Engaging with the shades of the past and vibrancy of the present
I have a few questions for you.
If I asked you to picture a colourful place in your mind, where would it be? Forgive my lack of artistic experiences, the only canvases I have a passing familiarity with are completed ones. I am limiting then the scope of this question to larger areas: neighbourhoods, cities, countries or regions.
For many of you I imagine home comes to mind, especially if you grew up outside of the West and the greyscales of so-called modernity. But even if not, with enough familiarity one can see past the black paint to the colours it was mixed with.
So where else? The tanner’s quarters of Fes in Morocco with its iconic dye pots? Perhaps the market streets of Karachi with its towering spice pyramids dwarfed by even larger personalities? What about the neon lights of Hong Kong or Bangkok refracted by monsoonal rains? Maybe it’s the Rockies in Fall, it’s glacial lakes, boreal forests and towering mountains joined by the gold of shedding larches? It could even be the crescendo of a brilliant aurora or sunset, now your default association with said place, as it is in memory that space and time most clearly converge.
For me though, the answer is Rwanda.
The first thing I noticed after stepping out of the Kigali airport was the ground. I doubt that’s something you’ll find in a tourist brochure though I never checked one to be sure. Regardless, the whole way into town I was fixated. It just has this distinct and gorgeous sienna colour to it. Laterite — what this type of soil and rock is called — is not unique to Rwanda, nor was it my first time seeing it. There is just something about the way that it contrasts with the green of the native plant life and the ocher roofs of the local buildings that I find so stunning.
Rwanda is the ‘land of a thousand hills’. It rolls off the tongue far better this way but it really feels as if it’s missing a superlative adjective. These hills host bamboo groves, jungle, farmland, tea plantations, thousands of picturesque villages and perhaps Africa’s best preserved cloud forest. Then in the far West they grow into towering mountains where gorillas live amongst the persistent mist.
These hills and mountains are products of the Nubian and Somalian plates ripping apart from one another underneath Rwanda. This phenomenon is happening all the way up through Ethiopia and is colloquially known as the Great Rift Valley. It’s a little counterintuitive how this can simultaneously lead to a massive valley and also hills and mountains. Essentially as the tectonic plate stretches apart, the asthenosphere (all the magma the plates are floating on) presses upwards upon the continental crust. The end result is similar to that of crinkled paper with the addition of massive volcanoes being created where the magma breaks through to the surface. In the end you’re left with lots of hills, some mountains, and also large lakes that will one day be consumed by a new ocean.
Along Rwanda and the Congo’s border is Lake Kivu. Staring upon it the geological process of its formation suddenly makes sense. There are very few beaches or anywhere flat enough to wade into the water; no barrier from where hill ends and water-filled rift begins. As a result there are no bad views of the lake. Wherever you find yourself a moment to gaze upon it, it will be immaculate. And it will be extraordinarily colourful. The reds and greens found all across the country are joined by a shimmering ocean-like blue. No wonder there are so many paintings of water– but still not enough of Lake Kivu.
Forgive me for the loquacious introduction, it’s finally time for the second question. What do you think of when you think of Rwanda?
From my experiences, the answer for most people is the 1994 genocide. Beginning on April 7 of 1994 the military, Hutu militias and thousands of Hutu civilians attempted to kill every single Tutsi in the country as well as anyone who showed them sympathy (determined sometimes by just a lack of aggression). The genocide lasted for around 100 days with an estimated 500 to 800 thousand people killed. In an extremely grim way, this almost under-represents how horrific it was. The vast majority of killings were carried out in the first month, often with a machete. The Kagera River, normally a pinkish brown from all of the aforementioned laterite, went crimson with the blood of bodies dumped into it.
When I think of Rwanda I think of how alluring its unique blend of colours and rolling topography is. But I also think of the genocide. At first I wasn’t sure what I should write about, the former certainly seemed easier and I did want to contribute to a broadening of the country’s image in my small way. Yet its beauty and the despair of its history are both equally true. In the decades since, Rwanda has pursued reconciliation within its borders acknowledging that it can’t turn away from what happened. I don’t think we should either. So I decided to write about both.
A few years ago I was sitting in a geography lab waiting for the prof to arrive. They were late and I had been early as I chose to eat my dinner there in the quiet classroom as opposed to the noisy cafeteria. A few of my classmates had had a similar idea so it was a little less quiet than I expected. Sitting a couple rows ahead of me were two students engaged in a conversation about travel. At first I was incredibly intrigued — unsurprisingly one of my favourite topics — but I quickly grew disheartened.
The one guy had never left Canada, whereas the other had grown up in Brazil and traveled extensively throughout South America. The — apparently quite wealthy — second student was describing in great detail just how dangerous the whole continent was. He explained how he needed to hire armed guards everywhere, from Suriname to Ecuador, to ensure his safety. With every question he was asked a new threat seemed to emerge. It was clearly performative and callous bullshit. An importing of vanity in exchange for the exporting of ignorance.
This was a bit of a bubble bursting moment for me. Travel has profoundly shaped who I am and certainly for the better. It sounds naive but I truly believe that in the face of all the ills of mass tourism that this can be true for everyone, visitors and locals. I still believe that, but that day I had to face the fact that it will take more than just limiting cruise ships, AirBnBs, and tour buses to achieve. It is not just impersonal structures that impede the changing of attitudes.
I think the missing ingredient is curiosity. If you are authentically curious about a place you will respect it. If you choose to go to Rwanda that means recognizing its beauty, exploring the culture and also engaging with its recent history. I would actually go as far as to say that it is your duty to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial and perhaps another site like Nyamata where the Church displays the remains of the 50 000 who had their lives taken away from them there.
When I visited the memorial in Kigali I was the only foreigner. I do understand that these are hard places to visit on vacation. In many ways it was a brutal experience. Think about those numbers from earlier again. As many as 800 000 people killed in a month. Every one of them with a family, a story, and a life worth remembering. I openly weeped on the second floor as the focus turned to some of the children whose lives were stolen away from them.
At the same time it brought me closer to the people of the country and a greater appreciation for human resilience. It does a great job of showing how something like genocide does not just happen. It is disputed by historians but Hutu and Tutsi may have originally been a class signifier not an ethnic one. German Colonial officials looked to exploit and solidify any differences with pseudoscientific practices like phrenology. The Belgians who took over the country in World War 1 would later introduce identity cards listing ethnicity while promoting Tutsi supremacy. Discrimination against Hutus and extreme violence against Tutsis continued in the decades post-independence in the lead up to the genocide.
No matter who is targeted or where it happens, a genocide is a global event. There is nothing to be gained by forgetting these mass atrocities but there is much to lose. As recent global events have demonstrated, we are no where near a post-genocidal world.
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Time for my final question: do you want to go to Rwanda? I sincerely hope that you do. Go and be astounded as you’re forced to turn the saturation on your photos down in an attempt to make its pallet seem real. Go and visit Lake Kivu where all conversations seem to run out of words. Go and experience the rush of standing next to a gorilla and question why the term ‘humanity’ doesn’t have a better prefix. And finally go and grieve alongside the nation at the genocide memorials, resisting the temptation to turn away.
To quote John Green, “the truth resists simplicity.” It also has a way of sticking with you. Rwanda will too.
