this country has come so far

3/14/10
This weekend has been the most emotional of all. We went to a city called Butare, which is about 1 hour south of Nyanza I think. It was nice to get out of Nyanza for the day. WE first made a stop at a nice historical museum; it had traditional tools, clothes, how things are made and such throughout the museum. There was also a traditional house made of weave that we could go in and see. I would give up electricity and water and everything to live in a traditional hut like that was. It was very Africa, but stayed cool and had a rather comfortable bed, just as comfortable as where I’m sleeping now anyway.
Then we went into town for lunch and the umuzungu grocery store. Basically foods from America but at double or triple the price but it was worth it for a one time treat. I got Pringles, nutella and granola cereal. Afterwards a few of my friends and I went off with 2 of our language culture facilitors to a “good” Chinese restaurant. I was not really feeling Chinese but at this point anything besides beans, rice and potatoes would be great. We first find out they do not have soy sauce because the “sauce specialist” was not in that day. So I go buy some from the grocery store and come back, I mean what is Chinese food without soy sauce. That was about 30 minute’s time and no food had come. 1 hour passes and no food comes. Our LCFs (language, culture facilitators) talk to the staff and they say their working on it. 20 minutes later 1 plate of noodles comes out. Not what ordered but we decide to eat them anyway. My food never came, my friend’s food never came, the 3 of us shared one dish. And let me not forget the fact the during our wait we saw 4 live chickens taken into the back and then one by one we heard a loud swak and them silence. Not the best feeling in the world that’s for sure.
Our last stop about 30 minutes from butare was a famous genocide memorial and a famous genocide massacre location. Words cannot even describe how hard it was to see this and nothing can prepare you for it. It was the location of an old boarding school that tutsis’s fled to for safety because it was supposedly protected by the French military. It was not safe the school was surrounded and some 50,000 were killed. Now the rooms are filled with the bodies “frozen” in time with a type of molding in the positions which they were found, not just one or two rooms, I have no idea how many rooms but we walked through at least 10. None of us knew how to handle it and it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen. I wasn’t sure how or if I should even write about it but I know how important it is that people know what occurred in this country, to prevent it from happening again.