There are not altogether that many, although probably too many, places in the world where you can walk around the tombs of 248,000 murder victims in the space of a couple of minutes. The mention of Rwanda for most people brings to mind the hair raising events that occurred in that country in 1994, from which Rwandans are still recovering today. In some ways the genocide in Rwanda has developed that almost super-historical status, like the Holocaust; the mere mention of the word invokes so much revulsion, a rush of grotesque images often generating a cold chill and raising the hairs on the back of your neck, leaving the details often forgotten.
Background
There seems to be a difference of opinion about the ethic and historical distinctions between the two principal ethnic groups in Rwanda - the Hutus and the Tutsis. In around 1700 the nomadic Tutsi clans came from the upper White Nile to Rwanda and
Burundi where they established themselves as a minority, ruling caste over the local Bantu, the Hutu. In the memorial in Kigali, a European anthropologist suggested that when the colonialists arrived they found Tutsi and Hutu living together in relative harmony. Rwanda was first colonised by the Germans and then the Belgians, both of whom used divide and rule tactics, favouring the Tutsi to further their colonial aims. In the late 1950's with the end of colonial rule in sight, the Belgians swapped sides to favour the Hutus - who preferred democracy and then independence. Ethnic clashes occurred in 1959 when the Tutsi king died, and the first independent government in 1962 was Hutu dominated, and introduced quotas for Tutsis. Many Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries, and proceeded to launch guerrilla attacks against the Rwandan government. In 1972 thousands of Hutus were massacred in neighbouring Tutsi dominated Burundi, causing even more anxiety in Rwanda. From this time until 1990 there were repeated massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda. During the 1980's many Tutsis in exile in Rwanda aligned themselves with General Museveni, who came to power in 1986. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front, based in Uganda and lead by the current President Kagame (a key lieutenant of Museveni) invaded Rwanda with 5000 well armed and well trained troops. The Rwandan called for French and Belgium assistance, which they received, and were successful in repulsing the rebels. The army then went on a rampage, killing many Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers, who they accused of helping the rebels. Thousands were murdered and hundreds of thousands fled to Uganda. The RPF invaded again in 1991 and 1993. In 1994 all parties attended a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, where a power sharing agreement was reached. However on the return flight home the aeroplane containing the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down by Hutu extremists killing them both. This was the tipping point for the unleashing of the Hutu extremists, those in suits within the government, the military and the Interahamwe - the militia made up of young Rwandans, trained and armed (often with machetes and other simple farming implements) by the men in suits. Lists of Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers had been prepared and the militia went from door to door, pursuing the people on the list, and then proceeding to hack them to death, and then did likewise for any of their relatives who were present. The militia also killed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers, because they knew it would provoke the Belgians in to leaving, and remove any potential for UN intervention. Guess what the Belgians did ? They upped and left - leaving a small UN force under the command of a truly heroic Canadian by the name of Romeo Dallaire.
Meanwhile around one million people, out of a population of around 6 million, and caused a couple of million refugees to flee to near by countries. Road blocks were set up, to stop people fleeing the perpetrators, all Rwandans had their ethnicity marked on their ID cards so it was easy for the potential victims to be identified. Those not caught in their homes, or fleeing on the roads were often hunted down where they sought refuge - in churches and schools, which were sometimes sealed off and bombed - killing all those inside. A tide of hatred washed over the population, and whilst the story of those who risked their own lives to protect others are many, the truth remains that millions of people, who formerly lived together as neighbours or even family, either took up weapons and killed people, or turned away and acquiesced. The streets of Kigali were littered with dismembered bodies - when the RDF forces took the capital all of the local dogs had to be killed because they had developed the taste for human flesh.
Interestingly Commander Dallaire had been informed that the Interahamwe was being trained, that plans were afoot to kill the Belgian peacekeepers to get the Belgians out of the country and that massacres were imminent, prior to the beginning of the killings by a high level defector in the Government. Dallaire sent an urgent cable to UN headquarters in New York, advising of the imminent threat, suggesting that even a small UN force would likely to be effective, and requesting such a force be sent. What happened - almost nothing. The matter was pretty much avoided, and the requested force did not arrive until over two months later. The first troops to arrive were the French under Operation Turquoise, which effectively created a corridor to the south and west through which the perpetrators could withdraw and escape in to the Congo. The world had failed to leave up to the creed of never again, and there was blood on many people's hands.
Genocide tourism ?
I visited two memorials in Rwanda, the first in Kigali, the capital, and the second in Kisuni, in the countryside near Rwanda's second city of Butare.
The memorial in Kigali sits in a suburb, down a hill just out of town, on the side of a small hill, above four long, thin terraces, in a stark white building. From the entrance you look out across the terraces across the small valley to the steep hill covered in houses and topped by a group of skyscrapers, some inhabited but many in the process of being built - giving the city an air of bursting, new vitality.
We started our visit with a tour of the mass graves where most of the 250 thousand odd victims in Kigali alone had been interred in four mass graves, covered by two 200 metre long concrete slabs about thirty centimetres high, each occupying one of the terraces that we had seen as we approached the memorial. It is almost beyond comprehension to imagine that around thirty percent of the population of a city were killed in the space of a few short weeks, by their neighbours, friends, family, all fellow citizens in a frenzy of organised violence. And here they lay beneath, crammed in on top of each other, beneath our feet. Looking at the city in the background it was difficult to see how these bustling streets, and smiling faces, could have been the scene of a bloodbath, emptied of the living and filled with the rotting corpses of the recently slain.
We then headed up to the museum and had a wander around. Strangely I was a little under whelmed - the exhibition was well presented, leading from a historical account of Rwanda, through independence, the build up, the genocide and the aftermath. The design of the building suited its purpose well, as I wandered around in circles following the exhibition the sense of space made me feel confused, claustrophobic and a little afraid. The room at the end containing thousands of pictures of the victims was very moving. However it never really had the knock-out effect, that left me floored when I visited Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge torture chamber in Phnom Penn. Perhaps here the wounds were to recent, there was not many graphic photos, not much description of the horrendous acts of violence, not much detail about how people were convinced, bullied or threatened to do what they did.
A few days later we headed out to Butare, and while Damo went off to track the chimps, I headed out to Kisuni. I met a soldier on the way who decided that rather than answer my questions about directions, he would escort me there himself. In that very African way he took my hand in his and we proceeded to walk down the road, hand in hand, something that takes even the most open minded Western man a while to get used to.
There is almost no flat land in Rwanda at all, there are simply big hills - volcanoes, less big hills - small rounded peaks, and then your ordinary, everyday hills. The school at Kisuni sits on a big hill, immediately surrounded by small hills, with a back drop of other large hills encircling it. It provides an excellent vantage point, it can be seen from far off and the views it affords of the surrounding countryside are panoramic. All of the hills are green, most are completely covered in a patchwork of square fields containing crops, with some of the summits are near verticals side of the hills covered in eucalyptus groves. You can see the dull orange of the gravel roads weaving their serpentine way off in to the distance, around the sides of hills, done through the valleys and along the ridge lines.
As we entered the fenced off compound a truck filled with rocks arrived and headed over the right where a large group of men and women were working. The soldier explained to me that some of the mass graves had started leaking and the bodies had been exhumed in order for the foundations to be laid in rocks and the tombs rebuilt and resealed. We met the caretaker who searched for the keys in the new yet to be completed, two storey memorial building at the top of the hill, and then lead us around the back to the old class rooms. There were about ten or twelve rows of six, simple, square red brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs, scattered across the side of the hill in neat rows, all looking very much like classrooms. I noticed that the windows facing the sun were all covered in large tarpaulins, secured to the roof.
The caretaker lead us to the building furthermost down the hill, whilst he opened the door I stared out around the valley, the sun was quite high in the sky, basking all I could see in a bright light which made the greens of the flora and the reds of the earth and the contrast between the two seem almost surreal. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene - there was almost no sound at all other than a few birds singing. Here and there I could see people working in the fields, and the odd cow or goat wandering about. As the door to the classroom was opened, I looked in to the dark room and was unsure of what I was seeing. In each of the four corners of the room were hip high simple wooden benches, about the size of a double bed, covered in bright white human skeletons preserved in lime. In the centre of the room was a small table with a stand of flowers on it. As I entered the room I noticed what was perhaps most confronting about the remains was that rather than being laid out as for a funeral many of the victims were preserved as they had been found, reflecting them in the moments before their death many were twisted and writhing in pain, mouths open to expel a chilling scream of pain, some cowering in fear from the death blow they were about to receive trying to protect themselves or shield young children or skulls and bones deformed or smashed as they were killed. I walked further in to the room and couldn't tear myself away from looking at the macabre spectacle, usually their is a distance between us and death, but here it was thrust upon me. The details that the lime permitted to be seen were incredible, despite many of the skeletons effectively being flat, it was still possible to see holes in skulls from hoes, broken bones, bits of clothes still attached to some victims. I looked outside to the bright sunshine and back in to the room and didn't know what to think.
Meanwhile the caretaker had been opening the other rooms and when I came out of the room for some air, he pointed me to the second room. Likewise it was filled with the same disturbing scene, this room contained more young children, some no older than two or three years; the next room had more young people; the next mothers and babies and so on. After I had seen six of these rooms, I looked out at the surrounding countryside and thought to myself, what am I doing here ? Is this the height of insensitivity, the disturbing depths to which tourists descend to try and capture that authentic experience ? Do I want to reach out and touch the bones so that I can feel the genocide - so it is more real ? Am I honouring the people who died or is it just another stop, a Holy Planet must see, on my tour of Africa ?
As the caretaker locked up all the rooms, I stood under the shade of the veranda looking out on the countryside and my mind kept loping back to how could this place and these people have done all this. I imagined what it must have been like for those victims who cowered in fear for a couple of weeks, held together in a large hall, denied food and water so that many died of dehydration, to be then set upon and hacked to death. There chilling cries would have rung out across this small silent valley, and everyone in the surrounding area who heard must have known what was happening - and yet they either participated or turned a wilful blind eye to the tragedy.
When the caretaker asked if I wanted to see the other rooms - there were around fifty of them - concurred with him that it wasn't really necessary. On the way back up the hill he showed me the central hall where all of the victims had been brought and told they would be protected - it was filled with shelves of clothes and shoes, many victims had their clothes stripped off them so the killers could wear them. He also showed French armies flagpole and volleyball court placed on top of mass graves, as they permitted the perpetrators to escape. On the way back to the memorial centre I asked the caretaker my routine question about how the survivors and the relatives of the victims can go on living today knowing that there are many among them who were perpetrators and will never be held to account, how do they bury their bitterness and get on with life ? Without battering an eyelid he explained that he had lost his mother, his wife and three sisters at this very place, but that now Rwanda was one country where ethnicity didn't matter any more, their wasn't a hint of bitterness or revenge in his voice. He paused to show me a mass grave, a narrow pit, about three metres deep, in to which bodies had been thrown, piled on top of each other until the hole was filled. He said that people have not forgotten what happened but that they had to think more about the future and about living together than the past.
Having asked this question of a few people, to me it seems that the forgiveness and reconciliation are a little forced in Rwanda - people don't like to think or talk about it - despite it being such a seminal event in both their lives and the life of their country. But perhaps their is no alternative - revenge and punishment will only lead to more violence, reopen painful wounds and foment more hatred. However, maybe, just maybe, Rwandans are succeeding, little by little, in that delicate balancing act between carrying on living and looking to the future, whilst not forgetting the painful past.
I still can't answer for myself the question of why I went, and it has raised more questions than it has answered, and exposed some deep contradictions about humanity. Why is is that when so many people die a life is so easy to take - almost thoughtlessly, that life itself loses meaning, and yet it is the large amount of death at once that makes us sit up and take notice and reminds us how precious life is- there is no memorial to the earlier victims of ethnic violence in Rwanda, nor to the estimated five million victims of the war in the Congo ? Why is it that the scale of the phenomena also seems to diminish and amplify the responsibility, how could individuals resist the tide of mob, yet why didn't each individual stop, think I am participating (or turning away from) the murder of one person, then another, then another and so on a million or more times ? Do individual victims have the right to demand justice, or is the fledging social cohesion, the rupture of which would no doubt lead to more violence and death more important - and who gets to decide ?
There are thought to be less than 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, and they are found only in a small area in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda - until recently one of the most unstable areas in the world. Gorillas however are a big money maker for all three countries, and prices have shot up to $500US (that is about $123 million in Australian dollars) a permit. Damo and I managed to knock them down a bit which you can read all about HERE.
Once the bargaining ended, and despite never receiving the permit in our hand, almost before we knew it we were in the back of the troop carrier heading off to the trail head for the Susa group. The Susa group are the largest family of mountain gorillas with 40 members (the other four groups have 13, 16, 13 and 6 members) and the hardest to reach. We drove through small town after small town, the space between them filled with fields of bananas, sorghum and corn, and local kids who waved and yelled out "mzungu, mzungu !!!" like they had never seen a honky before. After about 40 minutes we reached a small town, parked up, introduced ourselves to each other, got our wooden walking sticks with a lovely kitsch carved gorilla, and headed off along a narrow path between the fields behind a man dressed in olive green with a big gun (allegedly for rogue buffaloes), and our guide . Before long we had attracted a crowd of thirty or forty kids, who followed us at a small distance, and steadfastly ignored the repeated attempts of the guide and his assistants to shoo them away. There 
was a little nervous tension and expectation in the air, which we all tried to cover up with conversation with our new tracking mates, a diverse mix of Swedes, older and younger Americans and ourselves.
After about thirty minutes walking we reached a metre high stone wall which marked the border of the park, as the path started to head up the side of the volcano. Once we crossed in to the park we entered the bamboo forest, thick, bare, green bamboo trunks stretching straight up, topped by a canopy of greenery.
Despite only sharing 95% of human DNA gorillas are clearly far clever than homo sapien sapien - they are vegetarian. They can weigh as 
much as 200 kilograms (females are about half that) and consume about 15% of their body weight in bamboo shoots, giant thistles and wild celery, with the odd insect for some protein. (OK, so not pure vegetarians)
After another hour or so walking the undergrowth started to appear, thick knee high grass, and bushes and vines feeling in the space between the bamboo trunks. We then came upon our four trackers. The trackers set out early in the morning and try and find the gorillas, and radio through to the guide to let him know where they are.
We left our bags with the trackers, and started to hack our way through the forest which with the change in altitude changed, far less bamboo. The undergrowth became thicker and darker the further we went. I had stupidly forgot to put on my long sleeve shirt, so I was trying to play a game of limbo to avoid the stinging nettles. Needless to stay I was largely unsuccessful and was soon itching with stings up and down my arms. Without warning, we appeared in a clearing and there in front of us were 8 or 10 gorillas spread across the clearing, two gorillas sitting 3 or 4 metres directly in front of us, munching away on bamboo, oblivious to us.
I was immediately struck by their size - gorillas are huge - thickly set, large heads, bulging biceps, long arms and thick fingers, broad chests, big bums and a thick, glossy almost radiant covering of jet black hair. There was a lot of gasping as we watched a group of two or three munching away on some bamboo, breaking the stalks with their hands, then chewing on the crunchy inner part, completely ignoring our presence.
The guides grouped us together, and then looking behind us I see a huge silverback sitting 5 or six metres behind us. This gorilla is massive - sitting on the ground, with only his shoulders and head showing above the thick brush - broad chest, thick arms, chopping block head and
across his lower back a strip of bristling, 
white hair. Suddenly I am reminded of King Kong, and can easily see how the idea of a massive gorilla was so easily insinuated in to the public consciousness - here is King Kong, a lot physically smaller than the movie, but almost as big in stature.
Gorilla families have a silverback, so called because as males reach maturity at between 8 and 15 years their hair on their lower back turns silver, at the top of the hierarchy. Further down the pecking order are the other silverbacks, younger black-back males, females and then infants. Most gorillas leave the group when they reach maturity. It is the silverback that dictates the days movements, which we witnessed near the end of our stay when the silverback decided it was time to go, and most of the gorillas scurried off ahead of him in to the bushes.
Not long after, Damien spots the silverback, even larger than the one I had spotted, sitting in the middle of the big group, surrounded by perhaps 10 to 15 gorillas. In this group are the huge silverback, a few infants and their mothers and some juveniles as well. We all watch in complete awe as a couple of infants wrestling with each other, jumping on each other, and rolling about like small furry balls. All the while the rest of the gorillas are constantly eating. The younger ones use their whole body to leverage shoots out of the ground, and as the bamboo is torn loose from the ground, the gorillas almost inevitably fall over backwards, then get up, dust themselves off and start eating. For as long as we watch them they munch away on the greenery.
The incredible spectacle we witnessed was a single group with five silverbacks all together at once- at one point each way we looked there was a silverback looking back at us.
Gorillas use a variety of means of communicating including facial expressions, gestures and calls. (Interesting at the San Francisco Zoo a gorilla has been trained to understand more than 100 words using a touch screen, however whilst the gorillas can use multiple words he is unable to construct sentences or acquire language) Being surrounded by so many silverbacks, we had the privilege of hearing a few go through the chest beating routine, producing a hair raising, deep and thumping call which reverberated through the forest.
As we watch this group at play, over to our right is another silverback who appears as though his work for the day is done. He is lying prostrate, on his back, hands behind his head stretched out sunning himself. He has a huge white belly sticking out, his eyes are closed and he his very relaxed. At one point he rolls over, still lying down he rests his head on his hands, opens his eyes for a while with a look of deep contemplation, and then goes back to sleep.
The guides are frequently moving us around, for our own safety, better views and to avoid crowding out smaller groups. The head guide wanders off away from the main group, and I follow close behind. As he cuts his way through some bushes we spot a silverback with an small infant. Interestingly in gorilla families when a mother dies the infant is often adopted and then reared by a silverback, creating the arresting spectacle of a 200 kilo behemoth, tenderly playing with a tiny infant gorilla, about the same size, and appearance, as a carnival stuffed toy. (Almost the same size relationship as King Kong and his paramour) As we approached the silverback he became a little perturbed, and with one hand in a single movement scooped up the infant and threw him on to his shoulder. The infant squirmed about, eventually sliding down the chest of the silverback, and ended up on its bum on the ground. The silverback decides it is time to leave, and gets up and wanders off with the infant scampering closely behind. (PICT 209)
We return to the main group and watch them for a while longer. I start to notice heir faces - the eyes are most striking, and the expressions are most human-like, whether playful or pensive, it is easy to slip in to anthropomorphising these looks, faces and acts. Likewise the sitting posture, including the beer gut, the use of the fingers to handle the food (and each other) and the manner of eating, reinforces the gorillas' humanness.
Being so close allows us to get a good look, and whilst they only glance at any of us a couple of times, you can 
clearly see how evolution didn't force much change over the millions of years that separate us. So much so that I start to see the resemblance with a few people I know - one ex-boss in particular springs to mind.
Eventually the main silverback decided it is time to move on, he stood up on all fours and immediately all the other gorillas turned around to pay attention. The silverback began to chase another large gorilla - and all the others begin to scuttle. Interestingly, despite their size, gorillas are relatively placid, and conflict is mostly restricted to shows of strength and vocal disputes. The silverback catches the target, taps him on the head, and then waddles off in to the bushes, with the others following not far behind.
As the main group move off we head back to where the lazing silverback was - he is now sitting up, happily chewing away, their is a glint in his eye as if to say about time I got some attention. We move a little closer to him, with Damo in the lead, and the silverback decides it is time to leg it. As you can see in the video, gorillas have a very particular way of moving on all fours, lumbering around with their bums in the air. Like myself, Damo seemed so intrigued by the way the silverback was moving that he got a little too close, and had to beat a hasty retreat - but all in the name of capturing that authentic experience. (INSERT VIDEO 224)
We get the five minute warning from our guide, and quickly search out a few of the fringe dwellers. Another silverback puts on a little show for us, posing on all fours, looking around for a while, a smile for the camera, and then collapsing on to the ground for a nanna-nap. We spot a few more in the bushes at a distance, and then our time is up, and we reluctantly drag ourselves away, trying to catch one last glimpse of these awesome animals.
We manage to capture these two hairy ones as we leave the clearing.
On the walk back to the cars we are again surrounded by children, who treat the mzungu (honkies) like we treat the gorillas. Every once in a while Damo and I pull or coordinated kid scaring move, on the count of three we turn around and run at the kids growling. The kids immediately scatter, with the look of fear in their eyes as though they are about to be eaten by the mzungu. Every one, them and us, ends up in fits of laughter, and yet the trick continues to work not matter how many times we pull it.
When we finally arrive back in our hotel in Ruhengeri we find our faithful friend waiting to direct us home
One thing I noticed on my first day in Rwanda is that it is an incredibly clean country, roadways are bush, grass and then road - no great piles of rubbish, endless bits of plastic blown around by the wind at caught together by barriers. In town you wander around wondering who collects all the rubbish, no rotting garbage piles, no filthy piles of trash on empty blocks.
In futuristic Rwanda plastic bags are banned - that is right, in the whole country there are no plastic bags. Instead everything comes in paper bags - from sliced bread to vegetables from the market. A friend told us that if you bring in bread from Uganda, they make you take the bread out of its plastic bag and put it in a paper bag. The difference is very discernible, no clogged waterways, no eyesores along road sides and no dirty, smouldering piles of refuse.
Goes to show you how pathetic the political leadership in Australia is - a tiny, poverty stricken African country has band plastic bags, and it works and life doesn't suddenly come to a halt.
If love at first sight is possible then I think Damo and I have fallen head over heels for Rwanda. We have been here for a sum total of 3 and 1/2 days, and the friendless, openness, vibrancy, sense of humour, smiles and laughs of Rwandans have one us over, throw in some incredible scenery filled with rolling green hills covered in a patchwork of tilled fields up and down the hills, some sinuous lakes filling in the gaps, a cordillera of volcanoes poking through the clouds as a backdrop, a small town lulling with activity and an hour with some of the last mountain gorillas left in the world and we are well and truly sold. However, perhaps the most endearing thing about Rwanda is the sense of bizarreness that hangs in the air, where ever we go.
Today we headed out to a small lake near the border with Uganda. We caught a share taxi down to the turn off and then walked six kilometres down a track to the lake. Throughout our walk we came across lots of people, who all seemed at first surprised to see us, then overjoyed, and then very curious, many following along behind us for kilometres.
Damo has developed a multi-lingual hello game for this multi-lingual country. He goes through his lost of greetings to see how many correct responses he an get
"Amakuru?"
"Ni meza"
"Abari gani?"
"Mzuri"
"Ca va ?"
"Ca va bien"
"How are you ?"
"Fine, thank you"
Surprisingly, he hits four out of four almost every time.
On the way down to the lake we pass a school, and I decide to head in and see how things are. It is lunchtime and soon things become very chaotic. I end up in a classroom, with kids piling in, more and more and more, filling the room and surrounding me at the blackboard as I try my best to explain where Australia is in relation to them. Meanwhile outside Damo is putting on his eyebrow show, and is surrounded by probably a hundred kids. I escape the oppression in the classroom, which only attracts more people to surround Damo outside. Eventually we decide it is prudent to leave the school, and on our way out we are followed by a big group of kids. One of them touches Damo's bag, and the whole bizarreness and being surrounded leads to Damo snapping at the kid, who quickly slinks off amid the other kids calling him thief. By the time we make it down to the lake, we are left with only three or four kids, and when they get word that the Principal has returned to the school they all scamper off.
We find a café by the waterside and our delusions about being the only tourists there are rapidly smashed, a group of four or five roll up in a van from Uganda, and we see an older couple taking a boat ride on the lake.
I take a swim which the kids again find as a source of intense bemusement, a big group of them stand on the edge of the shore and watch me undress and splash about in the water. We watch the other tourists head off, after handing out a pencil (strictly one per child) to the kids who have been persistently begging since we got there. It is a strange sight to see this clearly malnourished kids, dressed in no more than rags, some high from sniffing glue and all wagging school, running around with pencils in their hand - probably wondering whether they can ear them. Damo wants to say something to the departing tourists, but the tension is broken when they laugh at him offering them pencils as they drive off.
We are met by the local social services co-coordinator who takes us to be big time tourism investors. He repeatedly tells us that the land is available here to buy, and whilst conceding to our point that the lake is beautiful, goes on at length about how it is undeveloped. Both Damo and I come away at the end of the conversation imagining how ruined the Lake will be in 10 years by inappropriate development right on the shore and gaggles of wealthy Europeans and Americans zapping about on noisy jet skis.
Suddenly the sky turns very grey, and dark thunder clouds march across the lake, lighting cracking across the sky with roaring thunder in tow. We decide to leg it, and just as we reach the outskirts of the first village, the sky opens up, and the initial thick, fat drops of rain, turn in to an almighty downpour, making us seek refuge outside a carpenters workshop under a tin roof. Again we are the main source of entertainment to the group of Rwandans who are trapped with us. Mzungu, mzungu, mzungu.
After about half an hour the rain holds up, the sky clears, and we are on our way again. By this time it is late afternoon, and there are even more people out walking on the road. Damo and I get our timed scare tactics going again, and even the older locals are joining in our laughter at the terrified kids. I develop a new tactic of shaking the kids' hands, and then deciding not to let go. This usually terrifies a kid, and when they can't run away they become even more terrified. Strangely, once I let go, they run off, and then look back and see me, and everyone else laughing, so they join in. One young girl chooses to run off through the gate, and is petrified when I follow. She continues in to the house and waits behind the door, so I follow. She promptly runs into another room and slams the door, crying out Mzungu, Mzungu !!! A couple of minutes later she gingerly reappears to see the mzungu still around.
We finally arrive back in the junction town where we got off the share taxi from Ruhengeri. Even in town we are followed where ever we go. As soon as we become stationary we are immediately surrounded by groups of kids and adults - most just watch but some ask questions. The crowds form tight circles are we are not really ever being able to escape. So I decide to grab one of the bicycle taxi boys' bikes and do a few laps of the town, which only bemuses even more people and makes the surrounding circles even larger. A whole day of being the centre of attention is starting to wear me down, and when a share taxi arrives we quickly jump on board, looking for some respite.
On the way back to Ruhengeri we play the Conductor game, yelling out the destination as we drive through small towns, and trying to identify or perhaps even convince bystanders that they want to go to where the share taxi is headed. We cause plenty of laughs, and manage to find a couple of passengers before the real conductor does, which ends in the driver telling his conductor off because the mizungus were doing a better job. The driver spends the remaining 30 minutes of the ride back explaining to me in French that it is much cheaper to buy left hand drive mini-vans, and that the government taxes everything too much. We again arrive in Ruhengeri on dark and are both worn out and amazed by Rwanda.
And of course the sweetest thing about Rwanda is that whilst everyone told us it is expensive, we keep tripping over cheap options - a nice hotel room, lunch for less than dollar, bus rides for less than a dollar -truly love at first sight.
We had the pleasure of meeting Godwin in Gisenyi, the Rwandan town on the border with Congo - just across from Goma. Godwin was born in a refugee camp in Uganda, and leads the lonely life of a local journalist, working for the leading English language newspaper in Rwanda, covering the goings on in Congo. No big expense accounts, no laptops and no satellite internet connections like the BBC and Al Jazira boys. Instead his phones and emails are tapped by the government, and when we met he was awaiting his paper to send him money so he could continue his work and go back to the Congo. And he has the misfortune of covering the absolute misery of Congo, a tragedy that not only are most in the West going out of their way to ignore but a story most Rwandans don't want to hear about either.
Godwin revealed some home truths about what was going on in the Congo, and told some rip roaring stories about meeting war lords and spotting bare-footed Chinese miners wandering about in small villages in Congo, (I have asked him to write a guest blog, so keep your eyes peeled) but his greatest wisdom came in a few choice comments he made during the day we spent with him.
- On the Congolese government
- " The Congo Government, that is not a serious government. They only control Kinshasa and a few other towns. There are generals who control areas bigger than Rwanda, they run markets, they even impose taxes"
- On the Congolese farmer
- "In Congo the only job they have is to dance...the soil is so fertile that food grows everywhere, even if you walk in the jungle there are bananas and cassava"
- On corruption, or the lack thereof, in Rwanda
- "If he (public official) eats even one dollar, he will be in jail for a very long time. Everywhere there is someone watching"
- In response to my question as to why local Rwandans chase after the most rickety looking buses (that are the most expensive) arriving at the bus terminal and form long queues
- "Ahh, you know, locals are ...., locals"
National borders are artificial constructs, and no more so than the colonial hangover that is Africa, however sometimes they do mark real and noticeable change. As we approached the Rwandan border from Uganda even the weather seemed to change, as five huge volcanoes reared up in front of use, indicating the border between these two East African nations.
Once we entered Rwanda everything seemed to change; the landscape changed from small treeless terraced and over-farmed rolling hills, to wild, thickly forested jutting hills, sculptured lakes winding between the hills with wispy layers of cloud settling in for the evening in the valleys; the people had the same appearance as Ugandans but they looked different, they looked more nervous, as though they were on edge, that kind of look that desperately poor people have - resigned yet still enjoying the misery of life; and of course we butted head with a new language barrier, pushing me to rack my brain for any French that remained.
We boarded the next to leave Hiace van taxi, and almost at once everybody began asking us for money, even the woman sitting on the seat in front of me. Perhaps the most well known phrase in English has now changed from "OK" or "coca-cola" to "Give me money". A couple of women sat next to me on the bus, the one immediately to my left had a small baby strapped to her back. I peered over to look at the baby, and as soon as it saw my face it began to bawl, scared at the very sight of a mzungu (the universally used Swahili word for whitey/honky) All of the women in the bus began to laugh at the either the frightened baby, the embarrassed mzungu or both. The woman sitting behind covered the babies head in a shawl but even that wasn't enough to stop the tears. The mother took the baby off her back and started feeding it - which proved to be a far quieter activity than mzungu spotting. However for the next hour on the trip every time the baby saw my face, it bawled, and everyone surrounding me broke in to raucous laughter, both at the baby and my feigned attempts to hide my face to prevent a further crying episode.
After the usual wait, as the twilight began to fade we set off heading towards Ruhengeri, gorilla tracking capital of the world. As soon as we started moving I noticed another difference, there were people everywhere, walking on both sides of the road, and often down the middle. Women were dressed in bright kanga (sarongs) seemingly all carrying small children on their backs, and making everything seem a little brighter and alive than even Uganda. The stops on the thirty kilometre trip we fairly frequent, dropping people off and picking people up. Every time we stopped a crowd gathered, the usual pointing and shouting Mzungu !!!, with the added twist of Give me money !! There was a strange divide between those who seemed surprised and petrified to see mzungu in their mist - usually shown by kids who spotted us and then bolted, or the passengers refusing to sit next to Damien in the front seat; or surprised and curious -usually shown by people pointing at us, coming up to shake hands, or yelling at us in a mix of Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, French and English and then rolling around with side spitting laughter at almost anything we said to them.
When we finally reach Ruhengeri, darkness is setting in, so it is difficult to form any coherent impression of the place. The streets are unlit, so other than a few shop fronts throwing dim light on to the wide streets, and the odd car, it is difficult to make out anything in the darkness. We drive past a big touristy, hotel and then trickle in to the centre of town. The Hiace drops us off just behind a mobile cell phone promotional car, 3 foot high speakers sitting in the back blaring out music at full volume. There is a crowd surrounding the car, and the young kids on the outskirts are shaking their booty like they just don't care. Normally this would be most unsettling, the perfect conditions for a robbery, and we expect touts to come running at us, but instead Damien finds himself dancing with the kids, who are clearly appreciative of his interest in them, and start as Damien so aptly describes, smiling with their entire bodies. Not long after the car drives off and the kids, and everyone else disappear in to the night. We both look at each other and almost simultaneously say, "how weird is this ?"
Rwanda is infamous for what most consider to be the last real genocide of the 20th century, and with it being so recent, I expect things to be a little different. However, the general level of weirdness still arises with disturbing frequency as we wander around the streets.
