Pink and Purple, colors of justice

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I know that Rwanda as a country has more to offer than being the country where an atrocious genocide recently took place, but it's really hard to look at the country and not immediately associate the genocide with it. The Bradt guide book on Rwanda lists a UNICEF National Trauma survey of '95, which stated that:


:: 99.9%!o(MISSING)f children witnessed violence
:: 79.6%!o(MISSING)f children experienced death in the family
:: 69.5%!w(MISSING)itnessed someone being killed or injured
:: 57.7%!o(MISSING)f children witnessed killings or injuries with a machete
:: 87.5%!s(MISSING)aw dead bodies or parts of bodies

One of the main reasons that I wanted to go to Rwanda was b/c I wanted to see for myself how a country can move on so quickly after a genocide, and how two groups that once clashed could live side by side as neighbors and friends. It surreal and it shows that life here just works differently.

After a 5-day RnR in Lake Bunyoni, Megan and I headed over to the Rwanda border, which was just 10 km away from Kabale. We got into a taxi the size of a Toyota Corolla and fit four adults in the front, and four + a baby in the back. It was like being back in high school all over again (except during those days, it was considered fun). The baby looked at use like we were aliens... her mom explained she'd never seen a muzungu before.

There is one good news and one bad news about going into Rwanda as an American traveling in East Africa. The good news is that the visa to Rwanda is free for Americans... probably b/c of all the foreign aid guilt money Clinton gave following the genocide, among other reasons. The bad news is that Rwanda isn't considered part of the Kenya/Uganda/Tanzania East African nations pact, where if you get a visa at one of these countries, your visa works as a multiple entry visa and you can enter in and out of these three countries (for example, if you have a Kenyan and Ugandan visa, you can go back and forth b/t countries). However, once you set foot in another country, all your visas get canceled. So, for going into Rwanda (and the DRC), my $50 Kenyan visa and my $30 Ugandan visa are invalid and I have to apply all over again for a new visa to these countries when I back track to fly out to Nairobi. I guess it's not so bad considering that we don't have to pay for the $60 Rwandan visa. When I came back to Uganda from DRC, I got a 7-day transit visas for $15 (which is why Megan and I managed to peel ourselves away from blissful Lake Bunyoni), and that's what I plan to do again when I go back to Uganda from Rwanda.

Once we reached Kigali (the capital of Rwanda), Megan and I checked into Auberge La Caverne in Kigali, which is considered one of the cleaner budget guesthouses here. When we got there, we also found that it had a fairly happening restaurant that served decently priced meals, so based on the convenience factor, i would give it a thumbs up. Oh, plus they have free internet for guests.

We went to the Kigali Memorial Center the next morning, which is sort of like an educational museum that not only covers the events that happened during the 1994 genocide, but also extensively covers genocides that has happened in the past with Jews, Armenians and Cambodians. There are many emotionally shocking exhibits in the museum, but one that really punctures through your soul is the memorial dedicated to the children of the genocide. Children were specifically targeted during the genocide to effectively wipe out the next generation of Tutsis, and cruelty was not compromised during the execution of these innocent children. The memorial to the children show pictures of the victims, and underneath their photos, is their name, age they were killed, favorite food/hobby (i.e. mom's milk) or a specific personality trait (i.e. likes to run in the grass, or wants to be a teacher when he grows up), and the manner they were killed (i.e. hacked by a machete while in the mother's arm, or clubbed to death after witnessing his mother get killed). It was something that really shocked my senses and I could not even imagine such heinous and cruel acts happening.

Just to give a quick background about the genocide, I will share my understanding of it. During the Berlin Conference of 1885, the participating European countries concluded that Burundi and Rwanda would go to Germany, while Kenya and areas of Tanzania would go to the British. Germany sort of lost interest in it and handed the powers to Belgium. When the Belgians came to Rwanda, they noticed a stark difference in the people who lived there-- one group of people were short and stocky, while the other group of people were extremely tall. The Belgians used this as a way to classify the Rwandans into two ethnic groups, the Hutus (short) and the Tutsis (tall). The ethnic classification was then printed on their identification cards, which later ended up being a grave tool for the collaborators of the genocide to easily identify the Tutsis.

Before the Belgians, the Hutu and Tutsis were different in socioeconomic standards so it's not like the distinction b/t the groups didn't exist prior to the colonization. However, the Belgians did favor the Tutsis, thereby offering more education and job opportunities to the Tutsis, strategically using this as a tool to mobilized and control the power they had in Rwanda. This was the start of resentment b/t the groups as the Hutus (who were the overwhelming majority of Rwandans) were placed second tier to the Tutsis. During the process of independence, the Belgians started to switch their favoritism to the Hutus, and started to give them more power, resources and opportunities. Once this happened, the power was held by the Hutus and thus they started to suppress the Tutsis in retaliation of the decades of suppression. Soon after, Tutsi guerillas launched an attack and this was the initial start to the bloodshed b/t the two groups.

Tensions continued to be high b/t the Hutus and Tutsis, as the Tutsis felt that they had wrongly been discriminated against, but troubles reached an all-time peak when a plane carrying the Burundi and Rwandan presidents was shot down. Being that the Rwandan president at that time was a Hutu, road blocks popped up immediately after and the killings began instantly. Not only were the Hutu extremists (Interahamwe) killing the Tutsis, but normal, educated Hutus who never even committed a crime took part in the massacre, with neighbors killing neighbors, friends killing friends, and family killing family.

It wasn't like the Hutus immediately decided or one day woke up with this idea to massacre the Tutsis. The Interahamwe created a calculated plan to kill Tutsis by training Hutus on how to savagely butcher the Tutsis, creating a list of the Tutsis to target first, and by creating a media campaign (mostly through radio and printed propaganda) that brainwashed the majority to look at the Tutsis as enemies, and that the only solution was to exterminate them, as well as Tutsi sympathizers, known as moderate Hutus.

It was such a brutal time in the world's history; it's shameful to accept that so many people turned a blind eye to it, allowing nearly a million people to be massacred in a period of THREE months. Equally as shocking is that since the Hutus were now the favored group by the colonizers, the French supplied the Rwandan government with a massive amount of weapons and money... and those weapons and funds were used during the massacre.

In the Kigali Memorial Center, there is also a room that has pictures of the victims, whose families have brought it and posted on the walls, and it's painful looking at the hundreds of faces of people who look so normal and average, guiltless and crimeless, and to imagine the unthinkable fate they faced. You have to remember that these people were executed in the most brutal ways...killing methods that you can't even imagine or understand... aside from the popular method of butchering people with machetes or clubbing someone to death, other methods they used were forcing one to kill their own family members, or throwing people into the feces-filled hole underneath an outhouse, and leaving them there to suffocate and die.

Aside from visiting the Kigali Memorial Center, Megan and I took a matatu over to Nyatama, which is one of the dozens of genocide memorials in Rwanda. When we got off the matatu, we were swarmed by boda boda (motorbike) drivers calling out inflated prices, so out of stubbornness, Megan and I started to walk. We found out that the memorial is only one km away, so for anyone who goes, my advice would be to walk. A local boy chatted with me along the way, until we walked up to the church, which had been garnished with purple flags, which is the color representing the genocide.

This particular church sheltered hundreds of Tutsis, who all gathered here after they were misinformed that it would be a safe haven. When the Hutus came, they threw grenades through the windows, and many died from shrapnel wounds. Then they broke down the iron gates and started to massacre the defenseless refugees, and events of this attack is evident through the shrapnel holes in the ceiling and blood stains on the cloths remaining in the church.

Downstairs in the church is a memorial shrine made of glass that cases victim remains. Below all that is a single coffin that has the remains of a woman who was brutally gang raped, and then tortured with a puncture from her vagina to her head with a pole. The shocking reality of being in a place where such unthinkably heinous acts were committed was so devastatingly painful you could feel misery's presence commanding the room.

Behind the church is an underground burial site, where there are coffins as well as massive piles of skulls and bones. You can easily imagine the horrifying deaths these people faced through the cracked or punctured skulls. As I was downstairs, I started to hear gospel singing, so I walked up and saw that in a matter of five minutes, hundreds of mourners had gathered in a memorial service to the victims of the genocide. There were three coffins filled with remains found in the nearby villages, and they hold burial ceremonies every so often after they uncover new victims. Priests were present to lead the service, and there were people who came out and spoke, and although I could not understand what they were saying, the language barrier didn't downplay the pain of remembrance that was conveyed in their speech.

One particularly gripping moment was when they carried the coffins down to the underground burial site and some people were going downstairs to put away the coffin or to pay respect. One lady who looked like she was in her 20s or early 30s emerged from the stairs bawling and wailing so uncontrollably that she couldn't walk or stand, and looked like she was going to fall unconscious from reliving the painful events of the past.

I spoke with a man who was there and asked him where he was during the genocide. He said he was part of the Rwandan Patriotic Force (RPF), who was the group responsible for ending the genocide. I asked him if he has Hutu friends and he said yes. I asked him if it's hard to live side by side with people who once committed these acts of hate upon them, and he said "Yes, but what choice is there? If we don't forgive, what is there to do?"

Other trips that Megan and I made was one to Butare, which has one of the best cultural museums in East Africa, and another to Lake Kibuye. We stayed at Lake Kibuye for three nights and while I was there, I bumped into Massimo, the Italian guy I hung out with in Lamu. It was nice to see him again and catch up. The morning we were leaving Lake Kibuye, we woke up early and went into the town center to catch a matatu. We learned that the matatus were not going to run until 2 p.m. as there were gacacas happening in town that day.

A gacaca (village court) is Rwanda's answer to convicting the thousands of criminals from the genocide. Because the jails were overfilled with around 120,000 people waiting to be tried, and it was taking too long to prosecute them all, the government started a new system where village elders received training to orchestrate a court hearing in their village, while major criminals and heads of the genocide are being tried in the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. I spoke to a girl about the gacacas and asked her if they were effective. She said that the gacaca's has the image of being a solution, but the people are not properly tried due to a lack of resources, witness intimidation, corruption, and a lack of witnesses. I mean, some villages have people whose entire family was wiped out, so in some cases, there is only one witness to testify against all the criminals. Also, the criminals are rewarded with reduced sentences for coming to their gacaca hearing dates and not fleeing, and these sentences usually last a couple years. A couple of years!?!?! Another problem is that the major criminals get tried first, so there are some minor genocide criminals who are staying in prison for years waiting to go on trial, so in the end, the criminals who committed major crimes are serving less time than those who committed minor crimes. As for the Tribunal in Tanzania, the downfall of it is that some of the masterminds behind the genocide have received asylum in other countries, or have fled and are in hiding in the US, Canada or other countries. I recently heard of a Tutsi witness who testified in Arusha, and being killed when she returned to Rwanda. Security for the witnesses are not guaranteed here.

Finally at around 12 p.m., we were able to get on a matatu that received clearance to go. Along the drive, as we went past villages, I could see the gacacas taking place, evident through crowds of people gathered around and criminals in pink uniforms standing trail. Even when we went to the museum in Butare, I saw gacacas taking place, identifiable through the crowds and pink uniforms. We also drove past what I assumed to be a village jail, as I saw crowds of people in pink.

The thing about Rwanda is that you feel a staleness in the air... like the people try too hard to act normal. Kigali for one is very sterile, and unnaturally squeaky clean. It seems like any other city, but it's not. Things seem normal, but I don't think it is.

What can I say about Rwanda, after knowing the history, seeing the present and wondering about its future? For one, many of the people I met were extremely kind and honest. Second, the country has to have one of the most beautiful landscapes in the the world, with endless rolling hills making up its entire landmass. But beyond what I see, I am confused more by what I don't see. There seems to be no evidence of the past, aside from the memorials, purple flags and pink uniforms, and I wonder if it's a real sense of forgiveness and moving on, or if it's a mask to hide the tensions and reality of what they are feeling or thinking. Some say "never again" and some say "when?". It's hard to conclude what the future holds, and I think that's what makes me feel uneasy about the normalcy I've seen here. Should I feel in awe of man's ability and compassion to forgive or should I wonder about why it's so "normal" in this hauntingly beautiful country?

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Photos

Victims of hate
most of the skulls here have cracks or punctures indicating the brutal way they were killed (Nyatama)

Welcome!
at the Uganda/Rwanda border

Memorial service at Nyatama
they hold these ceremonies every once in a while when they have recovered enough remains in the nearby villages

The bus station intersection in Kampala
where cars actually stop to let you cross.

Comments

[Andrew from PEAI]

Wow that really affected me. Your writing style has gotten better. That was really informative

[joanne]

heartbreaking
how heartbreaking.