Rwanda Day 4: Independence Day!

July 1 is the national Independence Day for Rwanda, and today is the 50th anniversary of the holiday! What a great day to be here. On this day 50 years ago, Rwanda officially declared their independence from Belgium, which had been occupying them for many years, and was the government which originally made the official distinction between the Hutu & Tutsi ethnicities, driving racism between the two groups.

The celebration was held in the stadium of Kigali, which was also important in 1994 as a base camp for U.N. soldiers first, then the RPF (the freedom fighters who ended the genocide, led by Paul Kagame, who is now the President). The stadium holds 35,000 people, and it was packed! But we got there early enough to get good seats.

I'm glad we went, but it did make for a long, hot day of sitting in the sun on concrete slabs that made the stadium chairs. Here's a basic order of events for the day:
- Sit in the stadium for one hour, waiting for the festivities to begin
- On a small stage near the middle of the field, various small military bands sing and dance
- Various famous Rwandan pop singers perform
- Traditional Rwandan drummers & dancers perform
- All branches of the military march around the track, then stand in formation for a while
- We all take about an hour break of doing nothing, while everyone waits for the President of Tanzania to show up. Boring, soft music is played in the background.
- Several motorcades of cars finally drive in, from which various important political guests pop out, including the Tanzania president and President Kagame.
- The military marches around the track some more, and Kagame makes a show of "inspecting" each unit.
- The military marches out.
- Some speeches are made in Kinyarwanda (the local language).
- More traditional drumming & dancing.
- Special military unit marches to the center of the field, does a pretty awesome martial arts demonstration.
- Stand up comedian performs but it's in Kinyarwanda, so we don't get any of what he's saying.
- Awesome skit commences. Twelve young "hooligans" horse around on the field, clearly up to no good. Three teenage girls walk onto the field, trying to get safely to school. The hooligans try to rob them and push them down. The three girls commence in kicking their asses using super-sweet martial arts moves. The crowd goes wild as some guy gives a speech about how this skit is teaching the country a lesson about female strength and how you shouldn't mess with girls and women.
- Some important political guy introduces, by name, every other important political guy there. Crowd politely applauds for each person.
- Military units march back in.
- About 10 helicopters fly by the stadium, some trailing Rwandan flags.
- Kagame gives speech, in English (which we all thought was weird). He talks about how the future of the country is one of reflection, not celebration, and that it must value fairness. He states this will only happen when people take responsibility for their actions and stop saying they were the victims of outside forces.
- Individual motorcades pick up individual political guests while the entire crowd patiently waits.
- Crowd leaves, ushered by secret service.

So all in all I'm glad we went. By far the best part was the skit where the three girls kicked butt -- they were doing all sorts of awesome martial arts moves. The speech by Kagame was very interesting as well. But, we were definitely ready for it to be over.

Now we're taking a break in our hotel rooms, before meeting up for dinner. We're hoping to find some local, authentic food.

Below are a couple of shots from the stadium today. One of the guys walking around checking out the military is Kagame.