Travel Update #7: Arusha, Tanzania to Cyangugu, Rwanda

After having spent far too much time in Arusha (and in Tanzania in general), Brian and I left on a long, long trip overland through Tanzania to Kigali, Rwanda. The commonly accepted way to do this is to take a bus from Arusha to Kampala, Uganda, via Nairobi, Kenya, and then to take a bus from Kampala to Kigali. Due to continued unrest in Kenya, and especially in towns along the road to Uganda, we decided that we would take the "road less traveled" and do a southern loop in Tanzania.

With only a very basic idea of how we were going to get to our destination, Brian and I left Arusha pre-dawn on Monday, January 28, on a bus bound for Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria. This involves a long loop around (not through) the Ngorongoro and Serengeti National Parks, through the small towns of Singida and Shinyanga. After over 13 hours on the bus, through some wonderful scenery (and some very un-wonderful scenery), we finally arrived in Mwanza at dusk. Mwanza is a thoroughly unremarkable town, but we were able to run some errands. We spent one day in Mwanza, and then were off on another pre-dawn bus ride, this time to the small town of Benako, near the Tanzania-Rwanda border. After 9 hours of ear-shattering Swahili music, we arrived in Benako, and took a taxi to the border post at Rusumu Falls.

As we neared the border, I noticed that the landscape was gradually becoming greener and hillier; the flat, endless plains of Tanzania were behind us and we were surrounded by verdant hills. After getting our Tanzania exit stamps, we walked down the hill and across the bridge that separates Tanzania from Rwanda. It was a surprise when, crossing the bridge, we found ourselves looking at a large, powerful, surging waterfall. Aside from the Victoria Falls border post, it was the most scenic border I'd ever crossed.

One thing I noticed at the border was that the waterfall was not clear or blue, but a deep, rich brown. It looked almost like a waterfall of chocolate-milk. At the time I was wondering why that was the case, but then I remembered that Rwanda is one of the most over-grazed countries in the world; it is so densely populated, and practically every square inch of land is cultivated. This has led to serious erosion, and that erosion was going into the rivers and turning the water brown. (Jared Diamond, in his book "Collapse", even suggests that environmental issues were one factor to contribute to Rwanda's genocide)

We hopped on a minibus, and immediately, I could tell that I was in a beautiful, hilly, lush country. Everything was green, every view was like a panorama postcard. (Also, for the first time, I was in an African country that used an American road system, with the driver in the left front seat, driving on the right-hand side of the road. That took some getting used to, especially when crossing the street in Kigali.) Soon the sun went down, and I noticed an extreme lack of lights of any sort on the road; we were in darkness, sans-electricity. That made it all the more surprising when we turned one corner and the sprawling city of Kigali was before us, lit up like a beacon in the dark, extending as far as we could see.

We were dropped off in the center of town, and got into a taxi to take us to our guesthouse. After a lot of confusion and uncertain communication, our taxi driver eventually got us to our destination, a crappy little guesthouse right in the center of town. (Rwanda is a French-speaking country, and neither Brian nor I speak any French)

The next morning, we walked around Kigali, and the first thing I noticed was how hilly it was. Kigali is a city built on hills; this gives it a beautiful, scenic look, but also makes it tiring to walk around for long distances (as is the habit when on a budget) and especially when I'd go on my morning runs. The second thing I noticed about Kigali was how modern it is; I was expecting to find a city bearing the scars of the horrors that happened there, a city that was slowly catching up, like Maputo. Instead, I found a modern city, with break-neck construction everywhere, with excellent roads, streets full of cars, minubuses, and the ubiquitous green motorcycle-taxis that everyone seems to always be taking, sidewalks filled with well-dressed, good-looking people (Kigali has some of the most beautiful women I'd seen in my travels through Africa, but unfortunately due to the language barrier I wasn't able to communicate with any of them), with internet cafes around every corner, and with plenty of new buildings. One could arrive in Kigali and walk around its streets having no idea that 14 years ago those very same streets were filled with decomposing bodies. The city even has a modern shopping mall with a fancy European-style coffee house, full of NGO workers and well-to-do Kigali-ites (Kigali-ans?) on their laptops, taking advantage of a wi-fi internet connection.

We spent 6 nights in Kigali, but it never got boring or old. On the contrary, I loved being in Kigali, walking around, soaking it all in. Brian and I booked ourselves into a gorilla-trekking safari on February 21 (I can't wait), we ate some fantastic food and some very cheap food (and, occasionally, some fantastic cheap food). We enjoyed some of Kigali's nightlife. We went to the Hotel des Mille Collines, the one-and-only Hotel Rwanda. This was the place where Paul Rusesabagina protected hundreds of people during the genocide, made famous in the 2004 film. The actual Mille Collines looks nothing like the hotel used in the movie, and in fact resembles a Holiday Inn more than anything. It is a nice place, though.

The most memorable part of Kigali for me, in addition to the surprise at being in a modern city
, was a visit to the Kigali Memorial Centre. I'd been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. Neither one holds a candle to the Kigali Memorial Centre, though. To get there, Brian and I each hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi and held on tight as the driver swerved through city traffic, up and down hills, and took us to the outskirts of the city. The memorial lies on a large plot of land, most of which is taken up by gardens and spaces to walk and think. Over 250,000 people are buried there at the memorial, their bodies having been exhumed from mass graves around Kigali and other parts of the country. Knowing that the place is a giant mass graveyard adds a dimension of gravity that other museums and memorials cannot match. Inside the main memorial building, there are three exhibits: the first, and largest, is a detailed account of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, starting with its roots in colonial times, and ending with the current situation in Rwanda. The second exhibit discusses genocides of the 20th century, from the slaughter of Armenians by Turkey, to the Holocaust, to Cambodia and the Balkans. The third exhibit is a memorial to the children who were killed during the genocide. I was so moved by the memorial that I went back two days after visiting, with pen and paper, to record some quotes, which I will include below.

In the main exhibit, the horror or the genocide is steadily, unflinchingly portrayed. Never done for pure shock value, the exhibit is instead extremely sad and depressing. Atrocities are recounted in clear, vivid prose, chosen for maximum effect. Here is one example:

"Women were beaten, raped, humiliated, abused and ultimately murdered, often in sight of their own families. Children watched as their parents were tortured, beaten and killed in front of their eyes, before their small bodies were sliced, smashed, abused, pulverised and discarded. ... Victims had their tendons cut so they could not run away; they were tied and beaten. They were made to wait helplessly to be clubbed, raped or cut by machete."

The exhibit then goes on to discuss the international community's failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda, with its anger barely concealed.

"On 21 April, the UN Security Council passed a Resolution stating that it was 'appalled at the ensuing large scale of violence in Rwanda', which had resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children. The same meeting voted to reduce the UNAMIR force to 270 volunteer Ghanaian personnel and to limit its mandate. ... Diplomatic staff and foreign workers left the country. Many left their colleagues, employees and friends to the mercy of the killers. Dignitaries of the Habyarimana regime, authors of the genocide, were evacuated. The number of foreign troops in the evacuation would have been sufficient to stop the genocide."

After leaving this portion of the exhibit, the next room is full of pictures of genocide victims, provided by their families. Walking around this room, looking at all of the happy, smiling people, couples, and families is truly sobering, as a video plays of survivors talking about their family members who were killed during the genocide, remembering their last moments together. Immediately following this room is a startling, darkened, haunting room full of skulls and bones collected from mass graves around Kigali. Many of the skulls bear obvious machete wounds.

After this, we walked into the main section of the first exhibit, with large quotes written along the walls. One is extremely poignant: "When they said 'never again' after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?" --Apollon Kabahizi

While this was all sobering and informative, the moment the memorial truly hit home for me was in the exhibit of Rwanda's lost children. Walking into the first room, a plaque reads, "In memory of our beautiful and beloved children who should have been our future..." and there are large, wall-sized pictures of happy, smiling children. It is a simple memorial, never over-done. Each picture is accompanied by the name of the child and a simple plaque with some information about them. After a while, this became too much to bear; I can still remember the moment when I started crying. I was looking at a picture of a happy little girl in a dress, with the plaque bearing the following description:

Ariane Umutoni
Age: 4
Favourite food: Cake
Favourite drink: Milk
Enjoyed: Singing and dancing
Behaviour: A neat little girl
Cause of death: Stabbed in her eyes and head

That is only one example of the numerous displays in the childrens' exhibit. At the end, there are pictures, submittied by their families, of many hundreds of children, all of them no longer with us. This is the end of the memorial; after this, we walked out into the sunny daylight, into the gardens, surrounded by the graves of the dead. It was an extremely sobering experience; Brian and I were both quiet for hours following our departure.

After so many days in Kigali, we knew it was time to leave, and on Tuesday morning we took a minibus to Butare, the main town in southern Rwanda. One thing I have noticed in Rwanda much more than other African countries is the number of amputees and other disfigured people walking around. It's pretty obvious, actually. While they aren't everywhere, and it is very easy to spend time without running into them, they are very easy to find. Missing legs, missing hands. Waiting for our minibus to leave Kigali, sitting inside, I was approached by at least 3 or 4 people with missing arms, holding their stumps up to the window, asking for money. I was caught off-guard that first time, but it has happened over and over again in Rwanda, and I can feel myself desensitizing to it. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

The ride to Butare was spectacular, as all of the rides I have been on in Rwanda have been---it is truly a stunningly beautiful country. Butare is actually very close to the Burundi border. Butare is an unremarkable town, and we were only there for two nights. On our first day there, immediately after arriving, Brian and I took motorcycle-taxis to the National Museum, which is the exact opposite of the Kigali Memorial Centre---a simple, uncontroversial description of the landscape and traditional life of Rwanda. There is no mention of genocide or conflict in the museum.

The following day, on a day-trip, we took a minibus to the town of Gikongoro, 28km west of Butare. On the way there, through green cultivated hills, we passed groups of prisoners in their standard-issue pink outfits, hundreds of men working the fields and rice paddies, with a few armed prison guards keeping an eye on them. These men are the genocidaires, the men who did most of the murdering during the genocide. While the architects of the genocide are being tried in Arusha, the rank-and-file members are serving their time, doing manual labor. I wondered if any of these men were the ones who killed little Ariane Umutoni by stabbing her in the eyes and head.

Once we had arrived in Gikongoro, we hopped on the back of motorcycle-taxis and were off, swerving around cars and people, and soon we were off of the paved road and were on a dirt road, going down a steady hill, toward the Murambi Genocide Memorial. Rwanda is full of memorials; it seems that every town has one to take advantage of "genocide tourism". I did not want to do this, and as such, the Kigali Memorial Centre and the Murambi Memorial (both of which I had heard about long before arriving in Rwanda) were the only two that I visited; I did not and will not visit any others.

Upon arriving at the memorial, a former technical college, we were greeted by an elderly man named Emmanuel. With limited English, he told us that during the genocide, 50,000 people had fled here for protection from the Interhamwe militias. But they were not safe; soon the Interhamwe came and over the course of 2 days, they killed everyone. Out of 50,000 people, only 4 survived. Emmanuel is one of these lucky four; he has the bullet-hole in his head to prove it. He said that his entire family had been killed at Murambi.

We walked around the grounds of the technical college, which is set, like much of the country, on top of a hill, looking out at beautiful panoramas of green cultivated hills and mountains. An elderly woman walked up to us with a ring of keys; she gave them to Emmanuel and he walked us towards a classroom block. As we neared the block, I noticed a smell unlike any I'd smelled before. It was a thick stench, one that fills the nostrils. Emmanuel unlocked the first door and opened it, and Brian and I stood there, looking at a room full of corpses. These corpses had been preserved with lime to look exactly as they had looked when the killers struck fourteen years ago, their bodies contorted in agony (due to rigor-mortis, their bodies were forever contorted as they had been at the moment of their death), their flesh shrivelled. Many of them had mouths open in a neverending silent scream, their hands raised to protect their faces and bodies; machete wounds were still visible on many of their heads, their skulls cracked.

We walked from room to room; each room Emmanuel opened was full of more bodies, the smell of death everywhere. I had to keep my hand over my mouth and nose, covering it, because of the horror of what I was seeing and also because I didn't want to get nauseous. We walked through room after room of adults, children, and small toddlers, their bodies lying there as a testament to the horror of the past. While the Murambi Memorial was not as sad as the Kigali Memorial Centre, it was much more horrific. The images of those bodies in those darkened rooms will stay with me forever.

We walked the 3km back to Gikongoro and took a minibus back to Butare. The next day, on Thursday, we left Butare and took another minibus to the town of Cyangugu, where I am currently. As usual, the ride was spectacular, especially when we drove through the Nyungwe National Park, once we were closer to Cyangugu. Cyangugu is the main town near the Nyungwe park, where Brian and I are going tomorrow. In a beautiful location, on the southern tip of Lake Kivu, Cyangugu is also a border town; it is the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Eventually the minibus arrived in the town of Kamembe, which is the main town near Cyangugu. Brian and I got off of the minibus, and were immediately surrounded by people asking us where we were going and offering us inflated "muzungu" prices to take us to our destination. We were especially confused because when we said we were going to Cyangugu, we were told that we were in Cyangugu. When we said we were going to town, they said "You are in town." Or, that's what I assumed, because they were mostly speaking French and I could only follow a little.

Eventually, tiring of the uncertainty, we just decided to take motorcycle-taxis to our guesthouse. This was a challenge, because we had our big bags with us...how would we manage on the back of a motorcycle? The solution (there is always a solution) was that the driver put my large beast of a bag in the front section of the motorcycle, between his legs, and used his legs to keep it in place. It wasn't totally balanced, though, so we drove slowly, re-adjusting along the way. Eventually we arrived at our guesthouse, and I was surprised at just how close we were to the border. The Rwanda-DRC border was literally a stone's throw from our guesthouse; we were looking out at the Congo.

We have been here in Cyangugu/Kamembe since Thursday, relaxing and enjoying the town. There is a wonderful local market where I've seen piles and piles of used clothes donated from America and Europe. I figure that some of my clothes were also in those piles, and was surprised while looking through one pile to find a "C.U. On The Ramps" Lerner Hall t-shirt, a free shirt that had been given to our freshman class at Columbia University back in 1999. I wondered if this was my old shirt that I had donated and was now holding thousands of miles away.

I had totally forgotten that I'd ever owned a "C.U. On The Ramps" shirt, but it seemed fitting; being in Rwanda, I've seen that the past is still alive in the memories of its people and in those amputees I've seen everywhere. You can forget the past, but it will find you....sometimes, even on the other side of the world.

A brief note on pictures

Well, I am currently in beautiful Kigali, Rwanda. For the past four days I have been trying to upload some of my pictures onto this blog, to no avail. After more than five unsuccessful attempts, I have decided not to post any more pictures on this blog until I get to another major city with a fast internet connection (i.e. Kampala, Uganda).

I will be writing another blog post soon, though. Being in Rwanda has given me a lot to say.