Rwanda and the genocide history

When making travel plans for Rwanda, of course, one of the highlights and main reasons of visiting the country is the gorilla tracking in Virgunas National Park. We also travelled to Nyungwe Forest in the South Western part of the country, staying at the Nyungwe Lodge, and doing the Chimpanzee Tracking. Highly recommended to travel to this unknown part of Rwanda. Travelling past beautiful mountain scenery, past well and not so well paved roads (lots of pot holes for about 30km) but also past UNHCR refugee camps with people who fled the war torn DRC.

Rwanda is a beautiful country with lovely people and great places to visit and explore. However, it also has a very recent and truly cruel past of genocide. We did know about the genocide that took place in 1994. However, visiting a few memorial sides opened our eyes, shocked and touched us deeply. The genocide took place over just 100 (!!!) days in which nearly 1.000.000 (mainly) Tutsis were brutally killed! And the world did nothing...

The genocide sites of Rwanda are not sites to write a fully detailed report on. Just don't put this side of the Rwandan history aside. Please go visit them, be shocked and learn from it.

The sites easiest to visit are the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Nyamata & Ntarama Genocide Memorials (churches where thousands of people, who we were expecting to find a safe place, were literally slaughtered) just a 20 minute drive south of Kigali International Airport and Murambi Genocide Memorial on the road to Nyungwe Forest.