Dave's Rwanda Trip, Tuesday 14 October, 2008
As before, many pictures are uploaded. We went on an official tour of the city this morning, so I took tons of pictures out the window.
http://www.thecathouse.homeftp.net/Filez/20081014
The tour costs $20/person, and lasts about 4 hours. A pretty good deal. Plus it leaves about 2 blocks from the Magnolia - we really are in the heart of the city here, across the street from the Hotel des Mille Collins (aka Hotel Rwanda).
Our tour guide (Tim) spoke good, though accented, English, and was eager to show off the city, and to highlight how far Rwanda has come. Most of my earlier pictures showed the poorer housing and villages between cities. This one progresses from the city, past some slums, and then to the newly growing middle and upper class part of the city to the, um, northwest? I'm kind of turned around. :-) It was interesting to see new houses coming in that would have been quite at home in the US (in the south where Banana trees could live anyway). The size and shape was similar, and so was the subdivision style arrangement. Key differences that jump out - 1) the high walls surrounding each of them, some with razer wire defenses (at least it's not the broken bottles in concrete that you see elsewhere). 2) individual water towers. I asked, and Tim said that most houses had well water, dug way down (or maybe city water lines way down, I could have misunderstood), but that it was wise to have your own water supply just in case. The water here at Magnolia is trickling today, and apparently was out for a month before we got here, so it certainly does seem wise. On the plus side there's a big industry for water tanks here in the city.
My overall impression is of a city in growth and recovery/advancement. They are replacing slums with apartment buildings, modernizing roads, and there is even going to be an amusement park thanks to some middle eastern investors. Plus about 5 new hotels are under construction, one of which he says will make the current only 5 star hotel in Rwanda look small by comparison. The government is pushing hard to modernize and advance this city and it seems to be working.
He called out that in addition to eliminating the concepts of Hutu and Tutsi and Twa, and the racial divides therein, they were also striving for gender equality, which one of the statues/parks in a roundabout was dedicated to as well. Pretty cool.
As he suggested, I do encourage all of you to visit - it is quite safe here, and very interesting to see. :-) The impressions you have about Rwanda from the mid 90s are no longer accurate.
I feel very confident saying this, and I think they have achieved it, largely because of the more somber part of the tour, which actually took up most of the time. Our first stop was a small memorial dedicated to the 10 Belgian soldiers who were killed at the beginning of the genocide in 1994. A brilliant move on the part of the Hutu regime, it scared Belgium, and the rest of the UN into pulling most of their forces out, and doing nothing to stop the genocide. Keep in mind that this comes almost immediately on the heels of our debacle in Somolia - and the US carries a lot of the blame as well for pushing against any troop involvement. The Canadian general in charge of the forces here says he could have stopped the genocide with 5000 well armed soldiers, and that's generally agreed with. Where do I sign up for that army? But out of fear the entire first world pulled out, and allowed a million people to be killed. I think that's part of why it's good to have this one small memorial, about 6 blocks from the Magnolia very near downtown center, to the first and only UN soldiers killed in this war.
Outside of town, at our 3rd stop (after we visited the first house in Rwanda, which had an excellent view from a hilltop), we stopped at the primary memorial/mass grave site for the genocide. If you've ever visited a holocaust museum, you know what to expect of this, it was similar. In fact while the downstairs detailed the Rwandan genocide, the upstairs was dedicated to half a dozen major genocides of this century, that they also not be forgotten, that we learn also from them. A portion was dedicated to the World War II holocaust. And they discussed again how the world united afterwards and added to the UN charter that we would always act to prevent this from happening again. Hm.
The memorial was very well done I thought. It was powerful, and I was moved to the verge of tears many times. It followed the relevant history chronologically, starting with the colonial influences which created and exaggerated the concept of race and the conflict between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Then it covered the handful of smaller practice genocides which have occurred, in the 60s, 70s, and in the early 90s. Many times the Hutus and the fascist government they installed have launched reprisals against the Tutsi... while the Tutsi in exile, precursors of the RPF, attacked from outside Rwanda many times as well. This event came as a shock to many people around the world... but it shouldn't have.
The coverage of the genocide itself was well done too - painfully graphic in ways, but not belaboring the horror. You couldn't pass through without really knowing that this was a terrible event, but it was explained in full detail, so you could understand what was happening and why, how they got to this point. A lot of it was government propaganda, via newspapers and largely, the radio station which I also included photos of. It still stands right in the downtown area as well, as another kind of memorial. The Hutu extremists spent months, or years even, talking up how the RPF, which was getting closer and closer to Kigali, was going to enslave and murder everyone. They spent a long time building up to this. When President Habayarama's plane was shot down, they started killing within an hour. It was well organized and planned ahead, and the population was well primed to feel obligated to participate.
The outside was pretty intense too. A pretty garden meaning to symbolize how the Rwandan people started as one, were split apart through this century, and now are working to come back together as one. And then there were a dozen huge concrete squares, apparently 6 meters deep, where 258,000 people are buried, collected from mass graves around the country. The bodies are stacked, sometimes as many as 6 to a coffin if the remains were so sparse as to allow it. And more are coming in all the time, as new burial sites are found, or as people in prison finally confess and admit where they hid them. Then they have a memorial very similar to the Vietnam War Memorial in DC where they are starting to put all the names down... it's going to take awhile, records are poor, especially for families that were completely wiped out with no one to speak of them anymore.
They call out in the first memorial, and it was repeated in this one as well, that the key to avoiding genocide is education, tolerance, literacy, democracy. That's what struck me as so good about this memorial. Having memorials like this, right in the city, free to the public, will help ensure that they learn the lessons of the genocide. They're not shy about admitting what happened and are clear about how to avoid it happening again. The memorial is powerful, as it needs to be, but I think it will work. There are many such memorials scattered across the country as well. The UN should have one in their offices too, I think. So should we. Notice in the first memorial, if you look closely, where the first and biggest genocide was. We're number one. But you don't hear about that too often in the US, we play it down pretty effectively. Granted it was a long time ago, but the historical obfuscation when history is written by the victors is dangerous. Rwanda has done a good job of avoiding just that.
Much to think about. They have moved on beyond the genocide, and are well on the road to recovery, but it's impossible for me to visit here without thinking about it most of the time.
The tour continued for an hour or so after the memorial, that's when we saw the upper class areas, and also stopped at an artisans market and bought some more souvenirs, including that game I mentioned last time that I saw in the museum in Butare, Igisoro which I now hear is also referred to as "African Chess". Then we stopped downtown, Mandy called the professors we'll be visiting at the university in Butare tomorrow, made plans to visit the chair of the reconciliation commission of Rwanda on Thursday, we got our seats to be together on the return flight from Nairobi to Amsterdam, and we checked at the FedEx office about shipping some souvenirs back to make luggage easier, but it looks like US customs laws about fumigating anything made of wood (most of our souvenirs) and the cost may make it easier to just check another bag.
Relaxing for a bit here at the Magnolia now, but soon we catch a van/bus to Butare, to crash there for the night so we can be at the university early in the morning.
I hope everyone is well back there! :-)