Genocide Memorial Day

Oh my, time flies. I’ve been here exactly 40 days now. In about 34 days I’m flying back home with a bagload full of memories, experiences and hopefully enough material for an interesting travel magazine. I officially came to the conclusion that the only way in life to learn and understand is by travelling. And I’m more relaxed than ever, enjoying every second and trying to take it all in. I really dread the day I have to fly back home, cause apart from seeing family & friends again, there’s nothing else but everyday life that will be kicking back in. All the ‘have to’s’ will come knocking on my – imaginary, since I still have to look for a place to live - door and I am so not looking forward to that. The next 34 days will definitely fly by because I’ve got many cool things on the agenda!

Schedule change
Looking back at how the last weeks evolved, I must say I won’t be getting the Miss Perfectly Organized Award 2011 this year. I used to plan every single detail in advance, knowing exactly where I was going. But I wasn’t able to plan much in advance for this trip and while I’m here I often have to take a few steps back in order to move forward. It annoys me, cause I hate running around in circles. So, just to get that extra bit of time – and postpone the dreaded return – I have reinforced a schedule change to my flight itinerary so that I will be back home on Friday the 13th. Don’t worry, it’ll bring me bad luck anyway according to the messages I’m getting from the homebase: bills, bills, bills and policecourt for stupid 33euro traffic fines. The neverending BB = Belgian Bullshit. Some people really need to start getting a life! Like all muslims have to travel to Mekka once in their lives, all Belgians and especially the you-know-whos should come to Africa once in a while. It's an eyeopener.

Tours
After a nice chat with the ticket sales rep – you know, airline staff amongst eachother – I went on my second mission: getting some tours organized. I read some very good reviews about ‘New Dawn Associates’ agency, who focus on sustainable, community based tourism. A guaranteed 70% of their profits will go to the communities. I spoke to Anny, a woman with a mission. She wants to give tourists the feeling they have become Rwandan at the end of their stay. Five different tours take you to the depths of Rwandan culture. I am joining them on the following tours:

From crop to cup – Help out the factory workers pick coffee beans on the cropfields and eventually grounding and tasting your own perfect cup of coffee. Coffee is, next to tea, one of Rwanda’s biggest export product. For this I’ll be travelling back to Gisenyi at Lake Kivu and visit the washing station on one of the islands.

Bralirwa Brewery – Attempt numero 3. Anny gave me the ‘write-a-letter’ version as well and cause I couldn’t be bothered about that, I’ve put my name down to join them.

Dancing Pots – Batwa handicraft culture. The Batwa formed the third group next to the Bahutu (Hutu) and Batutsi (Tutsi) in Rwanda. These pygmees used to be bushhunters and thrived the woods down south. When the land was given up for agriculture and the remaining jungle turned into a National Park, the Twa had to leave the forest and integrate in society. Since they were not familiar with agriculture and cattle holding such as the other groups, they became craftsmen. This tour shows how the Twa are excellent pottery makers and it tells more about their culture.

Millenium Village Tour – By 2015 poverty and hunger should be eradicated, every child should get a free education, women should be empowered, gender equality needs to be promoted, maternal health improved, child mortality reduced, major diseases such as HIV/AIDS and Malaria combatted and environmental sustainability ensured. That according to the Millenium Development Goals for the African continent. The tour takes us to a place where they try to work on all these goals. We’ll be visiting a health center, a primary school, a genocide memorial site and a basket weaving cooperative. Lunch will be served by trainees who are getting a catering training in order to find work in the hotel & restaurant business. Should be interesting for my work.

The downside to all this is that you always have to go through an agency to go and see these places and rates are too high. Also, they don’t cater for individual travellers. You either have to join a group of minimum four people or not go at all. According to Anny it is arranged as such in order to be able to give the communities their share and be able to run the agency. If they’d organize the tour for one individual they wouldn’t be making any money. Still, they don’t get the concept that, if you ask less and so give less to the community in advance, then you will get more tourists to actually book a tour and they will end up buying from the local community. Now, they try to take as much as they can get, but people will never come back and some will never book as it is too expensive. This is very hard to understand for these people. I’m curious to the outcome of these tours. Usually I have very high expectations, but always return disappointed. Fingers crossed.

Light A Candle
Thursday April 7th is the day that the whole of Rwanda commemorates the start of the genocide in 1994. The war that lasted 100 days resulted in the mass murder of about one million Tutsis. It’s a bit awkward that they commemorate the beginning, rather than the end of the war. Because of that, it is a national day of mourning and not a celebration. All over the country, memorial services are held and survivors tell their story once again.

I tried to get a glimpse of such a service at the Gisozi Memorial site, but that was closed. Luckily I bumped into a journalist who told me to go to the Amahoro (Peace) Stadium. By the time I got there, I’d missed the entire morning service and the President’s speech, but they held another service in the evening which I definitely wanted to attend.

Finding myself in a completely deserted city, with everything closed including bars, hotels and restaurants, I had only one option left, which was oddily enough the Mille Collines Hotel. It played a major role during the genocide, being Belgium’s Sabena-run diplomatic hotel. I had some food (they serve Vandemoortele mayo and sugar from Tienen) and a drink by the pool and headed towards the Camp Kigali Memorial site by 5pm. A Belgian delegation gathered together to salute the ten UNAMIR soldiers that were killed during their peace mission.

Right after that service, which only took about 30 minutes, I took a bus back to the Amahoro stadium for the ‘Light A Candle’ event. Vendors were selling purple ribbons for 100RWF, a colour symbol for ‘mourning’. Many people were dressed up in purple or had a purple accessory. At the stadium they lit a big campfire as the flames also have a symbolic meaning. At 9.30pm, President Kagame joined the ceremony and was seated about 100m away from me. The whole evening Rwandan artists sang songs about the events of the genocide and others speeched until we finally lit our candles around 10pm. After the songs I tended to clap my hands, but I was told not to by my neighbour Alvin. “Clapping is to express joy and celebration. This is a sad day, so we don’t clap”.

I had to make a move soon after, because of this stupid curfew, but from what I’ve heard, they showed real footage of the genocide. Apparently it set off a wave of emotion through the stadium and many people started screaming and had to be taken out. The President even stopped the film, because it was getting out of hand. I’m a bit annoyed I missed out on that because I really wanted to get a good impression of the people’s mindset and atmosphere during such an event. I guess the only good thing was that I got out before a few thousand others did and I found the gate still open when I got home. Which was better than trying to find a hotel in the middle of the night with a credit card that doesn’t work.

Relaxed atmosphere
Overall, I found the atmosphere pretty relaxed. The stadium was filled with young people of whom most weren’t around at that time, but still wanted to pay tribute to those who lost their lives. One of them was 29-year old Alvin whom I mentioned earlier. This Business Administration student was born in Kampala, Uganda as a son of refugees. He came back to Rwanda four years ago when the government persuaded all the refugees to ‘come back home’. Rwanda is still rebuilding after the war and many of the refugees got a good education abroad. Their skills are highly needed now in their homecountry “in order to invest, create jobs and generate income,” Alvin explained. And thus the government is trying to bring everyone back. “We are proud to be Rwandan and we do want to come back and help our country,” Alvin concluded.

Until Monday, people will travel around the country to visit the various memorial sites. In a way, the genocide has become part of the tourism business as well. Skulls, bones, mass graves… are all on display because the government wants people to be confronted with what happened in order for history never to repeat itself. But on the other hand I wonder whether or not these people should be given a proper burial so they can finally put their ‘souls’ to rest. Especially overhere, where people are very religious and even believe that taking a picture would take their soul away. I will try and get an answer to this question one of the following days.

But to conclude a sad day I want to finish by something really funny. While there was hardly any public transport in the city center, I walked all the way down to the Nyabugogo market to catch a bus to the Gisozi memorial site. On my way, I noticed a small shop where one should definitely get his hair done: the Hair Force One Saloon. They probably blow dry your hair with 747-engines.

Tomorrow I’ll check if life is back to normal downtown and on Saturday I’ll be joining ‘Youth Against Genocide’ in their ‘walk to remember’.

Wednesday 6th -Thursday 7th of April – Kigali 20 degrees