Ihahamuka-“without lungs or breathless with fear”

“Everyone from abroad seems to think they have something to teach Rwandans about reconciliation. No one considers that it is the other way around.” Christine Stansell

Since arriving in Kigali five months ago, one of the biggest challenges for me as a foreigner (and a social worker) has been to try to wrap my head around the mental health of this nation, and do my best not to pass judgment or make premature conclusions coming from my Western-educated lens. And like most things, the more I read and the more meetings I attend, I only have more questions. I finished “A Thousand Hills” by Stephen Kinzer a few weeks back, a book following the trajectory of Paul Kagame’s career, Rwanda’s current president. While I didn’t particularly enjoy the writing style of the author (sorry Stephen), it’s a fascinating account of Rwanda’s recent history, and the complex and complicated events that led up to the genocide of 1994, and how the country has since worked to become a leader in East and Central Africa under the Kagame administration. I’m not sure I’d particularly recommend the book to others, but do advise anyone to read many of the books that have been published about Rwanda since 1994 in order to combat some of the ignorance the majority of the Western world still suffers from genocide history.

The ethnic history of Rwanda was strongly influenced by colonization by the Germans and ultimately the Belgians. Prior to this time, Tutsis and Hutus lived together harmoniously, speaking the same language, intermarrying, obeying the same laws, following the same religion and traditions. The distinction between them was not ethnic at all, but based primarily on economic status. In fact, individuals could move between the two groups freely, depending on whether one raised cattle (Tutsi) or farmed the land (Hutu). It was not until the arrival of the Germans in the late 1800’s, and Belgium after WWI that Europeans began classifying Hutu and Tutsis into separate and distinct groups, mirroring Europe’s monarchy by wrongly concluding the ruling class and minority Tutsi as nobility, and the majority Hutus (85%) as their serfs. Further, Belgians found visible distinction among the two groups: believing the taller, lighter-skinned Tutsi were superior to the more “African-looking”, shorter, broad-nosed black Hutus. Further classification was made in 1933 with mandatory identity cards, a legacy that would pave the way for the mass killings of thousands of Rwandans in future years, and pave the way for the racial propaganda that fueled the genocide.

Again, numerous books and essays have been written about this topic, so my feeble attempts at summarizing 100 years of Rwandan history are poor at best, and I apologize for the distastefully abridged version. Further, I won’t attempt to summarize the events of the actual genocide itself. The 100 days of murder, terror turning neighbors against neighbors, media campaigns spreading hate ideology, children witnessing the murder and rape of family members, mass ambushes in local churches, abandonment of the international community (particularly the United States)…it’s all too much to process, digest, and accept. I visited the Gisozi Genocide Memorial museum a few months back, and have not yet been able to write about it, let alone process it. It’s unfathomable, impossible to believe that it occurred.

What’s unique in contemporary Rwanda is this idea of cultural or national identity. During the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, Belgium and the Catholic Church strongly shaped social and political life. Loyalties shifted post WWII, and the support of a ruling aristocracy in the Tutsi quickly shifted to sympathy towards the powerless Hutu masses. Anti-Tutsi sentiments were stimulated by this new sense of justice for the majority. Local and regional Hutu officials soon replaced Tutsis, and with the support of Belgium and the Catholic Church, the Hutu Manifesto was drafted, calling on Hutus to rise up against the oppressive Tutsi rule. By 1959, attacks became common and Hutu militants began fighting back in fits of organized violence. Tutsis flooded neighboring countries of Uganda, Congo, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya, and remained refugees afraid of returning to their homeland until after the war. Because of this, Rwanda’s population of 10 million people has a large Tutsi population that never even saw Rwanda prior to 1994. They were raised in neighboring countries, taught in other languages, yet had a strong determination to return to their home and the land of their ancestors. Paul Kagame was one of these refugees. It is not uncommon to find a Rwandan who speaks French, English, Kinyarwanda, or KiSwahili. Despite this historical displacement, Rwandans have pride in their country, their traditions, and their culture. They were asked to repatriate and assist Rwanda in its growth and new national identity.

Today, fifteen years after the genocide, Rwanda is among the leaders of the region. There is no doubt much of this comes from Kagame’s vision. First impressions of Kigali, as I’ve shared before, are that it’s very “un-African”. It’s incredibly regulated. It’s unbelievably clean. It’s the kind of city where if you drop a sweater on the sidewalk, five people run up to pick it up for you. It’s calm and has a strong sense of civil obedience and structure. Days are very routine and predictable. There are strict laws against corruption; police presence is common; safety and security is exceptional. There are no urban slums. Street sweepers in serial-numbered vests clean the neighborhoods each morning. There are speed bumps, traffic lights, helmets, trash cans. The streets are quiet and empty by 8pm.

In the past five months, I’ve pondered whether Rwandans have always been this calm, reserved, comfortable in this culture of obedience to authority…or if this functional compliance is simply a coping strategy to deal with all they have been through. Regionally, Rwandans have a reputation of being very reserved, often lacking the liveliness and colorful friendliness that is characteristic in other Africans. How much of this reservation is self-protection, a way to build walls in order to feel less insecure, and how much is just the natural tranquility of the Rwandese people? I obviously couldn’t begin to draw conclusions about this. Kagame is both revered and criticized for his authoritarian, strong-handed policies. Most agree that it’s what needs to be done at this time of Rwanda’s history…that there must be some sense of comfort in the limits to expression, deviance, and political freedom. The ethnic hate propaganda that poisoned the nation for decades will be ever-present in people’s minds, particularly older generations, and Kagame’s hope for “One people, one destiny” needs to be closely monitored. National messages remind Rwandans that there is no strength in separation, that reinforcing difference divides us as people. Kagame believes security is the foundation for the growth of the nation, and that only reconciliation can allow this to happen.

So, this goes back to my question about mental health. I’ve been attending meetings recently at USAID, the Ministry of Health, and other organizations. It seems mental health is moving up on the radar screen, which is a wonderful leap. Next year will be the first time the Demographic Health Survey will collect data on depression. So, what is really happening here? How can an event such as the genocide that touched every family in every corner of the nation begin to move forward? One post-genocide policy that’s also been the topic of debate is gacaca, the historical practice of whole populations being involved in the processes of justice and reconciliation. Gacaca allows local communities to hold hearings against genocidaires (leaders and organizers of killings), where both victims and witnesses are encouraged to speak in the community where the crime was committed. There are over 800,000 suspects. It is the grounds for which Kagame hopes people will be able to live together again and find peace. Reconciliation and justice are a difficult balance, yet these community hearings hope to encourage this process. So how does one begin reconciling with someone who has killed your entire family, inviting them back into your community as your neighbor? And to what extent is this reconciliation forced?

My experience has been that the genocide is rarely discussed, or if so, it’s discussed very matter-of-factly. “Yes, I had a brother, but he was killed in the genocide.” “I had eleven children, but seven of them, along with my wife, were murdered in the war in 1994.” It is that direct, that honest, and then the conversation simply moves on. How are individuals encouraged to grieve or mourn after all they have witnessed when the government is pushing for this resolution? Some refer to what is happening right now as a state of “artificial reconciliation”. Rwandans are encouraged not to identify as Hutu or Tutsi, but Rwandan, and move forward in a unified way that facilitates a national identity. But what of all the people that weren’t here during the genocide and returned afterwards? What role do they play in the rebuilding of the nation as opposed to the survivors or perpetrators of the genocide?

I’m also moved by this younger generation of Rwandans, Rwandans that are now beginning to marry and have children, Rwandans that were young adolescents when the genocide occurred, Rwandans that lost their families and parents. Intelligent, strong-willed, functioning adults that are becoming the leaders of this nation. How did they mourn? How did they recover? And how do they have the strength to now put energy into their own families and the future of their country? Is this policy of forced reconciliation working for Rwanda, or is it simply blanketing the wounds of a nation that is not encouraged to mourn, to grieve, to heal? I have no idea. The government is making enormous strides in the region as a leader in IT development, human resource capacity building and education, and other goals mentioned in Kagame’s Vision 2020 (which I also recommend reading). So, I leave Rwanda with only more questions, and a incredible space of admiration in my heart for the resilience and integrity of this country and its people—determined, dedicated, kind, beautiful people. I only hope that the efforts of the current government allow for Rwanda to heal and grow in its own distinct way. It deserves that much.

Muzungu in Musanze

The clock is ticking. I have three weeks left in this country that has become my home for the past five and a half months. Apart from the denial and severely mixed feelings this induces, I’ve also entered that inevitable place where I suffer from thoughts of not having done enough. Much of this I think stems from, you guessed it, impermanence…and the fact that I was initially only supposed to be here for three months. I hesitated to get involved in things I now wish I had—volunteering, visiting rural communities, networking with NGOs to see what type of work they are doing. For many who have done development work or lived overseas, three months is quite literally a blink of an eye. You wake up one morning and realize it’s time to go, and how little you have truly accomplished. And of course, like anywhere and anything, as foreign as a place may appear at first, we naturally find our niche and our groove and things become routine. Work consumes you. Friends stand in for family. And the weeks pass into months and you realize you have spent half a year in a country that has slowly crept into that space in your heart that you call home. It feels kind of like a premature break up. We just need more time to get to know one another! It’s hard not to let my mind go to that place (you know, the completely unproductive, unhealthy, regretful place?) I haven’t seen enough of the country. I should have volunteered. I should have sucked it up and paid the $600 to see the mountain gorillas. I should have asked my Country Director for more work. I should have networked. I should have made a concerted effort to visit more organizations and see what work they do in this complex and beautiful country. I should have read more history and educated myself more.

So, this is roughly where my head is at the current moment. Not entirely awesome but not so bad either. It’s all part of the continuous process that reminds us how human we are. This weekend, I was feeling a bit left in the lurch. My sidekick Karen was out of the country; Luke and his fiancée Sarah had a romantic getaway at the lake; my ever-complicated, part-time squeeze was in Kenya for the week. Ho hum. What to do? My natural tendency was to sleep, which I did for fourteen delicious hours on Friday night. Saturday, I woke up and decided to go to Musanze, the small town two hours north that sits at the foothills of Volcanoes National Park, the home of the infamous mountain gorillas. The bus ride up was spectacular, yet also a harsh reminder of the reality of Rwanda’s food insecurity and population crisis. Rwanda is roughly the size of Maryland, has over 10 million, with a fertility rate of over 6 children per woman. This may not sound like much when thinking about the population of most American cities, but picture the island of Manhattan with everyone living on it requiring land not only to feed their families, but to make some sort of income. The land issues in Rwanda are multi-faceted and incredibly complex, a development issue I will choose not to elaborate on in this entry. But nonetheless, the drive up was filled with terraced mountains, patches of crops, grazing goats, and women, men and children tilling the soil. It’s green as far as the eye can see.

I arrived in Musanze around 11, took a quick moto ride to the next village over, Kinigi, which rests at the entrance of the park. I had no idea what I was actually planning to do up there, I just wanted to see the volcanoes, hike around a bit, and create some mental space in which to reflect over my final weeks in Kigali. Within moments, the sky opened up in a bucketing downpour. Well, I guess I’ll eat lunch. I sat, reading my book, watching CNN, in a lovely little guesthouse and ate quite possibly the most delicious fish brochettes I’ve had since I arrived in East Africa. Yum. So, I start to wander. I have no idea where the park entrance is, whether I will need to pay an entrance fee, how long the hikes are, and if I’ll be able to make it back in time for my 4:30 bus. After approximately three minutes, a very chatty and inquisitive teen named Chris approaches me. He speaks exceptional English. His friends Elize and Jack arrive. We start cruising around, wandering through farms and talking about soccer, snapping pix here and there with the volcanoes in the backdrop. It is a cool, beautiful day. Other friends surface. The soccer championships are coming up. It’s a huge deal. They are pumped. They will call me on Tuesday to give me the results of their match. I spend two hours with this motley crew of Rwandan teens. We talk chemistry, geography, reggae, soccer. I am quizzed on high school course-related facts (Do you know anything about the periodic table of elements…or Mt. Everest?) I answer compulsory questions about myself and America. (Do you have goats in your town? Are you married? Do Americans grow corn?) They are a blast. As we near another small village, the sky reopens and we run to the market, where they shuttle me onto a bus to take me back to Musanze and finally, Kigali. I am a bit saddened that my day is cut short due to the weather, but I’m really happy I came. It’s nice to be reminded how breathtaking Rwanda is, as the months here can slowly head one down a “taking-this-beauty-for-granted” type path.

I get on an earlier bus, and saddle up between two Rwandan women. The ride is winding…and the woman next to me is in the unfortunate, aisle flip up, small enough for an 8 year old child seat and is holding her head in her hands. Hmm. Ending the day with a woman vomiting on the bus in the rain doesn’t particularly suit me. I quickly offer to change seats with her. It’s at this time that I befriend an 80 year old man named Andre who is sitting behind me. It wasn’t until we started talking that I realized how few elderly people I have come across in Rwanda. He shares with me that he had 11 children, 7 of whom were killed in the genocide, along with his first wife. He has outlived the majority of his family. Despite this, he was a sassy, inquisitive, adorable personality who was basically obsessed with me within five minutes. He posed for pictures with his pipe and his sailor hat. He repeatedly informed me how beautiful I was. He had half the bus engaged in our conversation. He giggled uncontrollably at his posed photos. It was the perfect ending to the day. It’s these random encounters that remind me how lucky I am to be where I am, how engaging people can be, how such small events can teach us so much and connect us as humans. It was lovely, truly. So, I’m back in Kigali, gearing up for a crazy week at work, applying for jobs, drinking locally grown coffee, and trying to appreciate what remains for me in these remaining three weeks.

The Booj Part Deux

“To me, travel was not about rest and relaxation. It was action, exertion, motion, and the built-in delays were longueurs necessitated by the inevitable problem-solving of forward movement: waiting for buses and trains, enduring breakdowns that you tried to make the best of.” Paul Theroux

I finally started Dark Star Safari this weekend…Paul Theroux’s documented journey overland from Cairo to Cape Town. It was the perfect book to begin while making the trek back to Bujumbura, Burundi for round two of beach time, Lake Tanganyika, and the general debauchery that is lacking in Kigali. In the true spirit of travelling, Karen and I set off on Friday morning with no plan, two bus tickets, and a bag full of random Indian snacks. Karen and I travel well together. We’re both just anal enough to compulsively check a few things off the old list before being able to truly unwind and relax. We share similar attitudes about a few essentials when finding a trusty travelling side kick: we’re both seemingly responsible about money but don’t let it stand in the way of having a good time; we both wake up thinking about dinner; we appreciate and revel in the unpredictability and randomness of African travel; and finally and most importantly perhaps, we love the beach. We’re essentially a match made in heaven.

So, the weekend was more or less serendipitous from the moment we left the bus station. We stumbled upon some Dutch military at the money exchange who suggested we were ladies conveying “cheap and quick” recommendations. Um, thank you very much. We are indeed. Next we met Jean Claude sur la route, a 60 year old French Canadian who had been doing development work throughout Africa for over 20 years and just opened a new restaurant. He draws us a map on the back of a receipt and mentions ribs. Done and done. We head to the beach. No room at the inn. Wuh wa. The bubbly and overly-helpful staff person escorts us to the hotel next door. No dice. She suggests another place in town that’s in our price range. And by our price range, we’re talking under $40 a night for the two of us. We hitchhike into town with a friendly couple heading home from work on Friday evening. Strike three at Amohoro hotel. Again, friendly and helpful Burundians lead us to the next possible lodging possibility. We arrive to find the manager waiting for us. He escorts us to a very small, albeit clean room with private bathroom…and a FAN! 30 bucks for the night. Parfait.

Next stop, La Cervoise de Gaulois….the restaurant run by Jean Claude. Turns out he has rooms for rent. Information that may have proved useful roughly four hours ago. We meet a handful of gregarious expats. Quite possibly, my two new favorite expats in East Africa. Ekin-a Turkish, global operations manager that has been stationed at all the recent hotspots: Gaza, Darfur (to name a few) who is endearingly engaging, shares hysterical personal tidbits surfacing as complete and utter comfort with himself, and unbelievably humble. He invites us dancing. Karen and I simultaneously place him on his international development pedestal in the sky and accept without hesitation. And then there’s Pierre Olivier, a Frenchman who rivals Rick Moranis, circa “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” years. He’s comical, has a fantastic accent, and a mane of crazy, mad-scientist hair.

Saturday we sleep in after some late night dancing at Havana Club, and make our way back out to the beach via yet another free ride from the fancy Hotel du Lac employee minivan. It is random and much-appreciated. Burundi is lively and loud, disorderly, chaotic, unpredictable. We love everything about it. The beach is filled with locals swimming in the lake and expats lounging on the Bora Bora beach chairs poolside. Cold beers, breeze, sunshine, cold beers, sunsets, clouds, dreamy expats. It is the perfect day.

After a delectable post-beach nap, Karen and clean ourselves up and head back into town for dinner and dancing. It was the night of the annual Marine ball, so all our newfound friends were occupied until at least 1 am. Karen and I sought solace in Havana’s disco lights, techno music, and sweaty Burundian men gyrating to today’s hottest hits. The Turk texts us about an after-ball party. Again, we graciously accept and find ourselves dancing until the wee hours of the morning among Bujumbura's finest.

In addition to the amazing Turk and the peculiar Frenchman, we also meet Mohamed, a Tunisian George Clooney at first glance…a completely chivalrous, sweet, generous North African who is completely adoring of Karen and willingly escorting us around town in his UN vehicle while keeping us steadily supplied with cold Amstels and pizza. Could this weekend honestly get any better?

It was a sad moment to walk away from that beach, I have to say. For all the beauty, quiet, and peacefulness that Rwanda brings, there is something energizing about the spontaneity and heightening of the senses that Bujumbura offers to a traveler. It’s intoxicating in a way that just encourages more travelling. So, I’m back at the office, and sadly counting down my remaining month in Kigali, conflicted about leaving this region of the world that has been so inspiring and welcoming and beautiful and kind. Big, big sigh.