We're at the end of our 2 weeks of spring break. I wanted to go traveling, but from April 7th to the 13th we also had the National Week of Mourning for the 1994 genocide and I wanted to be in my village with them to experience it and support them. So some of the other PCVs went to Ethiopia, Kampala (Uganda), or others' villages, but I enjoyed just being in the village with my local friends.
Every day for a week people could only work in the mornings, each afternoon people would group together according to oumoudougoudou (say it: oo-moo-DO-goo-do, all the same "ooo" vowel sound, it means neighborhood) and local officials (like my host mom, the district secretary!) would read things from the government that prevent, fight against, and deal with genocide and its lasting effects. This year's theme was fighting against trauma, which they say 2/3 of the population suffers from.
I was told by my neighbor that our village is a Hutu majority (not the group targeted in the genocide) and they were almost all in refugee camps abroad during the majority of the war so very few people were killed from our village. This means there were no traumatic outbursts from people during the memorial week, unlike the majority of the country where people would randomly start screaming, crying, throwing themselves down, and remembering the horrors they went through. There are a few of my friends in the village NOT from Bungwe, but married local men or moved here for work; these women are the ones that HAVE suffered and some of them told me their story. Wow. I don't know how they have found the strength to continue, but somehow they do, and they're even doing really well. For this I really admire the strides this country and these poeple take to rebuild themselves and find new meaning in life. It's obviously really hard still, but they put a great smile on thier faces and continue on so well!
Since I hate being alone all the time and once the sun goes down (at like 6:30pm) I'm all alone in my little house, I spent the night at my friends house (a local house for the un-wed female workers far from home, like a boarding house for professional women) each night to hang out, cook, eat, and be with them. It was really fun to live with locals again! Then every afternoon I went to the oumoudougoudou discussions with a few of the other women in my neighborhood. During the day it was so weird to walk around our usually vibrant village and find it totally empty, like a ghost town. Maybe one or two little kids playing in the road, or a man carrying wood on his head, but basically barren.
So after the Memorial Week I hopped on a litte motorcycle--the only way down the mountain-- (as pictured here) and came to the capital city of Kigali:
no more locally farmed beans, potatoes, or carrots; no more papaya from my front yard for breakfast, no more milk and tea from our little restaurant (as seen here!) for snack. We have wireless internet at this little Americanesque cafe where we can order hamburgers, fries, cookie dough ice cream, pizza and beers! Have a happy day!
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