The Muzungu Diaries

This past week we traveled to the southern province of Butare. We managed to pack a lot into three days, but I would like to focus especially on Tuesday’s visit to Murambi Genocide Memorial - one of Rwanda’s six national memorial sites - and the following day’s visit to a nearby women’s cooperative. My words really cannot do these visits justice; still, I think it’s important that I try to share the experiences, because of all the things we’ve done thus far, they have impacted me the most. Here is a report that includes an interview with a Murambi survivor, whom we met, and pictures (which are fairly graphic): Rwanda Genocide Memorial. 

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The Murambi Genocide Memorial was supposed to be a technical college. When the genocide began on April 6, 1994, construction was halted and some 65,000 people from the nearby town of Gikongoro were lured to gather in the school’s empty buildings by local leaders who promised to protect them. Within days of their arrival, water and electricity supplies were disconnected. Then, at 3 am on April 21, theinterhamwe militia encircled the compound and began shooting, throwing grenades, and then hacking victims to death with machetes. The killing continued until the morning, and by the time the attackers retreated, over 45,000 people had been massacred. The bodies were bulldozed into a large ditch, over which French soldiers later erected a volleyball pitch. 

About one year after the genocide, survivors gathered to identify and memorialize their loved ones. Most of the dead were exhumed and reburied in a more dignified mass grave, but in order to preserve the memory of the Murambi massacre, the survivors preserved 800 bodies with quicklime and displayed them in what would have been the school’s classrooms. 

There is no museum at Murambi. There is no text, no explanation, no automated tour. Unlike the Gisozi Genocide Memorial, which we visited the previous week, Murambi’s purpose is not to educate, inform or analyze. Its creators were not trying to make a political statement; they were not promoting any particular narrative; they were not attempting to color visitors’ experiences. Murambi merely captures an event in time and allows the memory of that event to expose the horror and heaviness of genocide, no commentary necessary. 

When we arrived at Murambi, we were welcomed with a short recounting of the massacre, and then led towards a series of low-laying brick buildings behind the compound. As soon as our guide unlocked the first door, I could smell the decay. The stench of rotted flesh has dissipated over the past sixteen years, but is still nauseating beyond words. Dozens of partially decomposed corpses covered in white, chalky lime lay on slatted wooden tables in front of me; I could have touched them, if I wanted to. I stood there for several minutes, staring at them, smelling them. But that was only the first of fifteen rooms, so I moved onto the next one. And the next, and the next…

 After several rooms, the skeletons began to look like shapes and not people. But then I would notice a wedding ring, or a little red sweater, or a tuft of hair. You can see how each of them dies. Their skulls have been crushed and their bones have been broken, either by machete, or by bullet or by blunt force. Every person remains stuck in the instant of his death. Their faces express the incredible fear, confusion, loss, hopelessness, or acceptance they felt in their final seconds of life. Their jaws hang open in agony, and it is as if they are still screaming. Some of them are curled like fetuses; some of them are contorted and press themselves into the ground; some of them are stiff as boards. Their hands and feet are twisted, their toes and fingers clenched. They raise their arms to shield their faces, cover their eyes and plug their ears. Men clutch their wives; women clutch their husbands; parents reach for their children, who embrace other children, who tug at their parents’ legs and desperately attempt to crawl away, even as they bleed to death. Friends died pressed up against friends, their legs tangled, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. 

 It seemed unfair that these people have remained exposed and vulnerable for so many years, frozen in the least dignified moment of their existence. I tried to think of them as living, but I didn’t know them. How can you imagine people about whom you know nothing, except how they died? So I imagined them as other people - my people. I imposed the stories of my grandparents and parents and sister upon them so that they could seem like more than bodies to me. I imagined everybody I love, trapped in a room, frozen in death. I wanted nothing more than to bury them. 

Often with genocide, death occurs on such a massive scale that it becomes inconceivable to consider each victim as an individual. Sometimes we cannot manage to think about such suffering until we convert the dead into quantifiable statistics. But at Murambi, each twisted skeleton offers a stark reminder that here, sixteen years ago, almost one million individual people - with their own personalities, and stories and little red sweaters - were murdered by their neighbors, priests and best friends in the most brutal ways imaginable. 

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Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope. - Elie Wiesel

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I’m sure you can imagine that Rwandan society suffered a terrible crisis of faith when the genocide was over; there was such mistrust and such resentment among people that the rift between community members seemed absolutely irreparable. But in 1995, a daring group of women formed Ubutwari bwo kubaho (“in the courage of surviving”), a cooperative comprising of widows of the genocide and women whose husbands had perpetrated genocide. The day after our visit to Murambi, we had the opportunity to meet with a handful of the now 1,750 members of Ubutwari bwo kubaho.  

 I must admit, I doubted that two groups with such opposite experiences could reconcile their differences. After Murambi, it is difficult to have faith in peoples’ capacity to forgive and make peace with each other. But as each woman testified to the deep respect and love she feels for her fellow community members, I became more and more optimistic about humanity.

The story that sticks out the most to me is one of a woman who lost her entire family of 12 in the genocide. After joining the association, she fell ill and was hospitalized for two months. She no longer had a husband or children to look after her, so each week, a different woman from the association, regardless of whether she was widowed or married to a killer, would go to stay with her. She was never left alone and doesn’t believe that she could have made it without the support of her community. 

The women of Ubutwari bwo kubaho became each other’s family when there was no one else left. They truly love for each other and are able to work together (the co-op make soap) to support their families, regardless of what their husbands may have done. And their children, who are all well aware of their families’ history with the genocide, constantly seek to create peace. According to their mothers, they are more afraid of repeating their parents’ crimes than anyone else. The success of these women to achieve reconciliation has been a lesson in tolerance and compassion, and in my mind, far surpasses the inhumanity of Murambi. 

Before we left Ubutwari bwo kubaho, we asked the women what they wanted for us to tell people back in the States, and I suppose I’ll conclude this post with their response: 

“Tell them to love. Please go home and create love. With love, everything is possible.”

Major apologies for slacking on the blog and the general lack of pictures. I could admit that I’m just being lazy, but instead I’m going to blame it on the slow internet. Anyway, it has been an outrageously busy past two weeks, so I’ll start from the beginning…

Last Tuesday, we bade farewell to Uganda and, after a quick stop at the Equator (see picture below), crossed over into the Land of a Thousand Hills, as Rwanda is so aptly called. My first impression was that Rwanda is an indescribably beautiful country. The road south from Mbarara winds through brilliant green valleys, flanked by thousands of steep, tightly terraced slopes. The countryside is covered in tea plantations and banana trees, and the brightly colored dressed of women plowing dot the fields. The air is crisp and smells like rain and eucalyptus. Rwanda is truly a spectacular sight!

And then we would pass men hacking away at the overgrowth on the side of the road, and I couldn’t help but to imagine bodies at their feet. Were those machetes used to kill? I’m sure some of them were; most of the genocidaires - that is, perpetrators of genocide - had access to no other weapons than their own garden tools. Had these men killed? Or had their families been killed? Or were they caught somewhere in the middle? I watched them swing their arms forcefully and wondered, is this what it looked like when people were hacking their neighbors instead of grass? It is impossible to forget what happened here; all things, even the most beautiful things, seem to remind people of the genocide. 

After six hours in the car, we finally reached Kigali. (Side note: Kigali is actually pronounced “Chigari,” and get this: Rwanda is actually pronounced “Dgwanda.” Yeah, that’s not gonna happen!) After Gulu, I really was not expecting this degree of infrastructure and development. The roads in Rwanda are some of the best in Central Africa, and between the newly installed street lights, the handful of skyscrapers at city center and the huge expat community here, Kigali is vaguely reminiscent of the good ol’ US of A! Whereas Kampala was just about the dirtiest city I have ever seen, every corner of Kigali is absolutely pristine. Every neighborhood is on its own little knoll, so even if you can clearly see Point B from Point A, getting from one to the other could take an hour after navigating around the hills. To be quite honest, it all seemed extremely unmanageable for the first few days, but I have since gotten the hang of Rwanda’s highly accessible public transport system. 

So last Thursday, in what most of us thought was waaaay to quick of a turnover, we moved into our new homestays. Each of us has at least one host sibling enrolled in College Amis des Enfants, a local secondary boarding school, which is where we met our families. My “student buddy”/host sister, Annette, is 17-years-old and has a seriously good head on her shoulders. We are in agreement on several important issues: history is obviously the best subject, clubbing sucks, beer is gross, and an evening in with Harry Potter is much better than a night out with friends. It looks like out inner-grandmothers will get along wonderfully! As far as my other siblings - there are nine of them - I really only know Sheema (7) and Vanessa (8) well. The rest are in boarding school and though a few of them stop by periodically, they are pretty much out of the picture. 

My host parents own a bakery across the street from our house, which means that I am showered with fresh bread and mandazi (Rwandan doughnuts) on a daily. I give up on being able to button my pants, but I’m definitely not complaining! Aside from the bakery, my host dad owns a dairy farm about an hour outside of Kigali. He has promised to take me to milk the cows, for which I am unreasonably excited. 

One of the things that made me most nervous about living in Rwanda was the language barrier. All Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda and many speak French, but few speak English. But since my family lived as refugees in Uganda for several decades and only moved back to Rwanda after the genocide in 1994, everybody except my mom speaks English fluently. As with my Gulu homestay, I am extremely lucky not to be dealing with some of the communication problems that several of my classmates are having. 

This past week, we took a three-day excursion to the southern province of Butare, but that definitely merits its own post, so prepare for a long, relatively graphic post to follow. Otherwise, tuzongera (see ya alter)! 

P.S. For all my GW folks, I am currently sitting in Bourbon Coffee! It looks exactly the same as the one in D.C.

P.P.S. I am eating the most awesome cheese Panini right now. I thought you should know. 

Last week I was in Kampala. I have nothing much to say about Kampala. It’s a city. It’s loud, crowded, smells like garbage, etc. It’s okay, I guess, but I’m not a huge city person, so I’m a little bit happy to be leaving for Mbarara, a town on the border with Rwanda, tomorrow morning. Still, being out of the homestay and in a hotel has been fantastic. Dependable electricity, hot water and waking up without being pounced on by a 2-year-old are enough to make me ecstatic. Here are a couple of last week’s highlights:

On Thursday a few of us went to Garden City, a shopping center and muzungu hotspot, and found Aristoc, which is apparently the most legit bookstore in town. I walked inside (it smelled so wonderful!) and when I finally found the classics section, I actually cried tears of joy. But really, when I saw those fabulous little Steinbecks and Orwells and Carolls, I literally cried. I must have spent an hour in there before I finally settled on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. I read the whole book yesterday, bawled throughout the entire thing (because it is so heartbreaking and so beautifully written), and passed it along to the next lucky reader.

Friday was my favorite day of the program so far. We went to Jinja, which is about two hours farther east along Lake Victoria’s shoreline. It used to be a huge industrial center, but its economy basically died when Idi Amin expelled all of Indians (i.e. all of the business owners) in the 70s. Jinja is still a center of tourism and is the Uganda’s Mecca of adventure sports. I got to see the source of the Nile River (literally, you could see a current start to form out of a spring in the lake), eat a TON of Indian food for lunch, sit around by a waterfall and watch Ugandan men whitewater kayak past me, and eat a cheese sandwich for dinner. Do you know how much I miss cheese?! I have not had so much as a shred of cheese, other than Indian paneer (which is so not the same) since I left over a month ago. I love cheese so much. SO MUCH!

Saturday was Ugandan Independence Day. People were driving around waving Ugandan flags and cheering, and though I was super tempted to check out some of the independence day celebrations, the group decided to stay in and avoid any potential al-Shabab shenanigans. Luckily, nothing happened and people were able to celebrate in peace. 

That’s all. Blogs on Rwanda to come!!!

Sometimes it sucks here. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to the buzzing of mosquitoes and find myself tangled in a net, dripping sweat, violently scratching my dozens of insect bites, and unable to fall back asleep because the rain pouring into my bed through the window. And sometimes I wake up at the butt crack of dawn when my naked, soaking wet little brother runs into my room and jumps on me. And sometimes an infant poops on me. 

There have definitely been several days when I wished I could leave NOW…and now I’m about to leave. And ya know what? That sucks a million times more than all the other stuff combined! As I pack my bags (okay, as I consider packing my bags) and prepare to leave for Kampala in the morning, I can’t help but wish for just a few more days! I have more questions to ask, and more Acholi to learn, and more millet porridge to make! And I’m sure that Jabez will be crawling within the next few days (he’s SO close) and I can’t believe I’m going to miss it! Since the little bros realized I’m leaving, Elvis has been drawing elephants and giraffes all over my room, and Young has been attached to me like one of those little pencil-hugging koalas. It breaks my heart, especially since I know that despite how much I love it here, I won’t be back for a long, long time, if ever. 

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t incredibly stoked about Uganda when I first arrived. What I really wanted was to spend me semester in Rwanda, and in order to do that, I would have to spend a month in Gulu first - that was just part of the program. I wasn’t really expecting much beyond a fun few weeks, yet here I am, pleasantly surprised by everything about this place, and leaving is so bittersweet! 

Whether I like it or not, tomorrow, I’ll say goodbye to Gulu and head back to Kampala. So, to all my Acholi friends, Apwoyo Matek (thank you very much) for everything!

“WHAT’S THE FOOD LIKE?!” 

It’s like…starch. That’s basically it. Not good, not bad, just starchy. I think, after three weeks of carfeul observation, I’ve figured out the science of planning a meal. Here it is: 

Choose ONE of the following: 

1. Matoke - basically, mashed plantains. It’s kind of like swallowing a brick. 
2. Posho - a ball of thickened maize goo. 
3. Posho, but made of millet flour, instead of maize flour. 
4. White rice. 

Choose TWO of the following: 

1. Beans (the only food item I look forward to eating for dinner). 
2. Dodo/Bo - boiled and fried greens with a mild bitter aftertaste. 
3. Cassava
4. Potatoes
5. Sweet potatoes
6. Fermented cabbage (I think). 
7. Yams
8. Potatoes 
9. Roasted goat meat
10. A chicken 
11. Did I mention potatoes? 

AND, if you’re feeling adventurous, serve with ground peanut sauce! 

That’s all there is to it! In all seriousness, the food really isn’t bad - I’m just being a kvetch. It’s pretty bland, and sometimes it pisses my innards off, but it’s food. Maybe a month ago I would have been bored with eating “just food,” but the more I venture outside of Gulu and into rural areas, the more I realize how many people would give anything for my “just food.” So I’m not complaining. 

Anyway, it’s not all bland. Every day I eat a fresh, organic banana (like, Israeli status, for those of you who have had the pleasure of eating an Israeli banana). Pineapple is also in season, and it is - no exaggeration - the juiciest, most flavorful pineapple I have ever tasted! And every night, Mama makes passion fruit orange juice from scratch! The fantastic fruit kind of makes up for the not-so-fantastic tubers. 

Apologies in advance, but this is going to be a long and not-so-pleasant one…

Once upon a time, the Luo people migrated from their native southern Sudan into Tanzania, Kenya (Obama!!!), and Uganda. Luo is an umbrella ethnic/linguistic category that includes several peoples, one of which is the Acholi of northern Uganda. Acholi is the language I’ve been learning for the past three weeks! 

In the late nineteenth century, the British began colonizing Uganda following a ‘divide and rule’ pattern, by which the North was considered to be a labor reserve and a source of army recruits, and the South was awarded most administrative and economic power. This structure denied northerners the same services, education and freedoms enjoyed by their southern counterparts. By accentuating ethnic, regional and religious differences, the British colonial system laid the foundations for a series of national crises and conflicts that would follow independence. 

Fast-forward to 1962, when Milton Obote became the president of a newly independent Uganda. Obote, a non-Acholi northerner, suppressed any political movement that represented southern ethnic groups. He made the mistake of forging a relationship with the USSR, which capitalist Cold Warriors like Richard Nixon weren’t so down with. So in 1971, with tacit support from the US and UK governments, Obote was toppled by his army chief, Idi Amin. Amin was a harsh dictator whose rule was characterized by human rights abuses, ethnic persecution, corruption, and political repression. In 1979, after the military overthrow of Amin, Obote returned to power and this time, he marginalized all people who did not belong to his ethnic group, including the Acholi. So, in 1985, Obote’s Acholi generals overthrew him. And in 1986, Yoweri Museveni’s rebel militia overthrew Obote’s Acholi generals. Basically, Uganda has experienced lots of really screwed up governments and lots of military coups. 

Throughout all of this, a sort of ‘payback attitude’ developed, and with every change of administration, certain members of whichever group happened to be in power would seek revenge on everybody else. So when Museveni, a southerner, took power, many northerners feared that they would be the next targets of such revenge. Still, most people came to terms with Museveni’s victory. 

But not Alice Lakwena, a self-proclaimed Acholi priestess who organized a popular Acholi uprising, known as the Holy Spirit Movement. Lakwena and her followers wreaked havoc upon Uganda until they were routed in 1987 and Lakwena fled into exile. Her father tried to revive the movement for a while, but he was generally considered to be a total crazy, so that didn’t really work out. But shortly thereafter, Lakwena’s distant cousin, Joseph Kony, took up the cause. His Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) began fighting a guerilla war against the Government of Uganda in 1989. 

Kony’s strategy has involved: maiming, looting, massacring, raping, and displacing civilians, burning villages, planting land mines, and abducting children to beef up his LRA forces. Because Kony’s militia was basically sustained by the civilian population, in 1996 the Government began a policy of moving people out of their homes and into “protected villages.” About 1.8 million Ugandans became IDPs - Internally Displaced Persons. Many of these IDPs have not yet moved back to their homes and remain in the overcrowded, unsanitary camps. 

There have been no LRA attacks since the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed in 2006, but a permanent peace agreement has yet to be negotiated. Unfortunately, as Uganda attempts to recover from 22 years of violent conflict, Kony remains active in areas of Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he is reputed to be living. 

I’ll wrap this up with a disclaimer: the history I’ve given is SO incredibly watered-down and is not representative of how complex the this national and regional conflict is. The LRA War has so many dimensions (political, economic, religious, environmental, ets.) that I chose not to write about for the sake of briefness, but in order to even begin to understand what has happened here, we must take several things into consideration. Don’t worry - I’m done. But in case you are interested in further information, here are a few resources that I particularly like: 

Internal Displacement Monitering Centre: Uganda 

BBC Country Profile: Uganda

Global Security: LRA Page