Rwanda

 Photography books will tell you how lighting is so wonderful right at sunrise and sunset, but my camera thinks it has to blur at that time of day.  This sample cow is the least blurry, but you can at least get the idea about their impressive horns. 
 We take a family walk usually each day in the late afternoon. In Rwanda most people walk enough in daily life that our recreational walking habit got noticed as an interesting phenomenon and commented on.  A young man cornered me in the phone shop to ask me about it.  He began with, "A person of your age can give me advice..." 
I guess I am becoming one of the older women, but I still get a little culture shock and amused when someone comes right out and says it. 

 Paul has loved the past three Sundays in Rwanda.  He preached at three or four churches each Sunday morning, spending only about a half an hour in each church, but getting to many more people that way.  Pastor Bosco, his translator, was such a help and blessing. 

 

 The fourth church was about noon, and it was warm, and then the orange and white curtains made me think of Orange Dreamcicles. 

Why have candy at the check out when you can have whisky, cigarettes and condoms?  That's sad. 

 

I was impressed with Namibia's Anti-smoking campaign.  This is an actual box of cigarettes for sale.  Others of them have pictures with similar warnings, such as of babies with birth defects--not nice pictures, but I should think it would deter smokers,

and it's not just aimed at readers, but should also be a clear message to the illiterate. 

Palm Sunday Parade!  Thousands of people were out with scraps of palm trees, walking to...somewhere?  

 

It was a long, long line of people, but hard to get enough of them together to show the numbers of people. 

 

Hallelujah!  Our Lord is Risen! 

 

 

It's fun to see the American flag flying in Kigali, at the embassy.  When the wind blows, we can see it across the valley from where we're staying, on the opposite ridge. 

 

We went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial today.  About 250,000 people are buried there, all killed in 1994.  Hutu's rose up against Tutsi's and killed them at roadblocks, and at their homes if they were on a list of Tutsi leaders.  Men, women, and children were killed, mostly with machetes and clubs.  50,000 people were killed in one church where they had fled for safety. 

 

Some church leaders took the Hutu's side in the killing, while others were compassionate and risked their lives to help the Tutsi's. 

 

In total, 800,000 - a 1,000,000 people were killed in 100 days.  Dead bodies were everywhere, stacked up, by the roads, in the houses.  Dogs had to be killed because they developed a taste for human flesh. 

 

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" 

Sobering.