While waiting for the elevator, we lookde down on the roof beside us and could see women hanging out towels, at first we thought it was someone from a neighbouring apartment doing their personal laundry, then we realized it was the hotel laundry! Hundreds and hundreds of white towels and sheets, drying in the African sun. They are very careful about waste here, and there are not a lot of extra towels. They take all the dirty ones in the morning as they clean rooms, wash them and THEN replace them. There are not enough to have 2 full sets.

We can walso watch the carpenters who are working on the wing that is being renovated. They scramble up and down the scaffolding, which is rickety looking, old, rusty pipe. It's about 3 stories high, and the men wear no safety harness, no steel toed boots (just regualr sneakers), no hardhats, safety goggles or gloves and they haul these huge logs up on their backs, I have some great photos of this to post when I get home..

Jan 16. Another hot and muggy day,maybe some rain is coming? We had our morning wake up call from Chad and we decided to stay up and get an early start, before the sun makes it too hot.

Neither of us slept too well last night, it was very stuffy in the room and we had one window open (with a screen of course) and during the night I could hear one lone dog barking, a mournful sound. Now, normally a barking dog will drive me nuts, but this was a familiar sound from home, so it was sort of soothing.. Before too long however, a second dog started, then a third and in no time it was a cacaphony of sound, a frenzy of hyena's. I had to angrily scrabble out of my mosquito net and shut the window. No more cool breeze.

BATHROOM STORIES.

The bathrooms are modest, fairly clean, a bit of mold in the odd corner, and the sides of the tubs are usually falling off, but nothing too alarming, but the toilets are like the ones in Europe where you have to have a scavenger hunt to find the flusher. There are big plastic squares on the wall that you push, small round silver knobs on the tank to push, chains from the ceiling to pull, chains beneath the tank to pull (that one was a doozy to find), buttons on the floor to step on, plus the regular handle like at home. There is never a dull moment here, even in the bathrooms!

The tubs have a spongy sort of feel to them, you can actually feel the bottom of the tub move up and down an inch or so as you shower. I envision myslef plunging through the rotted floorboards all 8 stories down, waving to the occupants of floors 8 through 1 as I pass down...a queenly sort of wave I would hope, as opposed to frantic screaming.

The bathrooms also have vents, not unusual you say? These vents go directly into the hallway, if that does not sound odd, let me explain further. Each vent is a hole in the wall, about 12" X 18", and has 4 wooden slats in it and a screen to keep the bugs out. You can walk by and see if the light in that room's shower is on, and you can hear EVERY sound that comes from within. As we walk down the hallway in the morning, we can hear the morning ablutions and evacuations of other occupants. A lovely way to start the day!

Today (still Jan 16) was quite a day. We called Razak, our driver, and he took us to the Sunny safari office, where we finally met Shabbir, who has helped us plan the safari. We paid for the balance , and now we just have to wait until Sunday when they pick us up at the hotel. His office is in a mediocre part of town, but it is very clean, the staff all wear nice crisp shirts with the Sunny logo, and there were 3 books in the waiting room with letters of recommendations and photos from other clients, so we felt pretty good after seeing those. Shabbir himself seemed really young to me, maybe early 30's and his hair was slicked back (mafia style) and he looked like an Israeli soldier.

Except for his really, really, REALLY yellow and odd teeth, I simply couldn't stop looking at them, and I was terrified that I would make huge faux pas and utter something like: "We are so looking forward to seeing some wild teeth.", so I contained myself by asking other foolish (yet harmless) questions and eventually we left.

Razak had waited for us, and we asked him to drive is to the International Tribunal for the Genocide in Rwanda.

A Brief History Lesson. First, I don't know a lot about the genocide to my shame, but in 1994, in the space of 100 days, almost 800,000 Tutsi people were massacred by the Hutu people, in an attempt to wipe out an entire tribe of people.

The United Nations pulled out of Rwanda and then it became known that the United Nations knew about the planned genocide 3 months in advance (not all the UN members of course, but some) and also, many government members also knew, aided and abbeted in this genocide.

It's certainly more detailed than that, but the tribunal is taking place here in Arusha and it will go on for a lot of years yet, but the public is able to view the proceedings. There are all sorts of political bigwigs who have been held in jail for many years and are only now coming to trial, as well as members of the military.

It was probably the most fascinating experience I have ever had. We first had to ask permission at a guard house to get in, this was just outside the gates, then we were sent to though the gates where armed gaurds are standing and they point you to the main building. The building is very large and quite modern looking, and well barred, cameras and men with guns everywhere. Inside we spoke to another guard who took our passports (we get them on the way out) and made us fill out our names, address, passport number, reason for visiting, where we are staying and our nationality in this large book.. You are then issued ID tags, which I could not for the life of me figure out how to pin on...geez...), our bags were x-rayed, we walked through a detector and were directed up to the 2nd floor.

There are also armed guards by the elevators as well, and when we got the 2nd floor we had a choice of 4 courtrooms, we just went to the closest where we went through another detector, handed over our bags for this armed guard to keep (I have never seen so many guns in my life), then they give you the headphones that translate what is being said, and you can go in with pencil and paper only. You are also warned very sternly to not dare to take a picture, or to use any recording devices at all.

We went into the gallery which is about 50 feet long, maybe 10-12 feet deep and has 3 rows of chairs, about 25 chairs in each row, so maybe 75 people can observe. There were also 4 TV's mountd so you could see what was happening, someone inside was filming and would point the camera at whoever was speaking. There were only about 6 of us in the gallery today.

The wall in front of us was all glass which gave us a good view. To the left is 12 people (judges, lawyers) from 12 different countries (members of the tribunal), they were the prosecutors, someone for the defense was on the other side, plus various legal assisants, translators etc.

Today a Major Lemare (sp?) was being questioned, he was a member of the Belgium military at one point but at the time of the genocide he was with the U.N.

He said that he was "there" for a week and his mission had been to contact the authorities in the field and to prepare for future missions in Kigali. He seemed really nervous, his hands were very twitchy and a lot of his answers were: "I don't know, I can't recall."

There were asking him about the RPF, the Rwanadan Patriot Front and what he had known about cease fire agreements, military operations and their equiptment..

Sadly, we had asked our driver to return for us, so we couldnt' spend as much time there as we would have liked. Who knew it would be so amazing? It's really a huge part of history, not unlike the trials at Nuremburg.