Rwanda - Genocide and Gorillas

We drove from Kenya, through Uganda (more about that later) into Rwanda. The countryside here is absolutely stunning, its quite a hilly country most of it terraced for agriculture with lots of tea plantations. Because of the hills, mountains and volcanoes there is always low level mist in the mornings and driving through the plantations with the rolling mist is simply stunning. We went straight from the border to the capital of Kigali. Here we stopped for a couple of hours in the Genocide Remembrance musuem. The history of Rwanda is a lesson in how appalling colonisation can be. Very brief snapshot - When the Belgiums colonised at the turn of the 20th century, they introduced identity cards. Before that all tribes had been living peacefully for 600 years, The Belgiuns split the population on nose size and how many cows a person had on a certain day. THis resulted in the ethnic groupings of Tutsies and Hutu's. Then the Catholic Church made the minority Tutsie's in charge and then the French would only grant independence to the country in the 1960's if the majority Hutu's overthrew the Tutsie's, so they armed them. There was a number of small genocides towards the Tutsie people up until the 1990's but in 1990 the Hutu goverment of the day got extreme. Through propaganda they turned 95 % of Hutu's against the Tutsie's. People who were once good friends and neighbours and people who had inter-married were suddenly hated. THe government began training people in how to kill with blunt weapons and lists of people's to be killed were drawn up. In 1994 the Genocide started. In just 100 days over one million people were killed, most in horrific and slow ways, mainly with machetes. Whole families were wiped out and still have not been identified. Eventually those in power were overthrown. The problem was then rebuilding the country where most of the small population had fled as refugees, had been victims of the genocide or had particpated in it. The museum was incredibly moving and extremely thought provoking into the depths to which some people will stoop. The following day a local gentleman in his late 20's gave us his personal account. The part most of our group had trouble with is how quickly everyone is living side by side with each other again. The organisers are treated differently but the everyday person who helped with the killings are mainly still living in the same villages as the families of those they killed. They are having to do some time in prison but mainly community service, helping to rebuild. Francis told us this community way of justice is working because the perpretrators are free to come forward and recount exactly what they did. It means the families of the victims can have closure and know for certain what happened. As I say, most of our group struggled with this, as most imagined they would want some kind of vengence but the majority of Rwandans think differently.
On a must less sombre note, my other time inRwanda was spent visiting the Mountain Gorillas. There are only 600 left living in the wild and this is mainly to do with the conservation work started by Dian Fossey (of Gorilla's in the Mist fame). The Volcanoe National Park were I went has 15 Gorilla families. 7 families can be viewed by the general public whilst the remaining 8 are only tracked and studied by the conservationists. 8 people are allowed to visit each family for just one hour a day. My group visited the Kwitonda family. There are 15 gorillas in this family including 3 Silverbacks and a two month old baby. We trekked for half an hour to the boundary of the national park, then we trekked through the very thick and wet undergrowth of the park. The nettles and thistles were shoulder height and the branches kept trying to trip us up. After just another half an hour we could hear noises above us. The Gorilla's were in the tree tops. It was amazing. Then as we turned a corner a Silverback was sat right in front of us eating away. He was not bothered by our prescene at all. He was mesmorising. It is difficult to find the words to explain what we were feeling at this point. We moved on and found another Silverback, as we were watching, the first silverback came running through the bushes and charged us - we very quickly moved back a couple of metres. Hearts were in mouths at this point. Even our guide had run! He was not being aggressive though, simply showing us he was the boss. He definately was. He was so big, and the muscles on his back so well defined. After making his point, he pissed in front of us and then buggered off. We were very fortunate in that other Gorilla's came down from the trees just in front of us, including the baby. All too quickly our hour was up and we had to leave. To say this was a magical experience is not really doing it justice - it is something I will certainly never forget. I have seen Mountain Gorillas in the wild!!!!!