expressing emotions...

Two women are happy to meet in the midddle of the road. Taffic can wait. Big hug first

water

Psychological victims of the genocide

A lot of victims of the genocide are dead... They suffered a horrible death. Madness was ruling in April 1994. Up to one million people lost their lives. April is known here as ‘the month of remembrance’. People mourn their lost loved ones; they vouch that it won’t happen again.

There is a second category of victims of the genocide: the physically injured, of course and also the emotionally injured ones. The vast majority of survivors have moved on with their lives and have shown incredible signs of resilience and forgiveness. The setting of ‘gacaca courts’ (a local, traditional, community-based system of judging people, of solving conflicts) that was eventually introduced to replace the more ‘legalistic’, western penal system, was very much instrumental to reconciliation between the two artificially constructed ethnic groups.

I have come across two of these injured victims of the genocide. They both spent twelve years of their lives in jail, waiting for their judgement to come up, but were eventually handed in to the gacaca court – which found them innocent and completely cleared of any wrong doing.

Both have been seriously emotionally injured. You do not spend twelve years of your life in a African prison, waiting for justice to make its call, knowing deep inside that you are innocent, without developing some emotional scar. Yet one of them has bounced back and is now deeply involved in selfless community work – striving to help children receive the best education possible. There is depth in his eyes, strength and determination in his actions and an overall aura of wisdom about him. I want to get to know him better, to be inspired by him.

The other, in his early forties today has not recovered. A fellow inmate – a well known artist, taught him how to play the guitar. He is at his best when he plays his guitar and sings the songs he wrote in jail. The rest of the time, he seems lost. He was married when he was taken to jail and he had a young son. Twelve years later, when he was set free, he found out that his wife had remarried and he had no home to come back to. He went back to live with his parents. You can read in his eyes that he has not found another purpose in his life. There is a mismatch between what he says he should do to get back on his feet and what he actually does. He talks about going to university and study commerce, about perfecting his English, which is quite good already (all self-taught!) but he ends up going drinking with his mates. He would like to make some money by having a ‘taxi-moto’ business in the area, but is unable to meet the repayment of his loan and has the motorbike taken away from him. Lately he has been talking about buying some bees and producing honey (the honey around these hills is fantastic!). He is talking about getting his own place to live in about three months’ time. ‘That would be wonderful, go for it!”

African lake

Two ‘G.’ words

98% of our genetic code is the same as human beings. Our population has been on the increase, lately

A memorial to the genocide, in Kybuye

A lot has been written about the  ‘F...’ word. How about ‘G...’ words? For many people in the world, Rwanda is about two ‘G...’ words: ‘Gorillas’ and ‘Genocide’, they do not know anything else about the country. The risk of stereotyping is huge and very dangerous: ‘Rwanda people kill their gorillas and then kill each other...’  Nothing could be further from the truth.  One step in the right direction would be to say (i) a few uneducated, desperate, greedy people used to kill gorillas, with the same frame of mind as some executives decide to cut rain forests to clear land  for mining and (ii) under the ‘right’ circumstances, after a ‘well’ orchestrated campaign of building up hatred, any ethnic group can suddenly start slaughtering another ethnic group along a similar scenario: Jews were the victims of such treatment in Nazi Germany, Armenians in Turkey, Ordinary Cambodians were killed by Cambodian Khmer rouges, Serbs were hunting for Kosovars not so long ago.

There are some encouraging signs about the two ‘G...’ words in Rwanda today: (i) the gorilla population is on the increase, gorilla trekking is the number one source of foreign income in Rwanda... so they are preciously protected from poachers, (ii) the dividing line between Tutsis and Hutus is slowly but surely becoming blurry. Soon you won’t know if your neighbour is a Tutsi or a Hutu. It is no longer required to have such a label written in your ID card (the Belgian colonial power introduced this concept of ethnic labelling on ID cards, as it served their colonial purpose well).

So, more gorillas, Tutsis and Hutus merging into one Rwanda, people moving forward!

We know what the ‘f-word’ stands for... What does the ‘h-word’ stand for...? ‘Hope’?

Boats on Lake Kivu

Venise Vs Kivu

Today, Sunday I have decided that it is time so see some water.
I have enjoyed the 3 hours scenic bus drive to Kibuye, a peaceful town on Lake Kivu (about 100 km long), on the border to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I am sitting on the porch of my room - right on the lake, soaking in the atmosphere, when a man on his boat calls me and asks if I want to have a ride on the lake... OK, how about in one hour? OK. How much? 2000Rwf (4 $). Deal!!!

I meet him as planned, off we are. The balance on the boat is delicate but I trust him... As soon as we start gliding on the water, he breaks into some African chanting (I can tell it is not Kinyrwanda, it is Swahili... Good guess, muzungu!). His very deep and loud voice resonates throughout the lake.
I am really enjoying this! Very romantic and exotic at the same time... Venise, eat your heart out...