things are starting to hang together…

some very interesting interviews of late and some common themes are starting to emerge. two recent observations….

apparently the government is keen on ICT as it is used to move their troops around and to manage various parts of the reconstruction effort. heard this from both demobilised soliders i interviewed. i took a look at the infrastructure set up as have been off line for the past 2 weeks (antennae down official story). wireless via rwandatel only available in gisenyi, cyangugu and kigali. hmmm. antennae for all users down allegedly as under service by MINADEF trained technicians. hmmmm

and get this. memorial sites that several govt officials told me were spontaneous in that the communities create them themselves are actually mandated by law, so says several participatns. one woman ‘found’ her the spot where her family was killed during gacaca truth telling stage to find out that she cant bury them on her hill as the govt passed a law that the bodies must be moved to a memorial site. interesting…. must get my hands on that law. not sure if that is law, or if participants are too powerless to challenge the directives of local officials.

all those chevres and not a roll of cheese in sight…!

did a road trip this weekend. travelled butare-gitarama, gitarama-kibuye, kibuye-gisenyi, gisenyi-kigali, and kigali-butare. saw at least 1000 sheep and 3x as many goats. some bits of the countryside had such animal density that there were road signs marking their presence, just like those signs you see marking school crossing zones! now with all this talk about entrepreneurship and innovating products coming from the government side, why has no one picked up the idea of producing diary products, notably that goat cheese roll which is covered in walnuts?

i can’t live on maandazi here people…!

hectic

The last few weeks have been particularly hectic, with interviews 2 or 3 times per day. I am interviewing survivors of the genocide, ranging from individuals who are young adults now, 12 years after genocide, to women who are raising children who were borne of acts of rape committed during the genocide. I am also interviewing those children. To say the least, the stories have been harrowing and I am struggling sub-consciously to cope.

Nightmares are frequent. I have a recurring dream of genocide in my home town. it starts with my mother preparing the house - making beds, straightening the living room, putting food in the freezer - as news that genocidal forces are heading towards our home. My parents disagree on whether we should hide in a local hotel, where my brother is working, or if we should stay at home and hide it out there. She forcefully argues, while snapping a crisp sheet over my other brother’s bed, that we will go to the hotel. My dad decides to stay home because there is a baseball game that he wants to watch on ESPN. So we go, my mom and I, along with my youngest son. My other son, and the rest of my family don’t appear in the dream. Pee Wee Herman is there tho….

We get to the hotel and my brother has organised a suite. So we are sharing the room with about 15 other people, including the mother of my childhood best friend, Pee Wee Herman, and a few friends of my young son. A hotel staff member, dressed in the white frock of kitchen staff, comes into the hallway of the suite, grabs Pee Wee, and my brother, and runs a small hunting knife, replete with bone-inlaid handle, along the waist, up the torso and across the shoulders of both Pee Wee and my brother. Everything is incredibly silent.

Then the dream cuts to me strolling in the garden of the hotel with my mom, and my mom’s friend. We are walking along like Winston Churchill, hands clasped behind our backs, reflecting on the situation around us. we look across the harbour to the hills on the other side of my town to see that where our house once was is now a smouldering block, with the place where my childhood home used to be just a scar in the side of the hill. My mom says, “I guess that’s it for your father”.

At this point, it is getting incredibly vivid in my mind. I force myself awake and turn on the BBC to hear that Israel and Lebanon are at it again. I’ve only been back in country for 2 weeks following a 10-day break. Am wondering if I can keep up the pace that my research requires (or is it what I think my research requires).

What is clear is that the stories of burnt out homes, rape, pillage, running, hiding, running, hiding are starting to weigh on me. Let’s see what tonight brings….

‘Rwanda reigns in the realm of human rights’

this is the headline on page 2 of a recent article in a prominent Kigali english-langauge newspaper.

the analysis goes like this, ‘compared to others in the region, Rwanda is a leader in the protection of human rights of its citizens.’

i’m thinking this, when your neighbours are burundi, DRC and uganda, reigning as the king of human rights in the region is not much of a feat!

ndaho umukara!

i go to Kigali 2 or 3 times a week. this means that i walk from my house to the bus-stop in Butare town between 6:30 and 7:30 am, depending on the time of my first meeting in the city. Butare is about 130 kms from Kigali, which makes for a 2 hour journey by bus.

when i go to Kigali i always seem to happen upon the same group of primary school boys. the boys are dressed in their polished school uniforms – crisp white collared shirt with the school logo on the breast pocket, beige shorts, white socks and black shoes. they range in age from, i’m guessing, ten to fourteen years of age. when they see me dragging myself to the bus-stop, they greet me in chorus. ‘bite muzungu’ (hello white), ‘uraho muzungu?’ (how are you white?), or ‘amukuru muzungu?’ (what’s up white?). i always reply ‘ndaho umukara! (fine blacks!). we all laugh as we pass each other on the street. this has gone on at least a dozen times by now

muzungu is used as a descriptor by Rwandans to identify white-skinned foreigners. when I lived in Kenya, it was more of a derogatory greeting that suggested the dislike/distrust of whites. the different usage of the word muzungu in Rwanda and Kenya is a combination of many factors, including colonial context, but I digress!

one morning last week when i was heading to Kigali for a 9am meeting, i ran into my trusty crew of school boys. they greeted me, uraho muzungu! i replied, ‘ndaho muzungu!’. the group stopped in its tracks, looked at me most quizzically; i looked back at them bemused by their reaction. then, in their clean and shiny uniforms, they all fell on the dusty ground laughing like what i had just said was the funniest thing they had ever heard! having a bus to catch, i said, ‘you guys are crazy!’. as i started to walk forward towards the bus-stop, one of the bigger boys got up, brushed the dirt off his clothes, and said in a very serious tone of voice, ‘madamu, we are not crazy, we are Rwandese…’.

i can’t wait to run into these guys again so we can explore the meaning of that sentence!

genocidaires in my midst

i have, living with me, in my ‘staff quarters’, a man in his 60s and works in the garden. he is blessed with enormous hands, and bears the hallmark sign of a life of poverty – wide, flat and calloused feet. his presence is the by-product of the rental agreement that i share with the owners of the house, self-exiled Rwandans living in Belgium. he is to act as their eyes and ears, while i am to pay his monthly salary.

i was told that “he will cause no problems. he is quiet and respectful and will take care of you!” being “taken care of!” is a cultural imperative in Rwanda, where women alone are a source of concern. so he is my keeper, and when Rwandan men figure out i am here alone, i tell them that “actually, i have someone.”

i speak a little bit of Kinyarwanda, and he speaks no French or English. every morning, when i come into the kitchen for coffee, he is watering the rose bed in the back garden. he says. “bonne nuit madamu” (he says this to me whether it is morning or evening; every exchange we have includes his wishing me “bonne nuit”). there is always a lot of laughing, smiling and holding of hands. he jabbers in Kinyarwanda, and i jibber in English. holding hands is a cultural display of friendship in Rwanda. there is none of the clicking of the tongue or sucking of the teeth that i have come to understand as a sound of worry or concern about a topic of conversation. in conversation with other Rwandans, there is always much sucking and clicking when the health of president Paul Kagame is under discussion, or when we talk about the genocide. but not with him; he talks and laughs openly.

because of the rapport we share, i thought it would be wise to ask him to participate in my research. he readily agreed and we have spent about 15 hours together in formal interview in addition to the time we share together as ‘housemates’ or ‘employer/employee’. but my feelings have changed. he told me last week that he committed acts of genocide, and that he has passed through the gacaca process.

from a research point of view, he is a gem of a participant. but he lives in my home, i share my private space with him. why does his participation in genocide concern me so? what does it mean that i can recoil like this? i mean, i’m a Canadian who is sheltered in every possible way from the horrors of genocide. i experience genocide and its aftermath by choice. but knowing now the intimate details of how and who he killed, i feel differently. if i can’t cope, as far removed as i am from the actual nitty-gritty of the 1994 genocide, where is the objectivity, or it that my research is nothing but subjective and i’d be better off engaging it as such?