Christians and Condoms, Hills Aplenty: Rwanda (a bit late) First impression of Rwanda: it’s beautiful. I never imagined it was possible for a landscape to contain so many hills. Hills everywhere, hills on top of hills, creating exaggerated shapes like a child’s drawing. Also: like the dumping ground of an insane experimental art collective, obsessed with creating every possible variation on the basic form. The product of their wild abandon litters the Rwandan countryside, but the project finally had to be abandoned when the tiny country couldn’t fit even one more specimen within its borders.

Of course all these hills make for a rather dramatic bus ride. We had more than our share of heart-in-the-throat close calls at hairpin turns, compensated by an ever-changing kaleidoscope of spectacular views. Everywhere, through this fantastical landscape, people are walking: bundles on heads, babies on backs, uphill and down, around and down and up again. I wonder if the see the beauty, or is it a luxury for tourists on plush-seated busses?

Second impression: Kigali is sort of like a mini Kampala. Even the taxi park is K’la in miniature. The difference is, Kampalas hills add contour and variation to the city, creating areas of vista and areas of valley. Kigali’s hills run roughshod through the city, slice it up at every turn. 100 meters down the road is likely to be totally obscured by a bend, while 200 m may be visible again having re emerged below before disappearing again into another valley. A grid system is completely out of the question.

Third impression: It’s a bit scary. Our first night at dinner we sit at an outdoor patio and eat tilapia masala, fajitas, spaghetti marinara. A small pebble sails in, hitting Annamartine on the back of the head. Streetkids outside, lurking in the shadows. A man with a stick (is he employed by the restaurant?) makes halfhearted, vaguely threatening motions in their direction. They scatter, but when he settles back against the wall they re-circle. More pebbles, periodically. No casualties. After dinner we walk out into the night and the kids swarm around, pleading with outstretched hands and big eyes. We set off walking, with vague ideas of finding a cab. We’re surprised to see the restaurant staff sprinting off in the other direction returning within minutes with a taxi for us. As we get in the begging intensifies: kids sticking their hands pleadingly through open windows. Then, suddenly, as the taxi begins to drive off, the strategy shifts. A hand shoots in fast as lightening and grabs for my purse. More hands grasp the door handle. We bang down the locks and fumble with window levers as the taxi driver slams on the gas. The kids continue running abreast with the taxi, first jogging and then sprinting, pulling the door handles, grabbing the bumper, climbing up on the back of the boot. The driver accelerates again, and the last few hangers-on give up and fall back to be reclaimed by the night. Rwanda has over a million orphans, mostly from the genocide. Though I’d read books, seen movies, etc., I’d still sort of thought of the events in abstract terms, as something very tragic that happened in the past, but people have moved on, right? I didn’t have the imagination to understand that the genocide is still very real and present in Rwanda today. The street kids are only one manifestation.

Other impressions: A plaque at the entrance to the genocide museum announcing the museum’s sponsorship by the William Clinton Foundation and the Government of Belgium. I wonder if their consciences are clean now. The museum itself, explaining the history of the ethnic strife, how the Hutu/Tutsi categories were created by the Belgians who placed the Tutsi (those who had a certain number of cows) over the Hutu to be able to control the country more effectively. Noticing in the museum, and even more blatantly in a newspaper article commemorating the national day of remembrance, the liberal use of the passive voice: Rwanda “was visited by genocide”, killings “happened” (no mention of who carried any of it out). Meanwhile the international community which (in the only use of the active voice in the whole article) “turned a blind eye.” I wonder how much of this pussyfooting around blame is necessitated by today’s political realities? It may behoove the current government, dominated by Tutsis, to portray the genocide as something that happened to Rwanda, caused by evil politicians spreading hatred and lies, and by callous international actors. It’s not that blame should not be assigned to the international community, but where are the individual Rwandans in all of this? Somebody raised all those machetes, and it wasn’t the Belgians, or Bill Clinton. Of corurse genocidaires have been prosecuted, some in widely-publicized trials. But by sacrificing a few scapegoats the government is also, symbolically, absolving the rest of blame. Maybe this is the kind of rhetoric necessary for reconciliation. Or perhaps it’s a cynical attempt by the government to maintain power by telling the mass of the people what they want to hear. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

Gorilla trecking (the preliminatires): It took a Herculean effort to get ahold of the permits. Only about 20 are available per day, so our choice of weekend was based on when permits were available. After paying broker fees, bank transfer fees, currency exchange fees… we ended up spending over $400/pop. Getting to Rhungeri took an absolutely harrowing ride: screaming around curves on two wheels, the little matatu straining to break the bonds of gravity and take flight over the edge of every cliff [I may be exaggerating slightly]. Finally we arrived as dusk was settling in. Our hotel was also some sort of religious institution and was packed with young chruchgroups. Blonde shaggy curls, hemp necklaces, and bad teenage moustaches on the boys; long conair-straightened hair, awkward fleeting beauty and ridiculously short shorts on the girls. Hormones in the air, inappropriate urges channeled into religious fervor. Approximately point two guitars per capita, and frequent kumbaya circles breaking out like pimples on adolecent skin. We also had several amusing moments when the hotel staff kept appearing in Tammy and Cara’s room to enquire whether were *quite sure* they didn’t need their double bed separated into two twins. God forbid (literally) any homoerotic sleeping should take place under their roof. This was actually a welcome change to the hotel in Kigali where each room was equipped with a jumbo-sized foot pedal trashcan labeled “CONDOMS” across the top with masking tape. Kristen and I came to the firm conclusion that no further investigations would be conducted: the lid would not be opened even the tiniest crack. The bins were huge, I’d estimate five gallon capacity. They were probably completely empty, but the alternative was something we preferred not to think about. Finally, trying to pay at the Rhungeri hotel and being told that, despite “We Take Visa” signs plastered absolutely everywhere, the hotel can not, in fact, accept our credit card. Why? Various reasons are given at different times including “we only take Rwandese Visa cards” (do these even exist in a country whose only consumer products appear to be one brand of biscuits and two kinds of beer? Highly doubtful.), “We can’t get through on the phone,” and “The papers for the machine are all locked in a cupboard,” (The Man with the Key Has Gone).

The gorillas themselves: Incredible. We woke at the crack of dawn to assemble at the base camp. Racing other cars because we were told first come first served. Thanks to some tricky driving and Tammy’s take-charge attitude, we manage to secure a dream group of gorillas to visit: the one furthest away, with over forty members including about ten babies, three silverbacks, and a pair of twins. The hike itself took us through mysterious bamboo forests, led us clambering straight uphill at times, squeezing though narrow gaps in the groaning and creaking stalks. Mosquitoes, like good and bad angels, buzzing in both ears and around the soft belly and lower back areas for good measure. Then, after a patch of stinging nettles with sharp pharmaceutically-laced teeth, suddenly we came out of the forest and saw… a gorilla, just sitting there in a patch of spongy vegetation, blinking in the sun. We stopped and stared and whispered furiously, “Is he real?” “He looks kind of animatronic.” “I can’t believe we’re this close!” Then he scratched his arm and turned his head a few degrees to the left. The paparazzi went nuts. After the first gorilla was saw about 20 more members of the troupe, as they lolled about in the sun and munched juicy stalks of what I can only say approximates marsh reeds. We also followed some of them into the deep shade of some jungle trees where we watched them climb, groom each other, and eat eat eat. It was, to quote Lonely Planet, a “humbling, awe-inspiring, life-altering experience”. Well, life-altering in the sense that now I can say “I’ve seen the gorillas,” whereas in my previous, what I like to call my “before” life, I could not. But seriously, it was amazing to see them and definitely worth the effort.

Conclusions on Rwanda: hard to come by. There were too many contrasts, too many highs and lows, too many moments of tragedy and comedy to allow me to say anything more coherent than “Rwanda is a nation of paradoxes.” Wow, profound. Too bad it’s already been said by every other travel writer who has ever set foot in the country. I put off writing this for almost a month because I wanted more time for my thoughts to crystalize. But, as that has failed to happen, these disconnected ramblings will have to do.

  ¶ 9:54 AM