Rwanda 2011 Day 4

---

Sorry this is so late - we have had internet issues.

WARNING - today's entry is not for the faint of heart!

Today we had breakfast at the guest house again.  The same breakfast: 3 pieces of white bread, 1 small but very sweet banana, and some eggs (I would guess 3 - they are scrambled into an empty omelet shape so it is hard to tell but looks about the size of a 3 egg omelet minus the insides).

At 8 am We were picked up by our driver and were taken to two different genocide memorials.  This was going to be a lesson in humility in several ways.  first lesson was that I should know more of the language of the country I am going to visit and try to do some sightseeing in.  What a typical, arrogant American I am, "They will all speak English!". Our driver's English was better than my Kinyarwanda, but we had a lot of difficulty trying to communicate about where we where going, how far apart the two places were, even "
How do you know Pastor Simon?". The next lesson I humility was the visit to the genocide memorials - a lesson about what ANY person is capable of, if pushed to the extreme.

Ntarama - this was a Catholic Church were over 5,000 people were killed.  They have the bones of many of the people on a rack: the long bones on the top rack, the skulls on the middle rack, and the pelvis bones on the bottom rack.  You can see, by the different wounds on the skulls, the different ways that people died.
They still have the clothing of the people hanging on the walls of the church.  They also have the mattresses that people were sleeping on, their suitcases, and other things like thermoses and other items that they had brought to the church with them on display.
They showed us holes in the building, from the inside and the outside, where grenades had been used to get into the church.
we also saw the Sunday school classroom.  This was where a lot of children were hiding.  (WARNING- skip ahead if you want). The lady pointed out a stain on the back wall of this room where the infants had been thrown against the wall to be killed.  (I only pray that God was merciful and that they died on impact and did not suffer!)  We were not allowed to take pictures inside of the buildings, but I think I will remember that stain for a long time, if not the rest of my life! 

Nyamata - this was also a catholic church.  Evidently the Tutsi people fled to churches and government buildings where they thought they would be safe.  Most of the time this was not the case, and they were killed.  Sometimes the priests died trying to defend the Tutsis, and other times (this madness affected most of the people, unfortunately including priests) the priests let the killers in.
This church was the site of 10,080 deaths.  Grenades were used to break into the front door, and the grenades were used inside to kill theTutsi since there were too many to run around and kill individually with machetes.  A significant number of theTutsis were still killed by hand.  Outside this church there is a mass grave site, where the 10,080 are buried, but also many other bodies.  People are still bringing bodies once a year for a ceremonial burial. 
There was one woman who was especially hated by the Hutu. Our guide did not say why, only that once she was captured, she was tortured more than others and killed in a specially gruesome way.  (This is a story that needs to be shared in person, not on the web.)  She had a private coffin in the display area to honor her for what she had been put through.
There was also a special grave just outside the church for an Italian woman named Tonia Locatelli who had been very vocal in trying to prevent the genocide from happening - so she was murdered in 1992 - 2 years before the genocide occurred!

We returned to our guest house and We rested and read for a while.  At 3:30 pm we decided to walk down the road to see what type of food we could find.  We found a restaurant with a buffet line.  There was brown colored rice with sweet spices almost like nutmeg and such.  There was white rice.  Then came the starches:  There was something yellow that looked like mashed sweets potatoes, but it stuck together more like PlayDoe.  There was a white substance that looked like mashed potatoes but tasted different and was more rubbery. There were potatoes, matoke (a banana that is more starchy like a potato), and a purple looking potato that had a smokey flavor to it. Of course they had the Rwandan version of french fries, and then your choice of fish (higher price) or beef. Christina says that the beef was rather tough and fatty, which it was, but hey, this IS Africa!

After dinner we did some reading and then bible study together.
Another semi lazy day.  Tomorrow starts the real work - sight seeing and resting over, and clinic work to begin.  This starts with the 3 hr drive from Kigali to Gisenyi.  I pray that I will be able to do good teaching, that we will have many patients and that the doctor(s) and nurses are there so that I can teach.  I will also be learning a lot from them as well!

---