Rwanda

"How can people be so cruel?"
"Hatred . . . insanity . . . I don't know."
-Hotel Rwanda


When I was in Africa three years ago I spent a month traveling in Tanzania and at one point found myself only a couple hundred kilometers from the Rwandan border. Riding a local minibus one day, I saw a beggar on the side of the street. He had no legs, and he had no arms. Foolishly I asked the guy next to me if that was from a disease. He paused, and then uncomfortably responded "No. He is, I think, a Tutsi."

I will never forget that.

This time, the first sign that I was nearing Rwanda came from the UNHCR refugee tents a few kilometers from the border in Uganda. They had been recently put there so it was evident that these particular refugees came not from Rwanda but from the recent fighting within the Congo; but being from the Congo these refugees are part of a conflict that has tied the two contries together since the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

The genocide is a picture-perfect example of the failure of humanity. In 100 days Rwandans managed to murder between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus (think of that - there is a 100,000 plus-or-minus sign in front of the killings) by way of machete, gun, knife, gang-rape, and a variety of other methods. The West did nothing to stop the genocide and the African Union, which for some reason has escaped criticism for doing the same, sat by idly and afterward blamed the West for what had happened in their own backyard. It's important to point out that the genocide didn't stop because Rwandans suddenly and inexplicably came to their senses, or the rest of Africa decided to finally accept responsibility for their neighbors, or the West decided it would have taken only a few thousand troops to stop what was happening. No, nobody cared enough to stop what was going down even after almost a million murders. It was the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi rebel group based out of Uganda and led by current president Paul Kagame, who finally succeeded in driving the Interahamwe, the Hutu extremists who were committing the killings, out of Rwanda. So the Interahamwe, flanked by a couple million or so Hutu civilians who understandably assumed that the incoming RPF might want a little revenge after a million of their family members had just been raped and murdered, fled into the vastness of Zaire. More specifically, the mineral-rich, uncontrolled, forested sections of the North and South Kivu regions of Zaire.

Zaire, Rwanda's giant neighbor to the west, was in it's last days under the kleptocratic Mobutu Sese Seko who led from the other side of the country in Kinshasa. He was too busy trying to hold together his crumbling country in the west to worry about what was happeneing in the east.

From the east the Hutu extremists remained a tremendous thorn in the side of Rwanda's rebuilding efforts and a devastating presence to the Congolese civilians, whose government had neither the will or the resources to drive them out. Eventually Rwanda grew weary of waiting for Zaire to act and launched an invasion on its giant neighbor and actually managed to gain control of the entire country. Later, when Rwanda again became tired of the Rwandan-installed leader Laurent Kabila, they invaded the Zaire again, now remaned The Democratic Republic of Congo. This set off what people call the "African Civil War" and is still continuing to this day, primarily in the Congo, but having involved at one time or another a dozen African nations and having claimed five and a half million lives.

But even with both of these invasions the Rwandans failed to take out the highly militarized Hutu Interahamwe, now acting as an insurgency rebel force in the Congo and forever plotting to come back into power someday in Rwanda. So today there is pure chaos in the North and South Kivu regions of the Congo. The mineral resources of the region compound the matter even further.

The obvious rhetorical question that has to flow through every visitor to Rwanda is "How in the hell can something like this happen?" I say rhetorical because there is no satisfactory answer. An easy answer that a lot of people give is that the rigid hierarchical system in Rwanda was to blame because it allowed those at the top to dictate the genocide and those underneath had to carry it through.

Personally, I find this to be the biggest bullshit answer I've ever heard. My Italian relatives who got their heads bashed in with rifle butts on their farm by some Nazis in World War II died as a result of "following orders." Same with my Croatian relatives who were shot point-blank by an asshole Serbian. The "I was just following orders" defense makes me despise whoever says it because the speaker assumes a complete lack of humanity and allows themselves to be painted as victims in their own light. "Well, yes, it was wrong, but I was told to do it, so what choice did I have?" Jesus Christ! If you're told to force your neighbor to rape his own daughter before setting the entire family on fire how could you think that it is acceptable simply because you're following orders? How do you not turn your gun on your superior instead?

I doubt anyone can find a real reason behind the killings. They happened for whatever reasons, because people in mass groups can be stupid and led to do horrible things. In this case, a country raped, mutilated, and murdered a tenth of its population.

Crossing into Rwanda from Uganda, I spent the first couple days in the city of Ruhengeri, a starting point for gorilla tours and exploration of the surrounding Virunga mountains. While I decided it was best to leave the gorilla tours for another time, the fertile, black Virunga Mountains have been a point of fascination for me since I was eleven years old. So I spent two days trampling around the base of the mountains, just wandering from village to village and trying as best I could to ignore the ever-present crowd of children who followed me. Besides those kids, I had a great time in the forest and really enjoyed just generally spending time in the gorgeous Virunga forest.

From Ruhengeri I traveled to the resort town of Gisenyi, which lies on the north shore and right across from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a mess of a country that is the sexiest Pandora's Box I've ever wanted to travel to. I chilled here for a couple days and contemplated crossing into the Congo but ultimately decided that because of a relative lack of money and rumors of troops movements I would come back some other time and really knock the hell out of the place. For now though, I was already starting to feel pretty bummed about being in Rwanda and wanted to exit as soon as possible.

Even though I had been preparing myself for the country ever since I got to Africa, that preparation wasn't enough. The history of the Rwanda was a huge weight wherever I was. Even in the Virunga mountains I had a difficult time escaping it. The writing in this post already seems dry to me, and I think it's because writing about Rwanda in a non-genocide context is just hard. It's difficult to look at anything else besides the killings and its consequences, and even writing about that is damn difficult as well. I've got so much that I think about the killings and aftermath, but besides a bit more on the issue I'll leave it to you to read up on your own. I truly recommend doing so in order to at least partially understand the horror that the country exposed itself to. If you're interested there are a few books I can suggest. Besides being my choice picks, these are also probably the most well-read in the USA so they shouldn't be difficult to track down.

"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Along With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch would be the best one to start out with. Besides a couple historical inaccuracies it's a great book and will give you a decent picture of Rwanda with a specific focus on 1994. "Shake Hands With the Devil" by Romeo Dallaire, the UN Commander in Rwanda whose hands were tied by the Western powers during the killings, is a good book as well. Dallaire has a lot to get off his chest about the genocide; obvious torment in the writing aside, the shear volume of his book makes it clear he has a lot to say. And "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza is a well-written first-hand account from a Tusti women who survived the genocide by hiding with seven other women in the bathroom of a Hutu pastor. Of course there is the movie "Hotel Rwanda," the recounting of how a Hutu hotel manager of the Mille Collines in Kigali housed more than a thousand Tustis and moderate Hutus during the genocide and used every contact he had to ensure their safety. The manager, Paul Rusesabagina, also came out with a book detailing his account, "An Ordinary Man" that is worth a read.

From Ruhengeri I went to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. My first stop was at the Genocide Memorial Museum, a location that had a mass grave with the bodies of some 250,000 of those murdered as well as a museum dedicated to the events before, during, and after the genocide. Inside were rooms with pictures, writing, and interactive videos which gave a detailed look into what happened. On one of the walls I was surprised to see a picture of the church I was staying at in Kigali; upon reading further, I learned that the church priest had betrayed his parishioners during the genocide and led the Interahamwe killers to a large number of them who were hiding. All were killed. Reading that, the thought briefly crossed my mind - were any of them hiding in the room I was staying in?

The center area of the museum had a large room with individual sections that were stacked with skulls, leg bones, clothing, kids toys, and pictures of the dead. This inside area was a tough look; there isn't any mentally preparation you can do for it, and the images stay solidly locked in your memory. I left quickly but haven't been able to get over it. Outside, the mass graves were surrounded by a well-kept garden and covered with huge cement slabs, along with the occasional poignant sign reading "Please Do Not Step on the Mass Graves."

"Please do not step on the mass graves." My God, what a telling phrase. Something I know will stay with me until I die.

I happened to be in Rwanda on not only the 15th Anniversary of the killings, but was also there during their Genocide Memorial Week. The most important day in the week, for reasons unclear to me, was the Tuesday. That day I took a bus to the city of Nyamata, some forty kilometers south of Kigali. Nyamata was the site of a church were some 2,500 Tutsis had gathered to seek protection from the Interahamwe. The Interahamwe still attacked the church regardless, however, with grenades and guns and all inside were killed. The bodies had been left where they laid in and around the Church as a memorial, the same as with another nearby church where the same thing had occurred with 5,000 who had taken shelter.

There was to be a memorial service that day in Nyamata and I was planning to attend, but as soon as I stepped off the bus I felt out of place. I was surrounded by a sea of Rwandans that actually had a place here; no doubt many of them had lost relatives and friends here or elsewhere. Some might have even helped with the killings. But I had no place; I was just a tourist who was sick to his stomach by this whole place.

Exactly then, as I was going though my thoughts, the realization flooded through me that I had finally hit in straight on - I wasn't just horrified by the genocide, I was horrified by Rwanda. That realization was profound for me. I guess under different circumstances I might not have felt that way, but the timing of my trip made it difficult to get away from the genocide. In reality, Rwanda has built itself up nicely since 1994 with the help of foreign aid and is not the back-water country you may think. It has well-kept, efficient roads, crystal-clean high-rise buildings, beautiful gardens, and is largely free from the corruption so prevalent in surrounding nations. There are countless activities for those traveling though it, and really has done a terrific job of presenting itself as a tourist destination. If you were visiting it without any awareness of its history you would consider it a jewel of a country, a complete surprise in the middle of Central Africa.

But when you're there during a day like that Tuesday when the streets are deserted and literally every shop and building is closed down while an entire country looks into its soul and finds machetes and blood, you don't think about the roads and the gardens. You think about the killings.

I decided right then that I didn't care to see any more into the the mind of Rwanda. Every person . . . every country has their inner-demons, I suppose. But I don't want even one more glimpse into those of Rwanda.

So I left Nyamata. I got right back on the bus maybe thirty seconds after I got off and spent the ride back to Kigali sitting in disgust and revulsion knowing that this act - GENOCIDE - is still, even in these times, allowed to happen. Knowing that it will happen again. Knowing that despite the proclamations of politicians, military generals and aid agencies across the world of "NEVER AGAIN" after every genocide, it will indeed happen again.

Saying "NEVER AGAIN" might make the powers who stood idly by feel once again righteous, but the blood of the women, men, and children slain by machete remains on the Rwandan dirt. Every one of the 800,000 murderes was a human being with loves and hopes and emotions. Every one of them felt a feeling of horror in the moments before their death knowing that the end was upon them.

The world should be too ashamed to even apologize to Rwanda. Rwanda should be too ashamed to apologize to itself.

I stayed another day in Kigali but in my unhappiness and disouragement I didn't even leave my room. There was nothing there for me I cared to see. The day after I took a bus into Burundi, unhappy with my stay in Rwanda and even more so with my feelings toward humanity.

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As a footnote, I should add that I feel no need to reconcile myself with what I think of my time there. Sometimes there is no answer, there is no right thing to say, and there is no need to make yourself feel better about something that happened or how you feel. For me, this stop in my trip was one of those times.