Kigali

Kigali is the capital of Rwanda. A small country in the heart of Africa. I went to Rwanda the first time in 2004. It was this trip that made me fall in love with Africa. Africa not as just a dark continent full of poverty, corruption, disease and crime, but Africa as truly human at a level we seem to have long forgotten here. I swore to myself that if I should ever get the opportunity to go back for a bit longer and do something productive there I would. This happened in August 2006 when I went down for an internship in school management with the Belgian development organisation VVOB (based in Kigali).

I travelled all over the country during my two visits. I lived in Kigali where I worked. I went from the Akagera Park to Kibungo and Gisenyi (right at Lake Kivu on the border to the Dem.Rep. of Congo, across from Goma) and all the way up to Ruhengeri and the Volcano National Park to visit the wild gorillas. I swam in Lake Kivu, at the Milles Collines and the Umubano, broke down crying at the genocide memorial (and was comforted by complete strangers), worked with the most beautiful children you could ever imagine, I saw a live Cuban Band perform at a Thai restaurant, I lived up New Year’s at a packed club, ate at the best Indian place and drove around for hours with Ze as we explored the city of Kigali and the route to Gisenyi.

Kigali, population 851,024 (2005), is the capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is situated in the centre of the nation, and has been the economic, cultural, and transport hub of Rwanda since it became capital at independence in 1962. The main home and offices of the president, are located in the city, as are the government ministries. The city is coterminous with the province of Kigali City, which was enlarged in January 2006 as part of local government reorganisation in the country.

The Milles Collines hotel played a major role during the genocide of 94, the movie hotel Rwanda is set here and based on the true story of the heroic Paul Rusesabagina:

The genocide memorial is an extremely moving memorial dedicated to the victims of the 94 genocide. Over a million people were slaughtered in less than a 100 days. Everyone you meet has suffered unimaginable losses and witnessed scenes we wouldn’t be able to even remotely picture in our worst nightmares. The big cement blocks in the picture below are mass graves where 250,000 victims lay buried. The vast majority of them still unidentified and the graves still being filled 14 years after.

As the website of the genocide memorial describes it:

“The murderers used machetes, clubs, guns, and any blunt tool they could find to inflict as much pain on their victims as possible. It was genocide from the first day. No Tutsi was exempt.

Women were beaten, raped, humiliated, abused and ultimately murdered, often in the sight of their own families.

Children watched as their parents were tortured, beaten and killed in front of their eyes, before their own small bodies were sliced, smashed, abused, pulverised and discarded.

The elderly, the pride of Rwandan society, were despised, and mercilessly murdered in cold blood.
Neighbours turned on neighbours, friends on friends, even family on their own family members.
Rwanda had turned into a nation of brutal, sadistic, merciless killers, and of innocent victims -
overnight.”

* Disclaimer: not my own photographs.