Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

Approaching the border post, I could see the flag: three vertical bars of red, yellow, and green with a big black “R” in the middle. It signaled my last chance to retreat back to the relative safety of Uganda.

To many people, Rwanda is just a name. Auschwitz, Cambodia, and Darfur are also just names, names of places that history will forever link to a catastrophic event. They’re just names. Surely people don’t go there.

For me, a teenager studying political science and African cultures in Nairobi, Kenya in 1998, Rwanda was like a living textbook. Being only a bus ride away, I could not pass up the chance to observe, first hand, the aftermath of one of the 20th century’s most horrific and formative events.

At the border post, the Rwandan official told me to pay $35 for a visa. My guidebook said the price of a visa was $15, and I showed this to the official, hoping he would lower the price. “That book is old,” he said. “You pay $35 or you go back to Uganda.” I shoved the book into my backpack and paid the visa fee.

The man sitting next to me on the bus was tall and light-skinned and spoke some English. I asked him if he was a Tutsi. He didn’t say anything but looked around the bus, then nodded “yes.”

I realized that it may have been too soon to talk to people about 1994, so I asked him about the situation in Rwanda now. “We are trying to rebuild,” he said. “Everyone wants to put the problems of the past behind us and move on.”

The bus rattled into a dusty Kigali terminal at dusk, and I could just make out the silhouette of the city set into wrinkled hills. I found a taxi and asked the driver to take me to a hotel listed in my guidebook, though by this point I had begun to realize that a pre-war guide to Rwanda was about as useful as last week’s newspaper.

After traversing Kigali for half an hour, the driver finally broke down and asked for directions. “The hotel is gone,” he reported.

Without getting my hopes up, I asked about another hotel and showed him the book. This time, we did not waste time futilely searching for it. “Your book is old. That hotel is gone too,” he said. “I know a nice woman who runs a mission. You can stay there.”

Sonia, a short, petite woman with glasses and silver curls atop a weathered face, was surprised to see me. An Episcopalian missionary from Boston, she ran a modest guesthouse and mission with basic accommodations. “We don’t get many Western travelers,” she said. “Mostly just Africans stay here these days. The Burundi national soccer team is staying down the hall.”

I was famished and asked Sonia about a restaurant that was listed in my book. “That restaurant was destroyed four years ago,” she said. “The guidebook you have is pretty old. Once Jim gets here, we’ll all go out to eat.”

Jim, another missionary from Kentucky, picked us up in a spotless white Land Rover, and soon we were eating Chinese food and talking about African politics.

Sonia had been in Rwanda for 10 years. She had stayed through the bloodiest months in 1994 and told stories about sheltering refugees at the mission. I asked about the current situation. “It’s peaceful, but people are guarded about the peace. You might find that people are unwilling to talk about 1994 because they are still afraid.”

I told her about the Tutsi man on the bus who didn’t want to talk about his ethnicity. “A million people died because of the group they belonged to,” she said. “They don’t want to be reminded of that.”

The next day, I decided to get out of the capital and visit southern Rwanda. I found a minibus, called a matatu, which was going to Butare, two hours away. My book said there was an impressive museum there, and even though I knew there was a good chance that it too was gone, I had nothing better to do.

Sitting next to me was a boy my age listening to a Tupac tape. He spoke good English and wanted to know all about the United States. For the next two hours, we talked about American pop music and basketball. The conversation never turned to the situation in his country, which was fine by me. I had made a friend and didn’t want to alienate him by bringing up the bitter past.

When we arrived in Butare, my new friend pointed me in the direction of the National Museum, which, surprisingly, was still functioning. The sprawling brick building looked like an Ivy League lecture hall and seemed somewhat out of place.

I roamed the halls filled with old spears and farming tools, beautiful baskets, and a few old German rifles. There were exhibits on every period in Rwanda’s history up to the early 90s, but nothing from 1994 on. Like my guidebook, Rwanda’s National Museum was out of date.

Walking back to town, I passed a crowded market. Merchants hawked colorful fabrics and used clothes; women sold heaps of tomatoes and large, dirty cassava roots. Walking through, I felt all eyes on me. As curious stares gave way to smiles, people started to call out, “Mazungu!” ("White person!").

In my travels to other East African countries, mazungu was always followed by a sales pitch. These people, however, had nothing to sell me. They just wanted to greet me, ask me where I was from, and talk about my country.

I stopped to talk to some of the merchants and soon a group had formed around me.

“Mazungu, how are you, fine?” asked a man selling T-shirts as he shook my hand. His attempt at English sparked uproarious laughter from the crowd. An old woman pressed three bananas into my hand, a cadeau (gift). This produced even more laughter.

“Where are you from? Where are you going? What is your name?” people asked. “Why are you in Rwanda?”

“I’m here to talk to you,” I said, “and to see your beautiful country.”

Was I a missionary? A journalist? An aid worker? No, no, I insisted. I just want to talk.

Finally, after answering all their questions and greeting what seemed like the whole town, I continued on my way, looking for some restaurant recommended by my guidebook. The book claimed it was just around the corner, but I wasn’t betting any money on it.