And Here's to You, President Kagame

Yesterday was a national holiday called Hero’s Day, in honor of fallen soldiers. Surprisingly, I saw probably 100+ Rwandese volunteers out helping clean the roads and paint the curbs. On our day off, we went to visit one of the genocide memorials 45 minutes south of Kigali (near Burundi). The memorial itself was a Christian church in which ~10,000 Tutsi and Hutu-moderates were brutally tortured, raped and killed. I will spare the details of how horrifying the site was (as it was nearly perfectly well-preserved). Needless to say, it was a very emotional experience. After the memorial, we went to the first Rwandese President’s house where I learned a lot about Rwandan history leading up to the genocide of 1994.

Interestingly, the Hutu/Tutsi/Twa designation of Rwandese residents did not exist prior to the Belgian colonization. The Belgians felt more comfortable ruling through a clan structure, and generally categorized individuals to each tribe based on broad generalizations like possession of certain domestic animals (Tutsi tended to own cows, while Hutu tended to own goats, and Twa: sheep, etc) as well as facial features (measurements of nose width, etc.). They established the ID cards with tribe (even though many Rwandese were of mixed origin), and decided that the Tutsi tribe would be the ruling class, and the Hutus would be the agricultural peasant class. Tensions between the two classes basically started after this point, and after Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in 1959, continued to grow in intensity (including other isolated incidents of anti-Tutsi violence pre-1994) until April 1994. The spark to the official genocide itself is really quite interesting. Rwanda’s president’s plane was shot down and crashed on his own presidential lawn! Although the perpetrators were never caught, it is thought that they were likely his own men, who had grown increasingly extremist and were frustrated with the conflict of his anti-Tutsi rhetoric but his reluctant negotiations with the UN.

One last thing that I found out was that current President Kagame was actually one of the primary leaders in stopping the genocide and overthrowing the genocidal and post-genocidal government. Kagame abolished the ethnic ID cards and has tried to reinforce the idea that all citizens are Rwandese. He has been in office for the last decade or so and has truly been a remarkable leader in metamorphosing Rwanda in the post-genocide era. As I previously mentioned, it was his speech in 2003 advocating partner involvement that really started the nationwide awareness of HIV couples counseling and testing as a critical risk reduction strategy. It is clear in talking with Rwandese citizens that they have the utmost respect for President Kagame and what his government has done and a true sense of hope for Rwanda’s future.

I’m scheduled to be training another couple interns/lab techs in the next few days on the data analysis that I do, so I’m hoping it goes as well as last time! I’ve got LOTS of superinfection data (some usable, some not) to get through in not a lot of time. Due to logistical reasons (internet unreliability, standard work hours here, etc.), it’s been difficult to maintain the efficiency I’m used to at home. In fact, I just wasted half of today due to having no internet, but managed to borrow a internet flash-drive from my roommate to run the programs I need for work. Guess that’s normal, so best get back to it while I've got the programs running! Data, ahoy! Mwiriwe! (Good afternoon!)