Rwanda rebuilding
Trip Start
Nov 22, 2011
1
7
9
Trip End
Apr 10, 2012
Kigali, Kigali City, Rwanda
Thursday, January 12, 2012
RWANDA.
A name, and a nation that evokes strong images in the mind of anyone who has heard even a little of its history. Prior to 1994 many would have related Rwanda to "Gorillas in the Mist". These days the images that come to mind are of people being hacked to death by machete in the streets. I can honestly say that when I left Canada I had no thoughts of entering Rwanda, I also had no idea how the country was coping in the years since the genocide happened. But here I am.
Our last few days on Lake Bunyoni were peaceful and relaxing. I slowly regained my strength, while watching the locals turn over their fields. I noticed that it was almost strictly women doing the hard, manual labour of breaking the soil by hand. The men seemed to spend their days gathered in small groups, relaxing and talking in the shade. Maybe at one point here the feminists went too far!(No hate mail please) Actually, something Iīve noticed often in Uganda, the men will walk empty handed while the women balance a basket on their heads and hold bags in their hands. Anyways one of my highlights before leaving was paddling around in a dugout tree. (This thing was more tree than canoe!) Alas the south is calling and it was time head off to Rwanda.
With only minor delays we were able to cross from Uganda to Rwanda. The boarder was a friendly, dusty affair and once all formalities had been attended to we were able to hop on a coach to Kigali. The bus had originated in Nairobi the day before, we were the only foreigners and the majority of the passengers had been onboard for more than 24hrs.
As we entered the country the roads changed from rough, broken and potholed to smooth tarmac almost immediately. We were following the route of the RPF and the UN used not long enough ago. As I gazed out my window I saw small, soft hillsides of green. They sloped down into an open, irrigated valley floor with the smallest of streams running through it. I could not help picturing the bodies that had clogged the rivers throughout Rwanda during those 3 months in 1994. However, there was no trace of the atrocities and the fields of tea looked in full bloom growing under the watchful eyes of the local farmers.
As we wound our way slowly towards Kigali the density of the population here became evident. All along the road people were walking, women carrying baskets of fruit, men pushing heavy loaded bikes over the hilly countryside. Every kilometer of roadside must have had a hundred people on it. The hills were also covered with the terraced agriculture we had come across in Southwestern Uganda.
From the moment we entered the country we were made to feel welcome by the locals, they have always been polite and often keen to help us find our way around (without asking for money which has been very common elsewhere so far). Kigali as a city is clean (the first Saturday of every month government shuts all businesses and has a mandatory public cleaning day!) and modern, it almost feels as though we have left Africa and entered Europe as we walk the streets here... almost. It has been very hard to believe that these friendly, shy, smiling people are the perpetrators and the victims of what happened here.
The genocide memorial is at the top of the list of things to see here and we made our way there on our first full day. It is in a beautiful white building looking out over the hills of Kigali. The memorial is very professional done, it is also heart wrenching. It leads you through the history of the division of the two sides and then into the events that took place directly before the genocide began. It does point itīs finger at the international community a bit too much in my opinion, but there is no doubt that there is enough guilt to go around and there is blood on more than just Rwandan hands. Through a mixture of media you are exposed to the story of several of the victims, it is a sad story. One of the exhibits that got me was seeing a childīs “I love Ottawa” T-shirt that had been pulled out of a mass grave and put on display.
The other genocide related place I went to was a church where the Tutsiīs had gone for refuge. None was given and the piles of skulls were a testament to that. I had a conversation with a survivor, while I was at the church, that I have been turning over in my head for the past few days and I will get to that in a moment. First I want to try to express my thoughts on all of this.
It doesnīt make sense and it doesnīt correlate, the people of Rwanda are intelligent, the city is modern and the country is wealthy by African standards. If you showed up here today with no biased you wouldn't believe that mass murder was done by a majority of the population. I have seen the left overs of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and that is a place that screams at you “tortured civilization.” Here you donīt get that and even after seeing the memorials and walking the streets, that machete wielding thugs killed on in all the news reports, I canīt see it. This is not the place I expected. The people preach forgiveness and say they have moved on as a country. Could they really have? Could you forgive? After all the chaos, the government here has done an amazing job of creating peace and unity. However, I am told, that to keep control of a potentially dangerous situation, the government is only one step removed from being a dictatorship. Maybe people are telling me what they feel they have to about moving on. I know I for one could not forgive someone for killing my family; I could not walk past them every day without lashing out. I am from the west and I want revenge, I want justice.
At the church I asked a loaded question, “Are the people of Rwanda really united, have they forgiven their neighbor’s?” I believe the answer I got was heartfelt and truthful. It went something like this…
“When I was a boy I had twelve brothers and sisters and both of my parents. After the genocide all that was left of my family was me and my brother, no one else had survived. Some of the men who killed my family I see. I have to forgive them because if I go and kill them I become what they were. I have gone to university and will become a teacher this way the generation after mine will have an example, I will be a good example for them. I do this for my parents, so people will know that my parents were good people. They arenīt here so I have to prove it, I canīt just say “my father was courageous. My mother was kind.” If I am courageous and I am kind, that is proof of who my parents were. So I will be courageous and I will be kind, no one will be able to doubt that I am that way because of them. This is what I have decided.”
I was honored to meet this man. I am not as strong as he is.
