An Exciting Weekend (with pictures!)

My weekend was full of unexpected adventures, and I am exhausted from all of the “fun.” I’ll try to make the update brief.

On Friday evening I went with my housemates to our next door neighbor’s house. It was a group of ex-pats having a house party. It was very interesting, because after talking to another girl named Liz from D.C. (small world), I learned that there are a couple very distincts groups of ex-pats in the country, but the main segregator being the length of stay.  As a matter of fact, I was introduced to someone as, “This is Liz She’s only going to be here a month, but we can still like her!” I was a bit offended, but I can understand not wanting to become invested with people who are just going to turn around and leave shortly. Anyway, it was interesting.

I slept in a bit Saturday and then decided to go with my housemate Laura (a Canadian here as a micro-finance fellow with Kiva) on an outing. We were so excited to have an adventure and get out of the city a little, so we went to the town centre, follow some guy up some side roads until we came to a “bus stop” that had a bus going to Nyamata in an hour. We paid our dues, climbed on, and sat with almost 20 other people on the tiny, rickety bus until we got to our destination about 45 minutes south of Kigali. Nyamata has a genocide memorial we wanted to visit. The landscape was beautiful on the way there. I think the best way to describe it is to combine the hills and exotic flora of Hawaii with the lollybottoms of Arkansas. We passed banana plantations, and a few villages, along with Rwandans walking along the side of the road carrying water from the river.

Some Pics of the Bus

The genocide memorial at Nyamata was horrible to see. It is a catholic church that held 6,800 tutsis inside and another 4,000 in the surrounding grounds. All in all, over 10,000 were killed there in some of the most graphic and despicable ways imaginable in one day. Only seven survived. Our guide, who was 9 at the time, was one of them. The memorial was extremely graphic, with all of the victims clothes, skulls and bones in different parts. I’ll spare you the rest of the details. So terrible, but so necessary to be there so people will see and it will never happen again.

We walked back through Nyamata and took in some of the sights: a football game, an adorable little girl carrying jugs of water, and some trees that I can only describe as “Dr. Suess Trees” (credit on the name to Laura). Check them out, they were everywhere. I still have no idea what they are.

After returning, though I was exhausted, I went with Andrea and one of our Rwandan friends, Lauren, and two of his friends to a dinner following a wedding reception. It was quite the cultural activity. Apparently earlier in the day, they held a church wedding, a reception of traditional Rwandan dance, and this event (which traditionally is held one week after the wedding) was where the bride’s family comes to check on her and make sure she is happy (in more ways than one, apparently.) Anyway, the groom’s family was all seated and then the bride’s family paraded in with gifts, and then the two dads talked to each other for an extremely long time across the room on microphones. Then both families get up to go get the bride and groom from their room and bring them out. Finally, we got served a traditional meal, which was in fact delicious. A few more speeches, toasts, and jokes later (3 hours later), and it was over.

Traditional Rwandan "dressy" outfits. The Groom's family is to the right.

Andrea and I at the wedding with Vincent

Finally, on Sunday we attended church (an English service that wasn’t too much different) and grabbed lunch and then went with our Rwandese-American friend Arthur to a restaurant/resort near the border of Burundi. We ate their specialty: a tomato-based stew with local chicken, spaghetti and cooked bananas. It was actually delicious. They use bananas and plantains here in some of the same ways we would potatoes (they also have potatoes, but definitely will mash and bake some bananas). The resort was pretty abandoned, as it’s about 10 miles through very rough dirt road with no infrastructure from the main road to get there. Kind of sad because they have some great food.

Anyway, that’s the short version of my weekend. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to read the long version? I hope all is well.