070610 Kampala again

Sunday 10th June 2007 Kampala at Rita and Terry’s place again.
We left Kabale, fully intending to take it easy and sleep at a lake, but it rained on and off all day and was overcast and cold, and Rita and Terry’s warm and dry home in Kampala beckoned. We passed through much flatter country than anywhere else in Uganda, past farms containing the huge-horned, but small, Ankole cattle, could have been Estcourt except for the little plantations of the matoke type green bananas, dotted around the slopes. Lovely fruit: (avos, bananas, pawpaws, pineapples) and veges (potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, tomatoes) were for sale in stalls for next to nothing, along the roads, as was never the case in Rwanda. And we hit the huge speed bumps, ‘sleeping policemen’, in every village again, none of which were in Rwanda, and the eroded sides of the tar, and the hellish bus drivers.

Saturday 9th June 2007 Levasta Inn, Kabale,
We drove to Kigale where we first visited the Genocide Museum. In the first hall the history and events leading up to the genocide was graphically displayed. Propaganda was used to incite hatred of the Tutsis by the Hutus who called them cockroaches, only fit to be exterminated. The torturous way the killings were perpetrated, accompanied by torture, rape, hamstringing to prevent escape until they got round to the clubbing. Many were thrown into wells, up to 10 thick on top of each other and stones thrown on top until the screams could no longer be heard. In another hall were thousands of photographs and the intimate memories of parents who survived and saw their innocent children slaughtered. In another were a few of the bones and sculls of victims, the tools used (hoes, picks, machetes, knives, traditional weapons and anything the perpetrators could lay their hands on). In another section were the graphic details of other genocides which have occurred eg Hereros in South West Africa by the Germans, the Jews in the holocaust of WW2 by the Nazis in Europe, Armenians in Armenia, the Muslims in Bosnia in 2000, the Cambodians under Pol Pot, the horrifying list goes on. Outside, were the mass graves with the bones of more than 250,000 people (from Kigali alone) are buried, up to 20 in one coffin. And a beautiful garden where one can meditate undisturbed in peaceful beauty. Purple is the colour of mourning and everywhere in Rwanda there are gardens with purple flowers, in front of houses, alongside the roads, in the middle of towns, as if to heal the atrocities with beauty. All over Rwanda are memorials with the motto “NEVER AGAIN”.
The people are slowly healing under the present president who is uniting the tribes as one nation of Rwandans. Today, because the courts could not handle the number of cases, traditional courts, Bacaca, made up of relatives of the victims and members of the village’s courts, are to this day every weekend, 13 years later, trying those accused of taking part in the genocide, and bones continue to be discovered in excavations, wells, and confessed places. Violence is not tolerated anywhere in Rwanda and there is no corruption. Prisoners are dressed in pink shirts and pink burmuda type pants do much of the reconstruction in the cities.
We then went to two churches, one contains the bones, clothes, books, mattresses, utensils of the 12000 people who had sheltered there for three days before the priest told the killers where they were. The Hutus threw hand grenades into the church, and then went inside and hacked, clubbed and battered the survivors to death.12000 of them.
The other church is a memorial now to the more than 10000 people who were sheltering there. The blood stains remain where young children were thrown against the walls, their brain matter splattered on the roof. The roof has holes from the bullets. Both churches (10Km away from each other) are covered by a steel shed to protect them and preserve them as they were found.
The presentation is done by locals in a very matter-of-fact way and no exaggeration is done or needed to instill a sense of shock and horror. Every politician should visit these four sites and speak to Rwandans themselves, so that “never again” is entrenched in the minds of leaders. It is a lesson in humility. It is the leaders of the country who have the power to be humane or evil. Even as I type there are occurrences in the world where people are steadily being ‘exterminated’ because of their membership of a certain group, whether political, religious or other. The world does nothing even now.
I have tremendous respect for the ordinary Rwandan people,that they are managing to put the past behind them, and grow towards a future as one nation without anger and bitterness. There are 9 million people there now, over 300 per SqHa, in Uganda it is 100, in SA about 50. Rwanda has made a huge impression on me.
Rwanda apparently has a “Community Day” once a month when no cars may be driven, and no-one goes to work until 12 noon. During this time, everone has to go outdoors and clean up Rwanda ie, pick up papers, rubbish, plant grass etc. Because of this it is definitely the cleanest and neatest African country so far. It teaches the people not to litter as they will have to clean up later. A lesson South Africans could take heed of.

We left the beautiful city of Kigali, cleanest and most organized capital so far in Africa, very reminiscent of the lay-out of Pietermaritzburg, to find the Minister of Defence’s dairy farm, but couldn’t find it, and found ourselves near the border with Uganda in the late afternoon, so went through, finding out we paid Ush116,000 as a road toll, instead of Ush35000 as a temporary license at the border when entering from Kenya. We will try to claim a refund when we pass through into Kenya again. We stayed in a room in a very clean Levasta Inn on a hill overlooking Kabale. We chose a traditional chicken stew for supper, and couldn’t eat the chicken, it was so tough. How do you mess up a chicken for Pete’s sake? We counted the total number of putsy maggot holes: I now have 33, Nev has 20. I hope that is the end of it now.


Friday 8th June 2007 King’s Palace Gardens, Kibuye
We were both in agony from being hosts to a PUTSY FLY infestation. We worked out that we had washed our sheets in the Kibale Forest camp site and, quickly, before we went chimp tracking put the nearly dry sheets back onto the bed, little realizing the horrible consequences. The flies had laid eggs on our sheets, and when we lay down they hatched and burrowed into the tender parts of our bodies. We suffered for a few days with the lava burrowing into our flesh causing huge boils at every point. Kita’s information was welcomed and we put Vaseline on the points to suffocate the creatures. Theoretically, after an hour most of the lava would turn round and come up for air, when we would gently squeeze them and pull them out with tweezers. In practice some were more difficult than others and in our bumbling attempts to get them out, we caused much pain and suffering to our poor flesh. We have red, pussy sores now at most of the extrusion points, but they are not so sore anymore, the relief was instantaneous. I had 23, Nev had over 10, and we are still feeling the odd bite, but now we know exactly what to do. They go for the tender parts of the skin. We will be much more careful with our washing in future, drying it properly, and not using it for 48 hours to make sure the eggs die first. The maggots are the size of a big rice grain, and every now and again they bite as if someone stuck a needle into you. Some of the wounds have what I call ‘putsy poo’ in them and are pussy. Apart from the extrusion process we proceeded to Kibuyu where 90% of the population was exterminated in 1994. Dave and Beryl went straight to Kigali and we went to the King’s palace by ourselves in*******************. The king who built it died in 1982, and his mother was one first killed in the 1994 genocide. The present king is in exile in America, but the palace is still there and is now a museum and art gallery. We asked the sweet guide, Dianna, if there was any camping in the area, and she came back with permission for us to camp in the garden of the palace, something that had never been done before. We spoke for a long time to the caretaker, Ronald, about the present state of Rwanda. We also visited a milk bottling factory there.


Thursday 7th June 2007 Father Patrick’s mission, Rwanda
No visa necessary to get into Rwanda, and we had to drive on the RIGHT side of the road. Immediately the difference in road condition was apparent, from bad muddy gravel in Uganda to tar in Rwanda.
We took a gravel ‘road less traveled’ through rural precipitous, conical shaped hills where the road had to wind its way along the contours of the 60 degree cultivated slopes. 43Km straight line, took us the whole afternoon as the roads wound round the hills. Sometimes we would be 20Km from our destination, and 5 minutes later we would be 21 Km from our destination. We kept crossing over culverts made of poles laid parallel with the road. When one gave way under the Landy, we were lucky that the vehicle didn’t fall into the culvert. I have never seen such a densely populated rural area. Every (and I mean every) square inch has been cultivated and there are people all over the place. It is difficult, if not impossible to find a private place to stop. They speak French and a local indigenous language Kiyarwanda. As we traveled slowly down the narrow road the people ran out of their houses and lined the road to look at us, an oddity in that part of the world. Expressions ranged from nervousness, fear, curiosity to amazement until I caught eye contact, smiled and waved. It was like switching a light on in their eyes and a special contact was made as they grinned broadly and waved back with both hands. These people touched my heart in a way far more profound than seeing the gorillas.
We eventually ran out of daylight and we saw a modern building (church or school) where we hoped we could camp. There in the middle of Rwanda were two white people. We couldn’t believe our eyes and we fervently hoped they could speak English instead of French or the local lingo. They were husband and wife, an elderly paediatrition and social worker from Germany who spend one month every year volunteering their expertise in Rwanda at Father Patrick’s mission. They work with the poorest of the poor who have nothing, often orphans from the three month genocide in 1994 when 1.5million Tutsis were tortured and slaughtered, before the RHS, the Tutsis in exile, intervened. We spent a very interesting evening talking to Father Patrick and the two Germans about Rwandans, their history and culture. The view from the clinic overlooked Lake Kivu with its hundreds if islands and precipitous slopes.