One of the things I was looking forward to most in Rwanda - and there are many mosts - was going to Akagera National Park to see Mutware, the elephant, who I'd been reading about in Rwanda news articles. Mutware (whose name means "boss" in English) is thirty-seven years old and has become a famous tourist attraction, with people trying to get him to climb out of the water, where he likes to lie and rest, so they can get a better look, and he sometimes used to oblige. But recently Mutware hadn't been as friendly or accommodating as he used to be. For example, last year he charged three tourist vehicles, stomping them to destruction. And then this past spring he started trampling in the gardens of the
villagers living next to the Park. The USA embassay went so far as to put out a security warning about him, but rangers at the Park say it's tourists' own fault if they go in without a guide, and besides, Mutware only acts like that during mating season, or when he's lonely.
I have an affinity for elephants to begin with and have lots of ornaments given to me of elephants, and Orwell wrote a famous essay about an elephant and I myself have also written a parable about an elephant.
So, when planning the trip to Rwanda we made sure that going to Lake Ihema in Akagera National Park was on the agenda so that I could go and see Mutware, and hopefully he wouldn't be wallowing in the mud in the lake but would be out and about in full view.
Early on Friday morning the taxi driver we had hired for the day arrived at the hotel to
take us to Akagera National Park (in the northeast side of the country) and then back to Kigali that same day. Cecile was coming with us and so we detoured over to pick her up before heading to the highway on our first trip out of the city.
Cecile is the friend from Canada who I hadn't met before I came to Rwanda, and is the one who gave me the beautiful sari which she brought with her from Montreal, where she lives. She was born in Rwanda but has lived in Canada for many years and was now back for a family wedding and to be a tourist in Rwanda herself. But, being from the French part of Canada, Cecile speaks French which I, being from the English part of the country, don't. But, in the times we'd met over the past few days, we'd managed to put her growing command of English and my strengthening recall of high-school French into a semblance of communication, and it was kind of fun. The taxi driver spoke only Kinyarwanda but that was fine because Cecile speaks
Kinyarwanda. And my husband Bob speaks only English, and with an English accent "to boot", so no one can undersand what he says (just joking).
As we drove along the road we spent most of our time looking out the window as it was all so new, seeing banana fields for miles and miles, the same way we see corn fields in Canada. In amongst the trees were very small houses, some in groups and others all alone, and tiny villages were built up near the road, separated by a few miles. Between the villages, going in all directions, were people walking or pushing bicycles. On their heads, or on the bikes, they carried bananas, potatoes, straw and water containers. Everyone was going somewhere or coming back from somewhere, to another village perhaps or maybe to the communal water source - usually a pump in a square. At this time of the day we passed lots of children in dark blue uniforms walking to school, some of them having quite a distance to go we'd discover upon
coming upon the school seemingly miles down the road.
What amazed me the most, and which is the personification of Africa, is the women walking so statuesquely with huge loads balanced upon their heads. And the little children - in training - who also walk with smaller loads on their heads, but nevertheless still substantial.
Cecile asked me if I thought I would be able to walk with a load of bananas on my head and I told her "non" in perfect French. But she challenged me to give it a try and so we pulled over and all got out of the car, alongside a family who stopped to wonder what we were doing:
Cecile, in her Kinyarwandan, asked the lady if she would let us borrow her bananas so we could try balancing them on our own heads, and she smilingly
agreed.
Cecile, probably because she has Rwandan blood coursing through her veins, seemed to be pretty good at it. She probably could have even let go, given more time. I, on the other hand, was a little less confident. Firstly I placed the weaved cushion of banana leaves on my head, as shown by the lady, and then Cecile placed the "beautiful bunch of unripe bananas" gently on top of the cushion and stepped back. I was actually quite amazed at how heavy they were, thinking that my main challenge would be balancing it for walking, not staying upright without buckling at the knees. I didn't even contemplate
letting go and came away from the experiment with even more awe and amazement of people who so sedately and seemingly effortlessly comport themselves down the highways and byways this way.
After leaving Saint Famille I asked the
driver to take us to where I could look for some Rwandan clothes. He spoke very good English and on the way to the shopping area we discussed the Genocide, the subject having come up after the visit to the church. He wondered how it came to be that we were in Rwanda and so I told him that on my website I monitor events all over the world, searching for the truth, and toward that goal I had written about Rwanda and President Kagame and now wanted to see for myself the nation famous throughout the world for having climbed out from below ground-zero economically and socially to now being the lone example of peace, prosperity and good governance in Africa. He agreed with that perception of Rwanda, saying that it was a million times better than it had been before the Genocide and that what Kagame had done to improve the country was amazing. He believed in Kagames wish that the Hutu and Tutsi forgive and learn to live as one. But he said that there were still some people who
did not want to admit to their role in the Genocide and were afraid of witnesses who could expose them. I showed him my Orwell Today card with the All-Seeing-Eye logo and explained that it was symbolic of what Orwell meant by BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU in his famous book 1984. At that point the driver turned around and said, And its symbolic of YOU watching everything thats going on in the world and telling the truth about it, and being an all-seeing-eye yourself. I thought that was pretty hilarious as I had never thought of it that way before. By this time we had arrived at an area where I could find some clothes shops and he parked in a garage parking lot where he said he would wait for us to finish. Bob, my husband, said he would go to give a soccer ball away and so we split up - me going down one side of the street to look in stores, and he going down the other side to look for kids. The first place I went into sold only material, no ready-made
clothes, and I was just about to walk out when I noticed a picture of President Kagame on the wall behind the counter. I asked the shop owner if I could take a photo of the picture and he said Yes and then asked if he could be in it as well. I said Sure, and then another man came out from behind the curtain and said he wanted to be in the picture too. I asked them if they liked President Kagame and they said Yes, Yes and then happily posed with him in between. The reflection of my orange blouse can be seen in the glass under the counter as I snap the photo. I thanked them very much and told them they would be famous one day because I would be putting that picture on my website for all the world to see. I did not notice, until I got home and developed the picture, that the photo of Kagame is on a soccer poster celebrating the KAGAME CUP 2004, which is so appropriate as at that very moment Bob had found some recipients for a soccer ball. When I stepped out of
the store I saw him across the street talking to three young boys in various steps of height. He explained later that he had approached them walking toward him and asked Do you boys play soccer? to which the boy in the beige outfit patted his chest a few times saying goal keeper. Bob asked him if he could take a picture of him holding a soccer ball. They all looked bewildered. Then he reached into his backpack and pulled out the pump and started putting it together. The kids were still bewildered. Then he pulled out the deflated soccer ball and their eyes lit up when they realized what the pump was for. The three boys and Bob are lost in the crowd, but on the ground in the circle formed around him, the little boy in the beige is pumping up the ball. Afterwards, Bob organizes them into a semi-circle for an official portrait. Notice how tightly the little boy is holding on to the ball, and how his friend has his hand on it too? But also notice that there is
another boy there who seems to be holding a slightly controlling hand on his shoulder. As soon as I stepped back from taking the photo, and thanked him for posing, he sprinted away and up the street so fast that he was yards away before anyone noticed he was gone. Then everyone started chasing him and Bob yelled RUN! which got a laugh out of the crowd. We talked about it afterwards saying how it was almost reminiscent of the little boy running from Saint Famille into the UN refugee truck, all those years ago. We were pretty sure that with those running shoes on and his attitude, there wasnt anyone who could catch him. When we got back into the taxi and told the driver about it, he said he had watched the whole thing. In the back seat of his car I found a baseball-size ball made of twine which he said was what many children played with, and he gave it to us as a present, and it is a very valued memento. After that we went to another section of town where I found
a souvenir shop full of fantastic Rwandan crafts, including a motor-cycle and rider made of banana leaves and a similarily made three-tiered mobile depicting seventeen characters in various Rwandan activities. When we got back to the hotel we arranged for the driver to pick us up later as we were going out to dinner with Cecile, the friend who had given me the sari. But that gave us a bit of time to relax and unwind by the pool with a bottle of beer for Bob and a maracuja for me. Genocidal saint famille On Wednesday, the day after the July 4th Liberation Day celebrations, we caught a taxi outside the hotel and asked the driver to take us downtown and to Saint Famille, the church where thousands of Tutsi had run for safety after the start of the Genocide, only to be handed over to the genocidal Interahamwe (those who attack together) by the priest who was in charge there. The breathtaking view in the top photo below is what a person sees as they come down the
hill from the main commercial area in Kigali. That is the Saint Famille church on the right. We would have gone inside but the huge doors were locked tight. There was hardly anyone around. As we stood in the courtyard in front of the church I told my husband a story I had read about how the United Nations came one day to evacuate a refugee exchange between the Hutu Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front. They would only take people whose names were on their list and desperate people were begging to not be left behind, as the Interahamwe came regularly to take them away for massacre. A five-year-old boy broke through the barricades and made a run for the UN truck as it was pulling out, jumping on the back and getting away. The crowd left behind all cheered. I recalled as well the story of how the Rwandese Patriotic Front had made a daring raid, in the middle of the night, into what at that time was enemy territory, and rescued 600 Tutsi refugees from Saint
Famille, similiar to how they had rescued hundreds one time at the Amahoro Stadium. I also recalled the story of how General Dallaire, the commander of UN unpeacekeeping in Rwanda had held meetings with the leaders of the Interahamwe, the gangs of murdering youths who manned all the road blocks and slaughtered those with Tutsi identity cards. He had forced himself to be polite and shake their hands (thus the title of his book, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL). On that same day - which was May 1st - after getting back to UN headquarters at the Amahoro Stadium, he heard on the radio that some mortar rounds had hit the Saint Famille church. At this time the then Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front were fighting for control of Kigali and people and buildings sometimes got caught in the crossfire. When he got to Saint Famille there was chaos, with people terrified and lying bloody all over the courtyard. The refugees, seeing him and his men in their blue berets and
uniforms, asked why they never did anything to stop the Interahamwe who were coming to the church all the time to haul them away. He said he explained that his soldiers were there to be peaceful not to fight but the people could never understand that concept.
To be continued Jackie Jura is an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events website: www.orwelltoday.com & email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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