"'94" and the Hotel Des Mille Collines (Kigali, Rwanda)

Rwanda is beautiful. Getting out of the airport and meeting up with Guen, who I'm staying with while I'm here, I immediately thought of Bogota, where a lot of my Colombian family lives or has lived - lights decorating hills like a Christmas tree on a Saturday night about to pulse to life.

And Kigali, where I am right now, is one of the cleanest cities I've ever seen. So much feels new or freshly paved, painted, just arrived. Guen says that there's always been a tradition of appearance being very important, whether it's the way folks dress, or the city's streets, whatever -- "it's something that was around well before '94," as she said.

This is the only way the past exists here. And the word used to describe it: "'94"

Today though - no one is Hutu anymore. No one is Tutsi. I still can't get a straight answer on whether any specific laws forbid the mention of either "arbitrary grouping" publicly (as a number of Rwandans I've met have identified them as candidly) but there are just things you don't talk about. There are other things you discuss "on the porch." A woman today told me that there's no tribal origin that explains the Hutus or Tutsis - she says the Belgians merely divided the population into those who owned "more than 10 cows at the time" - Tutsis - and those who didn't - Hutus.

All the districts have been renamed, as well as the cities, and, although most Rwandans in most parts refer to places with the old names, you can't find any maps or formal documents that mention them. There is a lot of strong negative sentiment against the French, although many still use French in their every day lives. I was told today that the French trained and supported the Interahamwe, who led the genocide that left almost 1,000,000 Rwandans dead.

Last night I had some great food and went dancing til 4am at a disco. We had drinks and had fun. I was captivated by the people I saw out. The women are stunningly beautiful. So are the men. I can't distinguish any two groups, although you'll hear a thousand different folkloric ideas about what "physical characteristics" separate the two. It makes me think of turn of the 20th century anthropology and other "science" that hierarchized the identified races.

I honestly didn't feel the heavy weight I thought I would have felt since I got here. It sort of felt like a dream - and a good one at that. Everyone seemed well-dressed and buzzed. Everyone was smiling. Lil Wayne bumped at the club. And everyone, whether they spoke Kinyarwanda, French, Kiswahili, English, whatever, they sang along to the song like they wrote it.

Everything was cool. Until 2 hours ago.

I went with Guen to have a drink at the Hotel Des Mille Collines - the infamous hotel talked about in the book "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" and in the film "Hotel Rwanda" that tell the story of a hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, who saved 1268 people by giving them refuge at the hotel on a hill in Kigali.

Today the Mille Collines is still a hotel. With the same name. No mention of Paul Rusesabagina. No memorial or monument. It's a slightly over-rated 3.5 star hotel. It kind of looks like a Holiday Inn in Boca Raton where someone would go with their grandparents for a weekend golfing trip.

I sat at a table and drank a sprite and Guen said to me, "The first 2 weeks it really weighs on you...and then you forget. It's fucked up but you do. I came here to watch music last Thursday, it didn't even cross my mind...and then you see a guy trimming a lawn with a machete."

"They still allow machetes in this country?" I asked, shocked.

"I mean it is a useful tool," she answered.

At the supermarket, after we left, she came up 100 Rwandan Francs short at the checkout counter. I remembered that I had been given two 100 Franc bills by Mrs. Mwinzi as a parting gift before I had left Nairobi. They were from her last trip to Rwanda.

As I pulled out the bill, something very abrupt happened - a sharp shift in the air. Everyone immediately stopped - all four cashiers in a line, the customers all turning around to look at me.

No one smiled. No one talked. The cashier carefully put her hand around the bill and rolled it over twice, a sort of weighted, slightly numbed nostalgia in her face - like she was looking at an infant handprint petrified in volcanic ash or an old photo about to turn to dust.

The bill was from 1989.

From the era "before '94," in a world where the past is like a forgotten dream broken down into increments that exist either "before '94" or "after '94."

This "land of a thousand hills," with a people described by most Rwandans I've met as a "fun-loving people who love to party."

For a few brief moments, today, I met Rwanda.