Rwanda -- and interlude

A magical moment -- a meringue topping for Mount Kalahinga - a not-so-dormant volcano

It is bumpy and uncomfortable. I am squashed in a seat next to Rebecca, (a new addition on our truck – Kiwi, legal eaglette, delightful, only with us until we are back in Nairobi), a dark window on the other side which makes the whole world look like there is a power outage (perhaps there is an outage out there? No! It is 9 o'clock in the morning, for goodness sake!), Ben and David behind me, stoically not-complaining about my seat back that keeps on collapsing onto their laps, and a young couple desperately wishing they were in a hotel room rather than on Rwandan public transport in front of us – their seat back showing the same lack of backbone as mine and keeping on collapsing onto our laps every time he leans over to plant another passionate kiss on her luscious lips – which is about every nine minutes and 12 seconds...

But, there is a nine hour trip ahead of me in this African public transport coach. I am sitting in seat no 35 and this is where I stay from Kigali, Rwanda, until we get to Kampala, Uganda tonight. So – to show my willingness to keep all my readers up to date (mmmmmm I know – hopelessly out of date at this stage!), I shall brave the hardship and try to give you an overview of the past few weeks.

Earlier I made the comment that this side of the continent was a matter of rushing from one spill and thrill to the next. I said it with slight disdain – no doubt about it. But after the past few weeks, there is no disdain in my voice anymore, believe me. East Africa is not "Africa" - like West Africa is, but has been full of wonderful surprises and awesome moments. I know my idea of coming to travel through Africa was not to come bungee jump from the highest bridge or river raft down the most challenging, rated-5 river or even to see the Big Five in every game reserve or walk in the footsteps of every David Attenborough documentary on Discovery channel.

“If you don't want to get drunk every night, then why are you here?” was the question asked the other day. I know the website clearly states the average age of the people on this trip is twenty to thirty, “ but everyone is welcome no matter their age as long as they are of the same mindset...” --- always a very dangerous criteria to set –' the same mindset' … The moment you start talking about mindsets, you fall in the trap of categorising. But how else explain who the people are that come on an overland trip? Perhaps it would be better if they spelt out what the 'mindset' is that they had in mind. I have to admit I assumed it was a set of people who at least share my passion for travel, for discovering new countries – in this case discovering a whole new continent, meeting people, learning about their culture and customs and traditions, their language, their history, their daily activities, their thoughts, their politics, their values. I also wanted to learn about the economies, the agriculture, the fauna and the flora. I wanted to try different foods and drinks, read what their authors write about their social structure, hear their commentary on their lives, their expectations, their aspirations, their ambitions for themselves and their social structure. I wanted to get to understand the thinking and the mind processes of the people of this continent a little better and so , hopefully, understand the differences and the intricacies of other peoples of this world. Who knows, if we understand each other a little better, we might even end up helping to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it.

--- It must be the bumpy road that got me off on that particular tangent... What I really wanted to get to was that the last few weeks have turned out to be amazing.

Rwandan women walking to fetch water in their basket holders, laughing, chatting, in general such lovely, warm, smiling people.

A young man comes down the aisle to check our passports. I am travelling on my SA passport and did not have to get a visa for Rwanda, but going back into Uganda, I have to pay $50 all over again for a re-entry visa. The service for African transport is remarkably good. The young man also hands out the exit forms for us to fill in as well as the entry form for the other side of the border. Saves time and hassle. Excellent.

Against the backdrop of the stunning primeval forests, the beautifully manicured tea plantations of Rwanda

So, where was I? What am I doing in Rwanda, you might well ask?

Let me go backwards.

A few days ago Ben and David and Rebecca and I left the group in Kisoro, Uganda, and, with a driver, set off at the crack of dawn to drive across the border, not more than 20 kilometres away, into Rwanda. David and Ben had done a lot of organising and planning and price comparisons, and found us a guide, Jarred (but pronounced Jallad – as everyone in Rwanda seems to have learned their English from Japanese teachers and their r's and l's are more often than not reversed!) and vehicle to accompany us in Rwanda for three days and show us as much as we could possibly fit in.

A moving sight - a damning testimony of man's inhumanity to man.

(A quick aside regarding my remark about Rwandan and Japanese: In the one museum we visited there was a whole section about the Rwandan language – how complex it is – and how many similarities there are in the grammar – and syntax - with the Japanese language! The one example that struck me was how they do not have a very large vocabulary, but how each word can have, depending on the intonation, position in the sentence, emphasis etc. etc. as many as 30 different meanings!)

Faces -- so many. Names -- innumerable. Stained clothes - so terribly sad. And all around you, the whispers of the dead - each one somebody's child, each one somebody's mother or father, sweet old grandmother, loving sister, precious little baby..

Rwanda is of course the country we all think of when the word 'genocide' is mentioned. Still fresh in our memories the 1994 100 days of bloodshed in this small country – when the Hutu government ordered the annihilation of the Tutsi population – or the Inyenzi – cockroaches, as they were called. Literally in 100 days 800 000 people were massacred. Not by mass shootings or bombings or grenades or any other form of mass killing. But hand to hand – face to face killing by means of machetes and clubs with nails, knives and stones.

It was one of the most bestial and troubling killing sprees in the planned campaign of extermination which claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days between April and July 1994. The genocide had actually started many years before – as far back as 1959, but it was only in April 1994 that the president declared that they will no longer tolerate the Inyenzi – they will no longer go look for them in the forests and the fields. They need to wipe them all out once and for all.

On 6 April, after the genocide began, members of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus sought shelter in the sports stadium, in churches, in any building where they felt they would be safe. There are very sad tales of priests allowing the Interahamwe take a certain number of people each day outside to slaughter -- so 'sacrificing' a few in order the save the rest -- but in the end they were all killed anyway - including the priests. Jarred showed us the church in Kigale where he had spent 3 months with his sister and parents. But his parents were amongst those 'sacrificed' early on -- picked out from the hundreds sheltering in the church, taken outside and hacked to death. He and his sister survived though, and live to tell the tale...

A staggering 50 000 sought shelter in the Murambi school, which was guarded by a detachment of elite Belgian paratroopers from a United Nations peacekeeping force, and where they were told they would be safe. They were kept in the classrooms for two weeks with no water or food, and then – famously when the UN forces were told they should shoot the dogs that had started eating the corpses outside the fences of the schools, but they were not allowed to shoot at the killers!, the UN force abandoned the school on 11 April, leaving its inhabitants at the mercy of the extremist Hutu militia, the Interahamwe. Fifty thousand people – men, women, children and babies – fifty thousand humans were killed in 24 hours. How can anyone imagine such a horror? How can you even imagine the sheer energy that had to to be used in order to kill with machetes and clubs so many people in a mere 24 hours?

Murambi School

When we visited Murambi school, walking through the class rooms where thousands of the bodies had been preserved in lime, forever frozen in the horror of their last moments, where more thousands had been buried in huge mass graves that almost cover the the whole top of the hill, where the class rooms stand with their doors and windows wide open – such as one sees when you drive through villages and towns in Africa – to allow a cool breeze to move through the hot crowded room, we were stunned. No words can describe the feeling. No words could possibly give expression to the emotions that ran through our minds. We were surrounded by so many souls. Their presence was so strong. There, on the crest of a high hill overlooking fields and farms and towns, visible to everyone from miles away, almost touching the clouds in the sky, a school – a place where young children's voices should be heard reciting their tables or singing their songs and clapping their hands – stands, now silent except for the soft breeze whispering through the branches of the umbrella tree that stands in the centre of the class rooms, the soft whisper of souls seeking peace.

Rwanda was definitely a 'difficult' country to visit. Everywhere you are reminded of the genocide. Every little hamlet, every school. University, place of business has its genocide memorial for the people who had died in that specific spot. Every person in Rwanda, older than 17 years, was involved in the genocide. No one in this country does not have at least one reminder of the genocide with them at all times. Jarred tells us that they now only look to the future. There are no Hutus and Tutsis anymore. Everyone is Rwandan. Is that possible? When the workers in the roads are dressed in either bright orange, bright pink or bright blue; the orange for the genocide prisoners who still have to be brought to court, the pink are genocide prisoners who are currently having their cases heard but have not yet been sentenced and the blue is worn by those who are busy serving their sentences. This country, which is so incredibly soiled by the memory of the most inhumane actions, is the first African country we have seen that is so spotless clean you could think you are in Singapore. Not a paper, a cigarette butt, a piece of plastic anywhere to be seen. The gardens are immaculate. There are flowers planted everywhere, the hedges are clipped, the embankments alongside the roads are planted in contrasting colours and textures, every open space in the cities is a joy to behold. The countryside is ordered and planted – the country incredibly hilly – the land of a thousand hills, they call is, and every square inch is planted with tea, coffee, beans, bananas, cassava, maize, sweet potatoes and “Irish potatoes” (what they call the simple potato!). It is almost as if they want to cover any possible bit of soil that may still hold the vestiges of the blood of the massacred or which covers the mass graves of the killed with something beautiful, something growing, something positive for the future.

David

Ben and Rebecca

Kigali is a modern city – beautiful buildings, wide clean streets, modern conveniences – quite incongruent in this central African country. The country is incredibly built up – (as mentioned, every square inch of soil is planted), and there are houses and people wherever you look. The only time we did not feel surrounded by people, was when we entered the Nyangui reservation. This is a vast region covered in dense primeval jungle – still, as the rest of Rwanda, one high hill after another – not a flat piece of earth to be found in this entire country. Here, in this Eastern reserve, is a wide variety of primates to be found. We spent one night here and early in the morning – really really early! – we drove to a point from where we trekked through this dense mountainous jungle for about an hour until we found a family of chimpanzees. Fascinating.

They are difficult to view; whereas the gorillas in Ugand, for the most part, conveniently lounged around amongst the forest ferns and undergrowth of the forest and allowed us to gaze at them at leisure for at least an hour, the chimps are constantly moving around – and they move fast – either on the ground through this dense, impenetrable bush, or along the tops of the 30-40 metre high forest canopy. The trees here are massive – four, five people would not be able to surround the main trunks, and the tops are so high that one stands in awe trying to credit the height of these giants. The chimps are noisy – shouting and shrieking and communicating all the time. The younger ones play amongst the branches, trying to catch each other or fighting over some fruit they had found, the older ones lie back in the forks of the trees munching away at the juicy wild figs and apples. All around them are the Mona monkeys – almost ethereal in appearance; they are pale grey with white bodies and white beards, and against the light the white almost looks non-existent – a little like ghost monkeys. Although the chimpanzees eat other primates, they apparently prefer the red colobus monkeys for the 20% of their diet (80% of their diet is vegetarian and 20% carnivorous), and they never eat the Mona monkeys – thus their presence with the family.

Suddenly, the leader calls a signal and, as one, they all climb down from the tops of the trees and make their way through the bush to another part of the forest. And we are left in silence. The total silence of an ancient forest...

Our last night in Kigali we treated ourselves to drinks at “Hotel Rwanda” - the scene of the famous incident during the 1994 genocide after which the Spielberg movie was named. We felt like royalty – four sad and sorry backpackers sitting like kings under the stars, listening to a brilliant combo of piano and singer, sipping gins and tonic, acting like we do this every day! So good was it, that we took the stairs up to the roof terrace where we ate a magnificent meal by candlelight, sipping wine, loving the silverware and crystal and looking out over the entire shimmering city below us. And remembering the history that had happened all around us, seventeen years ago. Remembering those who were there before us. A fitting farewell to a beautiful, beautiful country. And most certainly a very Red Button Moment...

The intricate woven ceiling of a Rwandan home - an artwork in itself.

The exquisitely basketry woven lids to the carved wooden 'bottles' for the storage of precious milk, displayed on an equally masterfully woven basketry table

Rwandan tea plantations