June 30, 2009

June 30, 2009

Today was another beautiful day in Kigali. I awoke early, showered, and read Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil before heading to our traditional morning French-pressed coffee. We worked out what we were going to say in our introduction to the Rwandese delegates and headed over to the conference room where a few Rwandese delegates were already waiting for us.

Some of us were a little bit shy at first, but we soon got acclimated, and the Rwandans made us get up and dance with them as part of their intro. We said our whole intro in Kinyarwanda, and I think they really appreciated the effort we made—they thought our pronunciations were pretty hilarious, too. We were pretty much sitting by country, with a few exceptions, but we started mixing with our ‘human rights squares,’ activity. It’s a game that Ms. Chilaka would definitely love! It was full of questions to ask, like, ‘Name a movie that confronts human rights,’ and, ‘What is a human right that is violated in your country?’ and, ‘What is the type of human rights violation that most disturbs you?’ It was incredible, and we got to meet a lot of people, and hear a lot of interesting answers.

[I will write more concerning this soon!]