Rwanda

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Rwanda is famous in Africa for the quality of its roads, so I was pleased to see tarmac stretching away from the border post.

A comfortable modern 3/4 bus transported passengers 24km to the nearby town of Ruhengeri. This might seem trivial, but after two months travelling in East Africa a smooth ride in a decent vehicle is a noteworthy event.

Rwanda is an hour behind the rest of the region, so it was 9.30 am when I checked into a small hotel.

By 11.30 I wished I hadn't bothered as a 100 metre walk in either direction was enough to get the gist of the place.

Nevertheless, I met some disillusioned VSO workers who were packing it in after only a year (no electricity, no support, no fun) who gave me some useful accommodation tips.

Ruhengeri is set below the same volcano range as Kisumu in Uganda but the clouds were not kind enough to part and afford me a view.



The bus journey to Gisenyi provided an introduction to the spectacular scenery of Rwanda, which was to become the norm.

There is hardly any flat land.

Everywhere the slope is either shooting up towards a mountain peak or plunging into a valley, only to be thrust upwards again.

Since 97% of the population work the land the mountainsides are covered in a patchwork of small fields at improbable angles, with small houses randomly spaced on intermittent flattened sections.


Gisenyi is set on the northern tip of Lake Kivu, which separates Rwanda from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The town itself is not attractive until you find yourself along the sandy lake shore.

In this area the depths of the lake contain vast amounts of methane and carbon dioxide.

The methane is extracted, so the area is never likely to suffer an energy shortage.

However, there is always the chance of a geological burp, which would suffocate all breathing life forms caught within its cloud.

The town has a good view of the Nyiragongo volcano, which last erupted in 2002 and buried half of the nearby town of Goma in the DRC.

Strangely, when I mentioned this volcano, it was dismissed by the locals.

'Our volcanoes are in Ruhengeri', they would say.

Personally, I would be most concerned about the active volcano I lived beneath. Pyroclastic winds and molten lava flows are not known for respecting national boundaries.

What with the volcano and the CO2 reservoir, this is not a town where I would choose to settle my family.


The manager of the auberge arranged for his niece to accompany me on a trip to a nearby village.

I thought that she was going to show me around but it turned out that she had never been there before, despite it only being 7 km along one of three roads leaving the town.

We managed to find the rather modest hot springs and I bought her some lunch.

Her English was only marginally better than my French, and as she insisted on speaking in a whisper I soon ran out of patience.

We were sitting on the shore of the lake when an unkind youth snatched her bag. He didn't make much effort to get away and we soon caught up with him.

He gave it back after a brief argument.

Apparently he wanted to punish her for being with a mzungu.

A crowd built up so I decided to stop wagging my finger at him. Thieves can expect to get a good beating in these parts, though I couldn't be sure that they were on my side.


The day was rounded off when the niece finally asked me to sponsor her education.

I had only been in the country a few days but it was already evident that it is almost impossible to engage a Rwandan in conversation without them taking the opportunity to ask you for something.

A few days later a youth spoke to me on a bus: 'Hello. Welcome to Rwanda. I am doing a course a college, but it is very expensive. Will you pay for me?'.


The next morning, a Saturday, I got up early for the long trip south.

Whilst having breakfast a Canadian girl informed me that today was Muganda.

On the morning of the last Saturday in every month the whole population is required to provide three hours of community service. Roadblocks are set up to prevent people travelling on their own business and all the shops are shut as the shopkeepers provide some labour to the state.

It was clear that I wasn't going anywhere that day.

Instead I walked along the lakeshore to the border with the DRC. Groups of men had gathered to have at derelict buildings with sledgehammers. I could see that at three hours once a month it was going to take a couple of generations to demolish these buildings.


Returning to the auberge, I met an Englishman, Dennis, who was in the process of cycling from Kampala to Victoria Falls, which was going to take him 3 months. As we were both going in the same direction we arranged to meet up in the next town, Kibuye.

This 126 km trip took me 6 hours on the bus and Dennis 10 hours on his bike. His average speed of about 12 km/h reflects the mountainous nature of the terrain and the rutted state of the gravel roads. Unfortunately the tarmac has not yet extended this far.



In Kibuye we stayed at the Hotel Bethanie, spread out along the tip of a peninsula into the lake.

While eating (or more accurately, waiting) in the terrace restaurant, the perfect scenery coupled with the lapping of the azure waters against the rocks below felt like an exclusive spot on the Riviera, not the middle of Africa.

It could have very romantic were I not with a skinny superfit senior with an obsessive Type A++ personality (www.warnersworld.net).



The next trip was 146 km to Cyangugu. Dennis left Kibuye at 5am and arrived at 8pm.

It was a little easier for me, especially as the landscape was continually inspiring.

Cyangugu is on the southern tip of Lake Kivu, across the water from Bakuvu in DRC.

Bakavu is a substantial town compared to Cyangugu which is modest at best. Of course, it's all about the location.


By now my long suffering trainers were comprehensively worn out and I had been looking out for replacements for some time.

The main source of footwear are the local markets where they sell the charity given second hand shoes from across the world.

These market traders were really trying my patience as they were asking £25 - 30 for a pair of trainers that cost less than that new in England.

Even though I knew the going rate (£6), they would rather lose the sale than fail to rip off the mzungu.

I knew that I would eventually meet an honest trader, but it took a while and required some insistent bargaining to achieve a reluctant sale.


I parted ways with Dennis and headed inland to Butare, another anonymous town, ungainly amongst the majestic landscape. The National Museum was quite good though.



A few kilometres away, at Marambi, there is a graphic memorial to one of the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide.

Fifty thousand Tutsi people had assembled in the Marambi technical college, taking refuge from the carnage occurring throughout the country.

They were safe for a month until the Hutu militia arrived to continue their genocidal plan.

It took about 48 hours for the Hutus to butcher all 50,000 refugees, mostly with clubs and machetes.

There was a contingent of French soldiers with the militia as the international community were supporting the Hutu government in the concurrent civil war.

They stayed on the sidelines while the murder took place.

The bodies were deposited into mass graves and the Hutus departed for the next item on their agenda.

The genocide lasted 100 days, killing 800,000 people, ending when the Tutsi dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front won the civil war.

A year after the events at Marambi, 8000 bodies were exhumed and preserved in lime.

These were then laid out in the many outbuildings of the college and this forms the basis of the memorial today.

On arrival I was met by the caretaker with a huge bunch of keys.

He leads through the grounds and unlocks the doors to six rooms.

Inside the rooms are filled with ghostly white cadavers.

The lime makes them white and provides the only pungence in the room. I was expecting a stink of some sort, but any putrefaction has long since passed.

Dried, whitened skin clings to the bones like a tarpaulin.

Hip bones seem prominent amongst the sea of skeletons.

Once I got over the initial shock I began to look closer, focussing on individuals amongst the masses.

Many skulls had cracks and holes. Some were completely caved in.

Infants and babies were placed atop the adults as if to make a pyramid of death.

Six rooms were (more than) enough.

The caretaker observed that the other 30 or 40 rooms were similarly stocked.

He then took me to the spot where the French troops played their waiting game.

As a memorial it is stark. A college full of preserved bodies.

You have to know why you are there and what you are looking at.

There is no attempt at context or explanation.

Fortunately, that came later.




My last stop in Rwanda was Kigali, the capital.

It is a small country and I had planned a route around the places I wanted to see without backtracking, which provides a certain travelling satisfaction.



Rwanda is a country for countryside lovers. The towns are merely interruptions of the scenery, necessary to the visitor for eating and sleeping.

Kigali would be just a two-bit town were it not for the very excellent Genocide Memorial Centre located on the outskirts.

This centre is built on the site of the mass graves of the capitals share of the madness.

250,000 people are buried here.

The information displayed here provides the sort of context that I so often yearn for when visiting various sites around the world.

For example, before colonialisation there was no clear distinction between Hutus and Tutsis. People could choose which they were and change if they wanted.

It was only the box ticker Belgians who had to classify everybody. Rather arbitrarily they decided that anyone who had more than 10 cows was a Tutsi, anyone with less a Hutu.

Later on the Belgians created a Hutu dominated Rwandan army.

It would not be possible to create a more divisive set up and as the two sides became entrenched over the years there were regular conflicts and massacres.

In the period before the genocide the Hutus were in power and imposed restrictions on the Tutsis remarkably similar to those inflicted on the Jews by Nazi Germany.

A military force largely composed of exiled Tutsis invaded from neighbouring countries in 1990, starting the civil war.

In 1994 a peace process was derailed by extremist Hutus when they shot down the plane of their president and embarked on the pre-planned execution of ordinary Tutsis.

The frenzy fanned out across the nation, galvanising many ordinary Hutus- men, women and children- to murder their Tutsi neighbours and former friends.

For many this is the most shocking part of the genocide as it raises questions about the human condition and the ability of any of us to do the same.




Despite her beauty, I have found it difficult to fall in love with rWanda.

She is less exuberant than her fellows, due, at least in part, to her traumatic past.

She has also developed an entitlement complex.

As soon as they are able to speak, children are taught the phrase 'give me money' which they throw unrelentingly at any white person.

A good many adults also expect a coin on request (one awaits the first person to say 'please'😉.

Yet one cannot blame them entirely for this attitude for indeed, white people have conditioned them in the art of expectation.



I exited Rwanda at Rusumo Falls, the scene of the first arrival of Europeans into the country in 1894 when the German count Gustav Adolf von Gotsen came across from Tanzania.

The Belgians also entered Rwanda via the falls, when they took over the country in 1916 during World War I, to start a course of events whose consequences are felt to this day.

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Photos

Kigali
Genocide Memorial Centre