absolutely livid

this is the first (AND hopefully the last) rant i will have in this blog. i am in rwanda for the night with five other volunteers/english teachers and we went to a local chain supermarket here in the capital, which by the way, is surprisingly wealthy compared to kampala. i notice in an aisle rather large silver cans marked USA, which immediately worried me. upon closer look, below USA it said US Aid, and there was the classic drawing of two hands held together. Somehow the bureaucracy has reached a point that the rich owners of supermarkets can usurp the vegetable oil that the US DONATES to IDP and refugee camps and SELL it for 3400 francs whilst the poor suffer as a result. i can honestly tell you for the past 10 minutes i have been so irate i am beside myself. i took pictures of the cans in the supermarket for you to see, i only wish i could post them here. I am absolutely outraged. I knew about the level of corruption of course, but that was like so in-your-face it was like laughing in the face of the US. i'd like to say maybe 30% of what the US donates actually reaches its intended recipients free of charge. the rest goes to effing rich supermarket moguls who conduct shady deals to sell it off themselves at an enormous - meaning 100% - profit.

enough. onto more important things

i went to the genocide memorial today which as you can assume, was absolutely devastating, draining, eye opening, educating, and all together worthwhile experience for every human. it was VERY well put together. there were mass graves right there on site for all those who died in the capital, kigale, alone. guess how many were in the mass graves i saw? 250,000 people. thats right. less than a quarter of those killed in total. the pictures, the skulls, the bones, the clothing were graphic, and horrific, but tolerable when you could grasp the humanity behind it. the two parts that hit me the most were first, there was a room full of clothing gathered from the slaughtered bodies and there was one article that struck me. DISCLAIMER: do NOT read the following sentence PLEASE if you don't want to hear about a rather graphic image. i'm serious. Ok, this article was a woman's skirt, and there was distinctly a ton of blood specifically in her crotch area~ this was demonstrative of the fact she was most likely raped and had her genitals mutilated before being killed. they were so dehumanized before dying it is unbelievable.

the other part that struck me, less graphic but graphic nonetheless, was an entire floor dedicated to the most innocent victims: the children. walls and walls of photos of these children, 8 years old, even tiny babies, newborns. the pictures were of them as they were alive, of course, but next to each one there was a plaque like so:

Name: Rebecca
Favorite food: Cassava
Last words: Run mommy!!
Age: 8
Cause of death: Chopped by machete

now i realize that is incredibly dark but the only purpose of me going to a memorial like this is to share it with you, share it with everyone, so thats what i'm doing. i wish you could have seen all these babies faces. they were babies, they were children, they were innocent, but they were tutsi, and for that killed, mutilated, even raped.

there was also sections about other genocides: that in the balkans by milosovic, khymer rouge in cambodia, and of course the armenian genocide in turkey.

the part i cried the hardest was when i read this quote, emblazoned in gigantic letters on the museum wall:

"when they said, 'never again', after the Holoucaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?" -Apollon Kabahizi

its true that the world stood back and watched. it happened in 1994, but the genocide massacres occured until 1997 in rwanda. that is exactly a decade.

all i have to say is: learn about darfur. if you think 'never again,' you can watch it unfold even today...

but if the same system that carelessly sells for a profit the charity food meant for jobless IDPs in refugee camps, you better believe thats the same system that fails to find out what is really happening in darfur and thus steps in time and time again once its too late. i can only hope that like obama and hillary have been saying, they are willing to use force in darfur. i just dont think we have until 2008 to wait for that to happen.

suz


p.s. update: will be teaching all next week with Georgie (we are paired together) and we will be running the classroom with an iron fist. just kidding but we might be teaching at anotehr school in the area, to tell you the truth i havnt gotten to teaching yet, but i definately will be this whole week. we just had a lot of learning and preparing to do at Teach Inn first. i cant wait to get back to my innocent village of nyakasiru where life is so simple (but sadly without phone or internet...well i guess thats why its simple). so hopefully i will have wonderful stories about the children next week! and by the way, they are fabulous children. i've been playing with them everyday. (i'm so sore right now from jumping rope with the little girls). much love~!