As I landed at Kigali airport last Tuesday, I joked with my colleague that everyone was going to think I am Rwandan, because I was once told I look like one. I had no idea how true and life-changing those words would become. To start with, it was all fun and games: I laughed and told the officer at the airport and the girl checking me in at the hotel that I was Somali and not their long-lost family member. But after a while, the looks I got went from the playful smiles to long looks of disbelief and disappointment.
Being British, I was freaked out by it all but just tried to smile it off politely. To be mistaken for a woman from a country full of stunning women is nothing to complain about. None of it made sense until I visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which commemorates the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The remains of more than 250,000 people are interred there, and as I walked into one of the rooms where the photographs of those murdered hung I saw faces that looked like the same uncles, aunties and cousins that I lost.
