Martin:
How to feel about Rwanda after Burundi? As Annemarie wrote earlier Rwanda's tiny southern neighbour is a country about which very little seems to have been written. Some told us it might be dangerous to go there. That it was poor and unstable, liable to erupt into violence at any point. That crime was rife. True, it's certainly not on the tourist map. With poor infrastructure and very little to attract visitors - unless of course they intend training for the mountain stage of the Tour de France. We'd only be granted a three day transit visa so our journey through the country was swift - but it was fascinating and I think we got some measure of Burundi even in such a short time. It's a stunningly beautiful country and if it can solve its problems and find some stability then surely it must have a bright future.
Rwanda on the other hand is a bit of an enigma. For the last decade or so it's been a "bucket list" destination - largely due to the opportunities it offers to go gorilla trekking in its northern forests. Yet its only 20 years since the country tore itself despite. Over the course of a 100 days in 1994, up to a million of it's citizens, 20% of the population and 70% of the Tutsis then living in the country, were brutally murdered in a planned genocide by the largely Hutu political elite.
Yet today Rwanda is a success story. Its progress towards the modern world one of the most rapid in Africa. A remarkable turn around and one the government of the country and its people should be proud of. Western governments are now falling over themselves to be associated with the new Rwanda. But I can't help feeling that something is not quite right here. Today in Rwanda talk of ethnicity is outlawed. Discussing it can land one in jail for the crime of "divisionism". There's a cork very firmly wedged into the Rwandan bottle and maybe the pressure is building inside? Perhaps that's an understandable response to the need to draw a shattered country and divided people back together again. There's certainly no doubting that in many ways the strategy has worked. But I wonder at what cost to freedom of expression. There are still questions to be asked about the recent history but its not always easy to ask them.
After arriving in Rwanda we travelled to Butare or Huye -depending on whether you use the old or the new name. From there we visited the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre. In April 1994 Murambi was a partially built technical school on a stunningly beautiful hilltop location. Yet in the early days of the genocide 50,000 Tutsi were sent there - supposedly for their own safety - only to have their water and power cut off by the authorities. When the local militias were sent in to kill the Tutsi they were repelled - but on the morning of the 21st April 1994 the interahamwe returned armed with guns, grenades and machetes. Only 12 or so refugees are known to have escaped the massacre that followed. After the killings the authorities buried the bodies in mass graves. When the bodies were later exhumed many of them were found to have been mummified by the heat of decomposition. Today around a 1000 of those victims have been preserved with lime and lain out on low white-painted tables in one of the buildings. A lasting memorial to the horrors of the genocide.
The grim reminder of man's inhumanity to man, woman, child and baby is incredibly moving. I couldn't help thinking of the casts at Pompeii in the way the bodies are contorted in their dying moments. But this was no natural disaster and these were real bodies. It's visually extremely powerful - but for me it felt wrong to photograph it. A little too much like Dark Tourism. The bodies are something you need to see first hand if at all. So here instead on the site is a shot of one of the buildings and Annemarie's very moving photograph of the racks of clothes gathered from the bodies in the graves.
Murambi is one of several genocide memorials and museums across Rwanda - including the main centre in the capital at Kigali which we later visited on Christmas Eve (I know not exactly traditional!). All tell the official history of the genocide. Some have questioned whether that is the full story. While we were in Rwanda a major row had flared up over a recent BBC documentary. It repeated claims that the majority of the genocide victims were not Tutsis but Hutus and that the current president, Paul Kagame, who led the largely Tutsi RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) liberation forces, had allowed the massacres to take place in order to further his own aims.
A few days after visiting Murambi we stayed at Jangwe Lodge - a beautiful retreat in the hills on the way to Kigali. Its run by Georges Kamanayo-Gengoux, a Rwandan/Belgian, and his Belgian wife Lydia. Georges is also a documentary maker and since we hadn't seen the BBC film up to that point he invited us in to watch it with him. To have Georges perspective on the film and on the future of the country was a real bonus. And I certainly went away with lots to think about. Though coming to understand Rwanda - its past and its future will take a lot longer I think. I look forward to watching Georges own film Kazungu, Le Metis about the search for his roots as a way of learning more.