Past and present

Today is travel day. The next town is Huye where we plan to coach hundreds of more children, and helping raising awareness of HIV. We’re all looking forward to seeing this new town and having fun with lots more children!

However, before we travelled we had plan to do a couple of activities that are very important to the future and past of Rwanda.

The main part of the day was a visit to the Genocide Memorial Centre, which commemorates the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis, where over a million Tutsis were murdered over the space of just three months.

I was expecting a very emotional day, and I wasn’t wrong. Learning about the history of the genoside in Rwanda was heartbreaking. Having heard about the people that had experienced the hatred and violence of the Hutu Interawame members towards their Tutsi friends, family and neighbours, it was heartwarming to know that, following the genocide, the existence of the division into Tutsi and Hutu is no more, and now the people of Rwanda are united working towards a promising and peaceful future.

Possibly the two worst parts about the experience was a room full of pictures of people that had been killed in the genocide. One room for the adults, and one for the children. It was very chilling to witness, and finding out how they were brutally murdered was immensely upsetting and traumatic.

It is right in saying that the after-effects of the genocide in 1994 will never be forgotten!

However the future of Rwanda is looking very bright. We visited the new cricket ground at Gahanga, where the facilities looked immaculate and very promising for the future of Rwandan cricket! Then we visited a local cricket tournament, where we could have visited the next professional players, just minutes from the new ground. Speaking to some of the children about their future aspirations, they want to become doctors, cricketers, teachers and lawyers. This just shows that the next generation of Rwanda want to be remembered together as Rwandans!