Lots of Dutch, Kibuye, a heatstroke, Kigali and the Genocide

I have quite something to tell! First of all, I have been meeting a lot of people from the Netherlands lately. This is not a coincidence, as the organisations that I work with have very good contacts with Dutch NGOs, and many happened to be passing through in late March and April. In total, I met five Dutch and one Belgian working for three Dutch organisations doing development work here in Rwanda: ICCO (whose Toggethere programme brought me here), Terrafina (microfinance) and Wageningen University.
One of the Dutch I knew already: Monique from ICCO is the one who got me in touch with Ugama/CSC, the organisation that is hosting me! It was nice to show her what a good job Ugama/CSC has done to make me feel at home. Monique also took me along on a Saturday mission to Rubengera, where the white ICCO Land Cruiser (from Bukavu in the Congo) took us over a rough path to visit a pepper field in the hills: for some time I was in a white jeep cruising through Africa (see also the romantic adolescence image I described in the first Rwanda blog)!!

Monique and Hubert in front of the ICCO jeep!

Given that Ruhengeri is quite close to Kibuye, a lovely little town on Lake Kivu, we spent the night there. Lake Kivu is one of the Great Lakes of Eastern Africa and forms the main part of the border between Rwanda and the Congo. It is deep, going down more than a kilometre. In deep lakes like that, there is the danger of huge methane- and CO2-bubbles emerging, swallowing swimmers who then find themselves pretty deep below the surface. Apparently a lot of people have drowned that way around Kibuye, so when I went for a swim after an early-morning run on Sunday I made sure I stayed close to the shore! It was absolutely great to drift in the water and enjoy the view of the Lake from the Centre Béthanie, the hotel where we stayed. All in all, it was very relaxing to be in such a beautiful and calm place and talking Dutch all the time with Monique!

Lake Kivu in Kibuye

The week from April 7th to 13th was the national week of mourning for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, the event that had a defining impact on the Rwanda of today, and looking at the holocaust and the genocide against the Armenians, will remain on people’s minds for generations to come. Over one million people died in the Rwandan genocide and the humanitarian crisis that followed, which means it affected everyone here. It was a strange experience to be in Rwanda during the commemorative week: as an outsider, it is impossible to grasp the full extent of the horrors that took place in every corner of the country, and people know you can’t. At the same time, there is a lot of blood on the hands of Western governments, who through their passivity allowed the genocide to happen (or in the case of the Mitterrand government, helped facilitate it to some extent, but don’t get me started on that now), and as a European I felt somewhat guilty for that.
To show my respect, I participated in the commemorative ceremony on the 7th. Given that the weather was pretty grey when I left, I decided to dress like I would at a funeral back home and also not take a hat. Not a good idea as it turned out, as the sun did come out after a while. With the big crowd and the sun, it was quite hot, and apparently I suffered a light heatstroke there: I got a big headache, and my feeling for temperature was totally off for several days. I was lucky that everything was closed in the afternoons during the week of mourning, so I did have some time to recover. On Saturday, I had recovered enough, so I went to Kigali to visit the national memorial centre there. That was an intensely heartbreaking experience: the centre is from 2004 and documents in a very graphic (yet professional) way what happened from April to July 1994. It was very crowded, and so there was a lot of devastating sobbing from visitors for whom the memories got too much. I’m glad I went there during the week of mourning though: it enabled me to witness and understand the incredible grief that people still feel about the genocide.
Given the total destruction that the country and its society underwent in 1994, it is truly amazing to see the progress that has been booked: the economy is booming, and all the survivors do their best to transform Rwanda into the best-functioning country in Africa.

In Kigali, I also took some time to explore the city centre and check out if there really is such a big difference between the products available there and here in Gitarama. Thus far, I would say there isn’t: given the image of Kigali as the “El Dorado for rich Rwandans who live just like Westerners”, the supermarkets and shops I found were rather disappointing: nothing you wouldn’t find in a European town of around 5,000 inhabitants, and at prices for imported products that are even higher than in Gitarama. Maybe I’m wrong though, and I have to look more carefully. It’s not a big deal anyway: it’s not like I’ve been craving imported food, I was mainly looking for some decent non-stale chocolate. There are considerable opportunities for development in the Rwandan food processing sector: after all, it is ridiculous that cacao is harvested in East Africa (Kenya for instance), transported to the Netherlands to be processed in hypermodern plants, only to be shipped to Northern Africa as Snickers for the middle-Eastern market, and then end up back in East Africa when the chocolate has turned grey!

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