30 km south of Kigali is the village of Nymata. A Catholic church there was the site where 10,000 people were killed. The church has been preserved the way it was right after the killings. It is an incredibly powerful and sad place. The clothes of the victims are piled on the benches in the church while the bones of hundreds or thousands are in cellars behind the church. Charles, one of the few survivors of the killing in the church, was our guide through the site.
