The Jaguar bus left at 3am for Kigale. My seat-mate was George, a farmer from a village near Masaka. George is the Greek word for farmer, so I think he has a good name. He told me that he raises bananas, coffee, and maize on his half-acre farm. He also has four cows and two pigs and about 10 chickens. The cows and the pigs make manure, which helps his crops, especially the maize. The pigs can eat the droppings from the banana trees. The cows graze on the grass that grows on his land.
George is going to visit relatives in Rwanda. His first visit was in 2007. He was born in Uganda sometime around 1985, and he speaks five languages. He learned Kinyarwanda from his parents, and he uses this language to speak to Rwandan neighbors. He also speaks Luganda, the language of 6 million people in the south of Uganda. He learned English in school. He also speaks Ruanyarkole, which is spoken by the Anchole people in Mbarara. Finally, he learned Swahili from people. He likes it so much.
For many years I have dreamed about what the land could look like if people lived in a way that took better care of the land. As I have traveled in Uganda, I have thought about what the land could look like if people lived in a better way. As we approached Rwanda, we suddenly passed through a village that was just like what I had dreamed about. I asked for the name of the village so that I could come back to study it someday, but the man behind me did not know.
Suddenly we were at the Rwandan border. It was very easy to pass across. I thought that Rwanda would make me pay 50 dollars, but they did not make me pay anything. This follows the general trend of eliminating trade barriers between the countries that are forming the East African Community. Strangely, though, Ugandan exit officials made Hannington pay 10,000 shillings to leave his own country! George says that he had to pay the same, but that the money will be returned when he returns to Uganda.
When we entered Rwanda I saw where the beauty of that Ugandan village had come from. Rwanda is paradise, like the garden of Eden, not just in natural beauty (which Uganda also shares) but in how people take care of it. The differences from Uganda are striking. Rwandans seem much more industrious. Men in Uganda seem to spend much of their time hanging around doing nothing, something I don't see in Rwanda. In Rwanda, everywhere I see people with hoes, and overall the people here seem much more busy with their hands. The hills are terraced, and in general people seem to have thought about how the water will flow. In contrast, in Uganda, dealing with water seems more like an afterthought, and there are many washed-out gullies.
Everywhere I look I am reminded of Belgium. People plant bushes or build fences around the borders of their farm or compound to define the space. This constrains where people walk and keeps the land from getting trampled and made barren.
Visiting Miles and Katie Kirby.
Our ride on the Jaguar bus terminated at the Nyabugoge bus station in Kigale. While we waited for Katie to pick us up, we changed money and purchased bus tickets for our Sunday overnight return to Uganda, for 12,000 Rwandan Franks per person. Katie drove us to their house in Gapocho. On the way we passed the Gakinjiro Furnature Market. It's really more like a giant workshop. I saw a large number of people there busy making all manner of furniture. It looks like a model that I would like to study.
Katie brought us to their house, and showed us our rooms. She explained that the company that Miles works for provides the house and the vehicle they use for free. Miles's company distributes a water filter. Katie and Miles have the filter in their kitchen. She gave us tea, and we talked about Rwandan history, society, and politics. Katie explained that the Rwandan government puts everyone into one of six "Ubudehe" classes depending on their level of income and assets. People receive assistance based on their category. I am again reminded of Belgium.
The government has determined that the bottom two categories of people should receive the water filter that Miles' company supplies. The higher-category people do not have the opportunity to buy these filters. It is assumed that the higher-category people can afford to obtain pure water in other ways, such as boiling it.
When Miles got home, he remarked that we had now seen each other in three continents. We were roommates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On the day that Miles and Katie flew from London to Rwanda, Miles ran into me at the London University Library. It was quite an unlikely surprize. I was there to power my laptop while waiting for a bus that would continue my journey from Edinburgh to Brussels, and he was there to return books before flying to Rwanda. We met up with Katie, toured his office at the London School of Tropical Hygiene, and visited the Egyptian exhibit of the British Museum before they left for the airport.
Miles talked about the water quality project that he works for. It is a for-profit venture, based on the carbon market. The company gets carbon credits based on how much their product reduces the amount of energy that people save by using the product. The problem I see with this is its apparent relativism. You can increase waste on the one hand and then get credit for "saving carbon" by reducing waste. I see the need to define a basic standard of how much energy-use or carbon release is appropriate for each person.
We spent most of the day being given a visit of Cornerstone Leadership Academy Rwanda by William Kinunu, coordinator of Cornerstone Rwanda.
Hannington and I spent the afternoon visiting the Genocide Memorial, where 250,000 people are buried. Inside are photos of about 2000 people who were killed, and outside is a list of roughly 2000 names.
At the end of our tour, we spent a couple hours in the Genocide Memorial's genocide library. I spent the time browsing the following book: When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda, by Mahmood Mamdani. I think that this is the most insightful book that I have read in understanding how the genocide developed. He considers how it is that in many communities essentially every Hutu participated in killing Tutsis, not in a removed way like the Nazi Germans but killing people who had been trusted neighbors by hacking them to death with pangas face to face. He emphasizes that you need to consider the conflict in a bigger context that includes surrounding countries (in addition to historical developments). He says that the worst atrocities committed by the Hutus in the Rwandan genocide were carried out in the south by Hutus who were refugees from the 1993 killing of 200,000 Hutus by the Tutsi government in Burundi. His analysis is that the genocide was the result of two things coming together: orchestration from the top combined with deep resentment from the bottom.
Hannington spent the time reading a book that I had previously read, subtitled "Finding God in the midst of the Rwandan Holocaust."
Back at Miles and Katie's house, I briefly browsed two fascinating books about the violent history of Eastern Congo. The first is King Leopold's Ghost: A story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild. It tells about the terror and humanitarian crisis created by the megalomania of Belgium's king Leopold, and how he tried to paint himself as a humanitarian. The second book is Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason K. Stearns. It emphasizes that the history of the conflict in Congo is intrinsically complex, and cannot be understood on the basis of a simplistic narrative.
On Sunday morning we went to a large Assemblies of God church. There were drums and choirs singing on a stage. Then a man preached about the doctrine of the kingdom. He said that the church is to be a foretaste of the kingdom. He emphasized the critical role of cell groups, small within the church that gather regularly, in realizing that foretaste. "In the small groups, the commitment level is what matters." He said that the small groups were a place for people to "come and taste". We have an obligation to tell people and to reconcile across all lines that divide people.