Kigali - Rwanda

After crossing the border we drove the few hours to Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. Along the way kids chased the truck and waved to us - the people so far are generally excited to see us although we have had a couple of older men shooing us away when we drive through some of the small villages. French is widely spoken in Rwanda so many of the sign posts on the road and in the villages/towns are in french. We stopped in Kigali for a couple of hours to visit the Genocide museum which was, again, horrific. What we found harder to cope with in respect of this particular genocide (don't you think the world has seen enough yet?!) was that it only took place 10 or 11 years ago - in the mid-90s!!!!! Interestingly, and contrary to popular belief, the tutsis and hutus were originally identified based on how many cows they owned, rather than on differing physical characteristics like height, and face shape etc. Any person with more than 10 cows was a tutsi, and so was his family, and any person with less than 10 cows was a hutu, as was his family. When the Belgians were in control of Rwanda, they placed many of the tutsi in high ranking positions above the hutu. And so, when the Hutu had their chance, many years later, the slaughter of the tutsi, over 1 million - many of whom were woman and children, began. The museum provided much information on how little the rest of the world did to intervene in the genocide (lack of oil perhaps?) although the french did come over to help but then got sidetracked apparently and started identifying tutsi for the hutu to slaughter. Meanwhile the UN seemed to be hanging out in the background and not doing a lot either. It was pretty devastating but it was very interesting to see a timeline and intricate details of the event.