Butare! the beginning

Last Friday morning, we left Kigali and set off for Butare! We were seriously so sad to leave, we have had some awesome memories in Kigali. But I think we were also so excited to check out Butare! The drive was soooo beautiful, we just went up and down mountains (I didnt even get carsick) and looked at the beautiful scenery while listening to our ipods. We arrived in Butare around lunch time, and checked into our guesthouse, which we expected to be kind of disgusting and gross. But it is totally the opposite! I am rooming with Jenny and Meghan, and our room is seriously one of the nicest rooms I have ever stayed in. Not everyone's is that nice, but we got lucky (and we had to pay a little extra, but i was forced to stay in that room, haha!). We have our own bathroom with hot running water, isnt that awesome!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!? and we also have a really nice desk and chairs where we have been studying for the test we have soon.
After we ate really good spagetti at a hotel nearby, called hotel Ibis, we went on a tour of the National University of Rwanda. It seriously felt like a campus in the US. There were so many pretty trees and buildings, it was just a beautiful place. We were walking along this path in the woods with the tour guide, and we looked up and there was this man at least 75 feet in the air, holding on to a tree with no ropes. I am not even kidding, he had his legs and arms wrapped around it and he was just chilling up there in the trees. Then this security guard came and started yelling at him, so he slid down the tree, like it was no big deal. I'm not even kidding, he was so high in the air it was ridiculous. The rest of the tour was cool too, except it was kind of weird when we reached a genocide memorial in the middle of campus because we weren't expecting to see it. We walked in, and the tour guide told us that 500 victims of the genocide were buried there. They were all students from the National university that had been killed by there peers (even by their roommates) and by their professors. If something like that had happened in the US, it would one of the most tragic things that has ever happened in our country. But in Rwanda, it is just one small part of the enormous tragedy that happened here. Isn't that sad?
Saturday morning, we had class. It was interesting because we started talking a lot about the International Criminal Court. We started talking about how sad it is that sooooo many people in the US don't know what the ICC is or what it does. I even admit that before this program, I really didn't know much about it. It's also ridiculous that the US refuses to ratify it. We keep saying we are a promoter of democracy and human rights, but we refuse to do anything that could "threaten our sovereignty," which really means we refuse to do anything that isn't in our interest. But the ICC could never really violate our sovereignty if our courts in the US are doing the job of prosecuting people that need to be prosecuted (the ICC is basically supposed to be the last resort, for prosecuting people from countries where the national courts refuse to prosecute crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. Anyway, I hope one day the US will become part of the ICC.
After class on saturday, we went to a coffee plantation. The plantation was labeled as "fair trade," but the workers still only received about a dollar a day, which is not enough to live on. The coffee farmers have no way of deciding the value of their coffee crop, and they often exploited by intermediaries that end up making tons of money. If you haven't seen the documentary called Black Gold, you really should. It is basically just about the exploitation of coffee farmers bewcause of neoliberalism and free trade (Lauren, I think you would like it!)
Anyway, Butare is definitely really cool, although it is really different than Kigali. We all really feel like it is the Chapel Hill of Rwanda, no joke. It's a small college town with a lot of students around, and there is basically only one street, which is exactly like Franklin Street. It's awesome, but it does make me miss Chapel Hill and all of you guys! The second half of the trip is going by soooo incredibly fast, and I feel like I will be home before you know it!
love Colleen