Rwanda

I arrived in Kigali early in the morning and set out for a quick tour of the city with my guide, Douglas.  The highlight of the tour was the Genocide Memorial that I had not wanted to visit - I have seen enough Holocaust Museums and had read enough Rwandan history to know what happened in 1994.  But the Rwandans are insistent that they not forget the past, but learn from it, and they take all visitors proudly to the Memorial.  It turned out to be not only a moving experience, but possibly the best genocide/holocaust museum I have been to, and I have been to a lot.

The museum makes clear that there was no age-old conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis.  In fact, they are not really separate tribes, and people moved fluidly from one category to the other.  Until ... the Belgians were given Rwanda after Germany, which had been given Rwanda in the late 19th century, lost its African territories after World War I.  The Rwandans had no idea that Europeans were determining their sovereignty.  The Belgians decided that the best way to rule was to create a ruling class to dominate everyone else.  So they decided to elevate the Tutsis, mistreat the Hutus, and make everyone carry an identity card.  Later, as European colonialism was falling apart in Africa, the Belgians decided to enfranchise the majority Hutus and turn them against their "oppressors" the Tutsis.  Thus, the Belgians left a legacy of hatred to the first post-independence regime, which unfortunately decided to continue to use it.

The point of the museum is that genocide does not come from tribal conflict or past hatreds.  Genocide is always a government policy.  The government fostered hatred and fear, convincing the Hutu majority that the Tutsis planned to kill them, so they should strike first.  The government enacted policies that were very similar to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Germany.   And the government prepared lists of Tutsis as well as dissident Hutus, indoctrinated and trained troops of young men, and armed them.  Thus, when the killing began, it was well organized and conducted countrywide.  In a one hundred day period, over two million Rwandans out of a pre-genocide population of seven million were killed.  And the country itself was destroyed.

In the late 1990's, Rwanda and Angola were both failed states on the brink of anarchy.  Angola still is, but Rwanda today is a modern African success story.  The second and most important point of the museum is to explain how that happened.  In two words ... the recovery is based on acknowledgement and forgiveness.  The Rwandans insist on remembering in detail what happened, but not taking revenge on anyone, for they understood that revenge creates a never-ending cycle.  Everyone - Hutus who had taken part in the killing, and Tutsis whose family and friends had been killed - tells their story and asks for or grants forgiveness.  Today, they insist that they are all Rwandans and refuse to accept other labels.

The museum has displays on several other genocides including Armenia, Cambodia, European Jews, the Balkans, and one in German West Africa (modern day Namibia) that I had never heard of.  The common theme is that the government perpetrated each genocide and no other countries or international bodies intervened.  In the case of Rwanda, French troops helped the Hutus, the UN pulled its peacekeeping troops rather stop the slaughter, and the US refused to intervene.

As depressing as this sounds, I could not help but be impressed with how Rwanda had taken such a horrible time from its recent past and is using it to move forward.  It reminded me somewhat of South Africa which has also taken the position that they must acknowledge the past so they can move forward.  This really makes me think about America where a lot of people refuse to acknowledge the wrongs done in the past so it would never occur to them to ask for forgiveness.  And whether it is conscious or not, the hatred and fear that they promulgate is the first step toward government sanctioned genocide.  Not a happy thought.

I have read enough African history to understand that the Europeans took the land and natural resources while enslaving the natives, either literally or effectively.  Again, the first step was to see the natives as savages who were incapable of or did not deserve to conduct their own lives.  Sadly, the first generation of local leaders after the wave of independence from 1960 to 1980, turned out mostly to be kleptocrats, taking as much as they could while in power.  In almost every country that I have visited, everyone said that the number one problem in their country is corruption.  They need new leaders who do not steal everything for themselves.  Rwanda is the only exception I have seen.  More food for thought.

I cannot think of a good way to transition from the genocide museum to gorillas.  My guide took me on a quick drive through Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.  When I thought that I would be staying here for a day, I made a reservation at Hotel Mille Colines, the site immortalized in the movie Hotel Ruanda.  But in the end, I am not spending a night in Kigali, so I went to the hotel for lunch.  Then we drove two hours to Volcanoes National Park for my next day's activity - trekking to see the mountain gorillas.  I noticed on the drive that very few people have private cars. Motorcycles are used as taxis here, as I saw in Vietnam also, and some private individuals have them as well. The primary vehicle seems to be bicycle, but … Rwanda is the land of one thousand hills.  They ride the bicycles downhill and push them up.  Or, they just use the bicycles as a means of transporting goods.  I have seen people pushing bicycles with huge bags of potatoes or containers of water.

I knew I had to trek for a few hours to reach the gorillas, but had not focused on the fact that they are mountain gorillas.  That meant trekking uphill.  They have porters available to carry your pack and I thought, I can carry my day pack.  But then the guide said to think of them not as porters but as helpers, so I hired a porter.  Peter held my hand and pulled me up the mountain, and on the way down, he prevented me from sliding down the mountain.  I don’t know if the young uns that I hiked with were jealous of me for having my own personal porter or laughing at me for being the only person in the group to need one.  Don’t know; don’t care.  Best decision I made.  

We met at the headquarters for the Volcanoes National Park at 7 AM and were put in groups of eight.  I understood that they group you roughly by ability but somehow I got put in a group of twenty and thirty somethings, so I knew I was in for a long hike.  We drove from the headquarters partway up the mountain to the start of the trek.  Then we climbed half an hour to the start of the national park through fields of potatoes and pyrethrum, which looks like a common daisy but its flowers are used to produce some kind of liquid that is an insect repellent.  I have driven through a lot of farmland in a lot of countries and have been surprised at how few people I see working in the fields.  OK, I’m a city girl.  I guess crops just grow themselves and you don’t have to do much day to day.  But here in Rwanda, I see men and women working in each field, and the only tool they have is a hoe.  They turn the earth, which looks dark and fertile, and pick the potatoes, all by hand.

Hiking past fields of potatoes

The fields end at the beginning of the national park and we continued to climb on a pretty good path through rain forest.  Trackers leave about an hour before the trekkers to find where the gorilla family is, and radio the guides when they find it.  When the trackers sent directions, we had to leave the path, so we put on our leg coverings, rain jackets, and gloves to protect us from the thorny undergrowth.  My guide had given me leggings so my lower legs were okay, but I could feel my hands and thighs getting itchier and itchier.  Fortunately, the sting is not poisonous and the itchiness only lasts a little while.

The sign says "Dian Fossey Site" and the elevation which is over 9,000 feet

Once we got off the path, I understood why the guides carried machetes.  Whatever I may think about the European colonists, I marvel at the first explorers.  I’m not sure what the point was of searching for the source of the Nile, but no matter.  They traveled thousands of miles where there were no roads or even paths.  After we got off the path, it was virtually impossible to proceed without the guides chopping back branches with their machetes.

Suddenly one of the guides said, there is the silverback, and there he was, sitting like Buddha in the middle of the jungle.  The guides hacked off a few branches so we could see him better.  Young males until the age of twelve or so are blackbacks, but at maturity, the males backs turn silver; hence the name.  They weigh over four hundred pounds, much of it in their stomachs, so they really do look like buddhas. They seem to do nothing but sit and eat branches, and while they are covered with fur, their faces and hands do look human.

I had pictured all of the gorillas in a clearing with us sitting and observing them for a while, but it was not like that.  They live in the jungle and are well hidden.  Duh.  It was only a few feet to the femaies and young males, but I never would have seen them if the guides did not point them out and hack back the branches.  We watched a female holding a baby so closely that we could hardly see his head poking out.

All too soon the guides told us it had been and hour and we had to leave.  An hour into the hike down, we came upon another silverback alpha male - sitting like buddha of course.  He was from a family assigned to a group that got a shorter trek, so we were not allowed to stay and watch him, but we got a bonus viewing of a second silverback and a two young males in a tree.

I still have no idea what a golden monkey is, but they better be pretty spectacular for me to spend another day hiking uphill.