Rwanda Rwanda

We left for Rwanda at five a.m. on Saturday morning. We drove to Kampala and caught the bus. I sat next to Trent, and we began talking, laughing, and telling each other random stories from childhood. Once we were a ways into our journey, the conductor got up and put a video in the cassette player. I was very impressed with the level of technology on the bus and I grew excited to watch a movie. Moments later I retracted my initial excitement. Blaring loudly throughout the bus was the most graphic, repetitive, and essentially ridiculous music I have ever heard. It was accompanied by cheap and equally as explicit music videos. Probably my favorite song was titled “If you do me, I will do you” and featured a line of women standing front to back doing pelvic thrusts in unison.

It was inevitable that during the 9 hour bus ride I would have to pee. I asked the conductor if we could stop at the next town. He shot me a side glance and yelled something to the driver in Luganda. Some time later, the bus pulled over in the middle of nowhere and people began climbing out. Trent started laughing and pointed out that it is here that the us has brought us to relieve ourselves. As I stepped out of the bus, I saw a line of men a few yards in front of me all peeing into different bushes. Heidi grabbed my hand and we began search for somewhere a bit more private. We passed Trent and David, and a series of big mama booties. Heidi was nervous and we couldn’t seem to find anywhere that was concealed. Amidst our searching, two Ugandan girls warned us that if we didn’t hurry the bus would leave us. Seconds later we heard the bus start up. We peed as fast as we could and had to jump onto the bus as it was rolling away.

A couple hours later the bus stopped again. This time, it was not for the convenience of the passengers, but because it had broken down. I got out of the bus and decided to sunbathe while crew worked on the engine. At one point, they took a handful of long stands of grass and used it to tie something together. There must have a good reason, because a short time later the bus was running and we were back on our way.

When we finally reached Rwanda we were met by Auntie Peggy’s friend, Richard. Richard is the Secretary General of the national committee of town councils and had taken the Lugazi Town Council on an educational tour. Richard became our guide for the weekend.

He took us to the hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda was based on. During the Rwandan genocide the hotel held 1,000 people seeking refuge from the chaos that was occurring just beyond the parking lot. I had expected the hotel to be a popular tourist destination because of the movie, however when we arrived, it ran just like any other hotel. There were no public tours, pamphlets, or even a plaque to commemorate the terrifying and extraordinary scene that unfolded there.

Richard spoke to the management, and a few moments later the hotel technician came to talk with us. He had also been the technician in 1994. Because there had been so many people, and thus a huge strain on all the technology in the hotel, the manager sent an armored car to pick the technician and his family. They crossed three road blocks, an extremely dangerous feat at the time. Once at the hotel, the technician only came out of the lobby twice. He hid in the hotel with his wife and children. He even had a child born there. His wife was among a group of people who got on a truck that was supposed to transfer them to a safer location in a refugee camp. On the way there, the van was stopped by militia and the passengers were almost killed. After many tense moments and heavy negotiation, the van was sent back with all of its passengers. Of the 1,000 inhabitants of the hotel, none were killed. This is an absolutely miraculous anomaly of the genocide.

The next day, we were taken to a National museum, and then we drove from about two hours out to another memorial in Murambi. As I have written in my previous blog, the memorial in situated on a hill in the most beautiful village of rolling hills that the mind could image. The memorial site was once going to be a technical school, but right before it was completed Hutus began their extermination of the Tutsi. At Murambi, 50,000 Tutsis were murdered in one day in an act of genocide. The bodies were put in mass graves dug out my machines provided for by the French government. The graves were covered in sand a used as a volleyball court for French troops. Once the government was stabilized and the threat of genocide had ceased, the villagers uncovered the graves. They did want the bodies to remain in that degrading state, and they didn’t want the mass murder to be covered up and forgotten. So, the covered the bodies in lime powder and placed them in the unfinished classrooms.

We were taken to one of the classrooms, and to our horror, the bodies were still laying there on tables. There were rows of bodies after bodies, all laying in poses of horror. Many of them still had clothes on and many still had hair. I was overwhelmed with the trauma of facing so many dead people, and I had to step out of the room. I began to walk down the pathway of classrooms and realized that they were all filled with bodies. One room was designated to little babies. As I stood in that doorway, my eyes welling with tears, one of the staff members came up to me. He explained that many of the babies were not initially killed when the Hutu attack. They were simply thrown into the mass graves alive, and left to die slowly.

We walked out to one of the fields and Linda told us her story which I have shared with you. We also heard for another one of the four survivors: He had help put up the small resistance against the Hutu when the killing first began in Murambi. During the fighting he was shot in the head and buried under a pile of bodies in near one of the classrooms. Miraculously, he did not die, but woke up at night once the Hutu had left. He crawled out towards freedom, more scared than he said is possible to explain, agonizing for his dead loved ones that were scattered all around him. He headed for the Burundi boarder crawling at night and hiding during the day. After many days and in a state of severe malnutrition and dehydration, he reached the Burundi boarder and waited out the turmoil in a refugee camp. He returned to Murambi, and says he could never leave it.

The morning we were to leave Rwanda, the taxi driver was late and we were scrabbling at the bus park. Jackie got everyone on the bus and I stayed to pay the bus driver. As I was discussing the price with him, I heard Tori yell “Ashley, get on the bus!” I turned to see the bus pulling out of the parking lot. I threw money at the taxi driver and booked it to the bus. I jumped in as the bus was rolling down the street. I got the very last seat on the bus which was next to the largest Ugandan I have seen yet. His thighs were the size of my entire body. I couldn’t even sit normally in the chair, but had to sit sideways with my feet in the aisle. As I was contemplating how uncomfortable I was going to be during that 9-hour bus ride the man in the chair across from me leaned over and peed on my foot.

I sat there completely confused about what just happened. I grown man just peed on my foot. He peed on my foot! Right in the middle of the bus. I moaned in disgust and was so relieved when the bus stopped at the boarder and we off-boarded to go through immigration. At the boarder, we discovered that our visas were not for multiple entry and we needed to pay another $50 to reenter Uganda. Almost none of us had 50 US dollars on us. So, we began pooling out money in the random currencies that we had: Euro, Pounds, Dollars, Ugandan Shillings, Rwandan, and Francs. In the mass confusion I thought that I had got everyone a visa, and I bought one for myself. I turned to run to the bus so that I didn’t miss is again to find David and Corbin had not received visas.

I knew that I had to go to the nearby city of Kibale and get money out for the boys. A guy who I had seen talking to Jackie and Corbin, and whom I assumed was staff of the bus company rushed me into a hired car. I figured he would drive me to the bus which I would ride to Kibale. Once we had been driving a few minutes, I realized that he was not with the bus company and that he was just a private hire. I got a bit nervous, and checked my phone to discover that I was out of air time. Luckily it all worked out and I was able to get the boys across the boarder and we caught a public bus back to Kampala. However, the new bus we were on stopped at each small village to pick up new passengers, many of which would stand or sit in the aisle.