A shepherd tends cows at Centre Christus, the Jesuit-run retreat in Kigali where we stay. (Debra Archambault photograph)
Part One
The van passes through the open gate of Centre Christus, the Jesuit compound where we'll spend the next 10 days, eating in the dining hall, sleeping beneath the gauzy tents formed by mosquito nets and waking up to the swells of hymns reverberating from the chapel during morning Mass.
The center is a spiritual retreat, but also offers simple accommodations (shared bathrooms and no hot water) for foreigners working on community service projects. It's a lush, peaceful place surrounded — like most of the nicer homes in Kigali — by an 8-foot wall topped by glass to keep out intruders. A caretaker tends nearly half a dozen black and white cows that wander the grounds. Two monkeys, one with a wire mysteriously protruding from its neck, scramble onto roofs to eat locusts.
Within sight of our rooms is a cement slab with a gold-colored cross and names etched in the stone. On our first day I pass it once on a walk around the grounds, figuring it's an ordinary memorial to the center's clergy who have died.
But Rebecca has looked more closely.
"It's a genocide memorial," she says, walking back to her room.
Rebecca, who keeps her thick brown hair pulled back, has a quiet presence and a tendency to notice details. Indeed, the 17 people named on the memorial all died together on April 7, 1994, the day the killing began. The first massacre of the genocide took place here at Centre Christus: Bullet holes still scar the steps leading to the dining hall and the back wall of a building where guests stay.
It's a legacy that Rebecca, who has also noticed the machine-gun toting police, already finds unsettling.
"The history of this country sort of follows you around," she later observes. "The genocide was 12 years ago. At the same time it's still so present. It's not taboo to talk about, but it's hard to talk about, because every family has been affected by it."