Volcanoes National Park

After confronting the worst of Rwanda at the Kigali Memorial Center, we decided it was time to get out of town and see another part of the country. Known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, nowhere is this more evident than in the northwest along the border with Congo and Uganda, where a chain of jungle-clad volcanoes (some still active, like the one that swallowed the town of Goma in a lava flow in 2002) rises up from the fertile valleys to heights of 14,000 feet.

To get there, we took a brand new Toyota Coaster bus on a two-hour trip that wound dizzyingly along high mountain roads. Called the Virunga Express (after the mountain chain) we were amazed that these buses left every half hour on the dot. Chalk it up to the population density or the billions of dollars in foreign aid, but we were shocked – timetables aren’t as reliable even in New York’s Grand Central!

The landscape became greener and more luxuriant as we reached Ruhengeri, with picturesque small farms dotting the hillsides. We also noticed an increase in signs along the side of the road. We asked people what the signs meant, and they explained, “Rwandans, stop the ideology of genocide.” Ruhengeri was a Hutu stronghold in 1994; maybe that’s why so many signs are there today.

When we went to bed, Anette wasn’t feeling well and had a fever (we’d been on the road for two weeks now) but we hoped that after taking some NyQuil and having a good night’s sleep she’d be ready to climb the volcano. In the morning when we reached the ranger station we saw a swarm of white tourists swathed in expensive gear, all of whom were going to see the gorillas, at $500 per person. We picked up three young travelers, who like ourselves didn’t have that kind of money and just wanted to climb a volcano.

The five of us got out at the base of Mt. Bisoke, whose top was hidden in the clouds. Blue-leafed trees stood out magically against the deep green of the jungle vegetation, stone walls lined the farmers’ fields, and cows, sheep and goats grazed the hillsides. “Amahoro,” we greeted the farmers and their children in Kinyarwanda. “Amahoro,” they said back to us with a smile.

We met up with our guide and a Rwandan army soldier who would accompany us with his AK-47. The soldiers conduct regular anti-poaching patrols, but are also there for our safety in case we meet an angry silverback gorilla, forest elephant or buffalo. It was a bit unnerving to look at this cadre of soldiers dressed in camo, faces of steel, holding their AKs, and wonder what they must have done during the genocide.

As we began to climb, the vegetation absolutely engulfed us. The trail was narrow and muddy, and as we brushed aside leaves bigger than our heads, we noticed that our skin began to sting. Nettles and other poisonous plants were all over, vines and moss were hanging from every branch, bushes exploded in all directions, beautiful flowers accented the green with splashes of yellow, white, purple, orange.

It was the perfect gorilla habitat, but unfortunately we saw only saw their droppings. We passed a trail leading to the grave of Diane Fossey, the American biologist who lived in these mountains to study the gorillas and was killed for her anti-poaching efforts. We stopped to breathe the fresh mountain air, looking out over the farms now tiny below us.

After an hour of steep, muddy climbing, Anette turned to me and said she didn’t think she could go on; after being with fever for the last few days, she felt exhausted and not up to climbing. We rested, rallied our spirits, and she continued to trudge on despite her total fatigue. 45 minutes later, she stopped again, but our traveling companions helped motivate her and again she found the strength to continue.

The next time she stopped, I told her to remember her grandmother, who endured freezing winter fishing trips from Norway to Iceland in the 1950s, and that her strength ran in Anette’s blood. Sadly, when we came back to Kigali the next day, we got a phone call telling us that Martha Kyvik had passed away at the age of 100. So on her grandmother’s last day on earth, Anette, despite her extreme exhaustion, found the strength to climb an 11,000 foot volcano. Coincidence?

As we reached the top of the volcano, a cold, wet wind blew through the jungle, chilling us to the bone. When we broke out on top, at 11,000 feet, the sun came out as if to congratulate us, and we sat for fifteen minutes devouring bread, cheese and meat as we stared down into the gorgeous crater lake. In the distance we saw a snow-covered peak. I later read that in November 1993, several teenage girls were abducted and killed high up the slopes of that mountain; one in a series of massacres leading up to the awful climax.

Already caked in mud up to our knees from the ascent, the mud would become the real enemy on our descent. Each of us slipped several times, and I landed flat on my back more than once. We have never been muddier in all our lives. We sank into a profound sleep that night, and when we returned to our Kigali hotel the next day, we gave our shoes, socks and pants a proper bath.

Post-genocide Rwanda

Tall buildings, shining glass windows, perfectly paved roads, a profusion of signs for clothing stores, sports stores, travel agencies, restaurants…are we in my hometown of Bethesda, Maryland, or is this really downtown Kigali 14 years after the genocide?

As we pulled into the central bus station, a huge outdoor area jammed with buses, minivans, motorcycles and taxis, we saw masses of people walking four and five abreast in all directions – it was as crowded as Manhattan during rush hour. There are 10 million people in Rwanda, but the country is about the size of Rhode Island, which makes for some cramped living. Much of it is mountainous, so the population is concentrated in urban centers like Kigali, Gitarama and Butare, a fact that made it easier for the genocidaires to kill a million people in 100 days in the rainy season of 1994.

At first glance, Kigali’s modern infrastructure belies its recent history – you would never think that these streets were witness to some of the most horrific acts of violence and brutality the world has ever seen. We walked around the city for two whole days marveling at the cleanliness, the newness, the apparent wealth of people, stores and businesses. We saw groups of white tourists being hounded by the ever-present trinket sellers. We saw plenty of cars with bumper stickers that said, “Rwanda is You and Me.”

Taking our cue from the locals, we breakfasted each day on thick green fish soup and read the morning papers. Then we noticed a pattern: genocide is always in the headlines. Even after 14 years, it is still the dominant issue in Rwandan society. Traditional courts called “gacaca” have been set up all over the country, but scarily, there are more than a few stories of gacaca witnesses disappearing and turning up dead weeks later.

Surreal to think that the people sitting next to us at breakfast, at lunch, on the bus, walking by us on the streets, had experienced - and quite possibly participated in - the killing. Bumper sticker slogans aside, what feelings they must still harbor for those who killed their family members, or for those they killed?

On our third day in Rwanda, we steeled ourselves for a visit to the Kigali Memorial Center, completed in 2004 with money from the Aegis Foundation. We didn’t go right away because we didn’t want the genocide to overwhelm our experience of the Rwandan people, but in some ways, the genocide is why we came. The Memorial Center is located at the foot of one of Kigali’s many hills, surrounded by mass graves and beautifully landscaped gardens with roses and fountains.

We took a cab, and when we asked the cabbie what he thought of the memorial he began to shake with nervousness. We didn’t understand all of his broken Swahili, but he seemed to say that the evil on display in the memorial center was still alive and well in Rwanda today. What must it be like for him to drive a steady stream of white tourists to stare at the unthinkable crimes committed by his own people against each other?

The first thing that struck us as we entered the dark hallways was that the written language of the exhibit was Kinyarwanda, with French and English in smaller letters near the floor. We had to get down on our knees to read some of the captions, but we were glad that the museum made the choice to put Kinyarwanda first, for it is most importantly a memorial for Rwandans, not for tourists, so that future generations of Rwandans will never forget, and never repeat the atrocities.

The exhibit begins with ancient Rwandan history, leads into colonialism when the Belgians exacerbated the split between Hutu and Tutsi, then documents the buildup in 1993 of the racist propaganda, inflammatory radio broadcasts of RTLM, the first massacres, and the pleas of the UN commander to the world that were repeatedly denied.

Then the genocide: terrible picture of corpses, copies of the identity cards that condemned people to death, actual weapons – machetes, clubs, knives, guns – still stained with blood, videos of the killings, interviews with survivors. We walked in silence, overwhelmed, angry, heartsick.

Finally we went upstairs, where the exhibit ends with the hall of children: life-sized pictures of beautiful children in the last photo ever taken of them. Below the picture, a small plaque states their name, their families’ memories of them, their favorite food, favorite toys, and then, the way they died…

“Hacked with a machete. Age 6.”
“Buried alive in a pit latrine. Age 4.”
“Thrown against a wall. Age 2 months.”
“Raped and shot in front of her family. Age 11.”

This was my breaking point. Looking at the smiling faces of the children and trying to connect those faces with their incomprehensible means of death, I slumped against a wall and began crying. Anette picked me up and we went out together into the garden with its mass graves, looking out onto the city where just yesterday, streets were rivers of blood and dogs and rats feasted on the bodies of the dead.

Obama: The Reaction in Tanzania

Living without a television for 15 months has been wonderful in so many ways, but on election night, what we wanted more than anything else was to be back in America glued to the tube. Instead, we settled for text messages.

The first one came from Jake at 5:30am TZ time: “It looks like Obama is going to win:-)” An hour later from my parents: “Obama has won! McCain hasn’t conceded yet, but it’s a given – hallelujah!” An hour later, a text from our Ugandan friend Vinbro who has been talking excitedly with us about the election for over a year now: “McCain has thrown in the towel! Were you watching??”

I had to reply that no, we weren’t watching because we don’t have a TV. But just as we were beginning to feel like history was passing us by, Jake called from the early morning streets of Washington, DC. The noise was so loud I could barely hear his voice, but he was able to tell us that Obama had kicked McCain’s ass, won 330+ electoral votes and all the swing states, and everybody was celebrating his incredible victory and the end of Bush’s Reign of Terror.

Ecstatic, we donned the apparel that Jake had brought for us when he visited in June: a t-shirt with Obama’s face framed in a big O of stars and stripes, and an Obama pin. As we walked down the hill to work, people looked at the t-shirt smiling and we told them the great news.

At work, our colleagues were thrilled for us and we laughed at a catchy Obama reggae song playing on the local radio station. We brought them our copy of “Maisha ya Barack Obama,” (The Life of Barack Obama) written in Swahili by our Tanzanian journalist friend, Maggid Mjengwa, on sale for a dollar on street corners in Iringa. They were eager to read it and to be inspired, saying that Obama is a man who can make anybody – even the poor and the downtrodden – believe that they can succeed.

The texts and phone calls kept coming throughout the morning: Musa Kwanga, a local pastor who helped us bring SODIS to the villages; Zebedayo, a good friend and teacher at Idodi Secondary School; Bahati, another teacher who transferred to the southern city of Mbeya and we haven’t heard from in half a year; Sammy, a young artist from Dar Es Salaam who we met at the Bagamoyo Music Festival.

All of them called - some using their last shillings of credit - to say congratulations and to express their happiness for me, for Americans, for Tanzanians, for the world. It was deeply moving to receive these personal calls on behalf of Obama - it made me feel like he was a close family member - and to see how the force of Obama’s personality has reached as far as the remote villages of Iringa. Later, when we read his speech, we realized that the line, “to all those huddled around radios in forgotten corners of the world,” applies as much to Iringa as to anywhere else.


After work we stopped in at a local eatery and the waitress, who knows us well, complimented us on the t-shirt and asked if we could get her one. The shirt continued to draw attention, with people stopping us on the street to share their happiness and shake our hands. When we saw a man with his own Obama shirt, we had to stop and congratulate him. He had been waiting for this day to get a big silk screen of Obama with the slogan “Change We Need” on his second-hand shirt. Singing Obama’s praises, he pumped our hands vigorously and told us, “This is a man of unity. If they start fighting again in Kenya, Obama will come and end it and they will listen to him!”

We then headed down a side street because I wanted to see a man who, when repairing my flip-flops one day, talked earnestly with me about American politics as we sat in the hot sun and he threaded his needle through the thin rubber of my broken footwear.
He was sitting with a couple of friends on his shoemaker’s bench by the side of the road, and as we approached he said to them with pride, “I told you that my American friend would come see me today!”

A few meters down the road, a teenage girl came running up to us and said she just wanted to look at the Obama shirt. She then broke into a freestyle rap about Obama as she walked beside us and told us she was going to begin studying in our favorite Tanzanian town, Bagamoyo, at the College of Arts.

Our last stop in town before climbing the hill to go home was to see a family that owns a crafts store. The daughter, Upendo (the most common Tanzanian name for women, it means love) saw me and told a customer in the store, “This is the guy who told me that if Obama loses he won’t go back to America!” Upendo’s mother congratulated us warmly and said Obama gives her great hope because she feels that America will succeed now, and if America succeeds, then Tanzania will also succeed.

We never did find a working television; although we wandered around our neighborhood all evening knocking on friends’ doors, we were foiled by strong winds that scrambled satellite signals and then caused a total blackout. So we ended the day by listening to Obama’s speech on our neighbor’s laptop. They had downloaded it from the net, and as we sat there listening to his voice coming through the speakers, I imagined families huddled around the radio listening to FDR’s fireside chats during the Depression.

Now, 70 years later, a man whose name means blessing in Swahili, and who has eaten ugali with his grandmother in his ancestral African village, is the president-elect of the United States of America. Come on, say it with me, “Yes we can.”