Friday 12 March - Field visit

Today I went on a field visit in the south of Rwanda. To be honest I don't remember the name of the place but it is situated about an hours drive straight south out of Kigali towards the border to Burundi. Here the country side is strikingly different from the northern and eastern parts of the country. The terrain is more flat and bushy, almost like semi-savanna and the area is not as densly populated. We were in luck because the weather was very good, sunny and warm.

When we arrived in the village we were shown a very interesting project. One of Sida's civil society partners is bringing cheap electricity to villages by installling solar panels and teaching the inhabitants in these villages how to use and maintain the equipment. Another organisation has built all the 110 houses in the village.




Four of the women were sent to India for 6 months to learn how to operate and maintain the equipment. These women have the responsibility of training women from other villages so that the knowledge can spread throughout Rwanda. These women also manage a fund where all the families in the village have to contribute 1000 RwF every month to pay for the maintenance of the equipment.



This woman showed us how it all works and what they do. The solar panels are on the roof of the houses and are connected to batteries which are charged with the electricity that is generated. Every house get two lamps to ligth up the house and one mobile lantern that can be brought along when going to the citchen or the outside lavatories. If charged for 12 hours the lantern will last for a whole week.



On this black-board were written down a guide for the work they do. I don't really know what the purpose is since none of the women could read or write... It is also a great achievement that they managed to learn all this is a foreign country without understanding the language!



The woman also really wanted to show us her house. This is in the bedroom where she now has electricity and can charge her mobile phone or listen to the radio. The houses are small but the standard is not bad. She also had a mosquito net which is a luxury for many people in this country.



This is the yard behind the house. The small house to the left is the citchen. It seems like the citchen is always situated in a separate building here. In the middle is the shelter for the cow. This woman is obviously quite well off.

After the visit in the village we went to two genocide memorial sites that were on the way back to Kigali. During the killings a lot of people sought refuge in the churches where they thought they would be protected either by the priests or by God himself maybe. Both of these memorials are churches where people had gathered but couldn't be protected. They were all slaughtered and these memorials serve as reminders of the atrocities mankind is capable of and to send the message: never again!

Church 1




In this church about 10 000 people gathered and hid for a whole week before the interahamwe attacked it with grenades and broke in. It's unbelievable to think that that many people managed to fit in this small space and I can only imagine how many people were already dead from starvation and diseases when the killers entrered the building. Layed out on the benches are the clothes from all these people that lost their lives here. Only five persons survived this massaker.



In the crypt of the church are some of the remains layed out together with personal belongings and the notorious identity cards people were forces to use. The first thing written on them underneath the picture is the racial belonging, either hutu, tutsi, twa or other. There is also a coffin containing the reamins of a woman that was brutally raped and then impaled in front of the terrified crowd of people next in line to die.



Outside the church are the mass graves where most of the people are burried. Here lies the reamins of more than 40 000 people from the surrounding area and the number increases every year as more remains are found. Every year on genocide memorial day (7 April) the remains found during the year are layed to rest here during a traditional ceremony. The color purple represents sorrow and white stands for hope.

Church 2




The second church is much smaller than the first. About 5000 people gathered here in this little space and only 10 persons survived. Here also the clothes of the people who died here have been hung in the ceiling and on the walls.



Unlike in the other church all the bones have been layed out on display inside the church and have not been burried in mass graves. It was not until 2007 that the clothes were separated from the remains and ordered in this manner. Most of the sculls have big wholes in them and the evidence of violence is present on most of the bones you see.



The walls are littered with wholes like this from grenade explosions. As well as in the other church this is how the killers managed to get into the church.





People brought food, cooking utensils and all they owned to the church showing that they had planned to hide out there for a longer period of time.




This banner reads: If you knew yourself and if you knew me, you would never have killed me.