greatest day so far

i had such a fabulous day today at the orphanage. one of the new volunteers, Patty, brought 5 burned hip hop cds for me to give to the boys. and they were so over the top excited. i gave them to the minister of sports and parties (explain this some other time) at lunch time and could hardly wait til the end of the day to play them. finally at 4pm the boys were able to break out the cd player and we listened and danced for 2 hours. the boys danced more than i did. i think for the next 2 weeks i will be staying late to hang out and dance with them. i took pics and video and because i am a total moron i accidentally deleted the videos. i am upset and will no longer press delete on anything any more.

on saturday we went to the butare area to see the memorial with the preserved bodies. i am having trouble with understanding my feelings and what i think of the experience. the 2 hour ride to get there was so beautiful that it is hard to accept that the outcome would be so horrific. the motorbike ride on the dirt road leading to memorial was especially beautiful. and for the few minutes it took to get there i almost forgot the purpose. as you ride up to the memorial it is the only thing at the end of the road and it just appears. the new building built in front of the old buildings is so huge that it almost feels intimidating to continue forward. coming here i thought that would be the most educational and the most informative memorial but i was wrong. i knew all the memorials would be disturbing and hard to see but this one was difficult on very different levels than the others. i guess i expected the bodies to be more real. i am not sure how to explain it but i thought the bodies would make me weak, scared, sad...but it was the smell of the lye. although there is nothing to equate the smell of lye to death. when that first door was opened and the smell of lye hit my nose my stomach dropped and my eyes teared up and i felt sick because of the smell and not the sight. we were allowed to take pictures but it was such a horrible guilty sick feeling to take pictures. i did but stopped because the guilt and confusion i was feeling was too much. i took pictures of the scenery of the hills and the outside of the buildings instead. i have decided not to post the pics of the bodies because it feels so wrong to do so...i understand that they have created this memorial to educate and to remember but at the same time it is so difficult to understand. looking at the bodies i saw the carcass as a person. children with their clothes still on their bodies. facial expressions of pain, fingers and toes in various positions where you could almost feel the pain. mothers with their child still attached to them. an entire rooms just of dead children. some still had their hair. and to think that i felt sick from the smell of lye and to only imagine what the survivors went through to move the 5000 bodies from the mass grave. the smell the sight the confusion and the pain. what hit me most about the memorial was they preserved the mass grave. they left it as it was when they dug the bodies out. thousands of dead bodies dumped into an enormous hole. a hole which was dug by hand and it was the size of a bus...

more later