Riding through town

I had my camera with me today while I was riding across town and decided to take a brief video of one of the main roads in Kigali. This is certainly the largest and longest road, going from the airport all the way downtown. In the video, I'm riding a moto, which is one of the main modes of transportation through Kigali.

Motos are somewhere between a moped and a motorcycle and provide easy, cheap transportation. The most you can pay (even as a muzungu) is about two dollars, and that would be for a trip from the far side of downtown out to the airport. Most rides are around town are less than fifty cents. Amazingly, all the motos are registered with the government, drivers are required to wear official vests with their registration number and both drivers and passengers are required to wear helmets.

We Are The World

For my last Friday night in Kigali, I decided I wanted to return to the talent show at Sky Hotel. The show was amusing as before (see the post from May called 'Talent show') and I caught a video of the performers' grande finale.

For those of you not familiar with this song, it was written in 1985 by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. It was recorded by a group of artists called 'U.S.A. for Africa' ('United Support of Artists for Africa') which included numerous famous performers to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

PSF Clinic

I have just a few pictures from the medical clinic at PSF...

'Beyond the Gates'

Last night I watched a movie called 'Beyond the Gates' (it was released as 'Shooting Dogs' outside the U.S.). The film follows the story of the events that took place at the Ecole Technique Officielle in Kigali, Rwanda, during April of 1994. The school served as a base for the Belgian UN peace-keeping troops and, once fighting broke out in the city, became a refuge for two thousand, five hundred Tutsi refugees. However, after ten Belgian soldiers were murdered by Hutu militia, the UN forces were given orders to retreat to the airport. As soon as the soldiers withdrew, the militia who surrounded the school attacked and all within were killed.

While I did not find this to be a particularly impressive film (contrary to reviews, apparently), I did find it incredibly eerie. The film was shot in Kigali in 2004 so the buildings, the hills, the clothing and everything else is familiar. There are a number of scenes in which I recognize specific buildings and specific views. There are lines in Kinyarwanda that I understand (and I can tell that most of the actors are not Rwandan from their accents). There are references to sections of the city and places where I work and that I frequently visit.

Even the details are haunting. The dogs are the same village mutts as the one several of my friends adopted. The bottles of beer are the same as the ones I drank this weekend. The mattresses are the same foam on which I sleep each night.

The most striking aspect, though, may actually come after the film is over. During the credits, faces of Rwandans involved in the making of the film are shown with brief stories of how they were affected by the genocide. For example, "so-and-so lost both her parents and five brothers and sisters", "so-and-so lost twenty-two members of his mother's family", "so-and-so hid in a cess pit for fourteen days and survived", etc. What is most haunting about these pictures and these statements is that, now, I actually know more than one of these so-and-so's. These are individuals who I have met, with whom I have taken lunch, with whom I have spent entire days. And, suddenly, each so-and-so portrayed in the film becomes one of my coworkers or friends - the woman who lost her husband, the boy who lost his parents, the woman who barely escaped across the border and was refused at the hospital because doctors assumed she would die, the girl who lost her brother and so on and so on and so on.

Moto Polo

Some of my friends have invented a new sport called Moto Polo. Basically, it's the game of polo, with all players on the backs of motorcycles instead of horses, using croquet sticks and a ball made of banana tree bark wrapped in duct tape, played on a dirt football field, with not very many rules. Sound like a bad idea? I'm sure it is, but I still went out to watch the second ever match this afternoon.The "professional" video from the first match (which was played a couple months ago) can be seen here.