Kibuye and Kiziba camp

I didn't realise the buses ran so infrequently to Kibuye (every two hours) and only just caught the last one on Saturday arriving after dark. Kibuye is quite small and there were no taxis about, only moto-taxis, and as I was travelling with my suitcase the only possibility of getting to the guesthouse was on foot. After a few minutes walking I was joined by a young man who offered to carry my suitcase for me. Being somewhat paranoid I turned him down but he kept walking with me asking some questions in English and French, both of us struggling to communicate. When I arrived at the guesthouse about half an hour later he said au revoir and turned around and walked back up the hill we'd just come down. I realised too late he'd been walking with me just to make sure I'd gotten there safely.



In the morning I was so glad to have a full day to rest before going to the camp. The views of Lake Kivu were beautiful and I spent several hours walking around the village exploring. Eventually I found a small beach used by the residents to bathe and fish from and spread out my towel to sunbathe. Every few minutes different groups of children would come and talk to me or passersby stopped to stare.


On Monday I met up with some of the NGO staff and set off for Kiziba refugee camp. It was then that I realised Kibuye is small: when I was introduced to a couple of the workers they told me they'd seen me sunbathing the day before! The camp is about half an hour from Kibuye down a road which at times is incredibly bumpy and you can easily invision slipping over the edge in a downpour. It was without a doubt the worst road I've seen in Rwanda, the workers laughed when I said that and told me it used to be much worse.


The stories I heard in Kiziba were similar to those I'd heard in Gihembe: the refugees didn't have enough firewood, food or sheeting and other materials to build houses. They often had to sell the few things they were given so they could provide more nutricious food, clothes and other things for their families. Kiziba also has a severe land shortage and is housing the seventeen and a half thousand refugees that live there on less than half the amount of land they should have for that number. In addition to overcrowding, it means that latrine and shower facilities are stretched thin and there was a real concern of a cholera outbreak in the camp should it be brought in from outside (there are reports of cholera at the moment in nearby Gisenyi so this is a very real threat).


While I was at Kiziba, I met the handicapped women's association (above) who, with the help of a microcredit programme in the camp, make lovely colourful bags and sell them. Since they began they've expanded from just a couple of members to training more than twenty who are now able to supplement their provisions with income from the association. It takes two women a whole week to create the bags which they sell for 6000 Rwandan Francs (about US$12).


This morning I ate breakfast and said goodbye to Kibuye while enjoying views of Lake Kivu and the Congo in the distance.

Gihembe refugee camp

Many people don't realise that Rwanda is the home of many thousands of refugees stemming from different conflicts in the region. This week I visited one of the largest refugee camps in the country, Gihembe, which is about an hour north of Kigali quite close to Byumba, a Rwandan town with a fairly large population in the middle of a tea growing region that provides jobs for about 60,000 people. Gihembe is home to about 17,500 Congolese refugees many of which have been living there almost ten years now.

Ten years.

There are still regular reports of violence in the border areas of the DRC from which they fled. Despite massive funding cuts and UNHCR's (UN High Commission for Refugees) hope that the refugees will voluntarily return soon, stability doesn't look promising across the border. Especially after yesterday's reports that there has been fighting in Kinshasa and Jean-Pierre Bemba, the runner up in last year's election and the DRC's opposition leader, has been accused of treason. The Rwandan government wants the refugees to return, but after one attempt a few years ago which saw the refugees attacked as soon as they arrived in the Congo and back at the camp within a few weeks, it seems unlikely that they will be convinced as long as their home continues to experience regular outbreaks of violence.

The camp itself is a few kilometers from Byumba, set high on the top of a nearby hill. From the distance you can make out the white sheeting the refugees are given by UNHCR to constuct their houses. Byumba itself is at a high altitude and quite cold at night, the refugees in Gihembe are all the way at the top of the hill and only have the sheeting to insulate them from the rain and wind and thin UNHCR issue blankets to block out the cold. It's rainy season and every night I spent in Byumba the pouring rain woke me up repeatedly. Sleeping under plastic sheeting, most of the time torn plastic sheeting, wet and cold must be virtually impossible.



There were many, many children in the camp, crowds of them followed me around all the time I was there. Some of the camp workers told me that one of the biggest problems in the camp is the lack of food. Refugees are only given very limited supplies of maize and cooking oil and often must sell some of their ration so they can supplement their diet with fruit and vegetables and buy clothes and other necessary supplies that aren't provided. Some lucky refugees have found low-paying jobs within the camps, but many more have to search outside for work and find that their status affects the positions they can take and reduces their pay considerably. Family planning efforts are having virtually no effect in the camps as families purposefully increase the number of children to increase their food rations. A six month old baby is given the same monthly food ration as an adult, many refugees see only the short term food gain in having another baby and not the long term consequences of even more mouths to feed and backs to clothe.

The staff I spoke to at the camp were quite amazing - in the face of hard and depressing working conditions and wages that with inflation get lower each year they are trying their best to help the people under their care. One of things I was told repeatedly was that the scarce resources and status of the refugees within Rwanda makes it very difficult for them to adequately provide for families and that the biggest losers tend to be adolescent girls. Sexual exploitation becomes almost inevitable when the girls aren't given clothing within the camps, their parents can't afford to provide it, they can't work and they have no other way to dress themselves than to find an older man who will buy them things or otherwise prostitute themselves.

A lot of sexual abuse occurs when women and girls leave the camp in search of work or firewood in remote areas. Counsellors told me that in Congolese culture rape is taboo to discuss and therefore many women don't come forward and talk about what has happened to them. They have been working hard to sensitise the community and encourage women to come forward, but this hasn't been help by the refugees status. Because they are not Rwandan, refugees accused of rape will only face jail for a few days before they are let go and return to the camp. There seems to be no way to hold prisoners indefinitely no matter what the crime.

On Thursday, I had my own rather frightening experience of this. When I first arrived at the camp a guy in handcuffs came up to me and shouted a bit and staff led him away telling me he had gone crazy after experiencing the war in Congo. They seemed resigned to him and treated him as if he was harmless so I didn't think any more about it. Thursday morning one of the refugees was leading me through the medical area to find someone I had a meeting with when suddenly she ran through the gate to the compound and it was locked just in front of me. I turned around and the crazy man was running at me shouting "Why are you afraid of me" as I tried to back away from him. He pushed me and kicked me before security managed to grab him and take him away and I slipped through the gate. I thought after that he would have been locked up, but in the evening when I was about to leave the camp he appeared and chased after me again but this time there were more people around that took him away before he could get too close to me.

The next day, after he had been sent to the mental hospital in Kigali, the camp director told me that the guards were afraid of him because he had killed both his parents. The prisons wouldn't keep him because he was a refugee and not Rwandan. He had been sent to the mental hospital in Kigali many times but they always discharged him after a few days and returned him to the camp, she hoped that this time he would be kept there but the prospects were slim.

my weekend in Goma and Gisenyi

After quite a busy (and thankfully successful) week doing my research in Kigali I decided to take advantage of the weekend and explore the country a bit. I caught the last bus on Friday to Gisenyi, known as a gorgeous retreat town at the top of Lake Kivu, and arrived about four hours later well after dark. Being a bit of a spontaneous decision I had no idea where I was staying and jumped on the nearest mototaxi (the back of a motorcycle) sans helmet and flew off down wet and mostly dirt roads in search of a room. Gisenyi is so close to the Congolese border I found my limited Swahili very useful to ask the cyclist to slow down - pole pole! - which he thought was funny (but he did slow down!).

The first 'moderate' guesthouse I tried was closed. The second had no bednets (not something I'm willing to go without in rainy season). The third was completely full. Eventually I ended up in a Presbyterian church run hostel which was quite basic but clean and much cheaper than the others I'd looked at. It was too late to get something to eat at the hostel, so after stumbling around in the dark nearby I came across a local restaurant serving an almost finished buffet dinner and helped myself to the scraps before going to bed.

In the morning I woke up to rain, rain and more rain. Now, I know this is rainy season, but rainy season usually means a downpour every day or every few days, not all day without stopping! As sunbathing was clearly out I asked around and heard that the situation across the border was stable... I don't think I need to tell you what happened next do I?



I knew Goma was close to an active volcano (it errupted in December and covered the town in lava) - but it was quite amazing being able to see the smoke rising from the top and see just how small it looked because we were essentially on part of it. The hardened lava was piled up all over the place and roads on one side of the town were completely destroyed by the lava flows and the consequential road scraping to clear them. I was only in the DRC a very short time, but it was long enough to get a bit of a feel for the place. Even in a few hours, the sense of chaos across the border was palpable. Rwanda has a large police and army presence, but in Goma men in uniform swaggered all over the place. One of the reasons why I have so few pictures from my visit is my strong desire not to be "interviewed" by one of them and forced to pay a "fine" for being caught photographing something forbidden (and that really could have been anything!).



After a (surprisingly) uneventful border crossing back into Rwanda I spent the rest of my time in Gisenyi walking alot and enjoying the gorgeous views of the lake. On Sunday morning I was lucky enough to catch about two hours of sunshine. So far on my trip every single day I've put on sunblock it's been overcast and the few bright days I've forgotten to do so. Yesterday was not an exception to this and in two hours of sunshine I managed to turn a pretty crispy red colour.



My trip back to Kigali yesterday afternoon turned out to be the most exciting few hours of the weekend. Shortly after leaving Gisenyi the rain poured down in what seemed like sheets of water. Despite passing dozens of cars, buses and transport trucks that had crashed through the occasional guard rail and off the side of the mountains, our driver didn't seem to slow down, let alone stop. The three and a half hours back to the capital were spent almost completely in tense silence on the bus, marred only by shouts from passengers when it seemed we were about to careen into something!

a short diversion to Butare (Huye)

Over the weekend I went to Butare (now renamed Huye) in the South, a town known as the intellectual centre of Rwanda where the main university is located. The journey took a good two and a half hours squished in the minibus, but the views along the way were well worth the discomfort.

At one point during the journey the driver screamed to a stop, the fare collector jumped out and chased after two kids disappearing into the brush. Eventually he caught up with them and dragged them back to the bus: everyone on board shouted at them for a good ten minutes while they hung their heads in shame. The person next to me explained they'd been caught trying to chip parts of the road off. I have a feeling if vandals were treated the same way in England there'd be an awful lot less graffiti and trash in my neighbourhood!



Though still the third largest city/town in the country, Butare is vastly different from Kigali and feels really relaxed and sleepy in comparison. Butare was the administrative capital of the country for the Belgians before Independance and there are many brick buildings, such as the Cathedral (above), that were built during this time. I spent a peaceful morning in the beautiful National Museum and many hours happily wondering around the town enjoying the lovely views.

Nyamata

Today was a public holiday in Rwanda. As all the offices were closed I thought it best to take the day off and venture out of the capital to Nyamata about 30 kms away.

On my way to the main bus station a little boy came up to me and asked me for something to eat, so I popped into the nearest shop and bought him some peanuts and chocolate milk. Within seconds about a dozen more streetkids appeared from nowhere and I had to go back and get food for them all - some of them wanted a picture taken so I snapped it quickly and kept walking before any more streetkids could arrive and I would have no money at all left!

The bus station was quite a bit further than I anticipated from the centre, but eventually I arrived (with a few new blisters). I quickly found the right bus thanks to some helpful strangers who thought a pregnant muzungu was one of the funniest sights ever, and climbed in ready to go. The minibus (same as a dalladalla for those that followed the Tanzanian adventures) didn't leave until it was full a good forty minutes later, but the trip to Nyamata was mostly smooth and took less than an hour passing gorgeous scenery along the way.


About half way there an old man got on the bus and says "How are you today young lady" quite loudly to me as he sat down. It's the first thing that anyone on the bus had said to me other than confirming it was the right bus, and everyone turned towards us to listen. He tells me he spent 33 years in Uganda so he has good English and starts chatting to me, asking what I think of Rwanda, and then talks mainly about the genocide and how difficult it is for people to learn to live together now, though they are trying very hard.

When we arrived in Nyamata the bloke next to me asked if I knew where I was going and offered to show me the way. As we walk along he tells me a bit about himself - he's 25 and studying at the university in Kigali. Next week he will defend his thesis and hopes to do well enough so that next year he can begin a Masters programme in Kampala at the big university there. He tells me he has family in the area so I asked if his brothers and sisters lived there.
He replies "No, they're all dead."
And then I said "and your parents...?"
"They are dead too. They were all killed in the genocide, there's only me and my aunt left."


The memorial used to be the church in Nyamata. When the president's plane crashed Tutsis from all around Nyamata gathered in the church thinking it would provide them with a refuge, instead they were slaughtered.

He walks me round telling me about what happened: pointing out the bullet holes in the ceiling, the machete wounds on the skulls, the clubs used to kill people that were left in the vault as a reminder, and the entire time I'm thinking to myself - this is where his whole family was killed.

He showed me the orphanage where he grew up behind the church and the schools he went to. I asked him how he felt about people coming to look at the memorials from overseas and he told me it made him really happy that people were learning from it so it wouldn't happen again.

...sadly, it is happening right now in Darfur.

a Sunday by the Pool in Kigali

Since arriving back in Rwanda two days ago, I've wandered round Kigali to work out where things are, tried to get back to feeling normal and well rested after not sleeping at all on the long journey here (just about there!) and spent a fair bit of time doing as much research as I can on the NGOs I'm going to try and talk to this week. This afternoon I thought it was a bit too nice to spend the day inside on my computer so I went down to Hotel Milles Collines (of Hotel Rwanda and a Sunday at the Pool in Kigali fame) and spent a couple of hours relaxing and watching the kids swim. It was really surreal to think that almost thirteen years ago the pool I was sitting next to was drained bit by bit to provide water for all the people that had crowded there to seek refuge.