It is 7:40 AM in Addis, Ababa Ethiopia. I am in the airport lounge waiting for my flight to Dubai. I left Kigali at 1:50 AM. My last day in Kigali was nice. I went to the Genocide Memorial and learned more details about what happened. Here are my biggest takeaways. On April 7 1994 the genocide started. People began to kill their neighbors and butcher anyone in sight. Over 1 million people were systematically killed in just 100 days. That is 10,000 people per day. Going back, under the colonial rule of Belgium in the 1930s, the Belgians made distinctions between Rwandans in society on their ID cards. Rwandans come from 18 clans, but they designated three different ones on ID cards: Hutus, Tutsi, and Twa. The classification was racial and socio-economic in nature. Rwanda gained independence in 1962, but it did not improve the situation. Hutu and Tutsi were deeply divided due to the Belgian colonizers rule the past 30 years. Ethnic wars started then and between 1959-1963 over 700,000 Tutsis were exiled. In 1990 civil war started when the Tutsis came back. The genocide started after the President's plane was shot down on April 6 1994. The genocide targeted the Tutsi's which accounted for over 85% of the deaths (this is an estimate based on talking to people). People would just get butchered with machetes and killed any which way. It was really sad to see such a tragedy happen only 30 years ago, and such a large degree. No countries from the West stepped in and helped. The Tutsi's were able to stop the Hutus led by Paul Kagame. Paul Kagame is still the ruler of Rwanda to this day. He is effectively a benevolent dictator. The people love him but he does not allow opposition. What he has done in 30 years to Rwanda is truly unbelievable. To turn a country from 0 to what it is today is very difficult. It is clean, safe, growing and stable. After the museum I ran into Matt accidentally at a coffee shop. We talked about an exciting business opportunity which I think actually has a lot of potential. I ran into him around 2pm. I ended up talking with him all day long. We went back to his restaurant and I got to try exclusive items off of the menu that have not been released. At night he let me go into the kitchen and cook a pizza. Side note, Zach got released from Kenyan jail Friday morning, after four days and three nights. I am on the way to Dubai to meet up with him. Well I spent almost a whole month in Africa. I am too tired and not enough brain space to give my full analysis, I will do so in a later post. Until then I await for my flight in Ethiopia, sleep deprived and stomach hurting. I ate a piece of injera at 5 AM because I wanted to while I was in Ethiopia and it was nasty.
