Travel Guide Nyamata

In less than six weeks in 1994, 50,000 Tutsis were exterminated in Nyamata, out of a population of 120,000. In 1963, many Tutsis from the north had been settled in this region of unhealthy marshes, after having escaped the ethnic massacres. Several thousand of these unfortunate people were massacred in the Nyamata church in 1994, but also in the nearby Ntarame church and in a maternity hospital where they had taken refuge. In 2004, the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld returned to Nyamata. He met with the survivors and the perpetrators and recorded their testimonies in two moving books, Dans le nu de la vie and Une saison de machettes . The Catholic church, built in 1980, has been transformed into a memorial representative of other churches in which the victims of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis died Until 2009, access to Nyamata and Bugesera was via a dusty or soaked track depending on the season. From now on, it is a dazzling roll of asphalt that leads there, in half the time, after having crossed the great plain of Akagera. The road then continues towards Burundi. It is also in the vicinity of Nyamata that a large international airport is being built, financed in large part by Qatar. It should be inaugurated in 2024, if all goes well. As a result, the price of land has skyrocketed, houses have been repainted and hotels are springing up like mushrooms. Asphalt is like electricity, it transforms life!