Welcome to ‘Hotel Rwanda’

Vice-President Ansari dines at hotel where over 2,000 people found refuge during genocide of 1994

February 20, 2017 10:13 pm | Updated 10:30 pm IST - KIGALI (RWANDA)

Harrowing past:  Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali is a symbol of the African country’s recovery from the dark days of 1994 that left an estimated 800,000 people dead

Harrowing past: Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali is a symbol of the African country’s recovery from the dark days of 1994 that left an estimated 800,000 people dead

 

For a large part of the world, the humanitarian crisis brought about by the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda is best exemplified by the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda , based on true events that took place at the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali. More than 2,000 people were saved after the hotel opened its doors for them to shelter.

As a possible nod to the importance of the hotel in bringing home the horrors of the Tutsi genocide to the wider world, Vice President Hamid Ansari, on a visit to Rwanda, made it a point to have a meal there.

That it remains in business, with a decent number of bookings, is also a symbol of the African country’s recovery from those dark days.

According to Paul Kato, head of marketing and sales at the hotel, there was never any question that, having survived the genocide, the hotel would shut down its operations. “We started to renovate, hire more employees in a sort of continuous process between 1994-2012. In 2012, the Kempinski group signed on to help us with the management. That contract got over last year,” he says. The last employee, from those days in 1994 when thousands of people took refuge in the hotel to escape the massacre by the Interahamwe — the Hutu militia — retired in 2015.

But Mr. Kato says new employees have all been made aware of the hotel’s history.

 

“We still get many guests who ask to see specific places in the hotel that stand out in the plot of the movie. The swimming pool is especially asked after as it was the only source of drinking water during that period,” he says.

Remembering the past

Looking at the serene blue waters of the pool today it is difficult to believe the ghoulish tale. A small commemorative stone has also been put in a corner of the hotel’s parking lot. The sales brochure of the hotel acknowledges the events of 1994, with a picture of the former director of engineering of the hotel, Abias Musonera, whose son Moise was born in April 26, 1994, in the hotel, at the height of the troubles.

“We give guests some information when they ask, but don’t go into the substantive aspects of what happened during the genocide,” says Mr Kato. “We are still the Mille Collines, and here to serve our customers,” he adds, an attitude that Rwandans, committed to reconstruction, seem to have taken to heart.

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