Welcome to Rwanda!

I’ve been in Kigali for a couple days now. The city is really beautiful and the people are warm and friendly. I haven’t bumped into my old dean again. Thank God. But I’ve gone out of my way to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Normally I travel alone or with one or two other people, so I was hesitant to go on this trip with 11 other people. I was already friends with most of them, but when you travel with people you get to know a different side of them. And usually it’s the worst side.

But so far, so good.

It’s an odd experience being in a place that was ravaged by genocide so recently. Walking down the streets and seeing such friendly people, who wave and smile and come up to introduce themselves, it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that many of them probably killed, maimed or raped Tutsis in the genocide, or were complicit in the crimes.

The loss and devastation was so widespread that nearly everyone was affected. But once it was over, they had to rebuild their lives on their own–without therapy or financial support. We talked to one woman whose husband and children were killed in front of her, and then a few weeks later the genocide was over and she had to go find a job as a store clerk. Even though she was dealing with unimaginable grief she had to find a way take care of herself–and there was really no government support because there was no actual government anymore. On top of that, she didn’t have much emotional support because everyone was dealing with their own loss.

I just couldn’t imagine picking myself up and carrying on with day-t0-day tasks after everything that I know and love has been taken from me. It sounds cheesy, but this experience really has left me in awe by how resilient the human spirit can be.

Anyway, today the group met with a justice on the Rwandan Supreme Court, Sam Rugege. He talked about how difficult it was to bring perpetrators to justice considering that most of the judges, lawyers and magistrates were killed during the genocide.

On Thursday we’re meeting with the President to talk about rebuilding the country post-genocide.

But for now we’ve moved on to a new city so we can go gorilla trekking tomorrow morning. Climbing up mountains for 8 hours looking for gorillas does not sound appealing to me—at all—especially since it’s $500/person to participate. But apparently, this is the only place in the world where it can be done so the group was really excited to do it. And I, being one solemn voice, had to concede to the majority.

Anyway, below are some pictures from a women’s coffee cooperative we visited yesterday. I’m obsessed with these first two kids. Obsessed.