Rwanda

Kigali, Rwanda is a 5-hour drive from Mbarara. Crossing a border is always exciting, but Uganda to Rwanda seemed particularly so. The language changes (to French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and only newly introduced English), the driving changes from the left side of the road to the right, and the country looks and feels different. The first thing any Ugandan says about Rwanda is ‘it’s so clean’. It is. It’s illegal to bring the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags into the country and there’s a once-a-month ‘voluntary’ Saturday country-wide community cleanup. Unlike Uganda’s widespread deforestation, Rwanda is covered with trees. It’s illegal to uproot a tree without permission and there’s one week a year for widespread tree planting. The toilet in the inexpensive guesthouse we stayed in had a faucet on the lid of the tank so that the water could be used for washing hands before it flows into the tank (my response was ‘of course!’). The landscape is stunning. It is lushly green with mountains and high volcanic peaks in the north. And everyone we met (with the exception of the unknown person who we think stole our driver’s cell phone) was friendly and helpful. My Ugandan housemate, Sam, would often get out of the car when we asked for directions to ‘experience’ the interaction and would typically return to the car with his arm around the person’s shoulders, talking and laughing. More often then not, the person would drop everything he or she was doing and offer to come with us to show the way.

And, of course, the history is different. We arrived on April 8, a day after the anniversary of the start of the 1994 genocide, during which 1 million people (out of a population of 8 million) were killed in 100 days. There is a yearly one-week commemoration with fires, ceremonies, and community discussions as well as other events throughout the 100 days. So throughout the country there were purple (for sadness) and white (for hope) banners and ribbons. We went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial where there are gardens; a museum that contains many photos, remains, and belongings of victims and that explains events before, during and after the genocide (including it’s roots in colonialism and the roles of hate speech and mass media) as well as rooms devoted to genocides throughout the world; and a mass grave containing 258,000 victims. There is a wall of names containing only about 1000 names, as the work of trying to name the victims is ongoing. From there we went to the Hotel des Mille Collines, the site of events depicted in the movie, Hotel Rwanda, and then to a church, which was the site of a massacre of 10,000 people who’d taken refuge there. It was profoundly sad. Yet the insistence on preserving the past- the overwhelming horror and occasional good-, on honoring the victims, and on talking as communities and countries about the events was extremely moving. Seventeen years later the events have immediacy. When we arrived at the church, a local leader had just come to bring bones for cleaning and burial that had just been found. The photos are of the garden dedicated to women, a statue of an elephant (who never forgets- though I just realized it's actually a gorilla) holding a cell phone (trying to tell the world), a flame in front of the memorial which burns for 100 days each year, and the church with the Rwandan flag at half mast.