Uganda-Rwanda Trip: Day 12

After an amazing day spent visiting potential sites and talking with some very senior people from the District of Kicukiro, Dunc and I (Gavin) were in a very good mood, thinking about all that we could get involved with, here, in Kigali.

We spent a large part of the morning visiting more sites and continuing to assess the current status of football (soccer) fields, here.

Nothing new from the day before: There are many fields that are in total disrepair.

The more we see the need for improvement the more we are being inspired to push through all of the clutter and continue to strive towards facilitating increased opportunities for activity for the youth here.

Everywhere you go, except for a select few, all of you see is the youth sitting around doing very little. Some might use a stick to roll an old bicycle tire around, a few others might be kicking a banana leaf soccer ball around, but, aside from that, we are constantly seeing children with very few opportunities to be active.

As I mentioned in the previous post, something disgraceful happened during the early evening.

As the week of mourning and remembrance of the Genocide continued with people attending the memorial centres and sites around the country, a grenade was thrown at the guard post of the Kigali Memorial Centre (the one we had visited on Day 9), killing one guard and injuring another.

This act of savagery was targeted at those remembering the victims of the 94 Genocide and might come as a surprise to many out there who believe that Rwanda is on a stable road to complete reconciliation.

Although the people of Rwanda have made amazingly large strides towards reconciliation, there is still much to do.

Over 100,000 suspects from the Genocide are still waiting trial and justice, and, according to the School Districts, the mentality of ethnic divide (which was the root cause of the Genocide) is rampant in the schools. Even though the Government has abolished identity cards and labeled everyone as Rwandans (rather than a specific ethnicity), there are still components of ethnic divide as evident by this act.

This information is disturbing, but it also makes what OA would like to do here all the more important. If our help in improving the number of opportunities for children and youth to interact, to learn to respect one another, and to build bridges helps at all, then any time, energy, and resources used will have been worth it.

Sorry for the heavy post. The next post will be a little more uplifting, as we visit a fantastic organization that is using sport to build many bridges amongst the youth throughout East Africa. We also make friends with some of the local kids that live near to our guesthouse in Kigali.

Until next time…