Last 10 Days

On June 29, 2008 Martha, my wife, joined me for my last 10 days in Rwanda. We were very happy to see each other after being apart for three and one half months. We visited the beautiful garden at the Mille Collines Hotel (of Hotel Rwanda fame) and the Genocide Memorial in Kigali where 254,000 people are buried. Next we visited the camps where I worked and stayed one night at each guest house. The staffs of the camps organized a farewell meeting with speeches and gave me a wooden mask, wooden map of Rwanda, carved milk bottle, woven map of Africa, woven basket and hand bag.

The last week we spent as tourists seeing parts of Rwanda I had not seen during my work. We traveled two hours from Kigali to the eastern border to see Akagara Park. Here we saw giraffes, hippos, water buffalo antelope, impalas, fish eagles, monkeys, baboons a few and other animals. This park has only a few elephants and lions due to settlement of refugees from Uganda and Tanzania in the park after the war of 1994.This created competition for land and poaching. The park is expanding the number of animals through protection and bringing in more animals.
The next day we traveled by taxi to Butare, the former capital and current university town. Unfortunately the king’s palace and national museum were closed due to a holiday. The taxi took us to the southwest part of the country to a large rainforest called Nyungwe National Park where we spent two nights. We hiked through bright green colored tea fields and the forest to a waterfall and viewed Colobus monkeys and a few birds.

The following morning we hiked four kilometers to a bus stop where we squeezed into the front of the bus for a six and three fourths hour ride on gravel mountain roads to Kibuye on Lake Kivu. Our hotel had a view of the lake though the water was barely warm. Nearby we visited ARC’s third camp in Rwanda, where I did not work as ARC is not responsible for health care. Here they have begun AIDS treatment in the camp’s health center. I had a chance to review the medical record they are using and found it to be comprehensive. The other two camps will be using this form in the next few months.
The night before our return to the US we were invited to the home of a Rwandan family whose son we had met in Iowa a year earlier. He is attending Iowa Wesleyan College there and had spent a holiday with my relatives. We learned of their living abroad for safety reasons, their losses during the war (genocide of 1994) and their assessment of and hope for their country. The mother, who is a former senator and current Supreme Court justice, explained that the constitution requires 30% of legislators be women and that now, after seeing the effects, nearly 50% of the legislators elected are women. This evening gave us a fuller understanding of the country.
We are now home. I must unpack and organize my things. I am working in the garden and fixing things around the house. In the next few weeks I’ll write a final entry to summarize my thoughts about this experience.