Monday, December 27, 2010

2011 Goal!

It has been way too long since this has been updated. I plan on updating this blog fairly regularly now with stories from Africa, about charities, and anything else that speaks to me!

My first thing is to recommend a book that I read about Rwanda: A Sunday at the Pool In Kigali by Gil Courtemanche



Brutal yet beautiful. Not to be missed.





I travelled in Rwanda for 3 days in July 2010 and it was such a beautiful country. If you only ever visited Rwanda and stayed in the touristy areas, you would wonder what the hype about the problems in Africa are all about. The roads are perfect, the air is clean, there is no garbage anywhere and the cost of living is very high (similar to here actually).

Rwanda is full of oxymorons...
- free and democratic apart from the government controlling the press
- in peace apart from people still referring to each other as Tutsis and Hutus instead of just Rwandans
- rich apart from the 60% living below the poverty line that you don't see because they are inland away from the main roads


We visited the genocide memorial in Kigali as well as another site in a small town that was a church where 5000 were slaughtered.



There is a haunting that hangs in the air; a quiet hush that always made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.