Travelogue

Two hours’ drive from Kigali, Nyanza, the Rwandan kingdom’s traditional capital is a forlorn looking place with the remains of a pre-colonial royal palace, as well as a modern palace built for the king by the Belgians in 1932. The modern palace, now an art museum, is empty and in the dark when we visit.

A few miles from Nyanza, Butare (renamed Huye), is the ex-colonial capital of Rwanda, and its intellectual capital today. It is home to Rwanda’s top university, the National University of Rwanda, and to several research institutes. Butare also has an exceptionally good ethnographic museum.

In the Belgian colonial days, it was the seat of government, had the country’s first public school, its first aeroport and its first theater. Today it is a sleepy but charming town, with the distinguishing characteristic of having the country’s only cafe which sells soft serve ice cream. A major motivation for the four hour round trip to Butare !

Every last Saturday of the month, from 8 to 11am, is Umuganda. The whole country stops working and people do community service. Clusters of 100 houses form a group, and each group selects a community service project to work on. It could be building terraces on hillsides for farming, repairing a road, planting trees or cleaning up the neighbourhood. Senior government figures including the president join in.

Umuganda was initially set up to help rebuild the country after the Genocide. Most importantly, it is a way of getting the different ethnic groups to rebuild bridges amongst themselves.

There is a typically Rwandan twist to this, though. That monthly community service day is mandatory and strictly enforced. Police set up roadblocks and stop anyone not participating in Umuganda. During those three hours, usually subdued Kigali feels even more eerily quiet.

Reminders of the Genocide are everywhere in Rwanda. During a hundred day period, in 1994, one million (mainly Tutsi) people were killed in their homes, in schools, in churches, on the streets. Neighbour killed neighbour. Friend killed friend. Parents killed their children’s school friends. Priests facilitated the killing of their flock. The victims were not simply killed. The goal of the genocidaires was to deprive the Tutsi of their humanity. The victims were endlessly tortured and humiliated before being killed. Parents were made to watch as their children were first tortured, then killed. Women were systematically raped by HIV-positive men. Today, 67% of the survivors are HIV-positive.

Just outside of Kigali, in pretty countryside, there are two churches which were the scene of massacres in April 1994.

In Nyamata, 11,000 Tutsi who had sought refuge  in the church were slaughtered with hand grenades and finished off with machetes and clubs. The church has been left as it was 19 years ago, its walls bullet ridden, its furniture shattered. The blood stained clothes of the victims have been piled up on all the church benches and every other available space; some other belongings, watches, crucifixes, are stuffed in boxes.

The bones of thousands of Tutsi are displayed in crypts inside the church and in the gardens around it. The skulls, neatly lined up all bear the marks of lethal wounds.

There is a school somewhere near the church and we can hear children playing and laughing in the distance – as we enter the church, the darkness closes in on us, and the laughter outside becomes fainter, almost unreal. Walking through the church, alone, surrounded by the thousands of shapeless clothes, we feel like we have left the world of the living. The borders between nightmare and reality are blurred. We can see the faint outline of the dead shifting in an out of focus. We feel the cold breath of Death just behind us and do not dare to look back.

Ntarama is smaller than Nyamata. Here again, we are alone with a custodian who guides us around. The church was badly damaged by grenades and fire. It has also been left untouched since the massacre, 19 years ago.

5,000 Tutsi were slaughtered here and the shreds of their clothes are hanging from every rafter in the building. There is no mass grave in Ntarama, so the bones of the dead have been grouped together in coffins which are piled high inside the church. Bins contain their other belongings. One is full of shoes. Another, full of pots and containers which they had brought with them when they fled here.

In one small outbuilding, we find the torn and blood stained books and games which the children had brought with them. In another outbuilding used to host Sunday school, the wall which the killers used to smash the babies still bears their blood stains.

A poignant phrase on the broken altar of the Ntarama church reads: “if you had known yourself, and known me, you would not have killed me”.

When we return to the busy, well organized streets of Kigali, that afternoon, we see it in a different light. People are almost maniacally organized and purposeful because they can’t afford a moment of idleness which would bring back the memory of those 100 days of darkness.

Gisenyi, on the northern tip of Lake Kivu is a pretty town which blends seamlessly with Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gisenyi acts as a sort of service town for Goma and the Eastern Congo, with many businessmen, NGOs and UN soldiers who work in the Congo keeping their residences here, shopping, banking and dining here.

The gleaming new cars in Gisenyi, fancy restaurants and branches of every known bank in East Africa are testament to the thriving border trade – and to the fact that the DRC’s mineral wealth is still seeping out of the country.

While there are two official border points – the Petite Barriere for foot traffic and small traders and the Grande Barriere for cargo and vehicles, the border between the two towns is, at times, hard to distinguish.

Houses on one side of the street are in the DRC, the others in Rwanda. A certain tree is in the DRC whereas its neighbours are in Rwanda. One clever businessman has even built a house straddling the border, with one door opening onto the DRC and the other onto Rwanda.

When I go for an early morning run along the croisette of Lake Kivu, I almost stumble into the DRC when I do not notice that I’ve just crossed a Rwandan customs’ barrier.

While we visit the gorillas, the boys, who are to young to come along (only 15 olds and above may visit the gorillas), go and and spend time in a nearby village.

Each volcano of the Virungas plays host to two or three gorilla families.

The first Silverback we see makes a dramatic entrance. He appears suddenly from the top of the hill in an explosion of breaking bamboo and swinging vines. Much bigger than we had imagined, with his white back shining in the sunlight.

There are only about one thousand mountain gorillas left in the world, all of them living in the Virunga volcano chain between Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo. The gentle giants tolerate us among them as they go about their day – the adults chomping on bamboo shoots and the babies playing and comically thumping their chests.

The huge apes are uncannily human in their behaviour, and when one of them turns around and stares, it feels as if they are looking deep into our souls.

There are ten habituated groups in the Parc des Volcans, on the Rwandan side, including the original four groups studied by Dian Fossey. Each group is headed by a Silverback, a mature gorilla whose back fur has turned to silver. The eldest Silverback is always in charge and, unlike what happens with chimpanzees, he does not get challenged by the younger ones.  These either bide their time until the leading Silverback dies to succeed him – or they leave the group to try to form a new one elsewhere.

We visit with two families, the Hirwa and the Sabinyo groups, the latter headed by the world’s largest known Silverback, Katonda, who weighs 220kg. Spending time with the gorillas is strangely addictive – and it is hard to leave them

The Virunga chain of eight volcanoes straddles Rwanda (which has five of them), the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. Constantly shrouded in clouds, with bamboo forest clinging to the volcanoes’ sides, it is a hauntingly beautiful region. 

The rare apparition of the cone of a volcano, when the mist clears for a brief moment feels almost like an illusion. Within a few minutes, the clouds resume their grip and we wonder whether the volcanoes were just a figment of our imagination.