Genocide

As our trip to Rwanda started with a visit to the genocide memorial of Kigali, so our last day in Rwanda included visits to two of the outlying genocide memorials. Both memorials were catholic churches prior to the genocide. As is generally the case churches were viewed as places of safety and thousands of people sought sanctuary at the various churches around Rwanda. For the perpetrators of the genocide this was seen only as a convenient way of getting people together so they could be killed. Each of the churches we went to had seen the massacre of over 5,000people and the mass graves out the back were the resting place for over 41,000. The exact number was not known as bodies are still being found as the trials continue. It is impossible to describe the emotion of being there and all three of us found our cheeks damp with tears. The saddest part is that the murderers and the victims were often neighbours and friends. The scale of the massare is difficult to fathom and the numbers are truly disturbing, but it is the individual stories that really tell the story. What follows is the story of our guide, Paul, I hope that I have done it justice.

Paul was 14 years old during the genocide. He had been brought up in a very religious household and was taught that he was a child of God and not a Hutu or a Tutsi. Indeed when he was taking his end of primary school exam and had to fill in on the form whether he was Hutu or Tutsi he didn't know so copied off his friend. Of course his friend was Hutu, whilst he was Tutsi so his page was ripped up and he had to fill it in again. Children that pass this exam were sent to government high schools, considered very good schools and paid for by the government. Despite being near the top of his class in primary school he was not accepted into the government run schools. One way of limiting the educational opportunities for Tutsi children. Luckily for him his uncle was headmaster at a Catholic school so he was able to continue to high school. In the years prior to the genocide there were killings going on and he recalled going out to the funerals of relatives but not really understanding what was happening.

Paul recalled on April 6th 1994 listening to the radio with his family when the announcement came that the presidents plane had been shot down and he was dead. He had a typical teenagers reaction of thinking it was good news as the school holidays were nearly ended and it would undoubtedly mean an extra week off school. His parents however did not share his excitement, knowing that this would not be good news, but obviously not aware of exactly what would happen. The next day a group came to their house on the pretext of looking for guns and lined the family up outside. A very close friend and neighbour (a Hutu) heard what was happening and came round to talk to the leader of the group. After the talks Pauls father was instructed to give them money, which luckily they had... so on day 1 money saved their lives. There was a meeting that night in which the list of people to be killed was read through. The neighbour came back and told them they had to leave. 5 of the children went with their mother to seek sanctuary in the church, his mother and 2 of the children were killed there. Paul went with his father and 2 other siblings into the forest to try and get out of Kigali that way. They hadn't understood that the genocide was country wide thinking it was confined to the cities. All the roads were blocked and identity cards (which identified ethnicity) were checked before you were allowed to pass. They were lucky though and managed to survive in the forest for 5 days, before being found by the RPF. It was four years later in 1998 that they were finally able to bury his mother and the two children who were killed. He is considered one of the lucky ones, he still has a father and brothers and sisters, many people don't.

Trekking through mud

We had one more day in Kigali exploring the different areas of town and visiting a natural history museum which is housed in Richard Kant's house, before heading to the Volcanoes National Park. One thing that was very striking is how clean Rwanda is. The other pleasant surprise is that the police do not carry around guns (of any size) compared with the machine guns seen in many other countries we've been to. We spent three days at the Volcanoes National Park with treks planned each day, so we expected to get very tired.

The first day was a trek to see the Golden Monkeys, supposed to be quite an easy walk. After our guide (Patience) informed us that the monkeys had moved and it would be a four hour hike there, we reached the monkeys before even entering the park proper observing them from the fields just outside. (Supposedly Patience was testing us to mae sure we really wanted to go). The monkeys were quite entertaining to watch jumping around in the bamboo... and at one point jumping on each other (although the female didn't seem to notice as she just kept eating before, during and after).

Day two was the much anticipated gorilla trek for Jason and I. There are only 750 mountain gorillas left in the world and we were very excited to have the opportunity of seeing them in the wild. In the morning of the trek you are assigned to groups based upon the difficulty of the trek the guides think you can manage. Jason and I were assigned to one of the intermediate groups (Umubano) that is supposed to be about a 1 and a half to 2 hour hike in the park. After walking through the fields towards the boundary of the park for about 20 minutes we met the trackers for the group. All the rain had encouraged the group down the mountain meaning we had a 10 minute hike through the forest before being able to spend 1 hour with the gorillas. Before you go you are informed that you should stay at least 7m from the gorillas at all times (although the gorillas are not aware of this rule)... in reality it was nearly impossible to get that far away from the gorillas. Generally we were about 2-3m away and at times closer. One of the babies seemed to think making the tourists move was great fun. The 8 of us were all standing in a group when the baby starting walking directly towards us, so the guides quickly moved us out of the way... and the baby changed direction heading towards the group, we moved, he followed. He didn't seem to want to touch us, just make us scramble out of the way. Once he tired of this game he started climbing on a tree, hanging upside down and fighting with his brother. We were also able to get incredibly close to the silverback. He hadn't moved from his nest that he slept in and went back to sleep whilst we were there after greeting the guides with some grunts. It was an incredible experience and we could happily have spent many more hours with the family getting to know them, but alas that's not allowed and so we headed back down the mountain.

On day three we were excited to finally get into the park!! We were pretty sure that Dian Fossey's grave would not have moved down the mountain. Initially we expected a 15minute walk to the park, then 2 hours in the park to the grave... however, because it had rained so much the guide decided to take us a different route walking for nearly an hour before making it to the park. We then scrambled over the wall and started up the volcano. Luckily for us it was only the three of us in the group, so we could go at our own pace without upsetting anyone. There was another group heading to the crater lakes, but 3 of those turned back before making it to the park and another 2 turned back shortly after overtaking us. There is really only one work to adequately describe this hike - mudddy!!! The 2 hour hike took us about 4 hours as even on flat sections we were incredibly slow trying to avoid sinking into the mud - we failed. By the end we were all caked in mud up to our knees and the inside of our shoes had filled with it. The walk was great fun and the gorilla graveyard although sad was interesting to see. By the end though we were all tired and hungry (having forgotten to take any snacks with us) and were looking forward to a few days of r and r on Lake Kivu.

Meeting with Andrew

After settling into the luxury of the hotel, we then attempted to meet up with Andrew. We couldn't remember exactly what time his flight got in so we called down to reception a few times to see if he had arrived. At 8:30pm we finally found out he was there and tried to call his room from reception. Whilst we were waiting for him to pick up he arrived at reception in person. It turned out he hadn't looked for us as the tour company he had booked the trip with thought we were arriving at the airport and had driven there to pick us up. They even had an arrival time for us of 9:30pm which is quite impressive as we were coming overland.

After a sumptuous dinner, we headed off for bed (which had been turned down for us!).The next day we visited the genocide memorial, which was incredibly moving and deeply disturbing. There were very moving stories, skulls, bones, pictures and videos. They also had a very good exhibit detailing a few of the other genocides that have occured to drive home the point that this is not a one of occurance in one country but something human beings repeatedly do to each other and we need to learn how to prevent. The genocide has definitely not been forgotten here with motorcycle taxi drivers jackets bearing messages regarding it, and frequent messages seen along roadsides and in country towns. There is a definite feeling of Rwanda defined before the genocide and post the genocide.

The journey towards luxury

Unfortunately the journey wasn't particularly luxurious at all. In anticipation of meeting up with my uncle Andrew and travelling with him in Rwanda for two weeks staying in his choice of hotel rather than our normal what's the cheapest we can find approach, we had camped basically every night in Uganda. Unlike in southern Africa where camping was usually accompanied by excellent toilets and showers in Uganda they were generally smelly pit toilets and cold showers. To put it bluntly we smelt... and were covered with dust as well. It probably didn't help that the minibus from the border to Kigali was an over crowded minibus with a whole bunch of other smelly people, requiring open windows ensuring a final layer of dust over everything. Our bags were strapped to the top of the bus and so had both achieved a brown coating by the time we disembarked. Not wanting to be total slobs we did opt for a taxi from the bus station to the hotel, rather than the cheaper boda-boda (motorbike taxi). Still, when we got out at the Kigali Serena where we were staying with Andrew noone rushed to help us with our bags, instead we got some rather strange looks.

The reception was however able to be convinced that we were actually staying there and replacing our backpacks we headed up to see our room..... and WOW!!!! Amazing. We weren't even willing to touch anything in our state of disrepair. After showers... with a shower door!! and a bathmat!! we dressed in the fluffy bathrobes whilst we set about doing a load of washing in the bath.... just to give us something clean to change into. After that we had another shower. In fact from being in a state of 'No, can't face a cold shower today'.... we are having 3 showers and a bath a day. Never has it felt so good to be clean.