in rwanda … they LOVE their buffets …
for breakfast, they generally only have tea … and finding local restaurants that serve dinner can be tough … but at lunch … wow …
fries, rice, bananas (cooked), beans, greens, goat, etc … i feel guilty at first … as buffets and i tend to … well … i eat a lot …
but then i see my plate … heaped with food 2 inches high … and then i see THEIR plates … heaped with food 5 inches high, in a flawless little pyramid that i have, thus far, been unable to come CLOSE to replicating myself …
and i don’t feel so bad …
i am back in kigali … i want to leave rwanda now … i don’t know why, as the place is lovely … but i want to leave …
so tomorrow i am going to tanzania … with absolutely no idea what i will do when i get there …
peace and love …
Filed under: Rwanda | Tags: Bisesero, Genocide, Humanity, Kibuye, Kigali, Murder, Ntarama, Nymata, Rwanda, Tragedy
Bible says, he made man in his image
But it didn’ t say black or white
Look at me you see BLACK
I look at you I see WHITE
Now is the time to kick that away
And join me in my song
We’ re…
Different colours / one people
Different colours / one people
this is going to be another hard one …
i am now in Kibuye, Rwanda … i have been in rwanda for … i dunno … feels like about a week … i spent a couple days in Ruhengeri just over the Uganda border, a couple days in Gisenyi just over the D.R.C. border … and a few days in Kigali …
my plan was to come to Kibuye from Gisenyi, but the bus was delayed and i didn’t want to spend another night in Gisenyi … so i just hopped on a bus to kigali at the last minute …
kigali is a nice little city … MUCH quieter than Kampala, Nairobi or Addis, but it is tiny compared to all 3, so i suppose that makes sense … you can really tell that a TON of $$$ has poured in from the west in the past decade or so … as large stretches of the city really feel like London or Saskatoon … that is until you look over the edge of the nicely mowed grass on the hill you are on and see the mass of corrugated tin roofs mashed together in the valley below … that is, where they haven’t yet bulldozed said roofs to make room for development …
on my 2nd day in kigali, i sought out the genocide memorial … and i have since visited 3 others … all are moving in their own way …
when i was in university, i studied interpersonal violence and anti-social behavior from every angle i could find … i even helped co-ordinate an international conference on the subject which focuesed on rwanada … intellectually … i understand as much as is possible … i get submission to authority, herd-like behavior, diffusion of responsibility, competition for resources, out-group hatred and genetic based prejudice … in my head … it makes sense (sort-of) …
in my heart … well …
kigali’s memorial, where 250,000 bodies lie in mass graves, has the feel of a modern museum … the walls of the primary display walk you through the ’story’ from ancient history up to the present … rounding one corner, you come upon a plasma tv showing genocide related scenes … that is really where it begins … when the first image of the child with her face slashed open reaches my ‘understanding’ mind … my understanding mind disappears under the weight of my broken heart …
sitting in a room surrounded by tens of thousands of photographs of the victims … the words (attributed to Stalin, though i am not sure that is correct) “one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic” … really hit home … face after face after face … in a week you could not look at them all … its ironic that in a room surrounded by images of humanity, the true humanity is lost entirely …
sitting in a room surrounded by clothes taken from bodies, hanging in cases as worn by invisible people … the sheer … normalness … of it all almost knocks me over … they, the victims … were normal … they lived lives like any other … they lived lives like their murderers …
sitting in a room surrounded by skulls … i ask myself if i am different … i know that i am not … i know that this horrid tragedy IS human … that we ARE all the same and that events like this have been carried out time and again by people of all walks of life, or all races, of all religions … but i wonder if i would be one of the herd, or if i could be the hero, like Paul in Hotel Rwanda, or Oskar Schindler, who does what is right even while everyone around says that it is wrong … i sit surrounded by the echoes of life … and i wonder …
another exhibit gives biographies of children … their faces are huge on the walls … smiling and laughing … it tells of who they were …
‘age: 6 … favorite food: bananas … best friend: her daddy … how she died: head smashed against a wall’ …
‘age:10 … character: quiet and polite … ambition: to be a doctor … how he died: stabbed in the eyes with a machete’ …
what are we ??? … we human animals ??? … how can ANY intellectual argument … justify THIS ??? … our history is LITTERED with such brutality … barbarism is, somehow, as much a part of us as anything else … but how … HOW can people … human beings just like me and just like you ……………………
its beautiful … the kigali memorial … the city rests on innumerable hilltops … and sitting in a quiet garden over looking a mountain paradise, surrounded by flowers and with the noise of the city humming in the distance … i wonder how this city, and these people … could do such a thing … with 250,000 bodies lying under my feet … i wonder what it was like to be here 14 years ago … neighbor killing neighbor … friend killing friend … to exterminate a people …
the next day i took a bus about 45 minutes east to Ntarama … there is stood in a church … on april 15, 1994, 5,000 people were hiding in the church … when the milita came … they thought that a church would keep them safe … i stood in the middle of that room and tried to imagine how it felt to be there that day … crammed shoulder to shoulder … waiting and wondering as the sounds of people approaching grew louder … they locked the doors to keep them out … so the miliata used grenades to blow holes in the walls … then threw grenades in among the masses … i wonder what it was like to be there then ??? …
the milita surrounded the church and machine gunned anyone who ran … others waded through the sea of people with machetes and clubs destroying every life they could find …
standing in a church … with bullet holes in the walls, grenade scars on the alter, victims clothes hanging from the rafters above me and around me, their shoes and belongings in meter high piles in front of me … and shelf upon shelf upon shelf of human skulls behind me … i wonder what it was like to be in that room that night …
another 15km down the road is Nyamata … another church … this one newer … more modern … on the pews, the clothes are piled … along the walls the clothes are piled … on the floor the clothes are piled … row upon row upon row … 1 foot high … you can’t walk around without stepping on them, from time to time … the clothes of 40,000 people who were sent their by their priest … he told them they would be safe … he knew what he was doing …
under the church is a vault with a few dozen skulls … i thought i was getting off easy …
behind the church was another vault with coffins stacked to the ceiling … each coffin was full of bones … i thought i was getting off easy …
behind this vault was another vault … i didn’t get off easy … it was dark and dank and musty … and standing in the middle of it … there were shelves on all sides … shelves more than 12 feet high … skulls, skulls, skulls … inches from my face, the wounds were unmistakable … this one was crushed by a club, this one had a clean hole where it was stabbed, this one with the unmistakable sharp line of the machete, this one is a childs … it was set on fire …
i remember reading something one of the survivors wrote about hope … how, in the month after, one would occasionally find to great joy that someone unexpected had survived … but that these moments of joy were remarkable only in their rarity … when 95% of your family and friends have been wiped out … you don’t even dare hope …
i thought about this as i thought about how i ‘hoped’ that my pictures would be ok … that my ‘memories’ would not be lost … how foolish i am sometimes … how fortunate i am to have the luxury of hope …
today, i took a 1 hour motorbike ride from kibuye to bisesero … it was a breathaking ride that took me along narrow roads, winding around the edges of hills through hairpin after hairpin as the ground fell away sharply, just a few feet away, to a pristine lake far below …
they have erected a beautiful memorial on a hillside … the climb up the hill takes you through a series of 4 buildings to a mass grave built on the summit … at the bottom of the hill, in a corrugated iron shack with a rusty padlock on the door … are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of skulls … its strange, when you see so many … so many … how … plain they all seem … i was struck by how meaningless we are … how meaningless i am … when all is said and done … bones are all we leave behind … just like everybody else … and whether death finds me in my sleep at an old age, or in voilent pain in a action of mass murder … the end result will be the same … my body will rot to bones … and as the ages pass those bones will turn to dust … and that will be the end …just like everybody else …
1 week in rwanda has me feeling more human than ever before … a frail, miserable, meaningless creature with the potential for absolute good and pure evil running through my core …
just like everybody else …
peace and love
soooo … after i finished those last 2 posts … i went out looking for the beach … gisenyi is on lake kivu … famous for its high priced tourist resorts and for having thousands of bodies wash up on its beaches in 1994 …
setting out into gisenyi, i was struck, again, by how NICE it is … hillside mansions and tree lined streets begged me to take a picture … so i pulled out my trusty camera and it made a loud beeping … said ‘overwrite protected’ … if i tired to review the old pictures … it said ‘xd empty’ …
nothing could possibly have made me happier, as this card has my only copy of all the pictures i have taken since the first of july … that is … the journey out of kenya and into uganda … white water rafting the nile … orphanage visits … sipi falls … kampala memories … the most beautiful drive of my life … forest treks … and then that little climb up the volcano …
i was pretty happy to have lost all these priceless memories … so happy i went to the most expensive hotel, bought an overpriced beer, sat on the grass beside the beach and wrote in my journal while rich people frolicked on their private beach all around me … then i looked over and my beer, a 333ml amstel at $2.50 (not a 750ml primus at $1.05) had sensed my inner pain and had committed suicide on my behalf … at least the grass got a good drink …
so it goes …
i am now in an internet cafe attempting to salvage my photos, which it seems have been virused … fingers are crossed …
(that was about 3 days ago … i have since managed to get the lot onto dvd, though my card is still totally effed… one more example of how strange i am … as i thought about how happy i was to have lost all those memories … i felt nothing but love in my heart for the poor soul who created that virus … as i am sure he/she was suffering in their own way … and facing the loss of my memories … i could relate to their suffering … thank you buddha … peace truly is a wonderful thing)
… rwanda is a french speaking country … “hi, is this the line i am supposed to wait in” … “francais?” … “errr … does anybody speak english … i just need to know what line i should be in” … “francais?” … so i just stood … figuring somebody would rescue the lost mzungu before long … and they did … they gave me a paper and i filled it out .. i made it into the room only to learn i had filled out the wrong paper and was in the wrong room … welcome to rwanda …
i spent a day in ruhengeri, about 30 minutes over the border … rwanda is like a new world all over again …it is CLEAN … the streets are spotless, the people are well-dressed, the sidewalks and roads are paved and the buildings are modern …
i came to rwanda mainly to learn about the genocide … something i feel a bit guilty about … ‘hi, i’m a tourist and i would like to learn about the darkest part of your nations history, something which undoubtedly impacted you personally in ways i could never possible appreciate’ … but what can you do … i am trying to be gentle about it …
on my way out of uganda i picked up this book called “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” … it’s written by a reporter at the New Yorker and is utterly brilliant … i HIGHLY recommend … it tells the story factually, tracing the history back hundreds of years, but also dives deeply into the personal tragedies … woven like a pro … really one of the best i have read in awhile …
terrible idea for me though …
i think it has done me personally more harm than good … everywhere i go and everything i do … i look at the people around me and wonder … who they are? … how old were they in 1994? … what ghosts live in their pasts? …
i have read the stories … i have seen the pictures … 800k-1M people in 100 days … thats between 5 and 6 people every single minute … bodies littered the streets … corpses choked rivers … infants, children, women … murdered up close and personal by their friends, priests, teachers, doctors … we in the west, in our typical self-absorption, focus on how WE let it happen … which is fair i suppose … but really misses the point entirely …
now i look at the survivors … and its TERRIBLE … i can’t stand in line at a bank or sit on a bus without looking at the scars on their faces and hands and wondering if they were caused by somebody defending themselves … i look in their eyes and wonder if they killed … stood over their neighbors with a large knife and swung …
the architects of the genocide really hammered the ‘with-us-or-against-us’ point home … forcing everyone to take part so that nobody could be ‘guilty’ … so really, everyone i meet over the age of 35 either fled to neighboring countries or …………………..
one day i was walking down the road and passed a 45 year old man carrying a machete … i wondered what it felt like, for him, in his hands … if it brought back memories … i wondered what it felt like for others to see it …
how can a people, a country, get over that ??? … how can they just ‘move-on’ ??? …
i have only been here for a day or 2 … and they have been spent in the ex-’hutu-power’ heartland … so it is foolish of me to conclude anything … but somehow … i don’t feel they have … there is a tension … i can feel it on the back of my neck … i can sense it in the looks i get walking down the street and in the greetings in the market … i am told Kigali and other major urban centers are different … but here … i don’t know …. i have never before felt so … uneasy … i pray i am wrong …
now i am in Gisenyi, just over the Congo border … i arrived late friday night, called to ask about climbing the volcano on sunday or monday, and was told that if i wanted to go it had to be saturday … i spent the rest of that night frantically preparing … and only returned to my hotel in Rwanda a couple hours ago … the plan is to hang out here for the rest of the day and then catch the early bus to Kibuye … i will post about the DRC when i get there … as that deserves a post all its own …
oh … random fact … in many places over here, the beer comes in 500ml bottles … but HERE … it comes in 750ml bottles … totally badass 
peace and love …
ps i have NO idea what the title of this post is supposed to mean … just seemed … i dunno …
