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Jennifer Moroz |
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Butare, Rwanda
There are a few things from last year that I’d forgotten about.
Like the raised eyebrows.
Which like at home can show shock or amazement.
Or simply mean “yes.”
Of course, it takes asking a question a few times and getting no audible response to figure out that the person you’re talking to really isn’t ignoring you. You’re just looking for your answer in all the wrong places.
Well, that or they are ignoring you, as happens sometimes in class.
“No” also is a little different here. It usually comes in the form of “not.”
As in: Did you have trouble with the homework last night?
“Not.”
Takes me back to Wayne’s World days every time.
Another endearing Rwandanism: the use of the word “sorry.”
I swear, you could get your skirt caught on the foot rest of a motorcycle while dismounting, fall sideways off the damn thing, and land in a crowd of people, and inevitably, someone will say: “sorry.” As if it’s their fault you just made a total public ass of yourself.
Sadly, the above is not a hypothetical situation.
It happened to me this weekend.
I was in Kigali, on my way to the opening of FESPAD, a weeklong all-African music festival. The cheapest way to get around here is by “moto” – motorcyle taxi. It also happens to be the most hair-raising way to get around here. These moto drivers are nuts, weaving in and out between trucks and dodging into oncoming traffic to pass. Add the terrain – there’s a reason this place is called the Land of a Thousand Hills – and you’re in for quite the ride.
You hear about accidents fairly regularly. Luckily (knock on wood), I’ve never been involved in one.
No moving accidents, anyway.
My problem with motos is, embarrassingly, getting on and off them. I still have a purplish scar on my right calf from swinging my leg a little too close to the exhaust during one dismount last year. I’m thinking I’m not the only one who had this problem because this year, I’ve noticed that most motos have been outfitted with special guards made, seemingly, to prevent such things from happening.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned guards happen not to mix well with long skirts. Which was, quite literally, my downfall this weekend.
As I got off the moto outside Universite Libre de Kigali, where the official opening of FESPAD was taking place, I tumbled into a crowd of traffic police and concert goers.
This time, it was a chorus:
“Sorry!”
Mortified is not the word for it.
I scrambled off the ground and into the masses of FESPAD.
And when I say masses, I mean masses.
Walking from the main road to the university entrance was like being in a pilgrimage. There were those of us on foot, and those in fancy SUVs who drove beside us, kicking up dust into our faces.
The pilgrimage ended at a big set of gates and dumped us into a mob pressed up against the bars, shouting and pushing to get in, waving their tickets at the guards Then suddenly, the gates swung open, and something like the running of the bulls took place. Before I knew it, the woman next to me, an agronomist I’d been talking to, was grabbing my arm and dragging me forward to prevent being trampled.
Getting out was much worse. I had a 6 pm bus to catch back to Butare, so could only stay for about an hour, which meant listening to the opening act – including a set by Dr. Cloud, a Burundian hip-hop artist who is pretty huge here – and leaving.
As I left, people were still waiting to get in.
And they weren’t happy. They swarmed against the gates with more force than before. And to get out meant getting through them. The guards opened the gate a sliver to let me through, then squeezed it shut behind me.
I couldn’t move, locked between the gate and the mob trying its best to get through it.
I cursed bringing my bulging backpack, and the laptop in it. I envisioned opening my bag and finding it smashed to smithereens.
If I even lived to open the damn bag.
I’ll be honest, I had my doubts for a few minutes there.
A woman standing nearby took time out from shouting and lunging her body against the gate to warn me that if the gates opened, I better not try to move against the crowd. They’ll crush you, she said. Just move with them, even if it means getting pushed back inside.
I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t making that 6 pm bus.
And then it happened: security opened the gate a bit, meaning to let in a handful of people. But this was one pissed off crowd and they weren’t having any of it. People literally threw themselves at the opening, jumping over the car some (probably regretful) idiot parked in front of the gate.
I suddenly knew what it felt like in the final seconds before being trampled to death. As people stomped on my feet, I held onto that car for dear life, my rock in a tidal wave. Had I fallen, I’m pretty sure I’d have died or at least pretty badly maimed. I looked behind me. The crowd had overtaken security and broken the gate, which swung helplessly off its hinges.
And then came the calm. It was over, the worst of it anyway.
I was still alive. And even had time – barely – to make my bus.
That was, believe it or not, my “treat” of the weekend.
I actually was in Kigali to try to get some work done … specifically to do reporting for a story. Really, I was trying to figure out whether Rwanda is cashing in on the “genocide tourism” you see at the killing fields in Cambodia and Holocaust concentration camps.
I had the idea last year, when I met a young Norwegian guy at a bar in Butare and asked him what he was doing here.
“I’m a genocide tourist,” he said, matter-of-factly.
The statement was so blunt. I was floored.
And decided to see whether there were a lot of others like him.
The short answer is: no. Not yet, at least.
The country isn’t set up for it.
More accurately, the country isn’t ready for it.
The genocide, I think, is still too fresh here to have tourists streaming in, gawking, asking personal questions.
There are reminders of the massacre everywhere you go: accused “genocidaires” in pink faded jumpsuits working on the side of the road, paying their debt to society while waiting to be tried for atrocities committed 14 years ago. And simple memorials adorned with purple ribbons and the word “Twibuke” – “Remember” – cover graves in almost every little town.
1994 is so imprinted on the national psyche here as the year the country started over that when meeting someone for the first time, it’s hard not to subtract 14 years from their age. How old, you wonder, were they when their lives went from “before” to “after”?
Getting information on the “during” is tough, unless you’ve been here for a while. People guard their personal stories well.
They’ll tell you the Genocide must never be forgotten. At the same time, remembering it is awfully painful.
Tourism officials don’t like to dwell on the genocide too much, either, but for slightly different reasons. The country is only now just getting over the stigma of being a place where people hack each other to death with machetes. A lot of the world still sees Rwanda as a war zone, and tourism officials are bent on selling the country on what it is now: one of the most stable and secure places in this part of Africa.
It also happens to be pretty beautiful.
So tourism officials would prefer to focus on that.
Given all that, visitors who want to learn about the genocide are largelyon their own. There really are no organized tours.
And there is little information offered at the memorial sites scattered around the country – churches and schools where Tutsis by the thousands sought refuge, told they would be safe there, then slaughtered en masse. There is no background for the rows of skulls, piles of bodies and bones and clothes people were wearing when they were hacked or blown apart.
They are just there.
The guides might fill in a few blanks if you ask a lot of questions, but language barriers can be a big problem.
Really, you have to come having done your homework.
The only real exception is the Gisozi Memorial and Museum in Kigali. It’s Rwanda’s only curated exhibit on the Genocide, providing visitors with historical background and context and the personal stories of survivors that most tourists wouldn’t otherwise hear about.
But for a lot of visitors, Gisozi seems to be an afterthought. Most tourists are here to see the mountain gorillas – 90 percent, I was told by most of the folks I spoke to in the tourism industry. Many of those people fly in and out of Rwanda within a couple of days. If they do decide to stay a bit longer, they may decide to visit Gisozi, or get talked into it by a tour operator.
But it seems most visitors to Gisozi – and to the memorial sites scattered across the country – are people staying here longer term.
People like me.
The country is crawling with them – NGO workers and volunteers and business people.
They seem to outnumber regular tourists by a long shot.
And pump a lot of dollars into the country – both tourism and investment.
A tourism flak told me Dubai World just invested $268 million in tourism development projects. The group has taken over the lodge and management of Akagera National Park – Rwanda’s answer to a Kenyan safari. It plans to build a high-end eco-lodge at Ngunwye National Forest, where chimps and other monkeys roam. It’s also taken over the golf course in Kigali, and the lodge at Volcanoes National Park, home to those famous mountain gorillas studied by Dian Fossey.
The Chinese also have a presence here.
Ditto for the Americans, who seem pretty intent on helping to build the country they – and the rest of the world – turned their backs on back in 1994.
At this moment, the country also is crawling with Brits. Specifically, Conservative Party Brits. The party has, it seems, taken on Rwanda as a bit of a pet project. They sent over a crew of volunteers last year for a few weeks, and did the same again this year. Minus the party leader. Seems there was a big flood in his riding last year during the trip, and he caught flak for not being at home to deal with it.
Some of the Brits are here consulting in their fields. But it seems like a big chunk of them took a TOEFL course just before coming and are now in schools across the country teaching Rwandan teachers how to teach English.
Over a few weeks.
Seems like it might be better for the Conservative Party (or rather, its image) than anyone else, but hey, who am I to say?
Ah well, I’ll say it anyway.
