Africa No.5 - Memory and sequela of red-soil / Rwanda

History is an event happened sometime before my early recollection. Current news is an event happened sometime after I began to understand things.

Rwanda Genocide was in between. It was something I read in the paper, not the textbook when I was 12, and still, looked as if it was a tale, a chiller one. ‘Once upon a time there were two tribes in a small inland country in Africa, and they hated each other. One of them decided to eliminate the next-door tribe, tried to kill every single man from that tribe, and in fact, killed them all. The red-soil covering the whole country was thoroughly ensanguined.’

Well that was all I knew about Rwanda Genocide, or, the history of Rwanda, for 19 years. Even until I got in to Kigali, the capital in Rwanda on 27th of February. What was added to this chiller tale were; two names of the anonymous tribes, Tutsi and Hutu, and the vague impression from two movies, ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and ‘Shooting Dogs’. And no more.

(Hotel des Mille Collines, as 'Hotel Rwanda')

1.  Kigali / To begin with

I went in to Kigali right after getting an entry visa in Kampala, Uganda.

Kigali town was clean and organized. Streets were neat, unlike the rest of the African countries. Motorbike taxis were safe and were obliged to carry only one passenger in one bike and to wear helmet, unlike the rest of the African countries. People I met here were not aggressive; rather, quiet, when I was negotiating, unlike the rest of the African countries. And at night, streets glittered in the orange light of street lamps, which I have never seen in the other parts of Africa.

All these encounters in Kigali had dissociation from my image of Rwanda, which was supposed to hold bloody memory in the recent past.

(Morning town, Kigali)

I went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in one morning, as soon as I got to Kigali from Kampala. The Memorial was clean with the shiny white floor and felt a bit unsettled. I thought it was because I got used to be in the Black Holes of messy lical stores in Africa, but it turned out that it was not the right reason.

Anyway, I started browsing around the exhibitions in Memorial and soon found out that it would take a long time to be fully understood, as the Memorial talked a lot about the genocide in 1994 with lots of panels and displays.

The story went like this.

- The Tutsi is the minority and the Hutu is the majority.

- Distinction between Tutsi and Hutu was not very clear in the old days.

- Just as the other African regions, colonial power came in to Rwanda(and Burundi); It was Belgium for Rwanda.

- As Belgium started to govern, it tried to maintain the divide between Tutsi and Hutu, in order to make the colonial rule easier. Belgian colonialism introduced separate ID cards for these two tribes.

- The Tutsi has been the ruling class under the colonial rule. The Hutus was the subordinate class.

- Anyway Rwanda went independent in 1962.

- Repression against Tutsi dated back to 1959, when Hutu government came into power.

- Hutu government pushed propaganda which inflames Hutu’s animosity against Tutsi.

- There have been some civil wars and many Tutsi got pushed out and became exiles in Uganda, Congo and Tanzania. The Tutsi based exiles formed RPF(Rwandan Patriotic Front) and started fighting back.

- On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the Hutu president’s crashed down mysteriously, and the president died. Hutu military declared to set out for murdering Tutsi.

- Hutu turned into thugs armed with choppers and machetes, to slaughter Tutsi as well as Hutu moderates. Half to one million people were killed in 100days.

- UN failed to work effectively to prevent the mass murder even though it knew what was happening here. French troop was even worse; they gave arms and trainings for the Hutu mobs to help them murder more Tutsis. The Tutsis had to wait for the Tutsi compatriots of RPF to fight back.

- RPF launched an offensive, took the capital on July 4, and the genocide has ended.

(Afternoon Memorial, Kigali)

As I went through the panels, I encountered some interviews done with the survivors from the Genocide. One of them was the one with a Tutsi lady who has survived from the worst 100 days of her life, witnessing all the murder and torture in front of her. She had somebody helped her to hide from Hutu mobs. In the interview I saw her saying, ‘In this world there is 5% of good people, but 95% are the evil or the normal people who don’t care’.

Normally it feels more real to hear the voice of the actual survivor of an historic event than reading a history book or articles, but this time the voice of a lady sounded somewhat different. Her voice echoed from far away, and sounded a bit unreal. Partially because of the sadness of the stories she talked. Partially because of the way I perceived.

Then I started to realize why I was felt a sense of discomfort during my visit to this memorial. It was not the fact that this place is quite gloomy and depressing.

It was the fact that good and evil are so obvious here. There was a line between victims and victimizers, a clear-cut line which nobody was entitled to challenge. There was good and evil in this situation and these two were completely divided into two, nothing else.

The Tutsi was the victim and the Hutu was the victimizer. The Tutsi was good and the Hutu was evil. RPF, the Tutsi-based government who is in the power currently was the right, and the Hutu who made mistakes was wrong.

‘Isn’t this place too much one-sided?’ I thought. And that was only the beginning of the story.

(Evening hangout, Kigali)

2. Butare / sequela, of history

I traveled to Butare, a southern province of Rwanda, after a few days in Kigali.

‘Mille Collines’, meaning ‘a thousand hills’, is said to be the description for a beautiful hilly country of Rwanda and this was the perfect description. As I went through the mountainous road from Kigali down to Butare, slopes were getting steeper and more like zigzag, and scenery beyond the mini-van was getting rougher and greener. Air was not polluted anymore. I opened the window and breathed deeply. Very quiet, fresh green breeze came in through the window and brushed my cheek gently. Such a peaceful place.

In Butare, there was also a genocide Memorial, which was called Gikongoro Memorial. This Memorial was built in the spot where the genocide took place. It was in the mountain and I had to take a bike taxi for half an hour to get there. I saw rows of prisoners wearing orange salopettes passing by my bike. They were not chained and they were calm and quiet.

(Prisoners in the mountain, Butare)

The sight you see in Gikongoro Memorial is all the same as the ones you see in Kigali Memorial, except this; hundreds of mummies of the victims from genocide.

I witnessed these mummies just as same as the other visitors, I was shocked somehow-probably because of the smell they had which was similar to the smell of gypsum-, just as same as the other visitors. The fact that the dead were sleeping before me was not really pained. The painful fact is that they were murdered brutally and were piled up in here against their will. And I need some imagination which connects these two facts. It was way beyond my imagination.

‘Who funded this Memorial?’ I asked when I got out of the Memorial.

The staff didn’t really answer. I googled it later on. This Memorial -and the one in Kigali as well- was built by the current government and UK-based Aegis Trust.

(Memorial in the mountain, Butare)

This solved one mystery.

I was wondering why Rwanda was a part of the British Commonwealth although Rwanda has never been controlled by Britain, why English was one of the official language in Rwanda.

The current government is deeply connected to Anglo-American government.

And to know who constitutes the current regime, it is the Tutsis, who has been oppressed by the Hutus for recent 50 years, but was oppressing the Hutus before then. Many important posts are taken by the Tutsi, the president Kagame is a Tutsi, Even though the policy eliminated the distinction between the Tutsi and the Hutu, there still exists the distinction.

It is said that the Rwanda Genocide and the civil war was the proxy war between the Anglo-US with Uganda and France with French colonized African countries. It seemed to me as just a ignorant tourist, apparent. That was why the Memorial criticized a lot about the French troops’ movement during the genocide.

Does this mean that the regime just went back to the one before the last regime? Does this mean that the history repeats itself? I was trembled.

Since way back before I stepped into this Memorial, there was a stage set in the base of this Memorial. Time goes back and forth where we didn’t really notice.

(Sunday in the mountain, Butare) 

3. Kibuye / sequela, of space

The last part I spent in Rwanda was in Kibuye, the small town in west province, close to the Congo border. Located in the lakefront of astonishing Kivu Lake, shining gold for the sunset, this small town always got breeze from the lake.

A friend of mine just opened a cottage hotel in the lakeshore, and I was so happy to visit her new place. I took a bike taxi going around the lake a bit up the hill, and went in to the green bush to get to the lakeshore.

(Dusk in Kivu Lake, Kibuye)

The view was breathtaking. From the top of the hill you could see the surface of the Kivu Lake glittering just like a mirror. This surface was waiting for the sunset to cast the golden light.

We had beer together with the brochette of a fresh little lamp just sacrificed an hour before. ‘That island like shape you see in front of you is DR Congo’, a friend of mine mentioned. Congo. What an unknown world.

We started to talk about Congo and soon got into the conversation about the Congo War which was just happening.

At that time, it was just disclosed that the Rwanda government was unofficially supporting the anti-government troop in Congo, M23. Rwanda government, with large numbers of Tutsi military has been fighting against the defeated soldiers of Hutu who were the commanders of genocide and who went into Congo as refugees right after the genocide. The Congo War is the combination of the domestic conflict of Congo and the Rwandan conflict, conflict between the Tutsi and the Hutu which is still going on.

I was trembled again, to know that the history repeats itself, not just inside the country but also outside the country. And with involving so many people outside, who has been nothing to do with the genocide. The genocide is still having a lasting effect, in terms of space as well.

(Congo is close by, Kibuye)

Well, this fact that Rwanda was supporting M23 has been an open secret for a long time, but this time human rights organization reported and the western countries could no more ignore. They are considering cutting off the official development assistance towards Rwanda, which Rwanda has been relying on.

As for the fact that the astounding development in Rwanda-it is referred as a miracle of Africa- was based on substantial amount of these ODA, we never know where Rwanda goes with the cutting off of the aid. We never know where Rwanda goes with this sequel as well.

(Pray in random church)