Day 4: Travel to Kigali, Rwanda

Day 4: Saturday, February 10, 2007

I woke up around 3:30 am to get ready for the three airplane rides to Kigali. As it turned out, all of the flights of the day arrived and departed nearly on time. When I first started traveling in Africa in the early 1990s, I always experienced long delays, canceled flights, and extended gaps between flights,-so things definitely seem to be improving. The 14-hour trek took me from Cape Town to Jo'berg to Nairobi and then finally to Kigali.

The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi is a nostalgic place for me. I've walked its circular halls many many times. I've even slept overnight on the floors of this airport, so it is always fun to be there and remember my younger days. I remember spending one lengthy layover in the late 1990s, complaining to every store and to the airport management that there was no internet cafe in the airport. I argued that this would be a profitable endeavor for whoever led the way. I was thrilled to find that there now at least five internet cafes, all buzzing with customers.

I'm already reading three books that I brought on this trip, but I couldn't help visiting another bookstore. My eyes were immediately drawn to a book titled "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda" by Lt. General Romeo Dallaire. Dallaire was the head of the UN Mission in Rwanda prior to and during the 1994 genocide that left 800,000 souls slaughtered in 100 days. I've read several books about the genocide, and I intentionally avoided Dallaire's because I found these accounts so disturbing and enraging, and I didn't feel like going through that again. Today, however, I decided to buy the book, and I've read it continuously on the remainder of the journey.

The Rwandan genocide has a painful personal side for me. I was born into a conservative Jewish family, and when I underwent my Jewish education, we were taught, even brainwashed, around the mantra of "Never Again." I could always understand the "never again" concept as this was intuitively obvious to me. I remember, even as a young child, asking myself the question, "But, how could all those people living in that time just sit by and let it happen?" In the spring of 1994, I was riding the Metro to work in Washington, DC. I remember reading in The Washington Post about the ongoing genocide ... and then a loud bell rang off in my head. I was one of those people who was just going on with my daily life while just a short plane ride across the pond (the Atlantic Ocean), a horrific genocide was ensuing. I promised myself that I would not live my whole life that way. When living in Zambia, several years later, and confronting the daily holocaust of death and destruction from HIV/AIDS, the bell rang again, and I experienced a personal tsunami that changed my life. I left the personal comforts of life as a technocrat and become an advocate for global justice ... eventually helping to create the Global AIDS Alliance. "Never again" has a different meaning for me in this phase of my life. It is a guidepost for how I live my life and spend my time!

On arrival to Kigali, dusk was settling, and as I drove from the airport to my hotel, a football match was letting out, and throngs of healthy looking, dynamic Rwandans were walking the streets. Kigali is a crowded city of some 500,000 people situated in the rolling hills of central Rwanda. Our car passed by the Hotel Des Milles Collins, where the film "Hotel Rwanda," which depicts the genocide, actually took place. It was eerie.

The first part of my week in Kigali will be focused on attending the inauguration of the Board of Directors of a new organization called Friends of the Global Fund in Africa, or Friends Africa as it's popularly known. Click here to visit their website!

Rwandan President Paul Kagame will be opening the meeting tomorrow. I'm excited to see him, as he was the general of the Revolutionary Patriotic Front (RPF) that liberated Rwanda from the those conducting the genocide. Friends Africa has adopted the theme of "Taking Responsibility, Ensuring Results!" and I'm honored to serve on their Advisory Council. It is a great joy to see Africans mobilizing themselves to accelerate the battle to combat the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria that are ravaging the continent.