Night 1
All of our flights go
smoothly, despite a delay taking off from JFK and a short layover in Brussels
which has us speed-walking across the airport wishing we had time to brush our
teeth. The last leg of the trip, a 7 hour flight, proves to be the most
difficult. We feel a little queasy from our anti-malaria pills, exhausted from lack
of sleep and vertical naps, and the flight attendants keep our bellies bloated
toward the pull-down trays.
But the airplane is
sparse, spacious, and allows for decent stretching of the legs. Sara sits next
to the Director of Human rights from Uganda, Lauren and Nicole find themselves
in front of a crying baby who likes to punch seats, and I meet a missionary of Rick
Warren’s, an Evangelical pastor who has
sent around 15,000 missionaries to Rwanda.
***
The religious situation
in Rwanda is interesting. At the time of their appearance in Rwanda, the Belgian
missionaries from the Catholic Church believed in a “Hamitic Ideology” which
considers certain ethnicities superior. These missionaries believed that Tutsis
were whiter and came to Africa from Europe; this ideology played a role in the
ethnic division of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda which led to the genocide.
In 1959, when Hutu
extremists first began the process of eliminating Tutsis, churches became a
refuge for the Tutsis. However, in 1994, when the genocide began, some priests
encouraged Tutsis to seek refuge in churches and then informed Hutu extremists
that they could come in and mass murder the hiding Tutsis.
Some Rwandans believe that the Vatican has yet to come
clean about the blood on their hands, and people are very angry with the
Catholic Church. Still, survivors of the genocide are born again Christians who
see their survival as God’s message that they have purpose. Rick Warren,
despite his bad reputation in Uganda, is a hero in Rwanda. The current role of
church includes teaching Rwandans the Bible which increases literacy, and creating
development projects that teach trades and create infrastructure.
Paul Kagame, the
current president of Rwanda, does not claim to be a religious person. Still, he
accepts current involvement of the church because it allows Rwandans to reach
toward reconciliation, something so difficult that spirituality seems to be the
only option.
***
When we descend the
steps from the plane, a sweet smell greets us. Our feet hit the African asphalt,
and reality still hasn’t hit. After retrieving our bags, we meet Tim, one of
the faculty members and also the whitest person in the airport. He waves us
down, clearly jittery from cappuccino, and we meet our Rwandan partner, Lama.
On the way to our hotel,
La Palisse in Kigali, lights dot the many Rwandan hills like blue fireflies. At
the hotel, red cobble walk ways remind us of Western’s campus. The hotel
personnel lug our bags to our rooms up a steep hill; they really like to help. Our
rooms are unexpectedly gorgeous, despite the old smell. Mosquito nets hang from
the ceiling like a flowing African dream.
On our way to dinner,
at an Ethiopian restaurant, we pile 17 people into a van. Most of the roads in
Kigali are paved, but everyone squashes up against each other as the van
rumbles over the red Rwandan clay. “This is called African massage,” says Lama,
laughing.
We meet Taya, a student
from Washington State University, who has been working in Gashora with the
cooperative we will be servicing during our trip. She’s been in Rwanda for
almost a month and has many tips for us: bring tissue with you everywhere, you
never know when there won’t be toilet paper; bring wipes, you never know when
there won’t be a sink; take every opportunity to wash your hands; don’t buy
things without assistance from a Rwandan friend, white skin=jacked price; the
kids will love you and fight to hold your hands, three kids to each hand.
“You’re going to love
it here,” she says. We hear that from everyone we meet.
Day 1
“You
can’t manage time, but time can manage you.”
After breakfast, we
plan to visit the Kigali Memorial Centre which commemorates the genocide, get
lunch and figure out financial affairs in Kigali, and visit a local
neighborhood before heading to our hotel in Gashora.
Instead, we sit on the
stone steps in front of the lobby chatting with hotel personnel and playing
cards. The van can’t fit us and our luggage. Eventually, we decide on using two
vans, one to get our luggage to Gashora, and one to transport us for the day.
Tim in the van
On the way to the
memorial, a Rwandan student filming us, Olivier, tells me about a saying in
Rwanda: “I can’t manage time, but time can manage me,” and we laugh about the
van confusion. When a car stops in the middle of the road, completely in our
way, Olivier shouts, “This one’s drunk!”
“No, he’s from Congo,”
jokes Lama.
“No, Uganda!” laughs
Olivier. In African countries which were originally colonized by the British
like Uganda, people drive on the left side of the road, but in Rwanda, which
was a Belgian colony, the people drive on the right.
At the memorial, somber
faces visit mass graves and read walls of history. The first panel reads: “This
is about our past and our future, our nightmares and dreams, our fear and our
hope.”
Mass Grave
Before being colonized
by the Germans in 1892, the division between Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas was
socio-economical. The Germans sided with the monarchy, which was comprised of
Tutsi, the richer class. Still, classes were fluid and a Hutu could become a
Tutsi by becoming rich. For example, a Tutsi was defined as a Rwandan with ten
or more cows.
After WWI, Rwanda was
given to Belgium as a trust territory. In 1932, Belgians issued identity cards,
even using rulers to measure facial features of Rwandans to determine whether
they were Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. They determined that 5% of the population was
Tutsi, 84% Hutu, and 1% Twa. Belgians viewed Tutsi as superior.
When the ruler, or
mwami, of Rwanda refused to join the Catholic army, and challenged Belgian
rule, he was disposed of. Eventually, Belgians believed that the conservative
Tutsis were more vulnerable to Marxism and decided that the Hutu class was more
connected to the Catholic Church. They then switched to being sympathetic
toward Hutus. In 1959, after being encouraged by Belgians, Hutus began to
overthrow the Tutsi.
In reference to 1959,
when he was forced to flee to Burundi, Lama says, “my mother told me that the
object wasn’t to exterminate Tutsis but to get them out of the country so that
[Hutus] could take our land.”
When Tutsi refugees in
Uganda grouped up as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and surged Rwanda on
October 1st, 1990, things got tense. The genocide started on April 6th,
1994, led by the government’s party of Hutu extremists. In a hundred days, over
a million Rwandans were killed, mostly Tutsis, until the RPF ended the Genocide
on July 18th. More details about these events will be spread
throughout the blog, but I’d like to give readers a break :)
For any worried parents
out there, Rwanda is currently the safest country in Africa, filled with
smiling, helpful faces. We have flushing toilets, cold showers, cell phones, and
have only seen 3 or 4 mosquitos; Malaria risk is very low in Rwanda.
After visiting the
memorial, we travel to the busy city of Kigali and settle for lunch. We learn
that if a woman orders an orange Fanta, it implies that she is a virgin. So a
lot of us order orange Fanta. We visit an ATM, and a local grocery store much
like a Fred Meyer. Then we wait…I remember the saying about time which Olivier
told me. We don’t have time to visit the local neighborhood. After waiting
almost two hours and paying a few hundred francs for the bathroom ($1=612 RWF
(Rwandan Francs)), a van arrives to take us to Gashora.
A bright orange sun
sets over the luscious hills of Rwanda which are spotted with banana and guava
trees. The area we drive through was burned to a crisp during the genocide but
has since been replanted. We all get another African massage on the way to the
hotel, which is a of couple miles past the Gashora city center. After
freshening up, we head back to the city center for dinner.
Here, we meet “Big
Dog,” one of the students sponsored by Lama’s program. He joins us for dinner
and we soon discover how silly he is. Dinner consists of some of the usual
local food: potatoes, beans, and pineapple.
We celebrate the
birthday of one of the Rwandan students working with the Covaga Cooperative,
Cedric. He tells us that he’s never had a birthday celebration before; he’s
just turned 26.
We almost fall asleep
in our cake.
But first we need to
walk 20 minutes up a dirt road, in the dark, to reach our hotel.
This is only the
beginning.
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