Staying in Hotel Rwanda - The Milles Collines Hotel

We stayed in the Hôtel des Mille Collines for the last few days of our stay in Africa. The Mille Collines is a hotel in Kigali, Rwanda. It became famous as the building in which over 1,000 people took refuge during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The story of the hotel and its manager at that time, Paul Rusesabagina, was used as the base of the movie Hotel Rwanda. The French, "des Mille Collines", is from "Land of a Thousand Hills", a poetic name for Rwanda. The hotel also appears in the 2005 film Sometimes In April. (If you want to learn more about the Rwandan Genocide that took the lives of 1,000,000 in 90 days these two movies are a good place to start).

While in Kigali we met a pastors wife who stayed at the Mille Collines for a while as a refugee during the genocide.

The Belgian flight-carrier Sabena owned the hotel at the time of the genocide. The European managers were flown out and Rusesabagina, who was manager of the smaller Hôtel des Diplomates at that time, was made manager. With the help of his wife, he bribed the Hutu Interahamwe militia with money and alcohol to keep them from killing the refugees in the hotel.

During the genocide, the water from the pool was used for drinking water.

The hotel is a relatively small and humble facility by American standards. Very beautiful though. "If these walls could talk..." was one of the questions that continuely went through our minds during our stay.