From Paige: Day 1 in Rwanda

While it is only 72 hours since my plane took off from Newark, I feel like I have already experienced so much more than that time span could fill. There is so much I can write about but I will just pick a few special ones so I can post this before the internet connection drops.

On Friday, we woke up and had breakfast together before heading to the Kigali Memorial Centre. The museum was an incredible place. It walks you through the story of Rwanda, from early in time, before the fighting began, and through time from European colonization, the genocide and to today. As you would expect, it was an incredibly emotional experience. I know the story (as best as one who did not experience it can know) but it still stuns me as to how long the planning was in place, how the government started planning for the 1994 genocide around 30 years earlier and they moved forward with their evil to make it a horrible reality. In addition to the “story walk” there are two rooms that are distinct – there is the room you walk through that talks through many of the other genocides that have occurred in the world and you can see the similar behaviors leading up to the event, and in all cases, nothing or at least nothing significant enough, was done to stop things before they occurred. Another room was one I could barely stay in. There were pictures of children that had died in the genocide and each plaque with their picture also had personal information like their favorite food, their best friend and how they died.
This plaque is outside:

And these are mass graves for the many many people who died in the Kigali area:

Later in the day we headed to the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, as Anne put it the morning was to remind us of why we are doing what we are doing. It was an amazing, important experience. At the village we got a tour of the grounds – the farm with a wonderful assortment of fruits as well as some animals. The land is absolutely gorgeous and it is incredible what has been done there in only 5 years. Below is a picture of one of the views, not even the nicest one except this one has Rob doing a pose for the picture and the one below that is some of the housing.

We ended our day with Village Time. Once a week, the entire village gets together in the dining hall for an event that is managed by kids. They have various groups come up to discuss what they are doing, they might show a presentation someone created or celebrate people’s birthday’s (they do birthday celebrations once a month like we do at Liquidnet – except they call all the birthday celebrants up to the front and sing to them). It was so much fun to be a part of that. It is amazing (yes, that is my word of the trip) how many of these kids did not know how to speak English and are now comfortable getting up in front of a room of 350+ people and mc the night. It is impressive and incredibly inspiring. (the picture below definitely does not do it justice)