Rwanda---or the “Pays
de Mille Collines”, as it is more romantically called---is a tiny mountain
kingdom located in the heart of Africa, characterized by its lush highlands, staunchly
pro-development politics, and friendly populace. Well, I guess the term “kingdom” isn’t
entirely accurate, as the Hutu monarchy that ruled the area for the past few
centuries was thoroughly subdued and dissolved by the Belgians after World War I…
the appropriate, politically-correct description of Rwanda’s current government
is probably something more like “fledgling democracy”---which, given that this
is Africa, inevitably runs more along the lines of “one-party authoritarian
police state.” In all, I guess that
pretty much sums up Rwanda in a nutshell: it’s a small, beautiful, green,
progressive, well-developed, friendly authoritarian police state. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s a small,
beautiful, green, progressive, well-developed, friendly authoritarian police
state with a particularly dark past.
For those of you who remember the 90s (or have seen Hotel Rwanda), the mention of Rwanda
necessarily invokes one particular event in that country’s history---namely,
the systematic extermination of roughly one million Tutsi by the Hutu-backed
Rwandan army as well as a number of armed civilian militias (most notably the
Interahamwe) in the spring of 1994. This
genocide can easily be ranked among the worst atrocities committed in recent
human memory, as the sheer barbarism and hate that plagued Rwanda during that
time reached a level of intensity previously unseen in that part of the
world. Indeed, over the course of about
three months, Rwandans had successfully murdered approximately one-eighth of
their own country’s population, all while the international community (most
notably the UN) watched and did nothing.
Not to mince words, but it was… a bit of a rough patch in the history of
East African development.
Surprisingly, despite the extensive devastation brought by
the 1994 genocide, you actually wouldn’t know it if you visited Rwanda today,
as heaps of foreign aid from a guilty international community as well as a
strict, forward-thinking government have ensured that modern Rwanda is not only
clean and developed but also safe and hassle-free. Parliamentary and presidential elections have
recently been held, and---although the results were a bit dubious---the
country is doing a hell of a lot better than it was back in the 90s, and it’s
now one of the most progressive and urbanized countries in East Africa. As such, Rwanda has now become one of the
more foreigner-friendly destinations on the continent, and, in recent years, it
has seen a steady influx of aid workers, expatriates, and tourists.
And, back in March, not to be deterred by trivial matters
such as “school” and “work”, one of those tourists was me.
I had always had a sneaking suspicion that not all of Africa
was like Songea, and---not to put Tanzania down or anything---I had heard
repeated tales of the relative safiness
of neighboring countries (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, southern Mozambique,
etc.). In no way do I hate Songea or
Tanzania, but I was intensely curious to see if these legends of a posh East
Africa were true, and given that Rwanda was small, compact, and didn’t require
a $60 entry visa, it became an inescapable detour during my aimless wanderings
around northern Tanzania.
In all, I spent about a week in Rwanda, which certainly
wasn’t enough time to see everything the country had to offer, but was
nonetheless sufficiently long to soak in as much Rwanda exposure as possible
before running out of money and going home.
Honestly, I never really had much of a game plan the whole time I was
there; organization is not exactly my forte, and unless you consider “doing safi crap while putzing around Kigali” a
travel agenda, I was pretty much going without any prior knowledge of what to
expect. I guess things turned out okay
in the end: armed with my tattered 2003 edition of Lonely Planet: East Africa and a solid 30 minutes of internet research
in Bukoba, I was able to follow what I guess could be called the “Western
Rwanda Circuit”---beginning in Kigali, moving south to Butare, heading west to
Nyungwe and Cyangugu, ferrying north to Gisenyi, passing through Ruhengeri back
to Kigali, and returning home via the Rusumo border. It was short, it was fun, and there were
enough mini-adventures and exploits to say that, overall, it was a worthwhile
trip.
Rather than bore you, the valued reader, with a blow-by-blow
account of these exploits, I’ve elected to---as done before in this blog---describe
my foray into Rwanda in “vignette” form, which will hopefully keep things brief
and interesting (and again allow me to tell a story without writing a complete,
coherent narrative). Moreover, if there
are any PCVs in Rwanda who happen to read this, karibu sana to call me out on anything that may be
inaccurate/misinformed/excessively jingoistic.
I mean, you guys actually live there, and I’m just a poor country
bumpkin from Tanzania, after all.
So, without further ado, here’s the Cliffs’ Notes version of
Paul’s Totally Radical Rwandan Adventure:
General Impressions
Perhaps the first thing I noticed when crossing the border
was the instant improvement in infrastructure.
The average Tanzanian house is usually a one- or two-room mud brick
structure with a corrugated tin roof and fire pit; the average Rwandan house
appeared to be a one- or two-room mud brick structure with a corrugated tin
roof and a fire pit and a personal
water spigot and a telephone pole
connected to an electric meter outside the front door. The roads, while still one-lane-each-way like
Tanzanian roads, were largely paved, and most sported newly-painted lane
dividers and passing zones, not to mention street lights---something only really
seen in Dar (and then only in downtown Dar) in Tanzania. Lastly, while I can’t vouch for rural Rwanda,
there were literally ZERO power outages and water shortages the entire week I was in country, which was
pretty mind-blowing given that I come from the land of outdated diesel
generators and personal rain catchment apparatuses (i.e. buckets). In all, I would say that things definitely
seemed a step up from back home.
---
Another major change between Tanzania and Rwanda was that
all of Rwanda (but particularly Kigali) was incredibly, meticulously---and, in
some ways, obsessively---clean. I don’t
think I’ve seen a cleaner capital city in my life; there was literally no
litter anywhere. In fact, I learned during my stay that possession
of plastic shopping bags is, in fact, a felony, and being caught with one can
incur a sizeable fine (plus, of course, confiscation and incineration of said
bag). Contrast this with Tanzania, in
which the main thoroughfares are constantly lined with miniature mountains of
plastic bottles, juice cartons, Styrofoam containers, and plastic bags tossed
from buses… it’s pretty disgusting, to say the least. In all fairness, I’m pretty sure these
stringent Rwandan anti-littering laws are more out of concern for pleasing the
international community than environmental awareness, but hey, it worked for
me, so I’m not complaining.
 |
| This is Africa. |
---
I have no idea why, but, before coming to Rwanda, it never
really occurred to me that Rwandans, in fact, speak a different language than
Tanzanians---both with regard to traditional Bantu language (Kinyarwanda) and adopted
colonial language (French). As a result,
literally the second I crossed the border into Rwanda, I transformed from a
street-smart, worldly East African veteran into a dumb, mute tourist who spent
the next week primarily communicating through a series of grunts and hand
gestures. In time, I eventually managed
to work out a system for most social interactions: I would first try English,
then Kiswahili… if both of those failed (which was often), I would reluctantly
switch to my French, which, for lack of a better description, was absolutely
atrocious. Seriously, my entire
knowledge of the French language stems from Inglorious
Basterds, Tintin comics, and that
week-long family vacation in Provence when I was 8… as such, the furthest my
French goes is only the most basic of phrases---“bonjour”, “désolé”, “Où est la toilette?”, “Je ne parle pas français”, “Je
suis un stupide américain”, and so on.
It didn’t help that many Rwandans seemed to be subject to the same
general preconceptions about white people as Tanzanians (namely, that wazungu all speak the same language),
and, with French being the de facto
“white guy” language for the region, I had a great deal of difficulty telling
Rwandans that I simply didn’t speak
French, and that saying it again in French louder wasn’t helping my
comprehension.
In the end, I was able to dig deep and recall some of the
more important words (like numbers), and, with the occasional strategic insertion
of English and Kiswahili, I was able to broaden my vocabulary to a marginally
functional level over the course of the week (“Avez-vous… maji makubwa?”). So,
in sum, I was able to get around without getting screwed over too badly.
And hey, at the very least, Rwanda marked the first time in
my life I was able to say “Excusez-moi,
mademoiselle” completely without irony.
So that’s plus, too.
---
I could be wrong about this, and any of you reading this
feel free to correct me, but… Rwanda struck me as a country that, well, maybe has
received a bit too much international
aid in recent years. By no means am I
saying that Rwandans aren’t industrious or that, given how much the
international community screwed them over back in 1994, Rwandans don’t deserve some foreign help… I’m just
saying that Rwanda seemed like a place where the local NGOs went a bit
buck-wild with their grant money over the past two decades: from the hordes of
white people, to the brand-new steel telephone poles lining the streets, to the
children playing with actual toys (as opposed to the venerable Tanzanian
bicycle-tire-and-stick combo), to the ubiquitous white Hiluxes and Landcruisers
patrolling the roadways, Rwanda just seemed like it was a bit more touched by
Western influence than Tanzania.
The locals gave me hints of this as well: while I am
routinely asked for money in Tanzania, money was frequently demanded from me in Rwanda, often to a
much more preposterous degree (“Give me 10,000 francs!”, “Give me your
jacket!”, “Give me your cellphone!”).
Heck, one guy even insisted that I give him my backpack as payment for
helping me get on a boat in Cyangugu, even though it was incredibly obvious
that my backpack was carrying literally everything
I owned inside it, and, as a result, I clearly
was using it and thus couldn’t give it to him.
I can’t imagine such audacious---and, in some ways, downright
disrespectful---begging arising naturally in Rwandan culture; while I’m sure
there are a number of factors at work, excessive foreign influence has got to
be one of them. Again, to invite
comparison: in most parts of Tanzania, the first English phrase Tanzanian
children learn (or at least feel willing to yell at you) is “good morning!”
(a.k.a. “goodimohn!”); in Rwanda, conversely,
it seems to simply be “MONEY!”.
 |
| The guy who wanted my backpack. After I refused to give it to him, he told me we were best friends and asked me to take a picture. When I told him I wouldn’t be able to print it for him, he instructed me to send it to him “by internet.” He didn’t give me an e-mail address, so here it is. Sorry, buddy… this is the best I can do. |
---
Perhaps a product of all this expat presence was the fact
that Rwanda, much to my dismay, was crazy expensive---so much so that I easily
spent more in a week there than I would during an average two months in Songea. At the time of my visit, the exchange rate
was 1000 RWF = 3000 TSH = 2 USD, which, while not terrible for your average
American or European with a full-time job, was absolutely devastating for me as
a Tanzanian PCV: in addition to the exchange rate not being in my favor, Peace
Corps Tanzania has one of the lowest living allowances for volunteers in the
world, primarily on account of Tanzania’s being so cheap. Thus, I was horrified to learn that, despite
every franc being worth three shillings, all prices in Rwanda were numerically
the same as those in Tanzania, meaning that I literally had to pay three times
as much for everything: a single meal in Kigali could set me back around 6000
francs, which equated to about 18000 shillings---enough to feed me for a week
(and then some) in Songea.
As a result, for the duration of my stay in Rwanda, I was forced
to go into hardcore “survival mode”: eating only one meal a day, begging kindly
expats to let me crash on their couches, and hitchhiking like it was my
job. Granted, it was out of this
hyper-anxious penny-pinching that I had some of my more interesting experiences
in Rwanda, but still, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as desperately poor as I did
during that week out of country (with the possible exception of that one time
when I sold my watch for passage across Lake Tanganyika, but that’s a different
story).
---
Exacerbating my problems with money and language was the fact
that I seemed to arrive in Rwanda in the wake of an aggressive (and, unfortunately,
comprehensive) nationwide campaign to rename and relocate literally everything in country… and then not tell
anyone about it. As a result, the towns
of Butare, Gikongoro, and Cyangugu on my map were now known as Huye, Nyamagabe,
and Kamembe, respectively; Rugege Forest had now become Nyungwe National Park;
and pretty much every major landmark in Kigali had been renamed, removed,
replaced, or relocated within the past two years. Naturally, this only caused me to be even
more woefully unprepared for my visit than I already was: not only was my 2003
edition Lonely Planet now completely useless, but literally NO ONE---not even the taxi drivers or the moto guys---knew where anything was in country,
making getting directions nearly impossible.
This was particularly problematic when I was in the capital:
Kigali, despite being clean and pretty, is clearly not a sterling example of
strategic urban planning, and, accordingly, I had no fewer than three
unintentional multi-hour tours of the city from the various moto drivers during my stay there, as we
would invariably get lost in Kigali’s morass of alleyways, dead-ends, and one-exit
neighborhoods. In fact, most drivers
never actually knew where my intended destination was in the first place (and,
of course, I sure as hell couldn’t help them find it), and since typical
African policy when it comes to taxis is to lie to the customer and then try to
wing it by asking locals for directions (and then charge the customer more when
we inevitably get lost), I ended up spending a lot more time in taxis or on motos than I would have liked. Add this in with my desperate poorness and
the inexplicable confusion most of the moto
drivers seemed to have with the words “cent”
and “mille”---in the end, you have a
recipe for many a heated, multilingual argument concerning capitalism, justice,
and the fair exchange of goods and services in a developing country.
---
Perhaps the most fascinating and unique aspect of
Rwanda---one that you can’t really see anywhere else in the world---was the
constant juxtaposition of modern-day Rwanda (clean, friendly, civilized, happy)
and its incredibly turbulent past. While
the entire country is currently wrapped up in an incredibly strong “never
again” attitude with regard to the 1994 genocide, the remnants of a much darker
Rwanda are still quite present in the countryside---from the strong negative
attitude towards the UN, to the occasional limbless farmer, to the ubiquitous (and
rather grisly) genocide memorials scattered throughout the country.
Events of Interest
Given my curiosity regarding the history of the Rwandan
genocide, I found myself visiting a lot of genocide memorials whilst in
Rwanda. This wasn’t driven by some sort
of perverse, voyeuristic desire to see as much carnage as possible before
returning to Tanzania; rather, I figured that Rwanda was one of the few places
on Earth in which one could (safely) observe some of the darker aspects of
human nature and, hopefully, learn how to prevent such tendencies from
manifesting themselves in the future.
Moreover, the memorials were usually free, which, admittedly, was a
strong motivating factor.
If you don’t think you’ve had enough mental or emotional
scarring in your life, visit a Rwandan genocide memorial; you won’t be
disappointed. The stuff I saw at Nyamata,
Ntarama, and Murambi was, in short, profoundly disturbing, and just thinking
about what went down at those sites back in April 1994 makes my skin
crawl. Not that I’ve been to many, but most
of what I know about genocide memorials in the West (i.e. mostly Holocaust
memorials) is that they tend to be at least somewhat tasteful: sure, there are
pictures, video, and perhaps refurbished renditions of various torture rooms,
gas chambers, etc., but you typically don’t see the direct results of the
genocide firsthand. In Rwanda, however,
everything is right there in front of you---the bloodstained machetes, the
bullet/grenade holes in the wall, the bloody handprints on the altar, the
numerous (and still dirty) instruments of torture, the baby-smashing wall, the
enormous stacks of human bones, and the knowledge that ~10000 people died in
this room over the course of an afternoon… it’s unreal. What’s worse, at Murambi, you can actually
see (and smell) the lime-preserved corpses of ~2000 victims, most of whom are
still wearing clothes and sporting machete wounds---something I don’t think
I’ll ever be able to wipe from my mind.
Have worse atrocities been committed in human history? Yes, definitely. Will I still watch violent movies and play
violent video games? For sure. But still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so
much death in one place before in my life.
 |
| Some of the grenade holes at Ntarama. |
---
On a lighter note, while in southern Rwanda, I made a brief
trip to Nyungwe Rainforest National Park (a.k.a. the poor man’s Parc National
des Volcans), where I took a guided nature walk with a cool German family I met
in the park. The walk itself was
interesting enough: we saw a bunch of monkeys, a number of rainforest birds,
and we were able to hear chimpanzees in the distance. Moreover, it was nice to meet some folks who
spoke good English (the whole “trying to speak French” thing was starting to
get to me at that point). I just think
it was kind of funny how we first met up: they pulled up in a clean, rented 4x4
for our 9am hike, replete with raingear and waterproof nature books… I pulled
up clinging to the side of a full cattle truck in a filthy t-shirt and jeans,
my everything-I-own backpack clumsily slung over my right shoulder. God, I’m such a dirty Peace Corps volunteer
sometimes.
---
I stayed in Cyangugu, Rwanda’s southernmost port on Lake
Kivu, for the better part of two days, waiting for boat transport north to
Gisenyi. Aside from almost getting in a
fistfight with a taxi driver over 5000 francs, I spent most of this time bumming
around town and hanging out with the resident Congolese population (they tend
to speak much better Kiswahili than Rwandans, and they tend to be businessmen,
so they didn’t badger me for money). This
was fun enough, but the town was pretty small, and I got bored fairly quickly.
Cyangugu happens to be across the river from Bukavu, a major
city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). While Cyangugu is small and unassuming,
Bukavu is quite large and safi
(mostly due to a large number of foreign aid workers). Thus, in my boredom, I decided it’d be fun to
do a small day trip to Bukavu, just to see what it was like on the other
side. Moreover, the Congolese guys I
hung out with were mostly from Bukavu, and they gave me the lowdown on nice
places to eat or things to see in town (although none of them could verify for
me if I needed a visa to enter). Lastly,
there seemed to be a lot of traffic across the bridge, anyways, so it shouldn’t
have been too difficult for me to cross over and take a peek.
So, one day, I gave it a shot. I stamped out of Rwanda (again no word on a
visa) just to be safe, and, given that there were no guards on either side of
the bridge, I simply walked across the border.
No one seemed to care, so I walked up the hill to the main road. Still no one seemed to care (and
interestingly, there wasn’t an immigration office), so I began to walk along
the main road into town.
All of a sudden, I heard a great deal of yelling behind me,
and, looking over my shoulder to see what was going on, I saw an overweight
immigration officer and two guards sprinting after me. Not really knowing what to do, I just kind of
stopped and waved awkwardly at them.
This seemed to irritate the officer, but one of the guards laughed, so I
didn’t feel in immediate danger… until both guards grabbed me and proceeded to
manhandle me into the immigration office (it was tucked behind another
building, so I didn’t see it when I passed the first time).
Once in the office, my lack of French landed me in a room with
the only guy who could speak some English, the commandant. He was an older guy, maybe around 50, who
looked that he had dealt with a lot of trivial crap in his life, but who was
nonetheless quite displeased with my antics.
He proceeded to grill me on a multitude of subjects---where I come from,
what work I do, why I was trying to get into the DRC without a visa, whether I
was CIA, whether I was a terrorist, whether I was (no kidding) a professional
saboteur come to reignite the war in Congo, etc. In the end, I managed to convince him that I
was just an ignorant tourist who didn’t know DRC visa policy and who had simply
missed the immigration office on my way in---that I was deeply sorry for
defying the DRC border authority and that, should I ever cross a border again,
I would immediately go to customs as is required by international law.
Moderately satisfied with my wholesale capitulation, the
commandant had me fill out an official “Formulaire de Refus”, which, again, was
in French, so I had to do a lot of guesswork regarding where to fill out the
proper items. As I learned immediately
after signing it, this form apparently exiled me from the DRC indefinitely,
pending review from an embassy. Whoops…
I guess while I can understand their concern, I can’t help but feel a little
rejected.
Once that was finished, the commandant took me back outside,
where two armed guards were waiting to escort me back to the border.
Commandant: “Here is your escort. Now leave my country.”
Me: “Okay, well, sorry about all this. Asante.”
Commandant: [in Kiswahili] “Wait, you speak Kiswahili?”
Me: [in Kiswahili] “Yes, I told you. I’ve been volunteering in a secondary school
in Tanzania for 18 months, so I speak a little Kiswahili.”
Commandant: [suddenly cordial] “Oh, that’s good! I feel it’s important to learn the local
language when you live in another country.
You’re doing good work; Tanzania is lucky to have you!”
Me: “Well, thanks!
Um… does this mean that you might let me into Bukavu after all?”
Commandant: [suddenly dour again] “No. Piss off.”
And so, after a brief manhandling down the hill and across
the bridge (the guards wouldn’t let me walk on my own for some reason), I was
unceremoniously kicked out of the DRC. Naturally,
the Rwandans on the other side thought this was hilarious… I guess it’s always
entertaining to see whitey get taken down a notch.
---
A random conversation with a Congolese (translated/paraphrased
from Kiswinglish):
Him: “Where are you from, friend?”
Me: “America.”
Him: “Oh, Americans.
Why are you here?”
Me: “No reason. Just
visiting. Rwanda is a really nice place.”
Him: “You aren’t trying to conquer Rwanda?”
Me: “Conquer Rwanda?”
Him: “You know, you’re a very bad people because you want to
take over the world. You are
imperialists. Your CIA does nothing but
overthrow governments and cause wars.”
Me: “Um… while I won’t say that I agree with everything the
CIA does, I think I’m insulted?”
Him: “Americans are responsible for all wars in the world
today. Just recently, Obama and the CIA
conspired to kill Gadhafi in Libya for his oil, and they did! And they killed Osama bin Laden before that. This is all part of America’s attempt to
control the world!”
Me: “But we didn’t kill Gadhafi. His own people did and NATO helped. And NATO only helped because Gadhafi was a
brutal dictator who openly massacred Libyans for protesting against his
regime.”
Him: [condescendingly] “You are a liar! Or you are stupid. You cannot believe the lies they tell you in
the American news. Gadhafi was an
African hero who was killed by Europeans subservient to America, all because of
greed!”
Me: “What the hell news do you read? The ‘Crazy Conspiracy Theory Digest’?”
Him: “I listen to Radio Free Africa.”
Me: “I doubt Radio Free Africa would say anything like that.”
Him: “That’s because you’re an ignorant American imperialist
who is trying to conquer Africa. Just
like all Europeans!”
Me: “Quick question: Do you like the Red Cross?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Then shut up.”
Aaaand... cross-cultural snap!
[Incidentally, there really is a whole lot of unjustified
(and perhaps unrequited) love for Gadhafi and Osama bin Laden here in East
Africa… heck, you can even buy “Gadhafi: Champion of Africa” posters here in
Tanzania. This doesn’t make any sense to
me since the former was d-bag dictator who bombed his own people and the second
was a known murderer of innocent Kenyans and Tanzanians in the 1998 embassy
bombings. Oh well… cultural exchange, or
whatever.]
---
There isn’t really much of a story to go with it, but, due
to my inexplicable (and well-documented) compulsion to cross all major bodies
of water in Africa by boat, I found myself on an overnight shipment of empty
beer bottles across Lake Kivu after I wrapped up in Cyangugu. Unfortunately, this trip wasn’t nearly as fun
as my other ferry experiences: since there were a number of people hitching a
ride, some of us were forced to stay in the hull, lying head-to-toe atop crates
of broken beer bottles stacked on shelves.
This was probably the closest I have ever been (or ever will be) to
riding on an actual slave ship, and, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t
comfortable. I eventually elected to
sneak back up abovedecks and spend the rest of the night on the bow.
And again, since I’m a dirty Peace Corps Volunteer, when the
boat dropped us off in Gisenyi at 3am, I was too cheap to get a hotel and
instead decided to wait on a street corner until sunrise. I ended up falling asleep, thus marking the
first time in my life I literally spent the night in a gutter. Unsurprisingly, when I woke up at around 6am,
I got a lot of confused looks from the local Rwandans… I doubt they see that
every day.
 |
| Pictured above: a horrible night's sleep. |
And that about does it.
Save for some hitching follies, another lake ferry, and a particularly
harrowing 35-hour bus ride, I was back in Songea before I knew it. Needless to say, it was good to be home.
So, what can I say about Rwanda? It was pretty fun, and it was definitely
refreshing to get out of the country a little bit and see new places. While Tanzania (and Songea in particular)
will always be my home here in Africa, sometimes you just have to get out for a
bit, and I really liked that Rwanda helped me do so (and then some). Most of all, though, I enjoyed the fact that,
even though Rwanda and Tanzania are profoundly different places with entirely
different histories, there is still an underlying, intrinsic similarity between
the two countries---that, despite differences in culture, infrastructure, and
general cleanliness, Rwanda and Tanzania are still distinctly African. In the end, I guess that’s what makes Africa
special.
 |
| Still distinctly African. |
haha. dude, what a great read. take a shower you dirty hippie. the bums will always lose!
ReplyDeleteIt’s never too early to think about the Third Goal. Check out Peace Corps Experience: Write & Publish Your Memoir.
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