I'm trying my best not to fall even further behind in this blog, so I'm going to write about everything we did yesterday (Tuesday) now.

We started the day with some more city touring. I kept up my practice of never really stopping my question-asking, and I have pages of notes on my thoughts as proof. So here's a few that I'll list for now:

- Traffic here reminds me a lot of Rome, though not quite as crowded. The only traffic law seems to be "Don't cause an accident" and it seems to pretty much work. Horns basically mean "Hi, I'm over here, don't hit me."
- The roads of Kigali are very nice - at least the ones they have chosen to make that way. Very smooth, with great landscaping along them. The government is all about cleaning up Kigali, and in the process it's creating lots of jobs. Dr. Keino says the roads are much better than in Kenya, although there are still plenty of pothole paradise roads around, too.
- Small scale business rules the city. The city is absolutely filled with people running a business of some sort. If they're lucky the have a tiny 10 foot by 10 foot little building to use as a shop, but plenty of people simply walk around, carrying their business with them. A perfect example is women carrying around huge baskets of fruit on their head selling to everyone they walk by. Such a huge difference from the American business model, and it seems to work.
- The only tax here is on purchases, which makes sense because you really can't tax the microbusinesses many people operate. I can't help but wonder if this practice can keep sustaining the government as the country continues to develop?
- The government organization is very unique, and kind of takes from Rwanda's true African roots. the government is very decentralized, with organization going all the way down to the local (and I really mean local) level of ~30 houses. These mini-governments (I can't remember their name) have their own leader, responsible for settling disputes and even providing work for everyone. Very interesting - a government with a personal stake in its affairs.
- Rwandan lawn mower = machete. Now that's tough work.
- 19 of every 20 cars is a Toyota. The rest are Mercedes. Don't know why.

Don't worry, I have plenty more to share later.

After our driving we ate lunch with Dr. Keino's friend John, who works in the UN here. From there we went to the Kigali Memorial Center, a memorial to the 1994 genocide. It was every bit as emotional as I expected. I wouldn't really say I learned much new information, but it is totally different to get the information here in Rwanda, where it is so much more real. The experience is so much more powerful to be in a building built by Rwandans, staffed by Rwandans, walking along with Rwandans... it hit me on such a personal level. There were a few things that really got to me, so I'll put some of those in here.

- I was blown away right from the start when the man at the welcome desk informed us that he had visited 415 memorials throughout the country but he had not visited them all.
- If the number of people used to evacuate foreigners from Rwanda were sent as peacekeeping troops instead, there would have been more than enough troops to stop the genocide.

And a few quotes from around the museum...

"He who saves one life saves the world entire" - Talmud
What does that mean when over 800,000 people are murdered?

A quote that really illustrates the incredibly hard problem Rwanda faced after the genocide:
"There can be no humanity without forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness without justice. But there can be no justice without humanity" - Yolande Mukagasana

A quote from a video about other genocides in the world that captured my feelings as a whole:
"Sometimes we call it war. Sometimes we call it ethnic cleansing. Sometimes we call it genocide. Any way we call it, we have wasted lives."

And finally, after I've gone through almost all of this incredibly emotional experience, I walk into the final section, the child victim section. The very first sign says, "This is dedicated to our children, who should have been our future."
And that pretty much finished me off.

But we couldn't end our day with the memorial, important as it is to understand, so went straight from the memorial to Gisimba orphanage, where our emotions can shift to the other extreme. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend as much time with the kids since we talked with Ildephonse, the director, about our plans for service work with Gisimba. We did get a little time with the kids - mostly photoshooting - and then we had to go home. I've noticed that the older boys (young teenagers) seems to hang out with Andrew and I a lot more than the little ones, who really seem to gravitate toward the girls... which makes sense I guess.

Even though we had already had an unbelievably full day, some of us decided we were still up for a little more and went to meet with the students from Simpson College who are just now going home from their trip in Rwanda. To be honest, my reason for going probably had more to do with the destination than the students (though it ended up being really fun to meet them and hear about their trip... just got me even more excited for the rest of ours). We met them at the Hotel des Mille Collines, the place where the controversial Paul Rusesabagina saved over 1,000 lives during the genocide. It was a fitting way to end a crazily up-and-down emotion day - a place that brings both good and bad to mind.