longest post EVER

Wow do I have a lot to post. I don’t even know where to begin. So I suppose I’ll try to start from the beginning and see how far I get. Just to forewarn you, this is going to be a massive, massive post. I’ve been writing it over the course of a few days, and I’m just realizing that it’s basically culminated in a BOOK. Oops.

This past week has been one of the most intense, surreal, overwhelming, and emotionally draining weeks of my entire life. I still haven’t fully digested most of what happened (or at least a few particularly surreal incidents), and I don’t know that I ever will. One thing is for sure – I am NOT cut out to be around 31 people (or pretty much any people, for that matter) 24/7, especially when we’re all crammed on a bus and the majority of the girls have an endless supply of energy and a major penchant for sing-alongs. Let’s just say that I was very, VERY happy to be back with my homestay family at the end of the week.

So my last post was a pretty hurried one. It seems like so, so long ago that the riots happened. I can’t believe it was only a week ago. I added to the post from the 11th; I know it’s outdated but I wrote it out while I was quarantined in the hotel without access to internet, so I figured I might as well post what I wrote. Anyways, things have calmed down in Kampala and we’re set to resume classes this morning. Of course, just because there’s calm on the streets doesn’t mean there aren’t lingering tensions, and it doesn’t mean that the government handled the situation in a non-dictatorial way. I haven’t had a chance to read a whole lot about what commentators are saying about the situation, but from what I gather, the incident that sparked the riots last week was largely just an excuse to voice a discontent that’s been simmering for a long time, and will continue to simmer (and will likely be sparked again) until the government agrees to actually listen to the Buganda and other kingdoms. But for now, hundreds of rioters are locked up and awaiting trial, so only time will tell what comes of that.

So from our ivory tower in the hotel outside of Kampala, we headed for the west and for Rwanda on Sunday. We drove and drove and drove, ending up at a refugee settlement (I can’t remember the name) in Western Uganda. They’re adamant about calling it a “settlement” as opposed to a “camp” because they claim that it’s a place where people can actually “settle” and build livelihoods as opposed to a temporary place of retreat. This was one of the most interactive experiences I’ve had yet, and I’m so grateful for it, but it was HARD. Apparently this place was started in the 1930s and for the first few decades housed mainly Tutsi refugees fleeing persecution in Rwanda. Now, however, 10 nations are represented (DRC, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia), adding up to 52,000 refugees. It was really interesting to hear about the informal hierarchy among the different nationalities. Apparently, because the U.S. is currently allowing group resettlement of Somalians in America, the Somalians (the largest population at the settlement) are at the top of the totem pole, getting way more resources and attention from the settlement officials. The Sudanese, on the other hand, are at the bottom of the totem pole, barely surviving. So the way they organized our visit to the settlement was by splitting us up into groups and sending each group to a different area (each nationality occupies its own area). My group visited the Ethiopians and Eritreans, who basically live together. An Eritrean refugee led us to the area and introduced us to some people living there. We ended up talking for about an hour to a man and his wife, with more people gathering and chiming in as time wore on. The thing that was most impossible to comprehend about this place was that EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. had a horrible, traumatizing story. And their horrible stories hadn’t ended upon reaching the settlement, but were actually getting far worse. As they told us, upon arriving at the settlement, you’re given nothing but a tarp and a small piece of land (the settlement officials told us that refugees receive far more land than most of the refugees said they actually got), with which they’re expected to build a home and, supposedly, farm. The land was SHIT, and their houses looked like they would blow over if a slight breeze came. Furthermore, many of the refugees came from urban areas, meaning they never knew how to farm in the first place, so even if the land weren’t shit, they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Once a month they receive 15 kg of maize. That’s it. I’m not sure if that’s per person or per family, but either way, every refugee agreed that by mid-month, they’re starving. And the settlement is out in the middle of NOWHERE, so for them to try to get any work (with their highest hopes being selling random crap on the street) requires going all the way to Kampala (many hours away). The main man who was speaking to us said that, basically, he eats and sleeps, because he never has enough food to give him the energy to do anything else, and he doesn’t have any prospects for getting out of the life he’s leading. A few people said they had been there over 15 years, and nothing had changed. Moreover, they said they have essentially NO protection from the Ugandan police who are supposed to provide it, and that they’re attacked periodically from rival tribes who also live in the settlement. What was even harder was that they assumed that, because we’re white, we have connections to authorities who might be able to do something to help them. They begged and begged and begged us to please do something for them, to help them, to tell someone; they gave us their names and told us their stories and cried, and all we could say was, we’re students, we’re trying, there’s nothing we can do. It was heartbreaking and I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel like there’s so, so much more to say about this place, but I suppose I’ll move on to the next of many eye-opening and trying experiences.

So on to Rwanda. The drive there was BEAUTIFUL. Hella long, but beautiful. Everything is so lush and green and the sky is so blue. Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) is a beautiful city – much, much different from Kampala. The roads are in perfect condition (as opposed to Kampala, where the roads are more pothole than road), there’s landscaping and fountains everywhere, there’s no trash lining the streets (the trash disposal system in Kampala basically entails piling your trash by the side of the road and burning it periodically), and there are rarely traffic jams (the jams in Kampala are almost worse than the 91 during rush hour). It’s eerie though, because it seems like one big façade – like there’s so much horror and tension just under the surface, but they’re using the pristine, beautifully-planned city as a means of fooling everyone into believing that everything’s fine and the troubles are over. Kampala just feels more….honest, I suppose. What’s more, Uganda receives a TON more foreign aid than Rwanda, so there’s something to contemplate….

I guess I should stop stalling and get on to the hardest and most shocking part of the trip – the genocide memorials. I know that my description isn’t going to even begin to do justice to what I saw and felt there. It was just mind-numbing. When my homestay mother packed up my stuff for me during the riots (because we weren’t able to go home but we needed stuff for Rwanda), she didn’t pack my camera. I was really upset at first, but I soon realized that it was a blessing in disguise, because not only does it feel wrong to take photos at these places, but it also seems to take away from truly experiencing things in the moment because you’re focusing instead on taking photos to look at later. The point being that I didn’t take any photos, but everyone else did and we’re all going to share after the trip, so you’ll definitely get to see. So we visited the official, state-commissioned memorial center first, which basically contained a lot of information and exhibitions about the Rwandan genocide and other genocides around the world. It was hard, but not visually shocking in the way the next two memorials would be. The next two memorials, however, were quite different. They were both churches in more rural areas where people had been told by the government to hide for protection but were ultimately used as a means to pack thousands of people in one place so it was one-stop killing for the genocidaires.

The first church was Nyamata. 12,000 people were killed there. In one day. The church is filled with rows of pews, and every row is piled with the clothing of the people who were slaughtered there. You can see everything – hats, socks, children’s shoes. And the smell… I’ll never forget it. And the silence – you could almost hear it, it was so heavy. Behind the church are stairs that descend underground into mass graves. You go down the stairs and you come to corridors that are about 2 feet wide, and on either side of you, stretching from floor to ceiling, are shelves piled with skeletons. They’re arranged by category, so there are shelves of skulls, shelves of pelvises, shelves of thigh bones, completely surrounding you. Before we left, we came upon a lone woman sweeping the tops of the mass graves. We started talking to her, and she explained that she was a survivor from that very church (apparently the only people who can work at these memorial sites are survivors….i can’t even begin to imagine how hard that must be). She survived by burying herself under dead bodies and smearing herself with their blood so the genocidaires would think she was dead. Not only did she survive that, but just last month, she was attacked in her home by a few genocidaires who wanted to kill her so that she wouldn’t testify against them in court. I don’t understand how these people go on.

The next church was pretty similar, though it had some of its very own uniquely horrifying aspects. Not only did the government tell people it would be safe to hide here, but the church’s own priest was actually involved in tricking the people and helping to massacre them. Inside the main church were the skeletons, the clothes, the items that people had brought with them to use while they were hiding them (cups, mattresses, blankets, school books, etc). Behind the church were two other, smaller buildings that had been used for Sunday schools. One of the buildings had been used for Sunday school children, but during the genocide, a number of women and children hid there. When the genocidaires killed the children, they did it by smashing their bodies against the wall. The huge blood stain is still on the wall.

And after seeing all this, we proceeded to visit a prison the next day where a huge number of genocidaires are being held. Get ready to hear the WEIRDEST. STORY. EVER. (sarah b., I know I always get mad at you for romanticizing, but if you want to include this story in your book, I won’t fight you.) Apparently SIT brings the students to this prison every year, but every year the agenda is a little bit different and the academic directors never know exactly what to expect. So we get there and we’re standing around waiting to find out where to go, and there are prisoners milling about all around us. Some are wearing pink, some orange – pink means you’re still awaiting trial, orange means you’ve been convicted. And here we are, a huge group of white American kids standing around awkwardly while the prisoners stare at us in amusement. We finally go in to meet with the director of the prison and she talks to us for awhile, clearly lying through her teeth about how absolutely wonderful the prison is and how happy the prisoners are to be there. It felt like she was trying to promote the prison; like we were going to return home and testify to the condition of Rwandan prisons and the treatment of prisoners. I think what was hardest for most of us to reconcile in our minds was the crime these people had committed, on the one hand, and the seeming lack of punishment (other than merely being locked up) they’re receiving. From what I’ve read about the American criminal justice system, I know that our model isn’t exactly ideal, but still….I can’t help but feel like these genocidaires are being let off too easy. But then, I have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors of the prison, what the director didn’t tell us.

So we finish talking to the director and then she leads us to this high-school-gymnasium-looking place. We’re seated on a stage with at least 500 prisoners seated in front of us. They begin performing for us – dancing, singing, doing sack races (wtf?), etc. Then a few of them come up to the microphone and tell their stories about what they did in the genocide, with one man saying explicitly that he was involved in the massacres at the churches we visited the day before, and also that he’s being released from prison in a few months. The whole thing is really surreal, we’re roasting to death in the auditorium, and I’m pretty much ready to be done. Things seem to be winding up when suddenly, one of the dancing prisoners comes up to the stage and pulls one of the girls off and begins dancing with her. We’re all shocked and confused and praying to GOD that she’s the only victim, but before we know, we are ALL down there, engaged in a spontaneous dance party WITH GENOCIDAIRES. WTF!?!?!?!?!?!? The whole thing happened so fast that there was no time to resist or to even comprehend what was going on. It lasted for about 20 minutes and it was SO SURREAL. One girl was even pressed cheek to cheek with the man who confessed to having been involved in the massacres at the memorial site. And what was especially weird was the fact that a number of people in my group didn’t even flinch; they LOVED it and it didn’t seem like they were even fazed by the fact that they were having a grand old time with mass murderers. I understand that the point of the prison visit was to show us that these people are human too, that there’s two sides to the story, etc. – but I didn’t need to dance with them to figure that out. Apparently groups in the past actually got to have direct conversations with prisoners, which would have been really cool and much more educational (though I guess dancing with genocidaires is its own form of education).

Okay, there’s SO MUCH MORE that I could say but this post has gone on long enough and if I keep writing I’ll never finish. Thanks for bearing with me!!!!

P.S. Snichols I got your letter(s) today – you are AMAZING and you blow my mind.