Not all those who wander are lost - but I'll be disappointed if I don't get lost frequently!

Saturday 28 April 2012

Land of One Thousand Hills and One Million Smiles

22/04/2012
Today we crossed the border into Rwanda, and made our way to the capital, Kigali. Rwanda is a beautiful country, so green and picturesque. I'm really glad that our gorilla permits are here in Rwanda, otherwise we would have missed this beautiful place.

We rolled into Kigali around 11am, and had a couple of hours to explore the Genocide Museum before a truck lunch in the car park. The genocide museum is well worth a visit. There is some very confronting photos, videos and testimonials in the museum, but what is probably the hardest to see is a room full of photos of genocide victims, and another room full of pictures and info on child victims. One of the pictures that had stuck with me was a picture of a two year old, who was killed by being smashed against a tree.



It's so hard to believe that the genocide occurred in my lifetime, and it's only been 18 years since it happened in 1994. Rwanda was in its annual mourning period for the genocide when we were there. It's really strange to travel through the country, knowing that anyone over the age of eighteen lived through the Genocide, and that a lot of them would have seen someone killed, or even taken part in the killings. Scary stuff. But the Rwandans seem intent in not forgetting the atrocities, so that the genocide won't be repeated in the future.

After lunch we drove up through the mountains to get to Musanze, our base for the gorilla trek and the next three nights. And good news - we had dorm beds for the My group was on dinner duty, do we quickly hiked to the local market to get some sweet potato and kasava to make mash potatoes to go with our devilled sausages (recipe provided by me). The sausages seemed to be a hit.

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