The other day we made our way from Kigali to Kinigi…by way of matatu, would it be anything else? Before the home of the gorillas, first we must discuss Rwanda, and it’s capital, Kigali. Rwanda is home of the world’s most recent genocide, but one would never know it slicing into the country through the jaw dropping Great Rift Valley with hills upon hills that never seem to stop. Rwanda is probably one of the most beautiful countries I’ve seen. It sits in the heart of the Great Rift Valley. Known as the land of a thousand hills, it is more hilly than the French Alps, and roads are more windy than the last song on Abbey Road. There is a dense cluster of volcanoes on the border of Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC which makes up the heart of the lava bed which lives beneath the Rift Valley in these countries. Apparently, the hills are slowly rising in the ring of bulges surrounding the core volcanoes.
Rwanda is quite a shock for any persons, like ourselves, living in East Africa for the last four months. For starters, the roads! They are paved! With lines painted clearly. The sides aren’t a jagged erosion that looks like someone pulled old tape off a bad paint job. There is a curb. And sidewalks! But people still walk on the side without the sidewalk, because they Afri-can. Traffic lights exist and are obeyed, they even have a countdown to alert drivers when the green and red light will change. The boda bodas are all registered which means drivers wear a vest of sorts with their number on it and are required to carry a helmet for their passenger (only one passenger per boda, unlike in Kampala where you can see upwards of 5 passengers on one bike: smallest kid in front, driver, kid, kid, parent).
Kigali is set on a few hills and is very reminiscent of San Francisco in that regard. The people are helpful, but seemingly not as friendly as those we have seen thus far. As we all know in 1994 during the months of roughly April – June, 800,000 Rwandans were brutally murdered at the hands of the Hutu ruling majority, they made up about 85% of the population. The country was severely divided into Hutus and Tutsis, and after such a savage display of humanity, a future without similar reprisals and retribution seemed unlikely. Despite the odds, Rwanda has pushed forward and been able to garner a reputation as a country without a divide, everyone is Rwandan, at least that is what we are told and read.
Beautiful roads and a government that scoffs at corruption aside, elements of 17 years ago are still in the forefront. The man in charge of collecting money and distributing tickets at the taxi stand is missing a finger, another young man taps people with an arm that stubs after the elbow asking for money, the nice young gentleman who practically runs the hotel we patronize speaks of the genocide episode as something that we must never forget, but also a phase in time we must move forward from. Most everyone we run into was there when during those dark 100 days hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen were brutally murdered. It is a very discomforting idea to process. We were not in Kigali long enough to really speak to anyone about this or get a general pulse of the people, but after visiting the Genocide Memorial, a museum erected to educate about the genocide, I did not know how the country can move forward from such a thing. But as humans do, they have bounced back, however, awkward the bounce may be, and hopefully the future is bright.
