While visiting her family in Bukavu, Zaire, in 1996, travel writer Dervla Murphy fell in love with the region surrounding Lake Kivu and resolved to return. In January 1997 she arrived in Rwanda, intending to trek through the mountains flanking Lake Kivu's eastern shore, en route to Bukavu. She found Rwanda still deeply traumatised by the genocide of 1994, in which more than 750,000 people, mostly minority Tutsi, were murdered.
The recent mass-return of refugees, the lingering tension in the refugee camps of eastern Zaire, and Laurent Kabila's rebellion there, had combined to put the en- tire Lake Kivu region into a state of high tension.
Unable to trek amid the resurgent violence of Rwanda, or to cross into Zaire, Murphy travelled between Rwanda's cities and towns, talking to people about the genocide and its aftermath. In the chapter of Visiting Rwanda from which the following extract is taken, Murphy describes a series of day trips she took with aid workers who were attempting, too often unsuccessfully, to grapple with the tragic legacy of a mass atrocity.
During the genocide thousands of Tutsi homes were burned, shelled or otherwise demolished. Thousands of abandoned Hutu homes were soon appropriated by returning Tutsi exiles; more than 400,000 had returned from Uganda, Burundi and Zaire by November '94. House-building was therefore high on the RPF's [Rwandan Patriotic Front] "Government of National Unity" agenda and for obvious reasons was a "project" that greatly appealed to aid agencies. (Photographs of smiling families moving into their new homes - provided by kind people like you and me - are a fund-raiser's delight.)
For practical reasons the government favours villages as a feature of the new Rwanda. If you want to provide piped water and sewage for everyone - maybe even public telephones and electricity, one day - it makes sense to create compact villages. But the Banyarwanda [the people of Rwanda, both Hutu and Tutsi] have never lived in villages and, despite their traditional subservience to authority, are resolutely refusing to do so now. (Incidentally, nearly 70 per cent of the rural population had access to safe drinking water pre-genocide, an achievement unmatched elsewhere in Africa.)
In one commune I was shown 192 dwellings built scarcely 20 yards apart, as specified by the Housing Ministry. These were completed two months ago but 191 remain empty. The other is occupied by a tragic young woman and her apathetic toddler. She is the Hutu widow of a Tutsi; he and their three small children were killed in her presence. Then she was gang-raped: the toddler is the result. Logically she too should have been killed; for genocidal purposes the wives of Tutsi counted as Tutsi. Looking at her I wished she had been killed. She never speaks, doesn't try to survive - neighbours bring her food once a day. But with what's left of her humanity she loves that toddler. When I appeared - a strange apparition, to her disordered mind threatening - she seized the little fellow and clung to him and stared at me with a mad pathetic defiance.
I'm not sure I'll want to renew my visa at the end of one month in this country.
Later my companion - Casimir, a '59er [in 1959 a Hutu uprising caused more than 200,000 Tutsi to flee into exile] from Uganda, now an aid worker - explained, "It's not only that people are against the new idea of living close together. Coming back from the camps they're afraid of being obvious targets for anyone wanting revenge - with those shiny roofs and beside the motor-track. It would be too easy to attack and wipe out villages and get away quickly. Most will only feel safe living in the old way, hidden on the hills, hard to get to. I say to them, `Wouldn't you be safer in a group, not just one ruga [peasant homestead] by itself?' But they can't see it that way, maybe they've too many memories of group massacres. Crowding into churches, schools, hospitals, commune offices didn't save the Tutsi. Many survivors don't understand how the refugees were forced to go to camps by the organisers. They think all who fled killed. But I tell them I believe the killers are the ones who didn't come home, ran away instead with their families into the middle of Zaire."
It is disconcerting to see so many empty new houses when all over the nearby hills are two-man-tent-sized benders, made of interwoven sticks and banana fronds, roofed with the UN tarpaulins given to each returning family and often sheltering up to eight people. More than 35,000 returned to this particular commune in November and December.
Tin roofs are given to aid agencies by the UNHCR [UN High Commission for Refugees], which imports them from Nairobi at considerable expense. The government opposes this arrangement, arguing that a valuable local skill (tile-making) is being lost, and anyway tiles are cheaper - in fact cost only the makers' time and energy, plus firewood for baking. And wood could be bought from the government's own plantations, thus circulating aid money in Rwanda instead of spending it in Kenya. Now, of course, tiles are coming to be seen as inferior, old-fashioned - and some people are demanding tin instead of wooden doors. The UNHCR insists that, given the need to house thousands rapidly, tin roofs make sense. There is, however, no shortage of labour here; Rwanda swarms with jobless young males. The only real advantage of a tin roof is for rain-collection, yet none of the "Shelter Programmes" I have seen includes guttering - not an expensive extra, nor is the tar-barrel to go with it. All these shining metallic sheets are so offensive I wince each time we come upon a rash of them - and they won't look much better when rusted. In contrast, the long-lasting red-brown tiles merge perfectly with the landscape.
In another commune we visited a site on which a score of returnee men are working quickly and cheerfully to build themselves new homes with well-made, sun-dried mud bricks. Casimir's NGO [non-governmental organisation] is arranging to transport their tin roofs from Kigali and is itself paying for the wooden doors and tiny shutters, to be made by a local carpenter.
Some WFP [World Food Programme] boffins are considering a scheme to provide these men with free food while they build, and Casimir voiced his doubts about this. "Is it sensible? Look how they are now, they must have food enough or they couldn't work so hard at such heavy labour. If the WFP comes along with hand-outs they could begin to think they should get wages too - instead of working voluntarily, independently. That way you set up more of this dependency we're cursed with. Why not leave them as they are, happy and proud to be building their own homes? Anyway most donated food is sold at high prices to buy banana beer. Or sometimes - not so often - to buy more palatable food."
Topographically this was an unusual site, a long, level, grassy ridge-top, the nearest thing I have seen to a plateau in Rwanda. "Here used to be many cattle," said Casimir. "Tutsi cattle - none left. Most cattle were killed too, then eaten. People enjoyed many big feasts in those days. The ones not killed they took to the camps, loaded in FAR trucks [from the former Hutu Rwandan army]. You've heard looting was part of the plan? That was smart! Permission to loot - official encouragement to loot - got thousands joining the interahamwe [Hutu militia].
Very poor idle young men. Then they were given beer to make them keener to kill. Often rich local businessmen donated beer - their contribution . . . Everything was looted from the Tutsi - and from the Hutu `enemy'. Money, livestock, household goods, clothes - everything. And immediately the confiscated land was used or `rented out' by the commune's officials. You were asking me about the neglected land - I think it was neglected sometimes because it was Tutsi-owned, making people superstitious about using it. A few Hutu have admitted to me they felt that way."
Casimir confirmed that many survivors survived simply because they could afford to pay off the interahamwe. The maimed man I met in "Granny's" ruga was one such. He promised to tell two interahamwe where his cash was hidden if they took him to hospital; an arm and a hand had to be amputated but he kept his life at the cost of a mere RF10,000 (about £20).
To me this aspect of the genocide seems peculiarly dreadful; another proof that the killings were far from being "an upsurge of ancient tribal hatred". The bought-off militia were betraying their "cause"; they should have disdained all cash offers and got on with the killing. Their failure to do so concentrates the mind, very unpleasantly, on the economic impetus behind the genocide. Most Tutsi peasants were no better off than their Hutu neighbours, yet what little they had could be possessed by their killers. Is it reasonable to deny, as some do, that overpopulation made easier the organisation of the genocide? A frightening thought, when one looks ahead, globally.
Elsewhere, I visited a housing project specifically for parentless children - a modest project, run by a small NGO.
Over-emotionalism is not one of my flaws yet among those children I more than once came close to tears. For a young family to be orphaned is under any circumstances tragic - but normally, in Africa, a supporting network of relatives and friends remains. For many of these Tutsi orphans, there is nobody left. Everyone they or their parents were close to is dead. The combination of their utter destitution and their joyless, haunted faces shattered me. And their terrible aura of hopeless loneliness was accentuated by their physical isolation as they struggled to build new homes on remote plots.
The first family on Angeline's list (five children, the eldest a girl of 15) lives 30 minutes' walk from the motor-track. Their present home is a leaking round thatched hut no bigger than many African poultry-huts - barely high enough for me to stand up in. Their possessions are: one battered saucepan, one ladle, one blanket (donated) spread on banana fronds. Nothing else. Not even one spare garment between them. They use pieces of wood as hoe-substitutes. Theirs is a catch-22 situation. They are too small and frail to cultivate the three family plots and must remain too frail while they are so malnourished.
Neighbours sometimes help but themselves have little surplus time or energy. The building of their new three-roomed shack has been delayed because the young man hired by the NGO to do the job - he comes from the nearest ruga - fell ill two weeks ago. Now he is back on the job, helped by several small boys enlisted as voluntary labour. An unexpectedly urban note was struck by a cocky young man wearing new blue jeans, a striped anorak, a green baseball cap and trainers. He sat on a camp stool cradling on his lap a giant ghetto-blaster with its aerial fully extended. Happily this machine was not working. When we arrived he remained seated and ignored us. In turn Angeline and Eugene - her team-mate, also Hutu - ignored him. He is this cellule's responsable [junior local official] and takes it upon himself to "supervise" NGO-funded building in the hope of being able to extract a "fee" from some naive foreign aid worker. "He should be in prison," Angeline said afterwards. "He was a killer."
As an NGO protege I have of course been witnessing the worst of rural poverty and post-genocidal misery. However, it has cheered me to observe also how many families have "got it together again" in less than three years - their plots well tilled, their homes in good repair, their donated clothes sometimes verging on the fashionable, their children certainly not starving.
My Rwandan minders, being intimate with the communes they operate in, are able readily to distinguish between the returnees and others. Some returnees are among the more affluent families, for reasons into which, I am advised, one does not inquire. This belies a large, brightly coloured poster (touching evidence of the RPF's striving for reconciliation) that is displayed in most schools, health centres, commune offices. It depicts a border crossing point - on one side a bare hill covered with UNHCR tents, on the other a forested hill overlooking a village of identical new tin-roofed dwellings. An emaciated, ragged, barefooted refugee family has just passed the barrier pole, small bundles on the parents' heads. They are being joyously welcomed by a well-fed, well-dressed, well-shod commune family who live - we deduce - in one of those new homes. The text is in Kinyarwanda, French and, significantly, English: "Banyarwanda, welcome Home, in peace let us rebuild a new Rwanda."
Visiting Rwanda is published by the Lilliput Press at £15.99 on September 21st. There will be a question and answer session with Dervla Murphy at Waterstone's bookshop, Dawson Street, on Tuesday, October 13th at 6 p.m.