---
title: "Seneca aviation professor recounts ‘deep scars’ on Remembrance Day"
type: "article"
space: "MyNews"
author: "Stephanie Conte"
created: 2021-12-01T13:56:46Z
updated: 2021-12-01T13:56:46Z
tags: ["feature-stories"]
url: "https://students.senecapolytechnic.ca/spaces/112/mynews/articles/feature-stories/3903/seneca-aviation-professor-recounts-deep-scars-on-remembrance-day"
---

# Seneca aviation professor recounts ‘deep scars’ on Remembrance Day

At first, Husam Wafaei and his Royal Canadian Air Force \(RCAF\) crew members didn’t see the destruction as they flew over Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. They were dispatched from Bosnia to rescue 500 orphans and 50 nuns. It was April 1994. The Rwandan genocide was already brutally underway.

“We didn’t even know where Rwanda was at the time,” recalled the Seneca [School of Aviation](https://www.senecacollege.ca/school/aviation.html) professor and program co-ordinator. “We were the first crew in. It was an eerie feeling when we realized there were dead bodies by the piles. They were in the river, and the river was blocked by the bodies. They were on the side of the road. They were everywhere.”

[Read the full story](https://www.senecacollege.ca/news-and-events/seneca-news/seneca-aviation-professor-recounts-deep-scars-on-remembrance-day.html?utm_source=mynews&utm_medium=ei&utm_campaign=remembrance)