February 20th, 2011

So its been awhile since ive blogged. We have been very busy so its been hard to find time to gather my thoughts and sit down to write on this. Im not really much of a blogger, but I like being able to reflect on what I’ve seen and be able to look back at it.

The past week I have been in Rwanda. Our program wanted us out of Uganda during the elections. Museveni won the elections by about 70% and is president of Uganda, once again. There has been some violence that broke out on Friday, the day of the elections.  Praying that everything will be peaceful from here on out, yet it does scare me a bit with all of these protests beginning all over the world. It seems like Egypt started a hip new trend).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isKOU1oeNRc

http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/uganda:-2-dead,-71-injured-as-vote-counting-gets-underway-in-uganda-201102192220.html

Rwanda is nothing like Uganda. Well, I shouldn’t say that, but from being here just a week, I can say that Kigali is nothing like Kampala. Kigali is unbelievably clean, there are garbagecans on the sidewalks, imagine that. It’s green and lush on the outskirts of the city with very impressive, perfectly divided crop fields.  It’s cooler here and I’ve woken up to rain almost every morning. There are many white people here too, way more than I thought. The bodabodas (motorcycle taxi drivers) actually wear helmets and have helmets for their passengers. There are stop lights here—And drivers actually stop at them!  The city is not as busy or overcrowded as Kampala.

Its been a pretty emotionally draining week. We visited three genocide memorial sites. We visited all three in the same day, which was a lot to handle. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I saw at these sites, it almost made me sick. It was difficult seeing the skulls, the bones, and the blood stained clothing with multiple machete holes in many of them. I’ll never forget the feeling I had at these sites...I can’t describe it.  It was just unbelievable. It was so hard to actually be at the churches that tens of thousands of refugees/Tutsis/and hutus have been killed at. Many fled to hide in the churches thinking the Interahamwe wouldn’t kill in a holy place, yet they bombed, raped, and killed anyway. And the burial sites where hundreds of thousands of bodies are placed was very hard to see. Emily said something at the end of one of our memorial site visits that really struck me. The last room had pictures of many of the children who lost their lives during the genocide…and its so crazy that these toddlers would be around my age if they were still alive. 

What’s incredible to me is the development that has occurred in just 17 years since the genocide.  It’s amazing what good governance can do within a country after such a tragedy.  I walk on the streets in amazement, its aerie knowing that these are the same streets that many of the one million who have been killed may have walked on. And the same streets that these 800,000-million may have been shot, beaten, raped, tormented, and killed on.  Maybe it’s that Kampala is so overpopulated, but It is kind of strange…Kigali does feel a little empty.

I bought a Ugandan soccer jersey and ‘vote for museveni’ tshirt as well as colorful African printed fabric that we are planning on making into dresses. One of our program advisors knows a tailor back in Kampala that we visit to get custom made dresses so I’m excited to come back to America sporting some sweet African attire.   Before I left, Kathleen (a fabulous woman I used to nanny for) told me that I better not come back wearing crazy African dresses and head wraps. “That will never be cool and hip in America, don’t even think about it” haha well I already failed in that because I’m obsessed with the fashion style here. While Ugandans and Rwandans seem to be producing more and more 2^nd hand malls filled with outdated Target and American Eagle branded clothing, I’m hoping to find some traditional African printed clothes. I’ve never seen SO many rhinestone-studded Obama shirts in my life. Just walking down the streets, Ugandans will shout at me one of two things:  “mazungu!” or “obamaaaaa!” haha. About a week ago my host sister took me to this mall-type shopping center, and they sold Barbies, all of them were white. Western culture has such a huge influence on many of the shopping centers that Ive seen so far.

Things I love about Rwanda so far:

• The free wifi coffee shop that im at, eating the best salad with so much avocado. I miss fresh veggies so much. I’m pretty sick of African food already. Its just the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. So many starchy matokay, potatoes, fries, rice.
• the dance clubs playing a remix of ‘oh nana whats my name’ with some sick African beat
• dace offs with rwandans
• fuseball tournaments. havent been able to win against a rwandan yet. so thats my goal before I head back to Uganda.
• How clean it is
• the weather. the rain
• MY GROUP.

D

That’s all for now, next week we are doing a rural homestay in Western Uganda which ive been looking forward to all trip! Yay for no electricity, no running water, no showers, no toilets. Rwanda has been a wonderful change of pace, a nice break from the crazy, busy streets of kampala. Its very nice here, its going to be interesting to go from here to staying in a rural village—but I can’t wait! ALSO a week from today I will finally see elephants!!!! We are going on a safari excursion. I may jump out of the safari van and run with the elephants. Peace outttt