Rwanda - really a long time ago now!

The weekend after Easter, Jemma, myself and two fellow volunteers from the UK, Louie and Adam went to Rwanda. Where we were staying was very close to the border, so it was not as big a deal as it sounds, and Rwanda is very safe.... they even tend to drive on the side of the road they are supposed to! We got up at a ridiculously early hour to get there and it paid off, as it took only about half an hour to get across the border (sometimes you can stand in queues for hours). So eventually we arrived to find everything closed at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning, as once a month all of Rwanda (or at least Kigali, the capital where we were) shuts down for the morning. So we just sort of wandered around and got a feel for the place.... traffic lights! shopping centres! lots of sealed roads! People speaking French!
By the time it got to lunchtime we were quite desperate for some food, and we ended up eating in a local cafe. This could have been a disaster (some local food is disgusting, like matooke - more later), but it was actually excellent. And so we discovered that the average Rwandan eats much nicer food than the average Ugandan. I think a huge plate of chips, rice, goat, greens and other stuff cost less than $1.
After our exotic lunch we headed to the main tourist destination in Kigali, the genocide memorial museum. This was, as you can imagine, both very interesting and very harrowing. The thing I found hard to deal with was the reactions of other Africans also seeing the museum.... there was a lot of grief and horror being openly expressed. And what can you think in a situation like that except please, never again.
The following day we headed out to a church site from the genocide that had been left as is.... only the bodies were removed and it was full of thousands of clothes. It is unbelievable to think that this only occurred just over 10 years ago. Which brings me to my next point. People have asked what Rwanda was like, if there is any evidence of the genocide.....
Kigali felt a bit too nice, like they have tried to cover up what happened with development and infrastructure. I suppose the money for that came from guilty-feeling countries who didn't do anything to help Rwanda at the time. I get the feeling that the genocide is never mentioned by local people, and everything is done to prevent differences between tribes of people being mentioned. For example, no one is ever referred to as a Hutu or Tutsi (even if they are.... and in Uganda people are identified by their tribe all the time). Another international that I met at one stage was telling me that it is easy to even inadvertently upset people about various things. For example, she offered a local that she know a biscuit, and he said 'no, those biscuits remind me of the genocide'. It turns out he hid in the back of a shop and had only this particular brand of biscuits to eat for a week. For course, I'm sure he was not offended by the question, but it seems that recent history is well and truly within memory for a lot of people.