it's been a rough week. My pregnant 18-year-old host sister had severe malaria, and had to wait 9 hours on the hospital lobby floor before getting treatment, even after bribing the doctor. I visited her in the cramped ward of the hospital, which was filled with patients in beds and family members camping out on bedding on the floor. I don't know what was more depressing, hearing Lilian telling stories about patients who die because they can't pay for medicine and treatment, or realizing that some of the stories didn't sound too different from ones I've heard about the US. But Lilian is going to be fine, at least.

we visited an IDP camp for Rwandan Hutu refugees. The World Food Program and the Red Cross had stopped services, in hopes that the refugees would return home. Some of the refugees hadn't eaten in a few days. They have no plans to go anywhere. Thousands of Hutus a week still come into Uganda, and there are about 300,000 in the country right now, because the racial tensions that led up to the genocide are exactly the same today. The Hutus are hated by the Tutsis for committing the genocide, who they have hated since the Belgians deemed them inferior, and it would not take much for the genocide to happen all over again, as evidenced by the attitude of the refugees. They told us that they only reason they would go home would be for "revenge."

I also went to one of Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Villages. UNDP was managing the project at such an intense level that I see no possible way it could be applied to a larger scale, much less handed over to the Ugandan government. They do have a nice clinic, though. On the wall there's a plaque proclaiming the foundation to have been laid by Jeffrey Sachs, who would never waste an opportunity for self-applause.

We crossed over the border to Rwanda, where my stomach was in permanent knots. It is the most bizarre place. It's like Singapore. The roads are paved and smooth and there is no garbage and everything is new and expensive because the autocratic Kagame government keeps everyone in line. You look at this modern city and think, how on earth could a genocide have happened here? We went from genocide memorial to genocide memorial, talked to people who had had their entire families chopped. There was one church where the pews were simply filled with the clothes taken from the victims' bodies. I have never seen so many human skulls.

none of us really know how exactly this happened, but we suddenly found ourselves in a wednesday afternoon evangelical service in a Kigali prison, surrounded by genocide perpetrators jumping around singing hymns. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be happy Rwanda is trying to keep its society intact in the aftermath of the genocide, or horrified that I was suddenly staring at the people responsible for all those memorials.

Basically, it's complicated.