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.

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.