Travel Guide Gitarama / Muhanga

51 km from Kigali, Gitarama (Muhanga) is a town that has been involved in the recent history of Rwanda. It was here that the Republic was proclaimed on January 28, 1961, and it was also here that the first elected president of Rwanda, the very Christian Grégoire Kayibanda, was born. Not far away, it was in Muramvi (in the training center of the Institute of Management) that the provisional government was entrenched after the death of Habyarimana, at the very beginning of the genocide. Some of its members are currently being held in Arusha. Gitarama is in any case a well-placed stopover for those on the way to Butare or Kibuye. On the way there, it is common to have breakfast or lunch on the back street. Continuing on foot, one finds the university on the left, then a pretty square with amazing facades (especially the one with the two lions) that deserves to be highlighted. In the middle was a small stadium where President Grégoire Kayibanda was sworn in in 1962, and used after 1994 for gacaca hearings (a judicial system created in 2002, with the aim of judging more than 100,000 genocide suspects, who were then occupying the country's overcrowded prisons). It has since been demolished. The tomb of the interim president Dominique Mbonyumutwa (who succeeded King Kigeli before giving way to Kayibanda) used to stand in front of the bleachers, before the authorities decided to move it to a cemetery. As this is the Catholic heartland of Rwanda, there are many religious buildings, such as the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, which dominates the city, or the Nazareth Center, whose foundation stone was laid by Pope John Paul II in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been a center for unaccompanied children. It can be reached via the main road to Butare: turn left after leaving the town, and take the track to the right. Finally, the Rwandan studio of Radio Maria is located in Muhanga.