When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Forced to leave Zimbabwe, scrambling to make a new plan for the remainder 2019, traveling wasn’t my first thought. But I now had the time and after Googling options I discovered a fare airfare to Rwanda, a place I’d always wanted to visit. Certainly cheaper than from home. It was soon clear that a tour was more realistic than independent travel and as luck would have it the Intrepid tour was on sale. It seemed a destined choice. I was also motivated to get to my 50th country (Uganda ultimately took the prize). But it was more than mountains and gorillas that lured me.
When the genocide unfolded in 1994 I was living in Zimbabwe. The Yugoslavian genocide still vivd in the international mindset, when chaos erupted in this tiny country of a mere 26000 square kilometres, situated in the Great Lakes region of Africa, nestled between Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania, the world paid little heed. Devouring my tissue paper thin Guardian Weekly, I would try to make some sense of the unfolding horrors. Who were the perpetrators and the victims, Hutu/Tutusi or Tutsi/Hutu? Earlier this year I watched Black Earth Rising, a Netflix drama capturing some of the senselessness of that time. I’d seen Hotel Rwanda. But it is only now, after a scant seven days meandering the soft mist covered hills of Rwanda that I can say I have a semblance of knowing. There are the facts, facts that are overwhelming. Then there is the emotion, emotion that is confounding. It would be incredulous to say I now ‘understand’ the genocide, but at least I have an appreciation — though that word seems wrong. Thesaurus can’t give me a word that captures how I feel. ‘Appreciation’ seems too positive a term for the complexity of humanity as it was seen in 1994 Rwanda. I have not travelled to Auschwitz, Yugoslavia or Cambodia to witness their genocides. Each has its own take on human depravity. Each stands alone in its orchestration. But here I’ll try and capture what Rwanda looked like to me.
Rwanda today
Simon Alllison’s 2017 article in the Mail&Guardian, (https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-07-00-like-it-or-not-rwanda-is-africas-future ) describes Rwanda’s modern day dark side. Other than high density housing clinging on to hillsides, the Rwanda of his piece is largely hidden from view. Arriving at night, I was greeted with twinkling hillsides and a mild wet season evening hinting at Kigali’s altitude and latitude, 1567 m above sea level and just 2 degrees below the equator. My first ever experience of emerging from customs to my name on a board, I was soon the solitary passenger in Hotel Beausejour’s minibus. Communication with my driver was soon at a stalemate — he had limited English and I no IKinyarwanda. My room in Hotel Beausejour was comfortable and spacious with a fantastic view out over the CBD and colourful light display of the conference centre (responsibly shut off at 10 pm each night).
Using my Mapsme app I set out the next morning for an ATM and the art centre. Hmmm, these winding roads spilling off each other, identified in a confusing cluster of letters and numbers was a challenge. KK102 Street (Kigali Kamukina 102 Street), KK 102 Road, KK 102 Ave, KR 102 Street (Kigali Rugando 102 Street, KR 102 Road and so on for each suburb….City/Suburb/Number/Road type — you get my drift. As my little electronic map struggled to orient me, I struggled to make any sense of where I was. I have a fairly innate sense of direction but even with an old school paper map a week later, the road appellations addled me.
Wandering through Saturday morning Kigali in Rukiri 1, I wandered from well made main roads with cars and taxis travelled at a sedate 40 kmph to cobblestoned thoroughfares where moto-taxis ferried red helmeted passengers around. Set back from lush planted nature stripes, behind ornate gates, I saw neat established houses. In this predominantly Catholic country preaching echoed from Seventh Day Adventist churches, hymns filling the hills as students streamed in and out of the SAD university. A little girl and her mother passed by. The girl then turned raising her hand to offer me some of her snack. On a grassy plot boys played an informal game of soccer. Now on an unmade dirt road I navigated channels cut into the surface by the rains and, reaching my destination I scanned the buildings. There was no art centre here. Seeing the Hotel Beausejour on a distant crest I began the return journey. Moto-taxis slowing to offer their service sped up as I waved them on. A curiosity, white and walking, I trudged up the incline with occasional friendly greetings punctuating my ascent. Youth. That’s what I noticed. Then I came across an older woman. Tall, draped in coloured cloth, one wrapped around her waist and another identical piece draped over her shoulder across to her opposite hip. Her face scowled. Mine soon mimicked hers as I thought, ‘what have I done’ (to evoke this look). Another older woman passed soon after. The same look. This time I paused in thought. ‘What have you seen, what have you been through, what have you done, what are you living with?’ — my first consciousness of what is the reality of Rwanda, of what this week might bring.
Back at the Beausejour, rain descended and Netflix replaced plans to head out again. The Intrepid group meeting was set for 6 pm so a bath (luxury as I had’t had one for months) was a greater priority. Jacob, our Kenyan guide, expertly introduced us to the week ahead. First thing on the agenda — order a meal. That was to become our mandate, order a meal at least an hour before you intended to eat. Service was excellent in manner and attitude in Rwanda and Uganda but it was on African time. At first impression the group seemed light and positive, such a contrast to my 2 Peregrine trips. I was relived and still glad I had forked out for the single supplement (thank you Intrepid discount). A late 60’s British couple and their 30 something daughter, a late sixties British mother and her 30 something daughter, a 70 yr old Chinese Canadian, a 62 year old American nurse working on Doha, a perky Irish 30 something and me. All female other than John. During our first meal together we bubbled with excitement and anticipation yet Jacob had sensitively forewarned of the impact of visiting genocide memorials, giving people the ‘out’ to excuse themselves and regroup in quiet solitude at any time, as needed. The tour, a relatively new one for Intrepid, had been carefully crafted, from genocide to gorillas, from horror to hope.
Day 2. Tours are weird like that. Day 1 was a 6 pm dinner. The last day was breakfast. Maybe tour companies think when working out the ‘daily’ cost of the tour it sounds better to divide by 9 instead of 7? We met our drivers, both Ugandan, the affable 50 something Paul, and Haddington, or Prince Haddington as identified on his Whatsapp. Setting off to our first genocide memorial, I found myself in the Land Rover across from Niamh and in front of Lorraine and Jacob. Jacob was a wealth of knowledge as was our group — a typical Intrepid group — well travelled and informed.
Awaking to low hanging clouds that obscured much of Kigali, the grey, the rain that would permeate the coming days, seemed fitting for the mood of our activities. Setting off early for the Murambi Genocide memorial about 30 kms north of Kigali, the journey was slow. Banana plantations, Irish potatoes filling terraced hills, steep pitched colourful roofs on newly constructed houses, an occasional valley of rice paddy fields, and always a smattering of people punctuating the green. Despite being classified as the most densely populated African country, the 12 million seemed reasonably dispersed to my eyes. Jacob’s quip that African countries overestimate their populations to attract greater aid from international communities led to our own. Rwanda certainly underestimated the number of hills. Meandering bend after bend, we were in the land of MORE than 1000 hills for sure.
I can be a lazy traveller. I turn up. I do some of what is on offer. I am sure as a result I ‘miss out’ on some experiences, but I have always been one to enjoy ‘just being’ in a place. In the old days we needed guide books. Setting off for a year travelling South America with Sth America on a Shoestring, Lonely Planet, or The Rough Guide, no internet or phone to book accomodation or check out transport along the way, we had to turn up and make do. There was typically a smattering of history within the text so some would be read in preparation and planning but usually it was when I arrived that the place would come alive. So other than distant memories from the Guardian Weekly, I was fairly ignorant of Rwanda’s genocide.
Genocide
Raindrops fell as we pulled up to the Murambi Genocide Memorial scrambling out of the vehicle over rust coloured earth. We were encouraged to make haste during our visit due to the threatening sky as, if the black clouds opened, rain would wreck havoc with the unmade road and our return journey. Sunday morning hymns echoed joyfully in the hills that were dotted with houses. Who now lived there, I wondered. Walking down the wide entrance we paused at the first commemoration.
“In April 1994, genocide perpetrators gathered prominent Tutsi families from Gikongoro area in this building in order to identify them and to ensure none of them could escape well planned and organised massacre. When the French troops arrived, they selected young girls to rape and would take them to their dorms from where they systematically gang raped them on daily basis. Such rape cases should not be considered isolated crime acts but part of clear genocidal oppression against Tutsi girls and women.” I feel sick as I write this just now, as I did reading it little over a week ago.
The words Tutsi and Hutu were particularly poignant. We had just gained knowledge no reading, movie or documentary had previously made truly explicit. The Tutsi and Hutu are not different ethnic groups. Rwanda, for centuries at least, comprised 18 clans with a single common language and shared cultural practices. So where did the terms Tutsi and Hutu come from? In modern day Rwanda it is explained thus: Prior to colonisation by Belgium (who was handed the area by the Germans post WWI) Tutsi was a word used to describe someone who had more than 15 cows, Hutu someone who had less than 15 cows and Twa for those who had none.
A scan of Wikipedia highlights the complex and inconclusive theories around the contention that Tutsi and Hutu are distinct ethnic groups. There is one assumption that even as far back as 5 centuries no distinct groups existed. At that time pastoral practices came to the area and it isn’t clear if assimilation of two groups occurred then or merely one group adopting a practice learnt through exposure to another way of being. As academia discards visual appearance as a measure of difference between these ‘groups’ other studies highlight lactose tolerance and DNA features as distinctive (so easily visible hey?). Considering 100s of years of ‘intermarriage’ and the existence of significant Bantu markers in both ‘groups’ the whole concept of labelling seems mute. Except that it wasn’t.
The colonisers, Belgium, attributed superior qualities to those with more cows and selectively appointed this group, more a class that an ethnicity, to positions of power. In the 1930’s race was added as a category on ID cards. And so the myth began — the Tutsi were ‘taller, slimmer, had a longer nose’, the Hutus shorter and rounder. Can you imagine? Think about your street, your group of friends. If over time your government, your media, your social networks started to classify an ‘us and them’, used physical features as symbols of hatred, dehumanised your shorter neighbour as a cockroach or rat, organised a neighbourhood watch to patrol the streets with military precision to ensure rounder people stuck to their own areas, your social media became unrelenting with messages of hate against your short statured friends. Then, finally, convincing you that extermination was essential to your very existence, you were encouraged to begin the kill. They’d deny it all later of course. Even you might deny it had ever happened. And there you have it, the eight simple steps to genocide. Reading about this reminded me of the brown eyed blue eyed racism experiment by an elementary school teacher Jane Elliot more than 50 years ago. How easily people can be swayed.
By April 16th 1994 Murambi Technical school housed 65,000 Tutsi and sympathisers fleeing death. The local priest and mayor had led people from the church to the school with promises of protection by French Troops. Food and water withheld, the thousands, weakened, defended themselves with stones. When the French left on April 21st the Hutu Interahamwe militia began their attack. Machetes, clubs, hoes and guns methodically exterminated 50,000 people in less than 24 hours. The following day a further 35000 were slaughtered in the nearby church. Only 35 people survived. One was our guide on that day. Cameras respectfully put away we began the process of witnessing hate.
Plaques identified perpetrators, including the French who, using industrial diggers, created and filled mass graves sometimes with babies, alive, suckling their dead mothers’ breasts. Afterwards, the French played volleyball tramping over covered graves to fetch their ball. They had a good hand in all this, the French. The Interahamwe were proud of the French training they received on efficient killing methods. One man calmly reported the initial effort required — “two hands to wield the machete” which by the end of the short but almost complete campaign morphed into “one swift, single handed blow”.
Our silent pilgrimage took us past bodies encapsulated in glass cases, some preserved in lyme, others as found. The memorial is exploring the most successful method for preserving bodies. Twenty-five years later the stench of death and decay filled my nose. It was confronting. I feel it in my gut now as I write and remember. Skeleton after skeleton. Corpse after corpse. Men, women, children, infants. I was shocked to still see evidence of the body that was. Through the lyme coils of tight black hair clinging to scalps were visible, finger nails, toe nails, soil and blood covered clothes draping brown skin taut over bones, bones in poses crying out the agony of a slow death, or defensive posture of fear. Still others, deformed skeletons pulled tight or crushed post mortem by shrinking skin. Then there were the facial expressions — real life canvases of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Skeletons and corpses lay testament to a litany of injuries. Cranial bones crushed with a club, a cut from a machete, a brain somehow preserved beneath the cranium despite a hammering. How long before this person succumbed to death? An occasional bullet hole. Was he the lucky one, a quick bullet to the head and it was all over? There were others where the cause of death was not obvious. Had they been buried alive? 50,000 massacred over a single night in an area the size of a few school ovals.
Walking between teaching blocks, I gazed across to peaceful stunning slopes where survivors had run in fear. I still heard hymns in the distance. It seemed anomalous.
Much of our group wandered past the rooms of skulls, femur bones and humerous bones. Lost in our private musings, individual emotions, arms crossed chests, stoic faces, a silent solemn pace. For me each room housed bones that bore witness to departed souls. Niamh reverently spoke my thoughts, “I feel I have to see each one, to recognise each person”. Mass graves punctuate the countryside of Rwanda. They are still being discovered. 1 million souls many of who will never be identified because everyone who knew them has gone too. There is no one to remember them. It’s as if they never existed.
There is an absence in the countryside. No dogs. With the massacre of their owners, the country chaotic, dogs were left to fend for themselves, doing the unthinkable, the unmentionable. Afterwards all dogs were destroyed.
After the memorial we drove to the university town of Hule. It was an unimpressive place, but perhaps our senses needed a bland space as we ate lunch?
The following morning we drove to Nyamata Church, about 30 kms south of Kigali, one of the country’s six genocide memorials, one of 200 genocide sites. Subject to five genocides since 1959, by 1973 up to 700000 Tutsi had been exiled. Hounded across borders or to the less hospitable Burgesa area south of Kigali which was ripe with malaria, tsetse fly and poor agricultural land, the resilient Tutsi improved the land and made a life. By 1992, the fourth genocide, Hutus fuelled with envy and resentment began the killing. Forced to seek refuge, more than 300 Tutsi were sheltered at Nyamata Church by an Italian nun, Antoinette Locatelli. Raising the alarm to the Belgian ambassador, RF1 radio and the BBC, the following day she was murdered. But she did not die in vain. Her efforts forced the police to intervene and put a stop to the slaughter.
In 1994 locals, recalling the previous sanctuary offered, flocked to the site. But this time the Catholic priests and nuns opened the gates to the Interahamwe. Holes were made in the walls of the barricaded church to throw in grenades. Then the machetes, clubs, hammers and guns came, bodies later thrown into a mass grave that had been prepared five months earlier by the local leader. Again our guide was a survivor. A child at the time who, cowering under a pew, covered in blood and dead bodies, was saved from the fate of the 10,000 people crammed into the small church plot. The sole corpse buried within Nyamata Church in a basement is that of a 26 yr old young woman raped by 15 soldiers. I won’t write how they actually killed her.
Heads of religious statues blown off, walls marked by shrapnel, roofs and ceilings punctured by bullets, blood stained floors. Row after row, pew after pew piled with the clothes of victims. I was speechless as I considered these second hand clothes from the first world now splattered with blood, sliced by the swing of a machete or pierced by a bullet. The altar is blood stained and scattered with coins, ID papers, a caliper, rosary beads. Souls praying and clasping desperately for hope. “People baptised each other with the free flowing blood” our guide recalled, “after the screams came silence”, pure fear amidst the stench, terror, and the mania of killers. At another memorial one survivor said “My mother implored me to die with dignity”. Just a youth, he chose escape instead. So maybe at Nyamata Church they prayed for strength to face an inevitable fate, for peace, or salvation and escape. Too few had the latter prayer answered.
Walking outside I heard children at the adjacent school sing and play. Birds tweeted while, in reverent silence, we descended to a mass grave where endless coffins are shelved. 50000 people are buried at Nyamata. It was only peering in I realised each coffin was stuffed with bones. An occasional casket claimed to house an entire family but with limited resources I wonder how anyone can be sure.
As perpetrators either overtly or covertly continue to identify mass graves, the story seems unending, more bodies now overflowing in coffins in a section of Nyamata Church await a more sacred burial. Interestingly the Nyamata church was officially desacralized by the Catholic Church in 1997 which seems ironic to me. The choices made by the priests and nuns during the genocide pretty much achieved that in 1994.
Next on the agenda was Ntarama Church genocide memorial, but as it was under renovation we went for a coffee to ‘Hotel Rwanda’ instead. Well, Hotel des MilleCollines as it is more accurately known. The movie Hotel Rwanda is banned in Rwanda, the inherent inaccuracies and absolution of the UN deemed an insult to the genocide victims and survivors.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial.
Where do I begin? It was emotionally overwhelming.
One thing that struck me from the introductory video and as I explored the site, the memorial is different things to different people. The site consists of a museum of sorts, rose garden, a series of mass graves and the wall of victims’ names. 250,000 people were massacred in the area. For survivors it is a place of reverence. They come to place a wreath or maybe just a single rose on a concrete mass grave. The words of survivors describing the memorial are piercing:
“This is where I feel whole, but when I go home I leave my family behind”
“This is my home”
There is much written about the history and precursors to the genocide. I am currently reading Lt Gen Dallaire’s memoir of being leader of UNAMIR. ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’ is a raw profound tome on the failings of the international community. So there is no need for me to go into much detail, rather I’ll recount facts and quotes that hit me the most.
In March 1994 Hassan Ngeze (CD-R), a ruling party member, predicted the death of Rwanda’s president Habyarimana. On April 6th 1994, returning from peace talks in Arusha, President Habyarimana and the President of Burundi were shot down at 20.23 hours. There was an attempt to attribute blame to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Yet by 21.15 hours, less than one hour after the plane crash, roadblocks were constructed in Kigali and other places, and the killing had begun. Death lists had been prepared well in advance. In fact from October 1993 through to February 1994, the genocide was being ‘rehearsed’ in Bugesera with the full knowledge of the French, who had negotiated a significant arms deal with the ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRNDD) party.
When the interim president Sindikubwano stated “Maybe you are unaware of our instructions…those who do not want to assume responsibility, all those who prefer watching others work, go away”, soon a climate was created for godfathers to kill godchildren, in-laws to kill in-laws, neighbours to kill neighbours. This struck me. I couldn’t imagine the Dyers turning on the Meades, or visa — versa. But in Rwanda it occurred in innumerable streets, across endless villages. This was not a distant stranger in army uniform shooting the men and boys of Bosnia, nor a military officer directing women and girls left and men and boys right as they disembarked trains at Auschwitz. In Rwanda it was the face seen every day throughout your life, at the market, at school, at church. Chasing you with a machete, cutting your calves so you could not run, clubbing your head, inflicting as much pain as possible.
I have spent enough time in Africa to see people as individuals (the people don’t ‘all look alike’). Walking amidst photos of victims at the memorial I was astonished. How could this woman be considered a Tutsi. That man’s nose looked pretty flat to me. Pre pubescent, she didn’t look tall or slim. He was just an infant. The baby would have no concept of his Tutsi father or Hutu mother. Then wandering into the children’s room where along with photos, dates of birth and death, a how the child was killed is there for all to see….ahhhh I feel the anguish again as I write, it wells in my throat, it is quite literally sickening. By July 1994 the RPF without any international support under the command of Paul Kagame quashed the madness. Some say that if this had not occurred people’s thirst for killing would have had to be satiated one way or another. Most of the Tutsi’s had been killed or fled so the definition of Tutsi or sympathiser would have shifted, height, length of nose, weight fluid concepts. God only knows what would have happened next.
100 days later
After quelling the mania and madness, Rwanda was dead. One survivor said
“Rwanda has gone to hell”
“there were dead bodies everywhere, people were killed day and night minute by minute”
“it was as if I was on a different planet”
Infrastructure, homes, schools, everything had gone to the dogs. Two thirds of the population was displaced, 2 million were across borders in refugee camps where much of the aid was directed while Rwanda itself received little support. Hutu genocidaires fleeing the RPF wound up in the refugee camps where they systematically continued their indoctrination of Hutus, gathering people based on their community and prefecture. In spite of this in going campaign of hate, in post genocide Rwanda signs of hope existed. During an Interahamwe attack in 1997 one group of school students refused to seperate into Hutu/Tutsi, stating “we are all Rwandan”. Some were killed but it signified a mark of change.
Women and children had been specific targets of the genocide to eradicate the next Tutsi generation. Yet by the end of the 100 days 37000 unaccompanied minors were left, children who had lost their families, lost their homes, lost their childhood, faith and trust. Somehow these orphans gathered creating artificial families, so many new households each led by a traumatised child. There is an absence of grandparents, aunts, uncles in Rwanda. How does this impact a society over time?
Treatment for PTSD was (and is?) a pipe dream. But by 1995 women survivors mobilised and created ACEGA — the Association of Genocide Widows and Widowers to meet some of the psychological, social and economic challenges. It has been considered a major success story particularly for women as it has improved their circumstances in a post genocide Rwanda where many survivors still live in poverty.
A million acts of murder. With more than 120000 genocidaires in jail, a truth and reconciliation process was essential. In 2002, in 12,000 communities the Gacaca — grass communities, used traditional and modern techniques with the single goal of establishing the truth. Prison, community service and mediation were some of the pathways to justice. If you see a prison gang working on the road side, those in pink are general prisoners, those in orange — gencoidaires. The Gacaca gave witness to 1.9 million cases and processed 1200 genocidaires. A drop in the ocean perhaps? Survivors talk of living alongside their family’s killer even to this day. How does a country recover?
In modern day Rwanda it is illegal to classify a person as Tutsi or Hutu. There are compulsory Umugabda peace building days. The government is a dictatorship. The economy is strong, the infrastructure works. People are warm and welcoming. They now speak English. If you hear French spoken it is a possible indication of the person’s age, or Hutu affiliation. Kagame, who grew up exiled in Uganda has brought a non British colonial country into the Commonwealth. Reports of recent attacks in Musanze province near the DRC border are concerning. Two decades later some feel Rwanda is a tinderbox, the stage set for another genocide. That is why it is essential to remember.
Six days after visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial, from the high of meeting a family of gorillas, spending an hour with playful golden monkeys, the impact of the genocide had receded somewhat. Though at moments interacting with Rwandans in everyday activities I would catch myself and ponder, ‘what did he see, what did she do, who did they lose?’ So I went back. I needed to bear witness once more before departing this enigmatic country. As I left the memorial it was the final words of survivors, words of hope, that brought my tears to the surface and crushed my chest in grief.
So my last words are those of survivors:
FORGIVENESS
What can this look like?
If I don’t forgive I might too become a murderer
Forgiveness is from god
You cannot forgive if no one asks for forgiveness
SURVIVAL
Why did I survive?
Others didn’t trust survivors
Being a survivor is hard, how do I love or trust again?
At least the dead are silent, they are fine
REVENGE
The greatest victory over death is life
“If You Really Knew Me and You Really Knew Yourself, You Would Not Have Killed Me”
