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- Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1998
Between April and July 1994, the tiny Central African state of Rwanda experienced unprecedented carnage as more than three-quarters of a million people, mostly minority Tutsi, were killed in a carefully planned genocide. In January 1997 Dervla Murphy travelled to Rwanda, intending to trek alone through the beautiful mountains she had first gazed on while holidaying with her family in Eastern Zaire the year before. She found Rwanda still racked by violent post-genocide convulsions and seemingly choking in a miasma of bloody memories, mass bereavement and collective guilt. Reluctantly conceding for the first time in her long career as a travel writer, that conditions would not allow her to trek, Dervla Murphy started talking to ordinary Rwandans, professionals and peasants, Hutu and Tutsis, about the genocide and the uncertain future. The result is an astonishing book: part travel narrative, part study of genocide and its aftermath part polemic against the international community, which failed to act on clear warnings that the genocide was coming, abandoned Rwanda when the killing began, and later contributed significantly to the creation of Rwanda's current problems. Dervla Murphy has brought back extraordinary accounts of suffering and resilience among the survivors, from the widows, the orphans, the mixed families' in which kin turned on kin. She shows that the killing was not, as the world has generally assumed, the result of primitive tribalism, but rather a well-orchestrated genocidal campaign organised by a small elite and its sophisticated propaganda machine. She considers the insoluble problem of achieving justice when a barely functioning judicial system is faced with the existence of tens of thousands of killers, and concludes that the death penalty, which she has long opposed, is the only appropriate punishment for the organisers of a genocide. Visiting Rwanda is likely to prove the most controversial book of Dervla Murphy's career. 'With compassion, understanding and her trademark courage, Dervla Murphy has produced a remarkable book. I recommend it to anyone who cares about humanity.' Fergal Keane
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VISITING RWANDA
Dervla Murphy
THE LILLIPUT PRESS
DUBLIN
for Clodagh
Acknowledgments
Without the advice and support of John Walton my Rwanda visit might never have happened. His colleagues in Kigali offered generous hospitality. So did various NGO workers throughout Rwanda, but they would prefer not to be named. To my first grand-daughter, Rose, a special debt of gratitude is owed; she started the whole thing by migrating to Zaire at the age of three months. On another plane, an equal debt of gratitude is owed to Antony Farrell of the Lilliput Press.
Chronology
1885
German Empire given responsibility for Rwanda-Burundi region at Berlin Conference.
1899
Germans set up civil administration.
1916
Belgian troops arrive as Germans withdraw.
1919
Treaty of Versailles entrusts region to Belgium as mandated territory.
1946
League of Nations mandate replaced by United Nations Trusteeship.
1957
The Hutu Manifesto demands independence from both the Belgians and the Tutsi monarchy which since 1931 has collaborated with Belgians.
1959
After death of Mwami (King) Mutara III, some 100,000 Tutsi are killed in a revolt against Tutsi rule and more than 200,000 flee into exile.
1961
The Hutu majority seizes power, abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a republic, recognized by Belgium. Rwanda and Burundi become separate states.
1962
Gregoire Kayibanda becomes first president of the independent Hutu republic and restricts his government to Hutus.
1965
The ruling party, PARMEHUTU, obtains 97% in a general election and Rwanda is declared a one-party state.
1973
In a non-violent coup, Juvenal Habyarimana overcomes Kayibanda who soon after dies in jail.
1975
The MRND, Habyarimana’s party, replaces PARMEHUTU as single ruling party.
1986
Rwandan (Mainly Tutsi) refugees contribute significantly to the victory in Uganda of Museveni’s army.
1988
In Washington a gathering of Rwandan refugees from all over the world endorse their unconditional repatriation as the only possible solution to their problems.
1990
Fred Rwigyema, formerly a Tutsi major general in Museveni’s army, leads an invasion of Rwanda from Uganda on 30 September. French, Belgian and Zairean troops help to repulse invasion.
1991
Another invasion from Uganda is repulsed in January. On June 8 Habyarimana promises constitutional reform and a multi-party system.
1992
A transitional government is formed in April to hold power until the 1995 multi-party elections agreed to by MRND, who later reject agreement. This government never took power.
1993
Three-year war ends when Habyarimana signs Peace Accord with RPF in Anusha, Tanzania, on 4 August. In June, Melchior Ndadaye wins Burundi’s presidential election and becomes the first Hutu president. In October his assassination by Tutsi officers in a military coup provokes extreme violence.
1994
5 April– UNAMIR’s mandate extended to 29 July by the Security Council. Next day Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntariyamira of Burundi die together in a plane crash and the genocide starts in Kigali.
9 April –Belgian and French paratroopers arrive in Kigali to rescue expatriates.
12 April– Government forces and RPA begin the battle for Kigali. Throughout the country thousands of Tutsi are being massacred every day.
21 April– UNAMIR troops reduced from 2500 to 270 by Security Council Resolution 912.
17 May– Over half a million Tutsi have been slaughtered. Security Council Resolution 918 calls for the end of the massacres and increases the Blue Helmets to 5500 (UNAMIR II)
17 June– Numbers of victims has risen to three-quarters of a million. A French initiative for ‘humanitarian’ intervention approved by Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
30 June– Massacres described as ‘genocide’ by UN Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur, in a detailed report.
1 July– UN Security Council Resolution 935 calls for the setting up of a committee of ‘impartial experts’ to investigate the evidence for ‘possible acts of genocide’.
4 July– RPF forces capture Kigali.
14 July– RPF forces take Ruhengeri, the main town in northern Rwanda, and tens of thousands of refugees flee over the border into Zaire.
17 July –RPF forces capture Habyarimana’s last bastion, Gisenyi.
18 July– The end of the war is declared and the RPF install a new government of national unity with a Hutu President and Hutu Prime Minister.
Glossary
Akazu:The ‘inner circle’ of government who wielded most power during Habyarimana’s presidency.
askari: East African soldier or policeman, a term now used in France’s ex-colonies to describe privately employed security guard.
burgomaster: a commune’s chief administrative officer appointed by the central government.
cellule: a group of ten or so rural house-holds: the smallest unit in a commune.
commune: thousands of homesteads scattered over adjacent hills.
Interahamwe: a civilian militia recruited to help implement genocide.
Indaba: a conference or serious debate, usually involving the elders of a community.
injara: Ethiopian bread made with ???? flour.
matatu: minibus taxi.
muzungu: white person.
rugo: peasant homestead: one or more huts usually enclosed by a fence.
umuganda: free labour demanded by the state (previously by kings or chiefs) as a form of tax.
wat: Ethiopian spicy sauce.
Acronyms
CIA: Central Intelligence Agency
EU: European Union
FAR: Rwandan armed forces pre-genocide
IMF: Internally displaced person
MAF: Missionary Aviation Fellowship
MRND: Mouvement Révalutionnaire National pour le Développement, founded by president Habyarimana: the only political party permitted under his rule.
MSF: Medicine Sans Frontiéres
NGO: Non-governmental organization: e.g., Concern, Oxfam, Medicine Sans Frontiéres, Christian Aid.
OAU: Organization of African Unity
RMC: Radio Milles Collines, a private radio station used to incite hatred of the Tutsi.
RPA: Rwandan Patriotic Army
RPF: Rwandan Patriotic Front
SAP: Structural Adjustment Programme: a spending restriction placed by the IMF on countries indebted to it.
UNHCR: United Nations High Commission for Refugees
UNAMIR: United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda
WB: World Bank
WFP: World Food Programme
Prologue
Throughout April and May 1994 I was in South Africa, completely absorbed in that country’s affairs, and I scarcely registered Rwanda’s genocide while it was happening. Then, my knowledge of Rwanda could have been written on a postcard. I knew only that it had the highest population density in mainland Africa (some 7.15 million occupying a territory about the size of Wales), that it was very beautiful, mainly dependent on agriculture and terrifyingly prone to lethal conflicts between the fifteen per cent Tutsi minority – for centuries the ruling élite – and the Hutu majority. I remembered too that in 1961, after the massacring of many Tutsi, the Hutu gained power as the Belgian rulers prepared to leave their grossly mistreated colony to its own sanguinary devices. Also, during a 1992 cycle ride from Kenya to Zimbabwe, I met a few of the Tutsi who had settled in Uganda as refugees in 1959 and subsequent years. From then I learned that between ’62 and ’67 certain Tutsi factions had tried to fight their way back to Rwanda but were always defeated. These incursions provoked reprisals, usually government-organised, against Tutsi still living in Rwanda. During the ’60s some 20,000 were killed and hundreds of thousands fled to neighbouring countries: Burundi, Uganda, Zaire and Tanzania.
In April 1995, a year after the genocide began, I suddenly had a personal reason to focus on Rwanda. My daughter Rachel, then two months pregnant, and her partner Andrew, were moving to Kigali where Andrew was to spend six months attached to a UNHCR team. (They first met in Mozambique when working as UN volunteers with a unit established to disarm the opposing armies in preparation for the elections of November 1994. On their return from Kigali in October, they came to stay with me and I expected graphic accounts of life in post-genocide Rwanda; normally both enjoy describing their travels and analysing regional problems. But this time they had strangely little to say. Almost nothing, in fact; their faces closed if anyone asked about their impressions of and experiences in Rwanda. This silence was in itself disturbingly eloquent and when they lent me two books I fully understood it.
Death, Despair and Defiance, published by African Rights, needs 1200 pages to report exactly what happened in each of Rwanda’s 143 communes during the genocide. It is by far the most shattering book I have ever read, all the more so for being a straightforward record of facts and figures, dates and times, personal names and place names, unadorned by literary graces. As for Gérard Prunier’sThe Rwanda Crisis, that made me aware for the first time of the French government’s unforgivable complicity in the genocide and of the shameful passivity-cum-duplicity of the UN before, during and after the tragedy. In February 1998 I was unsurprised to read that General Roméo Dallaire had been forbidden to give evidence to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda about communications between himself and the UN during his time as Commander of the UN ‘peace-keeping’ force in Rwanda. The reasons for this embargo, which inevitably lessened the value of the General’s evidence, are given in Chapter Four.
On 4 August 1993 the Hutu government and the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) signed the Arusha Accords, designed to end the conflict that began in October 1990 when the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) invaded from Uganda, determined to overthrow the extremist Hutu regime and make it possible for the millions of Tutsi refugee and their born-in-exile children to return to Rwanda. The Accords provided (in theory) for the integration of opposing armies and the presence of a UN peace-keeping force until the setting up of a transitional government, including members of the RPF, to run the country while elections were being organized. On 5 October ’93 the UN Security Council’s Resolution 872 at last authorized the peace-keeping force (UNAMIR) but its troops were not deployed until December. Meanwhile the Hutu extremists were blocking the formation of the transitional government and training and arming thousands of militia, ostensibly for ‘popular self-defence’ and the ‘neutralization of infiltrators’. Because of a shortage of firearms, army officers instructed civilians in methods of killing with machetes, spears, swords and bows and arrows.
On 21 October ’93 the first Hutu to be elected President of Burundi, where the Tutsi are also in a fifteen per cent minority, was assassinated by Tutsi army officers. More than 50,000 – both Hutu and Tutsi – died in the subsequent violence but the so-called ‘international community’ made no significant comment. Rwanda’s genocidal leaders exploited this situation to incite hatred and fear of Tutsi and pointed out that a world indifferent to massacres in Burundi would remain equally indifferent to the extermination of Rwanda’s Tutsi. They were soon to be proved right.
In January ’94 France promised President Habyarimana more than $5.5 million in military aid for the coming year. During February the Hutu militia murdered forty people in Kigali, the UN troops making no effort to deter them though UNAMIR’s mandate was ‘to contribute to the capital’s security’. When that mandate expired on 5 April no transitional government yet existed and the Security Council voted to extend it for another four months. UNAMIR then consisted of about 2,700 soldiers from twenty-three countries, the vast majority inadequately trained and ill-equipped – not at all the sort of troops the international community would send to an oil-rich battleground.
On the evening of 6 April ’94 President Habyarimana and President Ntaryamira of Burundi died – with all others aboard – when their plane was shot down as it approached Kigali airport, by a person or persons unknown. Within hours of that event the slaughtering of Tutsi and their moderate Hutu allies had begun. ‘Moderate’, in this context, means Hutu opposed to the extremist regime and willing to implement the Arusha Accords. Not all Hutu so describe had ‘Moderation’ as their middle name.
By 8 April blood was flowing in torrents; in just one attack on that date over 2,000 were killed on the campus of the Adventist University at Mudende. Next day 300 French paratroopers arrived to take control of Kigali airport. A thousand Belgian troops and an Italian contingent followed, while 300 US marines moved into Burundi. In collaboration with UNAMIR, these crack troops efficiently evacuated more than 2,000 ex-pats. Very few chose to remain in Rwanda where the massacres were being accompanied, day and night, by orgies of rape and looting. The foreign troops then withdrew and by 13 April some 20,000 Rwandans had been butchered – as the Security Council noted while debating the crisis without reaching any conclusion. Three days later, by which time many thousands more had been killed, it held another inconclusive debate. On 21 April General Dallaire stated that he could end the genocide if given a force of 5,000 to 8,000 well-equipped soldiers. On the same date the Security Council’s Resolution 912, prompted by the US government, directed the withdrawal of most UN troops, leaving only 270 with a mandate limited to helping to deliver humanitarian aid and acting as ‘intermediary’ – a fanciful notion since mediation was not on the agenda.
Three weeks later, after countless prolonged discussions, the Security Council was about to vote to send troops back to Rwanda when the US representative request a postponement of the vote because she had ‘no instructions’ from Washington. Not until 17 May did Resolution 918 authorize the sending of 5,500 troops to Rwanda with a mandate to protect civilians (of whom more than half a million had by then been killed) and the delivery of humanitarian aid. The US voted for this Resolution but delayed deployment by insisting that the situation needed to be ‘further assessed’. Six weeks later the Secretary General admitted that only 550 troops were deployed in Rwanda, more than two months after the Resolution authorizing ten times that number. It is surely not irrelevant that on 10 June US officials were instructed to avoid the word ‘genocide’ as its use might increase pressure on the US government to act.
On 1 June General Dallaire appealed to Washington for armoured personnel carriers without which he was unable to save civilian lives. President Clinton’s envoy to Rwanda promised him that his request would be ‘taken to the highest authority’. On 22 June 10,700 bodies were removed from Lake Victoria for burial; those bodies, flung into the Kagera river some time previously, had become a major threat to the lives of lakeside villagers. Next day the US delivered to Kampala the first of forty-seven armoured personnel carriers leased to the UN. On June 28 another four arrived but proved useless because lacking radios or machine-guns.
The RPA took Kigali on 4 July and on 15 July the US government withdrew recognition from the genocidal regime and ordered its Washington embassy to be closed. Members of this rump government and the FAR Chief-of-Staff then took refuge, with French assistance, in Zaire and the RPF announced the formation of a new Rwandan government.
The UNHCR estimated that by the end of July some 1.4 million Hutu refugees had fled to Zaire, 353,000 to Burundi and 241,000 to Tanzania. Many fled because their leaders told them the RPA would kill them if they remained in their communes, others because they were forced to leave by local officials. In Zaire FAR soldiers and militia regularly looted food and medicines from some of the refugee camps and prevented the delivery of food to others. Soon cholera had broken out and eventually more than 60,000 refugees died of various diseases.
On 10 August the US Assistant Secretary of State, George Moose, demanded the arrest and prosecution of all those responsible for the increasing violence in the expanding refugee camps. (A risible demand, illustrating his feeble grasp of the situation.) Three days later the Zairean Prime Minister sought international help for the disarming of the ex-FAR troops and their separation from the other refugees. He was ignored.
On 15 August a plan to repatriate refugees from Zaire was abandoned because the Hutu troops and militia threatened any who might attempt to return home; four men brave enough to defy them were murdered in Goma camps. Soon after the UN verbosely deplored the perilous insecurity – virtually a state of war – within the camps. On 8 September the Secretary General’s special envoy revealed that FAR troops were preparing to invade Rwanda from Zaire and had already sent raiding parties over the border and killed several Tutsi survivors and Hutu moderates. (The whole region was by then infested with ‘special envoys’, each more ineffectual than the last.)
At the end of September the UNHCR, Oxfam and several other aid agencies had to leave Kitale camp for security reasons. On 1 November Rwanda radio announced the killing of thirty-six people in north-western Rwanda by ex-FAR troops from Zaire and fifteen NGOs threatened to leave all camps in the Goma area unless the genocidal warriors and their civilian allies were brought under control.
Three weeks later the Secretary General requested a peace-keeping mission (oddly named as there was no peace to keep) for the restoration of order in the camps but not one member state was willing to provide troops or support of any sort for this operation.
On 25 January ’95 the UN decided to pass the buck to the notoriously corrupt and undisciplined Zairean army who would, allegedly, be ‘supported and aided’ by the UNHCR, an agency lacking any resources with which to control the well-armed ex-FAR and militia, backed up by the Hutu community leaders who had done so much to help organize the genocide. At that point aid workers had no choice but to co-operate with the genocidaires in the day-to-day running of the camps.
In the middle of a long book about a different subject (South Africa in transition from apartheid to something else) one needs a break, ‘a little holiday’. So said Rachel in January ’96 on the eve of her departure for Bukavu, the capital of Kivu Province n what was then Eastern Zaire. She was departing to join Andrew; his new NGO job involved working with the local Zaireans whose needs hardly impinged on an international community obsessed by the regional refugee problem. Rachel and Andrew and their first-born would be gone for an unspecified but certainly lengthy period. Therefore Nyanya (Swahili for ‘Granny’) could clearly see the need for a break in Bukavu.
Grandmaternity, to my friends’ amusement and my own astonishment, had brought about a personality change. Babies in general I have always been able to do without, very easily. They are of course inevitable, but excessively tiresome while one awaits the stage when verbal communication is possible. However, Rose somehow seemed different. She was born on 10 November 1995 in her parents’ London flat where I saw her bloody face as she emerged from the womb and heard her first cry and then heard the Afro-Caribbean midwife say, ‘Now what have we here – a daughter!’ Instantly I was besotted. I don’t recall being similarly addicted to the infant Rachel but maybe I was. That’s a long time ago and one forgets … Although Rose must have been as boring as any other baby, her every meaningless whimper and gurgle and wriggle riveted me. Within a month of her being transported to Bukavu I was conferring with my travel agent.
An urban destination unapproachable by road for security reasons and ignored by all commercial airlines is quite a novelty; from Nairobi one must take a twelve-seater MAF plane to Bukavu. Let MAF define itself:
Our new corporate purpose statement reflects a sharpening of perspective: ‘The purpose of the Mission Aviation Fellowship is to multiply the effectiveness of the Church by using aviation and other strategic technologies to reach the world for Christ.’ For half a century, the propellers of MAF planes have served at the very cutting edge of missions. Even now, our Electronic Communications Department operates a C-Standard Satellite terminal in Rwanda, enabling groups on the field to communicate directly with the US as well as with one another. In the absence of local communications, this system serves as a critical link to co-ordinate relief efforts on site and keep track of personnel in perilous areas.
1. ON THE EDGE IN ZAIRE
BUKAVU, 9 APRIL
From the air Bukavu was distantly visible at the base of a steep mountain, its three long narrow wooded peninsulas stretching far out into Lake Kivu. As MAF descended towards the airstrip at 1.00p.m. (two hours late), an immense expanse of blue appeared amidst the bush – a city of close-packed hovels, sheltering 90,000 Rwandan refugees, its blueness created by UNHCR tarpaulin roofs. Pre-grandmaternity, I would have been avid for information about how this camp is now being run. Today I merely observed it, was avid only for information about Rose’s development since last I saw her on 15 January.
I stepped off the plane into the arms – almost literally, he seized my elbow – of a tall, fat, complacent-looking Zairean soldier. In French he asked if I was the grandmother. Proudly I said ‘oui’. Briskly he led me past those numerous predatory bureaucrats who lie in wait for foreigners entering Zaire. Smiling, he delivered me to Andrew. No immigration officer was interested in my passport, no customs officer even glanced at my rucksack. Importing grannies is costly. But the dollars are effective.
I had been forewarned, I knew that Zaire is not as other African countries are: at least not those through which I have travelled. Here no one pretends that there is a functioning government. And if soldiers and civil servants go unpaid for years they must somehow acquire money, whenever and however and from whomever they can. Naturally dollar-rich foreigners are their main targets but this is not standard corruption. Zaire’s real corruption happens at the top in Kinshasa and for more than thirty years has been indulged by the US and French government – among others.
We hastened to the Land-rover, Rose peering at me rather suspiciously from beneath her wide-brimmed sunhat. One doesn’t linger in Bukavu’s ‘airport’, a huddle of flimsy shacks around two once-slid but now semi-derelict colonial office buildings. Numerous heavily armed soldiers stroll to and fro, eyeing all newly arrived passengers speculatively – and to deny their demands is unwise.
The main road bisects the refugee camp. Although small, compared with Goma’s ‘metropolitan’ settlements 120 miles to the north, it seems a vast intrusion on this rural scene. Reputedly it is less violent than Goma’s camps but one prefers, said Andrew, to drive through as quickly as possible. The vibes are disturbing. The pedestrian traffic on the verges was heavy as refugees carried WFP-donated foods to be sold illegally to Zaireans. Many women, using forehead straps, were bent double under the enormous sacks of grain on their backs. Scores of men, women and children, returning to the camp, bore headloads of firewood. No one was conversing or smiling – or looked capable of ever again smiling.
During that twenty-mile drive I fell madly in love with Kivu Province. Even my enchantingly cheerful grand-daughter, who already seemed to be thawing towards Nyanya, could not entirely distract my attention from the lush hilly beauty – hills grassy or forested, overlooking the jade-green waters of Lake Kivu, matching other forested hills on the far (Rwandan) shore. Here, towards the southern end, the lake narrows and that shore is only a few miles away.
Sometimes banana groves line the road and we stopped to spend Zaires 15,000 on a hand offered by three small boys, pitifully skinny yet bouncy and grinning. Watching this transaction, my heart sank. I’m bad at sums and in countries where three, four and five zeros complicate calculations I tend to lose my cool when shopping. Zaires 15,000 was one US dollar three months ago; now it’s about forty US cents.
Not far from Bukavu a large military tent stands by the roadside, labelled UNHCR. Several soldiers lounge at the entrance, ready to register the exit from Zaire of refugees returning to Rwanda. Because no refuges are returning to Rwanda this tent might be described as cosmetic, a symptom of the arcane political game being played by the various aid agencies, the Zairean, Rwandan and Tanzanian governments, the genocidal camp administrators, the sinister Hutu militia (known as the Interahamwe) and representatives of that amorphous entity, the International Community. I was about to revert to my pre-grandmotherly state of mind when Rose smiled directly at me, for the first time ever. Thus beguiled, I forgot all about genocidal refugees, corrupt institutions, self-serving ‘humanitarian’ aid agencies and devious governments.
On the edge of Bukavu, Andrew pointed out the city’s brewery. He knew this would make me feel secure and relaxed; a beerless holiday might overstretch Nyanya’s equanimity. This being one of few surviving local industries confirms the Lonely PlanetEast Africa Guide’s observation: ‘In Zaire the beer rarely runs out. Aside from Australia and Germany, there are few other countries which place such a high priority on their beer supplies.’
Thus far the road had been surprisingly good; in Kivu Province only those twenty miles are tarred and few of the potholes exceed six inches in depth and a yard in diameter. But now, as we entered the city, its disintegrated streets reduced Andrew’s speed to fifteen m.p.h. I noticed Rachel clutching Rose more tightly; the local drivers – not similarly inhibited – send their vehicles careering from side to side, swerving to avoid the worst chasms as though performing in a stunt film. Mercifully Bukavu is a mini-city and we were soon out of the centre, in the almost traffic-free quartier de Muhumba. As for Avenue Walungu – it is a winding rural laneway where goats graze on the verges and beyond the garden hedge of No. 19 a maize-field slopes steeply down to the lake.
A month ago, on Andrew’s erratic satellite ’phone – an over-rated gadget, liable to induce frustration-ulcers, and, if often used, bankruptcy – I had heard about Budgie, the fourth member of the family. Prosaicly, I had assumed him to be feathered. But – a joyful surprise! As I walked into the living-room, a minute ball of grey and white fur unrolled itself and stretched, then greeted me like an old friend, loudly purring. Of course I should have guessed; neither Rachel nor Andrew can live catless and Budgie was presented to them, at the age of six weeks, as a ‘Welcome’ present. Although born in January, he still looks too small to have left his mother. He is singularly ugly – the archetypal alley-kitten – but of ineffable charm and immensely composed. He and Rose are mutually devoted; they share the satisfaction of dominating all available adults, black or white, resident or visiting.
Towards sunset a three-minute walk took me down to the shore – to a secluded spot, overhung by tall pink and orange wild flowers – for my first swim in Lake Kivu. It’s ten years since my last holiday but this one was worth the wait.
10 APRIL
No. 19 is a compact little bungalow: living-room, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and bathroom and – most important and most used – a patio, some fifteen feet square, of polished concrete, overlooking the colourful garden, the lake below and the opposite peninsula. That peninsula runs into Rwanda, as I realised that night when house lights went on across the water from us but the small dwellings of the north remained in darkness. All are unoccupied; fear of Interahamwe incursions from the camps keep them so.
Two servants go with this modest home, part of the deal made by Andrew’s NGO with the Zairean owner who lives in Kinshasa. Paul is the elderly cook-cum-cleaner who lives two hours walk away and arrives punctually at 8.00a.m. six days a week. When he leaves at 3.00p.m. Mpolo, the askari (chowkidar in India) takes over until next morning. Supposedly he stays awake all night and in his tiny mud-floored hut by the gate (its roof is UNHCR tarpaulin: these may be bought in the market for $30) there is no encouragement to sleep, only a hard-backed, broken-legged chair. He also tends the garden and washes and polishes the Land-rover – second-hand, imported via Dar es Salaam and Bujumbura from where Andrew drove it at the beginning of January.
Two servants suggest affluence. But – there is no teapot so tea must be brewed in the kettle. And there are only two each of glasses, mugs, plates, knives, forks and spoons. It seems my arrival would necessitate sharing until I pointed out that empty honey jars can be used as glasses/mugs. I revel in this zany life-style, the bizarre colonial left-over of two servants juxtaposed with the extreme frugality of a conscientious 1990s development worker. And there is a hilarious incongruity about seeing my daughter thrust willy-nilly into a memsahib role – going to the gate to negotiate with vegetable sellers who call her ‘madam’. In some ways she is, I have to admit, slipping into this role with ominous ease, seeming very happy to recline on the patio watching Paul hanging out Rose’s nappies – he of course having washed them. And then he must iron them because of the mango fly which likes to lay its eggs on damp clothes. When these hatch out (if not killed by a hot iron) the worms invade bodies through the skin and make trouble – of what sort I’m not sure. However, Rachel’s happy reclining is perfectly natural; to relish household chores is unnatural. Only those who take p.c. to the point of fanaticism (as I stupidly did thirty years ago when living in Pokhara) or who are obnoxiously mean, would decline to share their relative wealth by employing servants in a country as desperately poor as Zaire.
Many vendors of fruits and vegetables, rabbits and chickens, souvenirs and scarves, bang hopefully on the gate shouting for ‘madam’. Happily this title in Zaire does not have its South African connotation. Here there is a hint of amiable mockery in the voices of dignified elderly vendors as they thus address the ‘mistress of the household’ – barefooted, clad in threadbare shorts and T-shirt and looking younger than her twenty-seven years.
11 APRIL
The capital of Kivu Province must surely qualify for the Guinness Book of Records: a city of quarter of a million with no public transport, no postal service, no telephone service, no functioning bank, no newspapers in any language, no ex-pat dentist, a doctor only at irregular intervals and hospitals without medicines. However, Bukavu’s welcoming and cheerful citizens (who have nothing discernible to be cheerful about) more than compensate for those little inconveniences. As do the clear deep waters of Lake Kivu (a swimmer’s paradise) and the perfection of the climate and the beauty of this whole region – in my experience never excelled, and only rarely equalled, on any continent. Within forty-eight hours, Bukavu had become my favourite city in all the world.
Goma and Bukavu, at the opposite ends of Lake Kivu, were the colonists’ favourite retreats from the relentless heat and humidity of the Congo Basin – the Belgians’ Simla and Darjeeling, inherited post-independence by Zaire’s Mobutu-pampered élite. Spacious holiday villas, and more modest homes for the permanently resident provincial officials, were built on the long wooded peninsulas rising steeply from the lake. These usually attractive dwellings are well spaced out, each surrounded by a glowing abundance of flowering trees and shrubs. Our Avenue Muhumba – on the middle peninsula, towards its tip – winds between plantains and tall trees swathed in purple bougainvillaea; plots of maize, beans and ground nuts separate the bungalows. None of these is large: probably lesser officials were the original inhabitants.
I have, by chance, arrived here at a most propitious time, towards the end of a rainy season. Now the vegetation is all new and vigorous and the dust still being controlled by infrequent but heavy showers while high, gently drifting clouds constantly change Lake Kivu’s colouring: from jade-green to black and blue to silver. On most of our walking routes the lake is visible and it never disappears for long – except in the city centre, the ex-commercial district. Well, not quite ‘ex-’; some muted commercial activity continues despite galloping inflation and closed banks. The one thriving industry, already mentioned, produces a tolerable brew: Primus, sold in half-litre returnable bottles. So precious are these that there is no deposit system; without an empty you cannot buy a full …
On the main avenues several ‘European’ stores (most now Indian-owned) seem large in contrast to the average African shop and still offer an amazing selection of non-perishable imported goods – at formidable prices. You can buy lavatory paper, shampoo, hand-cream, toilet soap, lipstick, sun-lotion, paper napkins, disposable nappies and edible items like biscuits and breakfast cereals made in Kenya and tinned Kraft cheese from the US. No one seems to know by which route American-made cheese travels to Kivu Province; it must be weirdly circuitous. And why import this repellent comestible when an excellent hard cheese is made on a Catholic mission farm not far away and sold in the butcher’s shop? (Expensive but one of the staple foods at No. 19.) But perhaps the importer of Kraft (three times as expensive) is catering for those elderly American radio evangelists who drive their jeep round and round the city centre loudly relaying taped fundamentalist messages. In contrast to all else in the ‘European’ shops, authentic British booze is astoundingly cheap: $15 for a bottle of Scotch (standard size) or Gilbey’s gin. Rachel patronizes such shops only to buy Scotch for special occasions and Klim powdered milk for our tea. Rose of course has her personalized milk supply.
