A detour to Rwanda
We left the northern region of Uganda for good on Friday. We’d already had to say many goodbyes throughout the past few weeks to our friends across the region, and now it was time to leave Gulu. The hardest part was when people would ask, “so, when are you coming back?”. Many expect that its not difficult for a “muzungu” to fly themselves across the world, and therefore don’t expect the response “when I get a job, and have enough money to do it all again”.
Reaching Kampala, we realized how much we had come to like living in a smaller town and spending so much time in the villages. Kampala is loud, incredibly busy, and expensive. However, it was nice to catch up with some of the people we’d met throughout our trip!
The last week has been a bit of a floury of traveling. We left Gulu Friday July 29th for Kampala. On Sunday, we packed up again and left on a 12 hour bus to Rwanda. And now I’m on a 40 hour flight/transit back to Canada. But as always, the traveling was always worth it.
It was so interesting to go to Rwanda, especially after having spent so much time in Northern Uganda. The two countries are so different. We’d heard from many people how beautiful Rwanda was, but the reason we were most interested in visiting was to try to understand how Rwanda was moving on from the experience of genocide. In 1994, almost a million Rwandans were brutally murdered by their own country-men in a premeditated 100 day massacre. As the world turned away, years of tension between two groups exploded in the most brutal way possible. The UN remained with a couple hundred soldiers as Western soldiers left fearing another Mogadishu experience, and the massacre only ended when Paul Kagame’s RPF rebel forces defeated the Rwandan Hutu national army and interhamwe militia. Since 1994, Kagame’s government has worked hard to develop a state-sponsored narrative of the genocide, especially through the numerous genocide memorials around the country.
The memorials are incredibly evocative illustrations of the impact of the genocide. Some, like the genocide museum in Kigal serve to educate the population on the Rwandan genocide, as well as other genocides around the world. Others, like the Murambi memorial site are extremely stark representations meant to serve as proof that genocide really happened. All sites house mass graves showing the unimaginable numbers of people massacred.
The memorial that shook me up the most was the memorial site at Murambi. Murambi is a community in Southern Rwanda that faced some of the most comprehensive massacres. As the genocide spread around the country, Tutsis started to congregate together in hopes that this would brig them more protection. In Murambi, people went to the technical school in search of protection, especially after local civilian authorities told them they would offer them security there. By the time the Interhamwe reached the technical school at the end of April, 50000 people had gathered in there. As the Interhamwe descended from the surrounding hills, the men attempted to put up a fight, but they were overpowered by the militia’s guns and grenades. When the resistance subsided, the Interhamwe descended upon the school with machetes and clubs and systematically entered each of the school’s 24 rooms and brutally massacred everyone. The few survivors were only saved as they found themselves hidden by the mounds of dead bodies. The memorial aims to graphically represent this massacre and therefore we were taken to the rooms of the school where we saw hundreds of men, women, and children’s skeletons preserved as they were when they were murdered. The memorial made me so upset. Upset that people could be so vicious. Confused that reason and compassion could be so easily forgotten. Angry that the world not only ignored the genocide, but even promoted it through arms trades and support for the regime… I just don’t understand any of it.
I wrote at the beginning of this post that we found Rwanda and Uganda to be so different. Just the way the capital cities look and operate are almost opposite. Where Kampala is clearly designed to be functional and for Ugandans (and therefore you find huge bustling markets, people everywhere, shopping, and a lot of traffic) in contrast, Kigali seemed to have been designed for tourists. The streets are completely clean and have little cafes and fancy hotels. Although it is a very pretty city, it is deserted. The lack of local presence could partly be explained by the extremely high cost of living in Rwanda, however there is definitely a larger middle class here. It is actually incredible how much more developed Rwanda is. Even just its agricultural techniques (although they also use hand hoes) is more organized and seems much more productive than agriculture in Uganda, even though land is very hilly and therefore harder to utilize in Rwanda.
What interested us the most however, were the differences in which the question of justice had been addressed in Rwanda. Similar to Northern Uganda, crimes in Rwanda were largely conducted by civilians and fellow community members. This created a serious issue at the end of the genocide, with hundreds of thousands accused of crimes. Where Uganda decided to pursue a policy of amnesty,
Rwanda pursued retributive justice, first through the international tribunal for the worst perpetrators, and then through local (“traditional”) gacaca courts. In Rwanda, the perpetrator’s community was given the responsibility of deciding what punishment was most appropriate. Rwanda therefore chose a very adversarial approach, not at all reconciliatory in nature, but combined this with a narrative that promoted a singular Rwandan identity over the destructive Tutsi and Hutu identities. The consequences of both of these strategies can only be judged in time.
Like our trip to Kenya, traveling to Rwanda provided comparative perspective on everything we’ve learned in Uganda. It was also powerful, and very sad, to see the genocide memorials, but visiting the country, it seems like the people have moved on in a very positive direction from their experiences.
Let’s just hope peace prevails in this region.
Reaching Kampala, we realized how much we had come to like living in a smaller town and spending so much time in the villages. Kampala is loud, incredibly busy, and expensive. However, it was nice to catch up with some of the people we’d met throughout our trip!
The last week has been a bit of a floury of traveling. We left Gulu Friday July 29th for Kampala. On Sunday, we packed up again and left on a 12 hour bus to Rwanda. And now I’m on a 40 hour flight/transit back to Canada. But as always, the traveling was always worth it.
It was so interesting to go to Rwanda, especially after having spent so much time in Northern Uganda. The two countries are so different. We’d heard from many people how beautiful Rwanda was, but the reason we were most interested in visiting was to try to understand how Rwanda was moving on from the experience of genocide. In 1994, almost a million Rwandans were brutally murdered by their own country-men in a premeditated 100 day massacre. As the world turned away, years of tension between two groups exploded in the most brutal way possible. The UN remained with a couple hundred soldiers as Western soldiers left fearing another Mogadishu experience, and the massacre only ended when Paul Kagame’s RPF rebel forces defeated the Rwandan Hutu national army and interhamwe militia. Since 1994, Kagame’s government has worked hard to develop a state-sponsored narrative of the genocide, especially through the numerous genocide memorials around the country.
The memorials are incredibly evocative illustrations of the impact of the genocide. Some, like the genocide museum in Kigal serve to educate the population on the Rwandan genocide, as well as other genocides around the world. Others, like the Murambi memorial site are extremely stark representations meant to serve as proof that genocide really happened. All sites house mass graves showing the unimaginable numbers of people massacred.
The memorial that shook me up the most was the memorial site at Murambi. Murambi is a community in Southern Rwanda that faced some of the most comprehensive massacres. As the genocide spread around the country, Tutsis started to congregate together in hopes that this would brig them more protection. In Murambi, people went to the technical school in search of protection, especially after local civilian authorities told them they would offer them security there. By the time the Interhamwe reached the technical school at the end of April, 50000 people had gathered in there. As the Interhamwe descended from the surrounding hills, the men attempted to put up a fight, but they were overpowered by the militia’s guns and grenades. When the resistance subsided, the Interhamwe descended upon the school with machetes and clubs and systematically entered each of the school’s 24 rooms and brutally massacred everyone. The few survivors were only saved as they found themselves hidden by the mounds of dead bodies. The memorial aims to graphically represent this massacre and therefore we were taken to the rooms of the school where we saw hundreds of men, women, and children’s skeletons preserved as they were when they were murdered. The memorial made me so upset. Upset that people could be so vicious. Confused that reason and compassion could be so easily forgotten. Angry that the world not only ignored the genocide, but even promoted it through arms trades and support for the regime… I just don’t understand any of it.
I wrote at the beginning of this post that we found Rwanda and Uganda to be so different. Just the way the capital cities look and operate are almost opposite. Where Kampala is clearly designed to be functional and for Ugandans (and therefore you find huge bustling markets, people everywhere, shopping, and a lot of traffic) in contrast, Kigali seemed to have been designed for tourists. The streets are completely clean and have little cafes and fancy hotels. Although it is a very pretty city, it is deserted. The lack of local presence could partly be explained by the extremely high cost of living in Rwanda, however there is definitely a larger middle class here. It is actually incredible how much more developed Rwanda is. Even just its agricultural techniques (although they also use hand hoes) is more organized and seems much more productive than agriculture in Uganda, even though land is very hilly and therefore harder to utilize in Rwanda.
What interested us the most however, were the differences in which the question of justice had been addressed in Rwanda. Similar to Northern Uganda, crimes in Rwanda were largely conducted by civilians and fellow community members. This created a serious issue at the end of the genocide, with hundreds of thousands accused of crimes. Where Uganda decided to pursue a policy of amnesty,
Rwanda pursued retributive justice, first through the international tribunal for the worst perpetrators, and then through local (“traditional”) gacaca courts. In Rwanda, the perpetrator’s community was given the responsibility of deciding what punishment was most appropriate. Rwanda therefore chose a very adversarial approach, not at all reconciliatory in nature, but combined this with a narrative that promoted a singular Rwandan identity over the destructive Tutsi and Hutu identities. The consequences of both of these strategies can only be judged in time.
Like our trip to Kenya, traveling to Rwanda provided comparative perspective on everything we’ve learned in Uganda. It was also powerful, and very sad, to see the genocide memorials, but visiting the country, it seems like the people have moved on in a very positive direction from their experiences.
Let’s just hope peace prevails in this region.
Comments
Post a Comment