Many thanks to our new friends Joe and Jenny for taking us on a day trip to Butare. Butare is near the Rwanda/Burundi border and around a 2.5 hour drive from Kigali. We stopped off at the National Museum and a craft store. We had lunch at a hotel/restaurant that Joe knew about (he works for USAID and has been around many parts of Rwanda for work). The restaurant had exceptionally good French onion soup. On our way back, we found a pottery "factory" which is run by a church and disabled people but it had closed for the day. We [View Full Entry]

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Though Butare is only about 2 hours from Kigali, all the morning minibus departures seem to be at 6AM. Since the WLP was written, the town has been officially renamed to Huye (part of a nationwide renaming program for reasons I was unable to determine) - I buy my ticket from the counter labelled Butare but board a minibus signed Huye. I doze and listen to music as the tarmac road takes us through more green hills. Butare is a small, clean town that is home to the national university. Within Rwanda, it had long had a reputation for tolerance, and [View Full Entry]

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Sorry I didn't get a chance to make a post yesterday; we were very busy. Yesterday we drove down Butare along with a journalist from Boston who is here to do a story on the genocide and Rwanda's reconciliation. Along the way the mountains gave way to wide valleys with large rolling hills. Butare is Rwanda's second-largest city and was the former colonial captial of the Belgian territory of Rwanda-Urundi. In 1962 the capital was moved to Kigali because of its central location. Butare was the largest city at the time, but today Kigali is many times larger. After walking around [View Full Entry]

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Not having any expectations for this trip was probably a good thing! My Rwandan life so far has been full of surprises and challenges and it's only been a week. On Monday, June 5th, myself and another med student from NOSM named Julie left from Toronto to head over to Rwanda to complete a 4 week medical placement with the International Federation of Medical Students. I was to be placed in surgery, while Julie was going to be spending her time in internal medicine. On our way to Rwanda, we had a 14 hour stop over in Amsterdam which was incredible. [View Full Entry]

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Hi all! This is just a brief blog about Rwanda to bring my East African account to a close! I am actually back in sunny Shropshire, UK, at the moment, gearing up for my year of work in Human Rights in Mexico. I set off April 20th. I hope to keep the blog going out there! One thing I've decided to do in future is to list my location as the most appropriate for the blog I'm writing. ie. I am not in Rwanda at the moment but have listed my location as Rwanda as that is where I'm writing about, [View Full Entry]

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Na wigilii bylysmy same - z nasza amerykanska znajoma, na pieknie przygotowanym tarasie z widokiem na jezioro. Tylko telefon do warszawy sprawil i rodzina jedzaca sledzika sprawily, ze przekonalysmy sobie, ze swieta nie sa jakims naszym urojeniem spowodowanym ugryzieniem przez muche tse tse. Potem przyszly dwie grupy lokalnych gosci, ale zanim sie zorientowalysmy, wyczyscili bufet niczym szarancza i sobie poszli. Bylo tradycyjnie: szaszlyki z grilla, kurczak, paskudna ryba. Pieczone kartofelki, ktore potem zastapily frytki. Na deser nalesniki z miodemi salatka owocowa. Popite piwem primus. Dzi [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at the gates to find the place seemingly deserted. Looking at our watches we concluded that the memorial center would probably open soon enough. We walked up the long entranceway to the main building looking for anyone who might know when the center opened. I gazed around the grounds thinking how normal the school looked. Essentially, it looks the same as it did back in April of 1994. Had I not been told, I would have never guessed that this open hilltop was the sight of one of the worst single acts of genocide in modern day history. After [View Full Entry]

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Dû à des contraintes techniques et autres problèmes, ce texte aurait dû être publié le jeudi 14 août, veille de mon départ de Butare Voila, ca y est. Le jour que j'apprehende depuis plusieurs semaines est bel et bien arrive. J'entends le glas de la condamnation, inexorable et froid, un rappel incessant que demain, je quitte le Rwanda. Quitter ces montagnes, ce pays si calme et verdoyant, ces gens si chaleureux. Quitter ce monde que j'ai appris a aimer et a connaitre, un peu. Le voir peu à peu s'éloigner comme une barque glissant loin du rivage, disparaissant dans la brume, [View Full Entry]

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Ce fut un heureux hasard ou destin qui choisit de m'envoyer, entre toutes les villes du Rwanda, a Butare. Parmi toutes celles que j'ai eu l'occasion de visiter, elle demeure mon coup de coeur. Bien que la deuxieme en importance apres Kigali et le centre intellectuel du pays puisqu'on y retrouve l'Universite nationale, il y a regne une ambiance de petit village chaleureux. Il est rare que j'y marche sans rencontrer un connaissance qui me salue. Autour du centre-ville delimite par le marche et les deux hotels pour les touristes incapables de se priver du luxe occidental, s'etend, d'un cote le [View Full Entry]

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Alors que ma derniere semaine (et la, c'est vraiment definitif) au CHUB en chirurgie se terminait avant-hier et que je ne m'emeus meme plus lorsque je dois arracher des lambeaux de peau brules sur le bras d'une fillette qui hurle de douleur ou lorsque qu'une mere de famille arrivant avec un bebe joufflu sur le dos ecarte les jambes pour nous montrer son anus litteralement englouti par une tumeur sanguignolente, infectee et qui a meme envahi son vagin deforme par une dechirure non reformee lors de son dernier accouchement, je crois qu'il me faut cesser de m'attarder a toutes les lacunes [View Full Entry]

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