I suspect that the reason most of us travel is that not only does it allow us to step away from our cell phones and alarm clocks and commutes but because it allows us to stop, catch our breath and reboot with new information. And isn’t it nice when that upload comes in the form of sun swept beaches, extra sleep and shopping for handicrafts? But sometimes we arrive at the distant shore and we find something that is not so gentle.
Sometimes it comes in the state of disbelief, in tears, in nightmares, in shadows, in shame and in fear. It is the sensation of choking on the impossible and not being able to utter the truth out loud for fear it is still close enough to materialize again.
Rwanda is an extraordinarily beautiful country. The locals call it Les Milles Collines which means land of a thousand hills. Its gently rolling mountains are emerald green with panoramic vistas and banana trees as far as the eye can see. The land is also replete with mangoes, avocadoes, papaya, pineapple, rice, coffee and great big beautiful lakes. There are tropical flowers, bamboo forests, volcanoes and the temperature is gorgeously equatorial- hovering at about 78 degrees. The nights are cool with starry skies and the streets here are thick with the smell of jasmine.
Kigali, the capital of Rwanda is calm and quiet. The people are friendly and smiling. The busses are orderly, the streets are immaculate, there are no stray animals or unsightly garbage. The streets are beautifully paved. The bougainvillea abounds and odds are good you could be ticketed for not wearing a seatbelt. There is very little corruption, no petty crime and in fact, it has been said that right now, Rwanda is the safest country in Africa. The pendulum swings hard.
The first three nights I was in this country I did not sleep. Despite the idyllic landscape, I could not hush the violent streaks of red that burned the canvas of my tired eyes. Maybe my imagination is overactive. Or maybe the night breeze whispers secrets so that no one
will forget but I could not get my head around the suffering, the horrors and the genocide that happened here so recently. I know it sounds crazy but even the Nazis could be seen as an evil goose-stepping, saluting, sadistic regime. The perfect villains. But Brothers? Classmates? Parents?
You cannot help but shudder when you walk down the street here and see the radio station all the propaganda spewed from, the barbed wire, the armed guards and the gutters which ran red not so long ago.
How dark is the soul of man that these neighbors and friends could hack each other to death- babies, school children in uniform and grandparents with the blade of a machete? What is the glitch in our DNA that makes this bloodlust possible? This is place where people ran to the catholic churches for sanctuary and the priests gave them up to the assailants, turning entire congregations into bloody morgues. Where do the desperate prayers go that are offered up during a siege like this? I wonder, where was God?
Well, I learned that now God exists in Rwanda within the powerful grip of the evangelistic Church. It makes sense that after such an unthinkable war where the people were betrayed by everyone they trusted would choose to be “born again.” To be wiped free of sin, guilt and suffering. To be healed. What better option could there be? Sign me up.
A bit of history; By the 1950’s the Belgians had colonized Rwanda. And like many imperialistic regimes, they chose to use the power structure that was already in place. The Tutsi tribe had most of the wealth and the power at the time so the Belgians simply backed them up. The Hutus were the poor majority in the country. But what the Belgians did was come in with hair-brained anthropological schemes- and with Nazi-style calipers they measured the Tutsi heads, noses, eyes etc… then they did the same with the Hutus. They then pronounced that there was a definitive genetic difference and that clearly the Tutsis were the superior race. They then assigned everyone an identity card which people carried from then on. (sound familiar?) And just so you know- the Hutus and the Tutsis cannot tell each other apart and have been intermarrying for hundreds of years.
By the 1990s the Hutus were in power here and many Tutsis had fled to neighboring countries. These Tutsis with Paul Kigame as their leader (the current president now) joined the RPF in Uganda and began gaining power, launching attacks in Rwanda. In 1993, a peace accord was signed with the RPF (Tutsi) and the Rwandan Govt. (Hutu) When the Hutu extremists saw there was a chance they could lose power, the belief is that they destroyed a plane carrying the president (a moderate Hutu) and blamed it on the Tutsis. After that, all out genocide ensued with Hutus killing Tutsis as well as Hutu moderates.
To our great shame, the west completely abandoned the people of Rwanda and despite the pleas from General Romeo Dellaire (A Canadianin charge of the UN forces here), the western soldiers were pulled out, all foreign personnel was evacuated and the People of Rwanda were left to the slaughter. The killing spree began in April of 1994 and in less than three months over a million people were dead and lying in the streets.
This week, just a short 12 years after the war, the Ga-cha-chas began. Ga-cha-cha is a pretty inventive way the Rwandans have devised to try the over 100,000 war criminals that are in the country. They are basically tribunals in each village that everyone attends and you try the members of the village that were involved in the genocide. Trial by a jury of their peers. They are 6- 8 hours long and they sentences range wildly although they are not allowed to institute the death penalty. Some of the people awaiting trial are in make-shift prisons now but many are at their jobs, working like they always have been. Imagine going to the market or the bank and seeing the people who murdered your children or your neighbors? I cannot believe this country has not come completely of the rails in the post war years. Oh and by the way, they do not talk about the war in school yet. It’s too soon. They have no idea how to teach it.
Nearly everyone here lost family members and loved ones and witnessed the most brutal violence imaginable so it is absolutely an astonishing to me to see the way they have moved on. Sharon, our dear friend who works at a school here says it is because when you are so poor and you’re worried about if you are going to eat that day, you really have no choice but to get on with living. No shrinks, no prozac, no alcohol problems. Just the raw reality. Past and present.
The first night we were in Kigali we went for Indian food (believe it or not- it was wonderful) with one of Sharon’s flat mates who is here doing research for local HIV associations. He was telling us how all the women he works with throughout Rwanda are HIV positive from being raped during the war and that now they are passing it on to a whole new generation of children. Apparently there was a huge initiative telling women not to breast feed (so as not to transmit the disease) but then more babies were dying from the water so now they are back to breast feeding again. These poor women survive the war, lose their entire families, are raped and brutalized and then have to contend with this? I can’t even try to imagine…
We were also told about the perilous state of Rwanda’s food situation. (ironically, he was telling us over some of the best saag panneerI’ve ever had.) Despite the green rolling hills and lush landscape, the population here is much too dense to be sustained with food from this country. this means it is totally reliant on the World Food Program which ships in the food it takes the people to stay alive and keep their anti-aids drugs working. Every six months a new shipment comes in. As of now there is no end in sight. Needless to say, we left dinner in such a state of sadness and despair. What a bleak outlook for this beautiful country with smiling, gracious and battered people.
The other night we went to happy hour at the Hotel Rwanda (the real name is Les Mille Collines) and the topic of conversation was the tensions that still bubble beneath the highly manicured façade. The fact that the tiny Tutsi minority is still the upper class here makes for a very unstable political structure. It is so hard to look at the big picture and not feel overcome with hopelessness.
So here’s the part where I list the positives in order to keep from crying.
Sharon Tao lives here, works here (for free) and spends every ounce of energy she has (which is a lot) helping the children of Rwanda. She will be opening her own school next year that will help prepare the poorest kids (read: Hutu) for a secondary education. In turn, she will be making kids’ lives better as well as their families, helping build great leaders and securing a sustainable peace by helping diminish the socio-economic divide between tribes. For the brief time we have been here helping her at the school and meeting the children and the teachers, it is easy to see what a huge effect she is having on all those around her. Her dedication, patience, contagious laughter and vision is awe- inspiring and we have been truly lucky to have been a small part of it.
Right now a butterfly is flapping its wings in Rwanda. The rest of the world- brace yourself.
The children themselves. They are gorgeous and grinning and mischievous and smart. And they surround us by the dozens when we walk into the schoolyard calling us muzungus (white people/tourists). They giggle incessantly when they touch my hair and they always are touching our arms and then smelling their hands to see if muzungus have a funny smell (I guarantee you after all the playground dirt and sweat we didn’t disappoint). They call Angelo “Zidane” because of his shaved head and they hang off him like a jungle gym. His patience and sense of wonder is so much fun to watch. So far, the big hits with the kids are making friendship pins, paper airplanes, the hokey pokey, heads-shoulders-knees and toes as well as us just trying to say “umorekozo” which is Kinyarwandan for thank you and always sends them into fits of laugher. They have absolutely no resources, no school supplies, no books, no water and many of them are covered in filth. But they are precious and perfect and luminescent and I only hope they know a life full of peace and beauty.
The government believes education is the way to peace and is investing heavily in it. The literacy rates are higher here than anywhere else on the continent.
There is tons of “guilt” money pouring in from all over the world so the Rwandaninfrastructure is down right luxurious compared to a lot of other African countries.
There are gazillions of NGOs here (non-governmental organizations) trying to get things back on track and helping in every way they know how. From food distribution, to AIDS education, to urban art projects, hospitals, and the helping institute the tourism now that the country is at peace.
Every freakin’ person I met or heard about here with the NGOs is from Harvard, Oxford or Columbia finishing up their masters or post doctoral thesis. So, if the brightest minds in the west are on it- that has to be good right?
The Gorilla Treks! When we first landed Sharon took us right to the mountains that border the Congo (sorry mom) and we did a mountain gorilla trek! This was the very mountain that Diane Fossey did all of her research on and it is easy to see why she became so smitten. There are only 700+ mountain gorillas left in the world and we were lucky enough to see a family of eight! We trekked high onto a volcano and then suddenly there they were- not five feet away! Unbelievable! They were munching on the vegetation and stopping occasionally to look at us over their snack. There were two babies and a mom, a teenage boy and there was also a 200kg Silver back named Charles.
As we were descending down the mountain, we looked up and there was Charles, high on a perch watching us walk down. Truly a thrill of a lifetime. The national park posts two armed guards with each gorilla family to keep poachers away so hopefully now there can be peace in the misty mountain tops as well.
The international community in so intertwined here now that hopefully it is way too high profile to let anything happen here again.
Tourism really could take off here if they package the trip with the safaris of Tanzania and the rafting in Uganda. I think they would need a new tag line though. Something cheery- something that doesn’t say war and violence. Something like “ I’m Fond o’ Rwanda!”
I have to believe at the end of the day, that good will prevail and it’s time for that to happen here.
Our time here has definitely been emotional and overwhelming. We have met incredibly smart, driven, curious people- both locals and mzungus. It has reaffirmed how blessed we are, how resilient the human spirit is and that one person really can make all the difference. Thank you Sharon. Here we have seen the darkest side of the human soul and on the same day we have seen the blinding light that eclipses the darkness completely. But whatever else it is, Rwanda is a place where the human rises to haunt us everywhere.
Peace on earth,
j&a