We left the hotel at 8AM for the airport terminal, just a 5 minute drive. We got checked in and through customs. We hadn’t had breakfast at the hotel because we were going to have a long wait at the airport for our flight. We planned to go to the airport lounge for breakfast. The lounge was at the very other end of the airport. It seemed like it was about 5 miles away from our gate. It was the worst lounge we have ever been in. A review we found online described the food as salmonella on a plate. Needless to say we didn’t stay long, althought the cappucino was good. We headed to our gate and just waited for the flight. The Air Kenya pilots decided to go on strike that day so our flight on Air Rwanda was full with people being rerouted.
We sat next to a Rwandan gentleman who had been in Kenya studying for a masters in IT. He described a fairly dire educational system in which they were teaching him IT theory but nothing practical. We tried to figure out how to help him, but so far we don’t have any ideas. We also met a swiss woman and her two children. Interestingly she had heard a lot about Rick’s cousin, Bruno Manser. I guess he is quite famous.
We were met at the plane by an agent of our travel company who helped us through immigration and then took us to a lounge where we had a covid PCR test. The covid test was not to enter the country, it was to ensure we weren’t sick so we could see the gorillas. Both our tests were negative.
Outside the airport we met our guide, Hussein. He took us to lunch in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, at a 5 star restaurant in a hotel. Our initial impressions of Rwanda and Kigali are very good. The roads are in great shape. The houses look much better. People are not so skinny. We are told that 90% of the country has electricity. Hussein told us that he really likes the president, who in Hussein’s opinion has done a great job of rebuilding the country after the 1994 genocide. Hussein’s son is going to university and he expects his daughter to go too. It was very different from our impressions after having spoken with the IT student on the plane.
Other interesting facts about Rwanda: Rwanda is called the land of 1000 hills and is home to 13 million people, 1.5 million of whom live in Kagali. 90% of the people are Chrisitans, 50% Catholic, it used to be higher but some Catholic priests and nuns participated in the genocide, so many people left the Catholic church and 5% Muslim. Girls must be over 21 years old to get married. Women represent 64% of parliament and hold 50% of government jobs. They have nationalized healthcare. In Kagali there are lots of mopeds, most of which act as “taxis.” People know they are taxis because the drivers wear red vests.
After lunch we went to the genocide museum. It was overwhelming to learn that one million people were killed in 100 days. We learned that there really wasn’t any difference between the Tutsis and the Hutus. It was a convention created by the Germans and later the Belgium, colonizers of Rwanda. They designated anyone who had more than 10 cows as a Tutsi and everyone else was a Hutu. Then the colonizers created a culture of hatred between the two groups. After Rwanda gained its freedom in 1962 the politicians intensified the culture of hatred and planned the genocide using Nazi techniques. They had youth soldiers in neighboring countries learning how to massacre people. On April 6, 1994 the president’s plane was shot down and the Hutus blamed the Tutsis. They had set up roadblocks by that night to hunt down the Tutsis. No one ever learned who shot the plane down, but it is believed that it was the Hutus because they were able to initiate the roadblocks and the killings so quickly. The world and the UN stood by and did nothing to help the Tutsis. There were neighbors killing neighbors and even family killing family. Even the catholic priests and nuns joined it! After several months Rwandans, Tutsis and moderate Hutus who had fled the country, organized to invade and stop the killing. The stories from survivors were haunting. As a result of the genocide, there were about 400,000 orphans. Many women had been raped by knowingly HIV positive men.
The museum highlighted some other genocides, including the Nazi genocide and the Cambodian genocide instigated by Pol Pot, and is part of a foundation that tries to educate people about the roots of genocide and prevention of future genocides. There was a traditional saying higlighted on one of the walls that I really liked, “A tree can only be straightended when it is young.” So true!
We watched Hotel Rwanda before we left and apparently the movie does not tell the entire story. According to Hussein the hotel manager made people pay to stay at the hotel and if they couldn’t pay he made them leave to be slaughtered. The real manager is in prison today.
After the museum we drove for about 2 ½ hours to Ruhengeri, which is where our hotel is located. We drove through lots of little towns and lots of farm land. Sinilar to our experience in Madagasgar, trucks struggling up the hills really slowed us down.
It rained much of the way and was pouring when we arrived. We got checked in and had a lovely dinner. Here are pictures of our hotel.
