More Famous than Ben Affleck

On Thursday a delegation of VIPs from the Congo and UNHCR came to talk to the refugees. I asked if I could bring the bub and the Cripple along in the afternoon as we would just be sitting and listening to people talk (and I’ve learned that in Rwanda people really like to talk, so it would probably be quite a long event). The camp director said sure I could bring her, but we would be mobbed so it was my decision to make. I didn’t quite believe her.

See, everywhere we go crowds of people come to wave and shake and the bubs hand. She loves the attention! The first time I took her into the camp she probably drew a crowd of about a hundred children, and she was a bit scared (she was also not feeling very well and had just had a nasty shot), but she went in again the next day for a check up and just waved when all the children came up to her. Every day the Cripple takes her out on walks and she draws crowds of children from the nearby school that come and shake her hands and stroke her head. She blows kisses and raspberries at them. When the Cripple takes her into church she sings along with the music and spends all her time trying to get to the other children. So I figured she’d be happy to get the attention.

As soon as we arrived I realised I’d vastly underestimated the scale of the event. I think virtually every refugee (and there are about 18,000 of them) had come to hear the speakers. There were so many hoards of people small children had climbed up the basketball basket – I really can’t imagine how – and were sitting on the hoop or hanging off the net in order to get a better view!

The delegates were just beginning to talk so we were quickly ushered around the side to the benches behind them. Though there were a few, mostly older, refugees sitting behind us on the few seats provided for VIPs, the vast majority of the many thousand attending were standing in front of us. Behind us a refugee who I’d met the week before was sitting. He offered to translate the proceedings for us and sat there diligently writing what was said. After a good hour and a half the talk finished and we thanked him profusely for his kindness. Apparently the delegates had come to try to talk the refugees into going back the Congo. They were promised their houses and property back and told the situation is secure enough for them to go. We asked the refugee what he thought of this and he gave a rather neutral answer (I should point out, all the delegates were still sitting in the row in front of us).

As we were a bit distracted talking to the people behind us we didn’t notice all the VIPs leaving. Suddenly I realised there was just us and a few thousand refugees left. As we came round the side of the shelter a huge wave of children surged forward. I suddenly realised what the camp director had meant.

Oh dear.

The Cripple and I made our way, as best we could, in the direction of what we thought were the NGO vehicles in the medical centre. The children, absolutely fascinated by the bub, screamed in joy and threw all their weight into getting close enough to touch us. Some of the refugee guards stepped in and tried to keep the children back by hitting their legs with switches. We were appalled, but really, there seemed to be no alternative. We finally get through to a space in the crowd and groan when we realise we’ve come to the UNHCR boarding point, not our own. The medical centre is back around a long fence that literally thousands of children seem to be hanging off and squashed up behind.

Starting to get a bit frantic I ask the single police officer if there is a back way to the medical centre. He says no and turns his back on us. Not two seconds later the fence starts to collapse and dozens of children fall off. The police officer rushes over and says yes, there is a back way. We follow someone as fast as we can away from the hoards.

After ten minutes of speed walking through a maze of locked gates we’re back in the medical centre. The camp director laughs at us and says “see I told you you’d be mobbed.” A couple of months ago Ben Affleck came to visit the camp. As hundreds of children squash their faces up to the fence to get a better look, I ask the camp director if they acted the same way when he visited. “No, no, no. She’s more famous than Ben Affleck!”

While waiting in the security of the compound, we thought about the talks we’d just heard. We wondered how, twelve or thirteen years on, authorities could know which house belonged to whom, and even if the houses were still standing. I asked some other refugees in the medical centre what they thought. One of them said “How can I return? The Interahamwe have taken our village. They live their now.” That night one of the staff at the NGO we’ve been staying with commented that there was conflict in the region they fled from last week. Over the weekend an NGO worker in North Kivu (the area the refugees fled from) said with astonishment “But the Interahamwe are in their villages!”

A weekend break

The Fourth of July is Liberation day, a public holiday here, so we were blessed with a long weekend. We spent Friday in Kigali at a really lovely guesthouse and heard that the holiday was a very big deal for the manager of the guesthouse. He had hidden under a bed for five weeks during the genocide and was freed when the capital had been liberated fourteen years ago. It’s the kind of story you hear fairly frequently in Rwanda and makes you realise how incredibly resilient the people are.

On Saturday we went to Gisenyi, on the northern side of Lake Kivu, and crossed over to Goma (DRC) for the Cripple to get her visa renewed. Despite making several promises before leaving that I definitely wasn’t crazy enough to go into the Congo with bub, ahem, when it came right down to it, it was definitely the simplest option. The thought of spending nine hours on a bus – twice – in one weekend in order to get to Kampala was just too much. So the Congo it was, though in all actuality it was a very simple crossing. The closest we were to getting in hot water was when the Rwandan immigration official noticed the Cripple’s visa had expired two days beforehand. Thankfully everyone in the line behind us spoke up and said the date definitely looked like a 5 – not a 3 – and after a severe tongue lashing we were through.

We cruised around in Goma for a couple of hours and saw the destruction caused by the volcano erupting. There’s a ban on taking pictures of almost everything in the DRC, and the few things you are allowed to photograph you need a permit for (which we didn’t have) so we hid our picture taking as much as possible. The greatest excitement occurred when we (the Cripple being a photographer it’s rather hard to resist) took a picture of some fishing boats and were shouted at by the people nearby (who thought we’d taken pictures of them) so at that point we thought it was high time we went back to Rwanda. The return crossing was without incident and the Cripple’s visa is now valid for the rest of her stay here. Woohoo!

Gisenyi was gorgeous and a lovely break from reality. The bub enjoyed playing in, and eating, the sand and was delighted to meet another baby around her age who was happy to play with her too. We spent the evening at the nicest hotel in town and spent far too much on a couple of drinks and dinner. But it was tasty, definitely.

The journey back to Kigali was a bit torturous – I had a headache, felt travel sick, was squashed in an uncomfy seat with people sleeping on me on either side and the bub sleeping on my lap did nothing to ease the pressure on my bladder for three hours or so. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself until we passed an accident on the road. A crowd of people from the nearby village had gathered round a bus that had collided with pedestrians (I think)… seeing a body wrapped in cloth on the side of the road sent shivers down my spine and made the small inconveniences I’d been grumbling silently about seem like nothing. When we reached Kigali I found out four people had died in the accident, not just the one I’d seen.

In yet another example of people’s incredible generosity here, on the way back we were offered a place to stay by someone I had met during my first week here. He has a baby born a week before the bub and we’d bonded a bit over baby stories. When we arrived back in Kigali he arranged collecting us, finding us dinner (and amusing the bub while we waited), taking us to the house (a brand new just finished building in the suburbs, one of the nicest places we’ve seen), hot water, a guard and sorted a taxi for the morning to get our lift (at 6am!) back to Byumba. As we were driving down the back roads to the house I had a moment wondering if we were perhaps being abducted. I just couldn’t work out why someone would be so kind. To be honest, I still can’t quite get my head round it. The level of kindness and generosity I’ve experienced on my travels always astonishes me, especially when I consider the way foreigners are treated in my own country.

Mazungu na Bebe

Friends will know that as much as I’ve enjoyed coming back to Rwanda again and again, I’ve found the people much more reserved than in other parts of Africa and being here long term can be a bit lonely.

Travelling with a baby has completely changed that.

From the moment we stepped off the plane – when someone from immigration saw me crushed under the weight of bub and luggage, asked me to sit down, took our passports to be stamped (in front of the massive queue), came back and carried all my suitcases through the exit – people have gone out of their way to help us. Frankly, I’m not sure I would have managed, especially that first week on my own, without all the kindness we’ve received from strangers.

At ten months the bub learned to crawl and became much more difficult to “manage.” Unfortunately this coincided with the beginning of the trip and brought on a new desire to do everything by herself. On the plane, she insisted on practicing this new crawling trick up and down the aisles for at least half of the 16 or so hours we spent travelling. Virtually everywhere we go here she adamantly demands to be let down to explore. Instead of tutting at her filth, people here laugh and wave and talk to her constantly.

She’s now feeding herself proper adult food, but oh boy is it messy. As we have no highchair, generally I scoop some of what we’re eating into the pocket of her bib and she picks out what interests her and eats it. She pops it in her mouth. She spits it out again. She holds it up to examine it. Then she might pop it back in or she might throw it on the floor. The Cripple and I have wondered (very gratefully) at the extraordinary amount of patience and indulgence she is met with everywhere we go. It is impossible to imagine going into restaurants in the “developed” world and being met with the same genuine happiness and good will we do here. Even on repeat visits! At the guesthouse in Byumba we’ve stayed in for a couple of weeks (that’s a couple of weeks of at least two meals a day throwing grub on the floor) the waiters know her by name and call to her gleefully when we arrive, often picking her up (grubby mitts and all) for cuddles.

We’ve received invitations into people’s homes, we’ve been given lifts and dinner; we’ve had people offer help, and extend friendship, almost constantly. I’ve noticed a big difference in the way that I’ve been perceived and the way people have responded to me both professionally and personally. Being here as a mother rather than an eccentric single traveller seems to have increased my standing and trustworthiness. Each time I go into the camp women ask after the little one and many of them give me their own babies to hold. They’ve dubbed me “mazungu na bebe.”

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.

ICTR Arusha

Though I've had a lot of fun fitting in as much as possible along the way, the real reason I came back to East Africa is to do some research. I'm looking into the effects of HIV on justice for the Rwandan genocide. While in Rwanda I spoke to people in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) office in Kigali and my last two weeks in Africa I'm working at ICTR Arusha.

The Arusha tribunal is where the trials for the high level instigators of the genocide are taking place. "Lower" level criminals are being tried in Rwandan Gacaca courts in a more traditional way. Being here is pretty awful. On Wednesday and Thursday I watched the former prime minister Kambanda testify. He's already been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment but was a witness in another trial. Watching the clips of him inciting slaughter and then seeing him be as obstructive as possible (when he has nothing left to lose) was sickening.

I had lunch at a place just down the road from the UN buildings and spotted two of the defense attorneys eating. I know there are people tried for crimes they didn't commit and need (and deserve) a good defense, but the question that kept going through my head was, how do you defend someone that commits (and incites others to commit) genocide? I know someone has to do it, but how the hell do you live with yourself after getting someone off the hook for such crimes?

As for the research, it's coming along. I've had some good interviews with key people, and the answer is essentially: HIV is hugely affecting the outcome of the trials. According to the chief prosecutor, usually 1/2 the witnesses have died or are too sick to testify by the time cases go to trial. The genocide will continue until all the people (mostly women) that were infected with HIV as a result of the genocide have died. And all their partners who were subsequently infected have died. And all their children who were born HIV positive have died.

1994

I'm writing this a few days late because I needed time to think... I still need time to think. As much as I have read, heard, seen and felt about the Rwandan genocide, it is something I don't think I will ever be able to come to terms with. I can't imagine how those that lived through it can.

The week I spent in Rwanda I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. The scale of the killings was such that everyone in the tiny country would have been impacted in some way by the genocide: either knowing or being perpetrators, victims, or both. Driving through Rwanda there are signs every few minutes to mark massacres, constant reminders that the beautiful landscape was recently scarred by human slaughter.



On the last day I was in Rwanda, Abby and I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. There were displays showing events leading up to the genocide, the genocide itself, and how the country is trying to rebuild. Almost a million people killed by machete in a couple of months is something that is really difficult to comprehend. The numbers are so large and the violence so extreme that the people victimised become unreal to us and the perpetrators inhuman. The memorial did an amazingly good job of showing that the victims were people. Video clips around the memorial of survivors describing friends and family that were killed made the numbers seem real.

For me, the hardest section of the memorial were the quiet rooms on the top floor. Poster sized pictures of children were hung from the ceiling with a plaque describing the child below it. Name. Age. Favourite foods. Disposition. How they were killed.

There's nothing we can do now about the Rwandan genocide. There is something you can do about Darfur.

Kinigi, Rwanda

We were in Kinigi from Friday to Monday at the base of the volcanos, it's at a really high altitude and I felt breathless and tired most of the time I was there. Kinigi is a tiny village and tourist destination for all who trek the gorillas, monkeys and other wildlife on the volcanos. Most stay in Ruhengeri, a much larger town about 16 kilometres down a really bumpy road, and travel to Kinigi only for the time they are trekking. There are two lodges in Kinigi, a fairly pricey international lodge and the Kinigi Guesthouse, run by an NGO that supports women and children survivors of the genocide.



We stayed in the NGO-run lodge for two nights. The guesthouse was really friendly and comfortable, easily the nicest place we have stayed at during our travels. Both nights I was in Kinigi I went out for a walk around the village, something that seemed to be almost a celebrity event for the children! No sooner had I left the gates of the lodge than I was surrounded by a young football team who asked me loads of questions about where I was from, what I was doing, and on the second night why I was staying! There were men in uniform with guns all over the village, the children explained that we were really close to the Congolese border where lots of 'bad guys' were (the exiled Hutu militants) and the RDF soldiers would protect our security. It was an eerie reminder of how recently the genocide occurred, and how few of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.



I ended up spending both evenings watching the children play and taking loads of pictures of them. They were very enthusiastic players and insisted I email them all the pictures I'd taken. As much as I enjoyed seeing the gorillas face to face, the best part of the trip to Kinigi was talking to the children.

Gorillas in the mist

This morning we set off early to the gorilla trekking base camp in Kinigi. After splitting into small groups we piled into a 4-wheel drive and bounced around the horrendous roads as far as could, then got out and walked up the volcano. After only about half an hour, I suddenly felt really faint and ill. My legs turned to jelly, I saw stars, I thought my stomach was going to explode. I thought I was going to have to turn back: I was only at the base of the volcano and already felt ill, we had at least an hour trekking in front of us at a much steeper grade than we had climbed so far. The guide told me to sit down, and after resting a few minutes and splashing cold water on my face and neck I felt much better. I got up again and started walking at the front of the group, much more slowly, with rests every few minutes.




The views from the volcano were incredible - we were surrounded by volcanic peaks and lush, thick vegetation. We climbed carefully, in addition to the altitude the prickly stinging nettles went straight through our clothes. What seemed like a very short time later, we turned a corner and came face to face with an enormous mountain gorilla! We spent an hour with the gorillas scrambling down the volcano through the nettles in a game of cat and mouse with the giant animals. The group we encountered had four babies - a couple of them played games running in circles around us and peeking out from the trees long enough for us to catch up with them before charging downhill again.


one of the babies, peering through the brush at me

Just as we were about to leave, the silverback (or chief) of the family stampeded down the volcano and stopped directly in front of us.

The wheels on the bus...

On Tuesday evening we set off from Mwanza on an overnight ferry to Bokoba, Tanzania. We had been assured that on the other side of Lake Victoria we would find a bus to Kigali, Rwanda. A bus that would wait if the ferry was delayed. This sounded a tad optimistic, but ever hopeful we set off. At about 5 in the morning I woke up to find the ferry docked and people disembarking. I poked a seriously disoriented Abby awake, jumped off the top of the three level bunk beds, scrambled to collect my things and marched off the ferry half asleep. We were just about clear of the dockyard when it occurred to me that not *everyone* was climbing off the boat, and maybe I should check where we were. A few minutes later, Abby and I slunk back into our cabin, much to the amusement of the ladies who had been chattering about the muzungos most of the trip.

When we did arrive in Bokoba a few hours later we found, not surprisingly, there was no direct bus to Kigali. We would first have to spend a day travelling to Kampala, Uganda, and then another day travelling down to Kigali. The daily bus to Kampala had already left, so we would have to wait a day in Bukoba before we could get going. Bokoba was a pretty sleepy town: we discovered the very slow internet connections, a New Rose cafe with good Tanzanian grub, and not much else.


scenes from Kampala

We stopped once on the long bus ride to Kampala at the Tanzania-Uganda border. We grabbed the chance to use the loo, and when we returned we asked the border guard which one was our bus. He pointed at it and said "I think it is even having mechanical problems" as if that were a good thing! Sure enough, the bus was having a tire changed, as the bumpy roads had bounced the previous one off.

Kampala was a chance to regroup, though after Tanzania everything seemed much more expensive! In the morning we set off again down to Kigali. The long Uganda-Rwanda border crossing, made even longer by a stupid muzungu who had her iPod stolen after she left it on the bus unattended, made us long for the tire change of the previous day.


the Rwandan countryside

After a full sunrise-sunset day on the bus we finally arrived in the capital of Rwanda and checked into our hotel. Though far more expensive than Tanzania or Uganda, the chance to soak in the bath was well worth it :)