Tuesday - Dec 16

We have successfully made our way to the airport in Kigali tonight, awaiting our departure. Yes, I do have a seat on the plane! We had been told yesterday that during my efforts to leave early due to the loss of Jon's sister, my original ticket had been "cancelled". I thought for a day that I might be spending Christmas in the Congo.

We visited the Genocide museum in Kigali today. This represents the loss of over a million lives in Rwanda in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi people. It is so difficult to imagine that just 14 years ago the very city we were in was covered in bloodshed. People fled to churches as a safe haven, only to be slaughtered while inside. Women, men and children known to be of the Tutsi clan were killed by Hutu militia, neighbors and government troops. It is felt that the rest of the world did nothing to stop this from happening even though UN peacekeeping troops had predicted a large scale tragedy would occur without intervention. The room dedicated to the lives of children lost during the genocide is of course, especially heart wrenching. The children were killed to stop the "next generation" of Tutsis. There were over 300,000 orphans due to the killing of their Tutsi parents.

Rwanda seems to have made great strides in physically recovering from the devastation of the genocide. Kigali is a beautiful city, schools, roads and other infrastructure have been rebuilt. The lives shattered are still recovering. The purpose of the genocide museum is to create awareness of genocide, honor the lives lost, and prevent genocide from happening anywhere in the future. As I think about the conflict in Congo, I fear that the DRC could be heading in a similar direction. The conflict is supposedly related to land disputes and tribal differences between the Tutsis, and the Hutus that fled into the DRC after the killing in Rwanda. The rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, is a Tutsi.

In the museum, this was written:
There will be no humanity without forgiveness,
There will be no forgiveness without justice,
But justice will be impossible without humanity.
Yolande Mulcagasana

The plane is now boarding, safe journey.
Mungu akubariki-
Lisa