Can you imagine losing every member of your extended family in a matter of weeks? To be the only survivor among the people you loved the most? This is exactly what the young man in this picture experienced and I sat there listening to him sing about it. Through the help of a translator I learned that the lyrics went something like this;

When I remember my past
My heart is filled with praise
Because God did the impossible for me
I remember the people who died all around me
But after they tried to kill me several times I survived
And that is impossible

Informed by a mere paragraph in Lonely Planet and a quick glimpse at their website, I set out to find the Solace Ministries Guesthouse in Kigali, Rwanda. The vague map in my travel guide pointed in the right direction without actually pinpointing the location. Passing through multiple neighborhoods, making several phone calls, and asking anyone he could find, my moto-taxi gradually narrowed down the spot until we had found the place. Introducing myself to Denise, the manager of the guesthouse, I mentioned that I sometimes photograph and write about vital causes that I find in East Africa. She then took me to the office of the founder and director of the ministry, John Gakwandi. Listening to what must have sounded like a bizarre story of how I found my way to his organization, John welcomed me and introduced me to their work.

Kigali has a fresh feeling to it. There is a chill breeze that carries minimal smog. Colors are vibrant and unhidden by pollution. Built on rolling hills, Kigali seems to naturally connect urban with rural. It is as though the cityscape is nestled into the countryside. The rise and fall of the local terrain means that in many parts of the city you get a fantastic view of the surrounding area.

Here I am at the Hotel des Mille Collines, sipping a cup of tea and pondering the tragic events that unfolded here only 15 years ago. Amidst chirping birds, laughing people, quality food and the luxurious atmosphere of this place, it is hard to imagine that hundreds of Rwandans once hid here to escape the genocide of 1994 that claimed more than one million lives in one hundred days.

I have long desired to visit Rwanda. It wasn’t clear if this trip would afford the proper circumstances for a visit or if it would be too far out of the way. Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, requires a ten hour bus ride from Kampala and since there isn’t much public transport back to Kenya through Tanzania around the South of Lake Victoria, you have to bus back to Kampala again before heading East into Kenya. When I decided to go gorilla trekking, however, I realized that I would be taking a bus most of the way to Kigali by reaching my stop in Southwest Uganda.

The next question was, what would I do there? Besides adding to my country count and experiencing a new place, would there be some redeeming value to the additional time and expenses that I would incur? While reading through my Lonely planet travel guide, I noticed with surprise that under their accommodations for Kigali they featured a guesthouse run by a Christian ministry. Solace Ministries, it said, used the funds raised by the guesthouse to purchase the ARVs, AIDS medication, for women who had been raped during the genocide. Realizing that this was exactly the kind of ministry that I have been looking for to support in East Africa, it was settled and I had to go.