Butare turned out to be a very special place during our trip - a city with faces. Butare made me think that I was on the set of a Cecil B DeMille film. On the main road through the center of the town, there was a constant string of people walking. At first you might think that classes were getting out - or that the workday had just ended. But they just kept walking. It gave the city a pulse and a rhythm that one rarely experiences in the West. Occasionally a bus filled to the brim with passengers making the three hour journey to Kigali would send dust flying in all directions; when the dust cleared, they just kept on walking.

It was in this setting that I had my favorite experience of the trip. Judi is obsessed with bookstores. Not that I am not, but on this particular occasion, she wanted to see a bookstore that was recommended in our guide. Considering that the town only has about four streets, you would think that we would have been able to find it with our trusty map - but after a while we abandoned our vain search and decided to ask for help. The woman we asked was probably in her twenties. She was carrying a heavy suitcase, and she was walking along the main road. When we asked her, she did something amazing. She smiled and said, follow me. She then turned around and began walking in the direction from which she had come. And she walked. And she walked. She walked us across the town and then had us follow her to the bookstore. The whole time that she walked, she was silent - smiling at us. When we arrived at the bookstore, she smiled and then walked away.

The patience and the positive attitude of the Rwandans is remarkable. Another example of this took place in an Internet Cafe. Everyone in Rwanda appears to have an email account – too bad that they cannot access them. We were delighted to find an internet cafe in Butare; not a surprise, I guess, since Butare is the famous university town. The room was crowded with outdated hardware set in a poorly lit room - the only significant light was provided by the monitors of the computers themselves. I sat next to a man who was doing a distance-learning course.  Half way through a long discussion board response, the power went out.  He lost everything – but simply shrugged and rebooted the computer. I wonder how I would have reacted?

This patience is something that one sees over and over again in Africa.  When we were flying home, I saw an incredible conversation at the Kenya Airlines desk. A middle-aged man walked up to the counter to enquire when his flight to London would be leaving. The woman behind the counter took his boarding card and then looked up at him – brow furrowed.  I am filled with sorrow.  Your flight left this morning.  You needed a new boarding pass. The man was as calm as could be.  Yes.  The sister working the desk told me to sit down.  I was late from Entebbe.  I am waiting to leave this evening.  The woman behind the desk typed something into the computer. She said, You are not on that flight.  You needed to go to transfer. He said, Perhaps the sister at the desk was tired.  She has much work.  Sister, can you help me?  And with that, the woman behind the desk nodded, took him by the hand and left a crowd of waiting customers, who did not protest as she led him away.  We waited ten minutes for her return, when she announced that All is well with him. No anger.  No shouting. 

As much as these experiences inspired me, they left me with more questions than answers. If this is the way that Rwandans interact with one another - how was the genocide of 1994 able to happen to the extent it did, in such a short period of time?

In Butare we visited the memorial to the university professors that were murdered during the genocide. The killings in Butare and in the surrounding area were some of the most extensive during the genocide. Butare was seen as the intellectual center for the Tutsi - and hence was a major target. The HRW report written by Alison Des Forges provides more detail about the actual events that took place there.

Though Butare left me with a really positive feeling, I was a bit unsettled by the Gacaca trial that we attended. This was meant to be the highlight of our trip. The gacaca trials have been hailed by some as a traditional African justice system that should serve as a model for other nations struggling to reconcile after a national injustice. The Rwandans, however, are of two minds on the success of the system. On the one hand, they are very suspicious of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established in Arusha. On the other hand, we heard repeatedly that many thought that the gacaca were not always honest.

After nearly not being allowed in to see the trial because we needed a permit, we entered into the cavernous hall where the trial would take place. Though we were to start at 9:00, the judges, sporting banners declaring their position as "Wise Ones," would not arrive until about 10:15. Apparently, we were the only ones not in the know about the late arrival. For most of the first hour, we sat with only a handful of early arrivals. As the day went on, the audience grew significantly.

The trial began with a moment of silence to remember the dead. Then, the judge asked who would bear witness against the defendant.  One by one members of the community came forward, showed their multi-colored identification papers, and then returned to their seats. About ten people came forward.  Then, they were sent outside of the hall so that they would not hear the testimony of the alleged perpetrator.  They would later be called in to corroborate her story.

The defendant was a nurse accused of abducting Tutsi children; ending the life support of Tutsi patients; and betraying Tutsis in hiding – which led to the death of four people. Her head was shaved, and she was dressed completely in pink.  With two hands, she held her notebook and pen – her only defense since she is not given access to a lawyer.  She must represent herself against the community. 

I was distracted by the uninterrupted hum of fluorescent lights; the intermittent ringing of cell phones; and the machinations of the sound crew who were incessantly trying to cope with a dysfunctional technology.  And I was frustrated by the proceedings.

Though one of the judges appeared to take sporadic notes, there was no stenographer documenting everything that was said. There was a clear sense that everyone in the room felt that she was guilty.  The judges laughed at some of her responses.  The crowd groaned and clucked and collectively smirked at her responses. She said that she had been hiding the children in her home when she was alerted that the Interahamwe was coming to inspect her house. She said that she then brought the children to the NGO Terre des Hommes. The Terre des Hommes is an NGO which is no longer in Rwanda – and thus there was no way to confirm her story. Modest, our driver, stood and asked if she knew the name of the person who warned her.  When she couldn't remember the name of someone from twelve years ago, their was a collective nod.  She was dishonest.

I was happy to leave this experience. I wasn't sure if being an outsider left me with so little information that I was overly sympathetic to the alleged perpetrator, or whether I was able to objectively assess a situation and see that a verdict had been rendered before the trial began. When I asked Modest if prisoners were ever freed, he laughed and said only one word: Not!