The Rwanda study abroad group has been here for 3 days. We have learned a lot about pre-colonial Rwanda, and some foundational aspects of how the genocide of 1994 was prepared.
We visited the Kandt House Museum. Richard Kandt was a German physician who, between 1897 and 1904 he explored the North-West of German East Africa and in 1907 was appointed as a resident of Rwanda. He established Kigali as an administrative capital of Rwanda and his former house in Kigali is now a natural history museum. For me, this was a very mixed emotions kind of visit. I don't like that we are learning about Rwanda through the perspective of a German "explorer" who came to live in Rwanda. It felt kind of icky to me. But here, we did learn a great deal about the Berlin Conference of 1884, which was the major conference where several major European power countries (and at first United States, though it ended up not taking part) met to divide up all of Africa among them, with ZERO African leaders being invited to the meeting. I still marvel at this show of the Western countries just feeling like they can simply take Africa just because they wanted to. I mean, wow. It's one of the main events that set in motion so much of the infighting and corruption that occurs in Africa today. It was all started by European powers coming in and simply drawing straight lines among themselves as they wanted to and calling this land their own. The map is how it was actually divided by the time they finished in 1895. I just cannot get over the brazenness with which these leaders decided they would just take Africa. There really aren't words.
We also visited the Presidential Palace that housed the Rwandan Art Museum. This was the place where former (Hutu) Rwandan President Habyarimana lived. When his plane was struck down on April 6, 1994 by Hutu extremists, this began the genocidal killings by the Hutu in Rwanda. His plane was shot down and happened to land in his back yard. We were allowed to go in an see the shrapnel that was left from the plane crash. I had never been here before, so it was interesting to see that and consider that this was where and how the genocide started.
We also visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial on about Thursday of this week. This is always a sobering look to consider how many Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists. There is a section that shares stories of children who died in the genocide and that is...really hard to take in. It shares their names, their pictures, things like their favorite food, best friend, favorite activities and such. It humanizes these children who did not even know what was happening and, through no fault of their own, were needlessly killed by a group of people who had been brainwashed into thinking an entire ethnic group of people needed to be killed just for being Tutsi.
We also had lunch at a local Rwandan restaurants with our wonderful guide Merveille and our driver, Shema.
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