Monday, July 28, 2008
Another thought on Rwanda: Just think of the children
They will always find something to make into a game, something that will invoke easy giggles and playful glee. They will always be mischievous, reaching for the forbidden extra cookie or “bon bon” when they think they can get away with it. And like my mom once wrote to me, will always react to the universal language of laughter, running and play, even when that is the only language at hand to be shared. For me, this is one of the most reassuring and one of the most depressing aspects of coming to this country. Reassuring because this shows that, despite the horrific history of genocide, the children truly embody a new generation of humanity and innocence, vital factors that echo on in national reparation. Depressing because at the same time that innocence is so fragile, and humanity so easily manipulated. The children we worked with this week were so reminiscent of the children at any type of day-camp back home. You had that token young little boy, seven years old, who had more energy then the rest of them who immediately blacklisted himself as the “trouble maker”. You had the group of older girls, around 9 and 10, who glued themselves to the female leaders under various forms of adoration. You had the young girl who you noticed later was the outcast of her peer group. You had the older “cool boys” who were surprisingly mature and kind. There were young leaders, artists, athletes (mostly soccer stars! ask Alex…), singers, fighters, and those who were just content to sit on your lap all day.
In my amature opinion, this country the children are in is like a phoenix being reborn from the ashes, although the rebirth is proving to be far from easy. It is going through its growing pains where I discovered that people declare there is no such thing as Hutu and Tutsi, only “Rwandan”, all while there are still whispers of patriotism towards those past so called ethnic groups. While this country appears to be the most stable of all Africa, there are still wisps of mistrust in the air.
Which, considering what happened 14 years ago, makes logical sense.
All around as you travel throughout Rwanda you see the same professional framed portrait of President Paul Kagame, signifying the new age of this country, while all throughout the same country you see men in pink and orange, stark reminders of a not so distant dark past. Digging ditches, planting grass blade by blade (there are no sod farms around here), building new homes for those in poverty and cleaning the streets, these are the Rwandan inmates, most arrested for various acts of terror during the genocide. You can’t easily escape a past where murderers once consisted of almost half the entire country’s adult population… Apparently the government was once criticized for taking advantage of their inmates, by using them as free laborers, but the government’s response was by saying “it was by the hands of these men that this country has fallen, and it will be by the help of their hands that it will be rebuilt”.
Touché.
That makes logical sense too. Despite the whispers, this country appears to be on a positive track.
Then we happened upon a Belgian man, one of the past historical colonizers of this country (and as such we were told not to respect much of what he had to say), and he told me things that the rational mind still had to consider. Take for example, the genocide inmates themselves. Their time in the prison is dictated by a trial known as “gacaca” (pronounced ga-cha-cha) during which they give testimony to all their genocidal crimes and are judged accordingly. The men are supposed to be kept separate post trial so they are not given a chance to plan any false stories together, thus making their testimonies genuine. When I talked with the Belgian man he told me a broken story about how one of his coworkers who had been a refugee of the genocide was recently arrested and sent to prison because one of the prisoners had a grudge on his family and falsely accused him of various atrocities during his turn at the gacaca. The man is still currently incarcerated under these untrue pretenses. The Belgian man also said that in all three years of his stay in Rwanda, the speech that the President gave during the victory day celebration [commemorating the end of the genocide] has changed. At first the speech honored the massacred Tutsi and moderate Hutus, which is indeed politically correct, but has evolved today into a speech solely honoring the Tutsi from the Hutu predators. The man told us that he fears that the government has some sort of hero complex, taking the honor and glory they achieved freeing this country and using it to stay in parliamentary power. Even the upcoming elections he said are not entirely democratic, because each of the running parties came from the original RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) Party, the same as the current government.
This could be absolute hearsay.
This is after all, coming from a Belgian.
But it still makes one ponder. Paul Kagame has done some amazing things for this country, making it a true modern day spectacle. The country is still after all going through its growing pains. And let’s face it, no place, no justice system, is perfect, right?
Now again I think about the children, caught up and born into this modern day intrigue of identity reform. I think about the smiling faces at day-camp, and about how the children are so quick to draw their new Rwandan flag on any available piece of paper, and colour everything from the flag to zebras and giraffes in their national Rwandan colours of blue, yellow and green. We sang their national anthem every morning of day-camp, it was long and intricate, and they knew every word of it. And we have adult volunteers from Canada with us who don’t know how to sing O’ Canada. What is to happen to these children in the next coming years? What is to happen in this country? I think of the prospects for children back home… of course not every child back home has it perfect there. For example issues that rise out of things such as divorce, neglect and low incomes could easily make the lives of Canadian and Rwandan children equally comparable in terms of the quality of childhood life. Yet the government’s invisible hand isn’t something that can be so easily ignored. Canadian children, while not always given the most privileged home lives, still live in a politically stable country. There is no overhanging history of mass death and complete evil, no potential to inherit fears of what your countrymen are capable of or what your relatives have done or endured. No knowledge that your widowed mother is ill a lot of the time because she was raped purposely by a man who had AIDS and now she was infected. No knowledge that your widowed mother’s friend had scars on back because she was attacked with a knives while defending her family and had to play dead for days, only to wake later find her family dead around her. No knowledge on what it would have been like to have a father, or brothers and sisters, because they were brutally slaughtered with machetes. No knowledge of what it would be like growing up an orphan because your parents were killers and disappeared after the war.
I don’t know what’s up next for this generation. But I have grown to love them. Their smiling and laughing young faces will be forever be imbedded into my mind. Their unshed tears ingrained in my memory (the children here rarely cry, even after the most bloody gash is received during day-camp and then painfully cleaned with hydrogen peroxide). Pray for the children and orphans of Rwanda! Pray for the widows who bare scars both physically and mentally. And pray for a country trying to be reborn and find its identity in today’s world. For all intents and purposes, the country seems like it’s on the right track, pray with me that it does not get de-railed and that these children can grow up with endless opportunity and peace on the horizon.
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In the meantime this week marks our last FULL week in Rwanda, and Alex and I are still loving every moment of it. Again, thanks for the e-mails and comments! We love you guys and can't wait to see you and share these experiences in person.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Thoughts Pt. 1
In reviewing our chronicles from
Joy (Why are Africans so damned happy?)
A shot in the dark…
In
Hospitality (I guess they don’t like money here!)
One thing that has blown us away here in
P.S. On a lighter note: JoAnna and I are doing well and will spend the next couple of days unwinding from day camp here in
We wish you well and love you all,
Alex and JoAnna
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Whose idea was it to see the monkey’s anyway?
Unfortunately things did not quite work out that way.
While we did make it to the bus stop in Kigali by 7:45, we missed the early bus and had to book tickets for the next one that left at 12:30. We burned four hours walking around the city and then stuffed ourselves at the back of a very snug bus. So snug in fact that you couldn’t move even if you wanted to vomit profusely. Which is something I needed to do (and did…) a good 3 hours into the trip. And there were still 3 hours to go! God knows that was one of the longest 3 hours of my life… The roads were windier than an over excited snake doing the wave and the colossal ruts in the road made one wonder whether it just suffered an attack from a passing meteor shower. Such conditions made it difficult for one who suffered motion sickness to keep smiling, that is for sure! And poor Alex. It was a long 3 hours for him too (having to deal with me that is)…
That night, when we finally made it to Cyangugu we easily found our hotel (Hotel Du Lac) then uneasily remembered that we didn’t know how we were going to go from the city to the national park, Nyungwe, a 1.5 hour drive away. We happened upon a Belgian man in the restaurant at the hotel and he kindly offered to drive us to the park at 9 am the next morning. Too late to see the chimps (as we would need to be at the park by 5am) but in time to see other primates (like the famous Rwandan Colobus monkeys). So we took the man up on his offer, and set out the next morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed (a hot shower in the morning can put anyone in a good mood, especially if it’s the first warm shower in over two weeks)! At the park we were greeted with the spectacular view of the Nyungwe Rainforest. The smell was humid and comforting as the decaying leaves of the forest floor melded in with the many flowers and leaves from the towering trees and luscious ferns. The sounds of buzzing insects and chirping birds were sporadically interrupted by monkey howls and we eagerly anticipated to get a glimpse of the monkey’s ourselves. We hired a guide who took us deep into the forest (on trail and off) and gradually met up with a tracker who led us to the Colobus monkeys. Roughly the length of your arm (their tail being the length of your other arm) the monkeys are completely black save for a white “mane” around their faces and a white tipped tail. Their babies are born completely white, and we saw some mamas holding their babies as well. Usually this group of Colobus monkeys travel in a family of around 400 but we met with much fewer. Our guide explained that earlier that morning the chimps attacked (the Colobus monkey’s number one predator) and as a survival tactic the monkeys scatter. We saw the scattered Colobus monkeys! And they were amazing! Unfortunately, the camera we brought with us says that it has a zoom function, but at this point we know better. It doesn’t zoom. This is definitely the one regret we have about this trip. Note to everyone out there planning on taking a trip to somewhere exotic: take with you a GOOD camera! (with lots of spare batteries, we didn’t bring those either. My bad. Seriously.) So believe us when we say we saw the monkeys! Because we definitely didn’t get any clear shots of them.
So the hike in Nyungwe was wonderful, we saw beautiful scenery and a lot of monkeys. And then it was time to get back to base, and oh yeah, figure out how we were going to get back to Kigali… Later Alex confided to me that he was praying the entire hike back to the base that we would find transport back to Kigali, and that he didn’t see much of the forest on the return trip. What a guy. After some intense moments we randomly met up with a group of medical exchange students (from all sorts of places like Canada, Norway, Denmark…) and they kindly allowed us to squeeze into the bus that they rented, as the bus’ final destination was Kigali, even though the student’s themselves weren’t going there. God is good! While the ride from the park to Kigali theoretically takes four hours in actuality it was over five. I suppose it makes sense that the bus driver would want to stop at every single available spot to fill up a bus emptied by medical students, and stop at every small town and village between the park and Kigali… But it made for us another exhausting trip. But fortunately for me, there was no motion sickness…
We originally wanted to plan a weekend that was relaxing, set with a hotel and a beach, since the previous week was exhausting with day camp (which Alex informed you about last week) but then somebody suggested seeing the monkeys…
But in the end I’m so glad we went. I mean, we went to a rainforest! Something my childhood dreams were made out of. But seeing as we’re still needing some R and R, Alex and I don’t think we’re going to go to Tanzania next weekend now because we know for a fact that travel across the border is going to be a gong show… And we want a relaxing weekend at a hotel with a beach… Because this week is going to be another exhausting (but rewarding, don’t get me wrong!) week with day camp.
By the way, I think it was Felix’s idea to see the monkeys…
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Day Camp
We love you all, take care and God bless,
Alex and Jo
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Peter....
Love,
Alex and Jo
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Giraffes and impalas and hippos, oh my
Thanks for your comments and love,
Alex and JoAnna
Friday, July 4, 2008
First week (almost gone...)
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It was rough.
In terms of the layout of the memorial itself, everything was presented in a very artful, very respectful manner, also not only talking about the Rwandan Genocide but in the end touching on other historical events of genocide including the Holocaust, the Armenians, Cambodia, Bosnia and others.
Following our trip to the memorial we went to a “mall” to get ourselves some supper (burgers and fries! comfort food I suppose…), where we discussed the day’s events. After our supper, with our moods substantially lightened, we went to a little out-door night club tucked in the hills of Kigali where we met with one of the founders of the Center and his friends. We talked about Rwanda, its progress and all in all had a great time. So much fun in fact, we didn’t make it back to the village to go to bed until 2 AM! Good times… Tomorrow we’re all meeting together first thing in the morning to go on a little Safari where we can hopefully see some savannah animals. We’re very excited!
We hope this new post finds you all well! As I’m writing this my computer tells me that its 8:45 AM in High River and here its 4:45 PM. Crazy!!
Much love
Jo and Al
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
T.I.A
Alex and Jo