This article pretty well summarizes what is being talked about around here in terms of the Congo/Rwanda conflict.
Sent to HPPC - Central Africa
December 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/africa/04congo.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=all
Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
KIGALI, Rwanda — There is a general rule in Africa, if not across the world: Behind any rebellion with legs is usually a meddling neighbor. And whether the rebellion in eastern Congo explodes into another full-fledged war, and drags a large chunk of central Africa with it, seems likely to depend on the involvement of Rwanda, Congo’s tiny but disproportionately mighty neighbor.
There is a long and bloody history here, and this time around the evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congo’s troubles; at a minimum, the interference is on the part of many Rwandans. As before, Rwanda’s stake in Congo is a complex mix of strategic interest, business opportunity and the real fears of a nation that has heroically rebuilt itself after near obliteration by ethnic hatred.
The signs are ever-more obvious, if not yet entirely open. Several demobilized Rwandan soldiers, speaking in hushed tones in Kigali, Rwanda’s tightly controlled capital, described a systematic effort by Rwanda’s government-run demobilization commission to send hundreds if not thousands of fighters to the rebel front lines.
Former rebel soldiers in Congo said that they had seen Rwandan officers plucking off the Rwandan flags from the shoulders of their fatigues after they had arrived and that Rwandan officers served as the backbone of the rebel army. Congolese wildlife rangers in the gorilla park on the thickly forested Rwanda-Congo border said countless heavily armed men routinely crossed over from Rwanda into Congo.
A Rwandan government administrator said a military hospital in Kigali was treating many Rwandan soldiers who were recently wounded while fighting in Congo, but the administrator said he could be jailed for talking about it.
There seems to be a reinvigorated sense of the longstanding brotherhood between the Congolese rebels, who are mostly ethnic Tutsi, and the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda, which has supported these same rebels in the past.
The brotherhood is relatively secret for now, just as it was in the late 1990s when Rwanda denied being involved in Congo, only to later admit that it was occupying a vast section of the country. Rwanda’s leaders are vigilant about not endangering their carefully crafted reputation as responsible, development-oriented friends of the West.
Senior Rwandan officials do not deny that demobilized Rwandan soldiers are fighting in Congo, but they say the soldiers are doing it on their own, without any government backing.
“They are ordinary citizens, and if their travel documents are in order, they can go ahead and travel,” said Joseph Mutaboba, Rwanda’s special envoy for the Great Lakes region.
But according to several demobilized soldiers, Rwandan government officials are involved, providing bus fare for the men to travel to Congo and updating the rebel leadership each month on how many fighters from Rwanda are about to come over. Once they get to the rebel camps, the Rwandan veterans said, they flash their Rwandan Army identification cards and then are assigned to a rebel unit.
“We usually get a promotion,” said one fighter who was recently a corporal in the Rwandan Army and served as a sergeant in the rebel forces last month. He said that he could be severely punished if identified and that Rwandan officials and rebel commanders told the fighters not to say anything about the cooperation.
Another cause for suspicion is Rwanda’s past plundering of Congo’s rich trove of minerals, going back to the late 1990s when the Rwandan Army seized control of eastern Congo and pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of smuggled coltan, cassiterite and even diamonds back to Rwanda, according to United Nations documents.
Many current high-ranking Rwandan officials, including the minister of finance, the ambassador to China and the deputy director of the central bank, were executives at a holding company that a United Nations panel in 2002 implicated in the illicit mineral trade and called to be sanctioned. The officials say that they are no longer part of that company and that the company did nothing wrong. Nonetheless, eastern Congo’s lucrative mineral business still seems to be heavily influenced by ethnic Rwandan businessmen with close ties to Kigali.
Some of the most powerful players today, like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga, who runs a small empire of coffee, tea, transport and mineral companies in eastern Congo, are part of a Tutsi-dominated triangle involving the Rwandan government, the conflict-driven mineral trade and a powerful rebel movement led by a renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, a former officer in Rwanda’s army.
Several United Nations reports have accused Mr. Makabuza Ngoga of using strong-arm tactics to smuggle minerals from Congo to Rwanda and one report said that he enjoyed “close ties” to Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame. This week a rebel spokesman said that Mr. Makabuza Ngoga was on Mr. Nkunda’s “College of Honorables,” essentially a rebel advisory board. Mr. Nkunda’s troops recently marched into areas known to be mineral rich — and areas where ethnic Rwandan businessmen are trying to gain a foothold.
Mr. Makabuza Ngoga said in an interview that he was not doing anything illegal.
“I’m just a businessman,” he said. “I work with them all.”
A Tale of Two Africas
Rwanda and Congo are polar opposites, a true David-and-Goliath matchup. Crossing the border from Gisenyi, Rwanda, to Goma, Congo, is a journey across two Africas, in the span of about 100 yards.
The two-minute walk takes you from one of the smallest, tidiest, most promising countries on the continent, where women in white rubber gloves sweep the streets every morning and government employees are at their desks by 7 a.m., to one of the biggest, messiest and most violent African states, home to a conflict that has killed more than five million people, more than any other since World War II.
While Congo is vast, Rwanda is packed. While the Congolese are often playful, known for outlandish dress and great music, Rwandans are reserved. While Congo is naturally rich, Rwanda is perennially poor. Yet Rwanda has emerged as a darling of the aid world, praised for strong, uncorrupt leadership and the strides it has made in fighting AIDS and poverty.
The fates of the two countries are inextricably linked. In 1994, Hutu militias in Rwanda killed 800,000 people, mostly minority Tutsis, and then fled into eastern Congo. Rwanda responded by invading Congo in 1997 and 1998, denying it each time initially but later taking responsibility. Those invasions catalyzed years of war that drew in the armies of half a dozen African countries.
When the Rwandan military controlled eastern Congo from 1998 to 2002, it established a highly organized military-industrial network to illegally exploit Congo’s riches, according to United Nations documents.
A 2002 United Nations report said that top Rwandan military officers worked closely with some of the most notorious smugglers and arms traffickers in the world, including Viktor Bout, a former Soviet arms dealer nicknamed the Merchant of Death who was arrested this year.
“I used to see generals at the airport coming back from Congo with suitcases full of cash,” said a former Rwandan government official who said that if he was identified, he could be killed.
Rwanda may have a lot going for it — a high economic growth rate, low corruption, a Parliament with a majority of seats held by women. But many people here say they do not feel free. When the former government official was interviewed at a Kigali hotel, he abruptly stopped talking whenever the maid walked by.
“You never know,” he whispered, nodding toward the young woman who was smiling behind a plate-glass window smeared with soap suds. “She could be a lieutenant.”
Scarred by a Genocide
Rwanda is tiny, tough and intensely patriotic. Like Israel, it is a postgenocidal state, built on an ethos of self-sacrifice. Its national motto is Never Again.
One oft-cited threat is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, also known as the F.D.L.R., a mostly Hutu militia that is based just across the border in the green folds of eastern Congo. The militia is thought to number 5,000 to 10,000 fighters. Some of its leaders are wanted “genocidaires” who fled Rwanda in 1994 after massacring Tutsi.
“These guys want to come back and finish the job,” said Maj. Jill Rutaremara, a spokesman for Rwanda’s Defense Forces.
Mr. Nkunda, the rebel leader, has used the presence of the Hutu militia and the Congo government’s failure to disarm it as a rationale for his continued armed struggle. His forces have routed Congolese government troops in the past two months and pushed the region to the precipice of another regional war.
United Nations officials say he has not acted entirely alone, either: they said they observed Rwandan tanks firing from Rwandan territory to support Mr. Nkunda’s troops as they advanced in October. Rwandan officials denied this.
Rwandan military officers admit, when pressed, that the Hutu militia has little chance of destabilizing Rwanda. The last time it attacked inside Rwanda was 2001.
Some Western diplomats, Congolese officials and Rwandan dissidents now believe that the Rwandan government is simply using the F.D.L.R. as an excuse to prop up Mr. Nkunda and maintain a sphere of influence in the mineral-rich area across the border.
“These are people who want to make business, and they cover it up with politics,” said Faustin Twagiramungu, a former Rwandan prime minister now in exile in Belgium.
Congolese officials say that that the Rwandan government is making no efforts to bring the Hutu militiamen back into Rwanda because Rwanda wants to make sure that any Hutu-Tutsi violence plays out in Congo.
“What’s happening in eastern Congo is a Rwandese war is being fought on Congolese soil,” said Kikaya bin Karubi, a member of Congo’s Parliament.
Rwandan officials dismiss these claims with a confident chuckle.
“We want to deal with these guys here,” Major Rutaremara said. “We want them back.”
Mr. Mutaboba, the Rwandan government envoy, said the allegations were part of “an organized campaign to distort the whole problem and give it a regional dimension.”
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s a Congo problem.”
Ethnic and Business Ties
But it may be hard drawing a fine line between Congo and Rwanda, despite the lines on a map. There is a long history of ethnic and business ties that seamlessly flow across the colonially imposed borders, especially among the minority Tutsi who dominate business on both sides, yet at the same time, feel threatened and a heightened sense of community as a result.
For example, several demobilized Rwandan soldiers in Kigali said the vast majority of volunteers who recently crossed the border to fight with Mr. Nkunda were Tutsi. Some of the soldiers said that they had relatives living in eastern Congo and that it was like a second home to them.
According to four soldiers and one employee at the Rwandan demobilization commission, at the end of their monthly meetings, officials at the commission ask for anyone fit and ready to fight to stand up. Sometimes the commission provides bus fare to the border, the soldiers said, and other travel costs. The soldiers usually travel unarmed, picking up weapons on the other side, they said.
One demobilized Rwandan lieutenant who just got back from fighting in Congo looked surprised when asked why he went.
“Why? I am Tutsi,” he said. “One hundred percent Tutsi.”
Friday, December 5, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
When planes fall from the sky
We slide into a false sense of security so quickly. The smaller risks adding up to larger ones until you no longer feel fear at the things that frightened you before. This increased risk taking typically occurs at the field level. Not saying anything to the crazy driver who navigates the vehicle at an alarming speed over potholes, across the median, around the winding mountain roads. Arguing with gun slinging soldiers instead of being polite like you were at first. And then there are the plane rides. The really scary ones. Through storms and turbulence. Getting all the way to Bunia and then turning around because there is a problem with the landing gear. Pilot friends will tell you that you have nothing to worry about. Planes can handle turbulence. There is a GPS and other instruments that guide them in a storm. Pilots are cautious, they aren’t going to crash unless a series of events go wrong. Then, people you know, people you have met at parties, people you have talked to, hugged hello and goodbye, crash into a mountain on a rainy Congo day and you feel sick every time you think about it and you can’t stop thinking about it because it could have been anyone you know, it could have been any of the people that you love and care about and it could even have been you sitting on that long leg back to Goma, thinking one more stop to go and then, from out of nowhere, death in the form of a rugged mountain peak in Bukavu, slams into you.
One year and one day before this latest crash in Congo, another plane went down and those of us who knew the pilots were frantic. The sight of Alex and Tristan climbing down out of the rescue plane the next day at the airport in Goma with muddy clothes and wild hair is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. After that, I realized that there are no guarantees that life will continue for any of us. In a second, you can go from talking about your plans for the evening to final silence. So the only way to live is to be completely alive in every moment that you have. Take all of the risks and challenges that come along, do the difficult things, the right things, so that you never have any regrets. Being alive in the moment was so easy in Congo. Everything about that environment was completely in your face daring you to look away. So you dive into it the same way you dive into the onyx waters of Lake Kivu at night. Head first, laughing, in awe of the space that you are allowed to inhabit, if only for a moment.
Whether I’m taking in the view from the top of the Ngong Hills or pushing through a mass of people on the streets of Kampala, or driving past an overgrown cemetary in Bujumbura, it seems that lately I’ve become more aware that life, as short as it is, is often filled with marvelous things. Wild and vivid situations, sudden moments of revelation, and opportunities to live a life of compassion in the face of adversity. On these grounds there is no room for suffocating anger. We are all just birds spreading our wings for a moment in the sun, before the final ride on that comets tail across the universe carries us away, trailing dust and cosmic embers in its wake. In the end, death always comes too soon and so we must fly as high and as far as we can go and never look down. These are some of the lessons that I am still trying to absorb as I travel down this long road through Africa.
One year and one day before this latest crash in Congo, another plane went down and those of us who knew the pilots were frantic. The sight of Alex and Tristan climbing down out of the rescue plane the next day at the airport in Goma with muddy clothes and wild hair is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. After that, I realized that there are no guarantees that life will continue for any of us. In a second, you can go from talking about your plans for the evening to final silence. So the only way to live is to be completely alive in every moment that you have. Take all of the risks and challenges that come along, do the difficult things, the right things, so that you never have any regrets. Being alive in the moment was so easy in Congo. Everything about that environment was completely in your face daring you to look away. So you dive into it the same way you dive into the onyx waters of Lake Kivu at night. Head first, laughing, in awe of the space that you are allowed to inhabit, if only for a moment.
Whether I’m taking in the view from the top of the Ngong Hills or pushing through a mass of people on the streets of Kampala, or driving past an overgrown cemetary in Bujumbura, it seems that lately I’ve become more aware that life, as short as it is, is often filled with marvelous things. Wild and vivid situations, sudden moments of revelation, and opportunities to live a life of compassion in the face of adversity. On these grounds there is no room for suffocating anger. We are all just birds spreading our wings for a moment in the sun, before the final ride on that comets tail across the universe carries us away, trailing dust and cosmic embers in its wake. In the end, death always comes too soon and so we must fly as high and as far as we can go and never look down. These are some of the lessons that I am still trying to absorb as I travel down this long road through Africa.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Through the kaleidoscope darkly
In waking, I find myself dreaming, in dreaming, awake, for an eternity of muted visions straining my definition of providence. The sky is brilliant blue to the north. Sunlight, golden in the afternoon, bathes the muddy paths in glorious light. To the south, dark clouds are crawling fast. The effect is striking. A sky divided. Ominous darkness on one side rapidly eating up the blue. The tree where the black-headed herons live is swaying violently back and forth. The mothers hunker down on top of babies inside their unsteady nests. The wind pushes me back from the balcony. A warning. Time to go inside and close all of the windows. But I am reluctant. I move closer to the edge and look down at the street. The rain is starting to pour down. I don’t want to go inside. I want to be alive for a moment, in the rain, in the wind, watching the last vestiges of sunlight as they are devoured by the dark clouds.
Increasingly it seems that time is racing past me, beyond everything that used to serve as milestones. I don’t own a vehicle, a house, a pet, the list could go on. I am freer than I was 2 years ago. I’ve learned to travel lighter. Lately I move between three countries per month. Rwanda to DRC to Burundi and back last month. Rwanda to Kenya to Uganda and back this month. What is the purpose of all this movement? Crashing into other cultures, trying to with hold judgment on everything. Sleeping in one hotel room after another. Guessing at the truth behind polite conversations. What are you not saying to me? What do I not say to you? What sand traps lie in the middle of what we don’t say to each other? Hugging, kissing, touching foreheads with strangers. Welcome to the rabbit hole. A beautiful, delicious, fevered, exhausting collision into humanity. There are days when I am ready to exchange this brown olive skin for something that will allow me to blend in better, something that will keep me from the weight of a hundred of eyes that follow every move. The anonymity that I crave is not found here. I need to move to Peru where I will be myself again and not the strangest of beasts, a circus freak, the creature with pockets full of cash. If an ATM machine sprouted legs and walked down the street, it would be treated exactly the same as I am every time I walk to the store. I want to find the words to explain in Kinyarwanda, Swahili, Kirundi: I am not white and I don’t have loads of cash. Even if I was white, that still doesn’t mean that I would have money. Stop stereotyping me based on the color of my skin – which really isn’t all that much lighter than yours anyway.
But these thoughts are poisonous and circular. If I feel this way, why stay? That’s what they would ask me. That’s what I ask myself. But I’ve made up my mind by now and the reasons are carved in stone. I will not leave until it is time. I stare at the ground a lot when I walk now. So that I can ignore the spectacle that I make as I carry my groceries home in a bag on my shoulder. I pretend to myself that the stares are friendly curiosity but on some days it’s just intrusive and abrasive. For a while I would have staring contests with people to see who would blink first. But I would always win because I would end up glaring and the other person would look away in confusion and then I would feel like shit. I’m tired. After 6 months without time off I will be ready for R&R in July. One week off. I’m planning to go to Kampala where I still might be stared at but probably not as much and at least I will be able to communicate with people and that makes all the difference in the world.
Increasingly it seems that time is racing past me, beyond everything that used to serve as milestones. I don’t own a vehicle, a house, a pet, the list could go on. I am freer than I was 2 years ago. I’ve learned to travel lighter. Lately I move between three countries per month. Rwanda to DRC to Burundi and back last month. Rwanda to Kenya to Uganda and back this month. What is the purpose of all this movement? Crashing into other cultures, trying to with hold judgment on everything. Sleeping in one hotel room after another. Guessing at the truth behind polite conversations. What are you not saying to me? What do I not say to you? What sand traps lie in the middle of what we don’t say to each other? Hugging, kissing, touching foreheads with strangers. Welcome to the rabbit hole. A beautiful, delicious, fevered, exhausting collision into humanity. There are days when I am ready to exchange this brown olive skin for something that will allow me to blend in better, something that will keep me from the weight of a hundred of eyes that follow every move. The anonymity that I crave is not found here. I need to move to Peru where I will be myself again and not the strangest of beasts, a circus freak, the creature with pockets full of cash. If an ATM machine sprouted legs and walked down the street, it would be treated exactly the same as I am every time I walk to the store. I want to find the words to explain in Kinyarwanda, Swahili, Kirundi: I am not white and I don’t have loads of cash. Even if I was white, that still doesn’t mean that I would have money. Stop stereotyping me based on the color of my skin – which really isn’t all that much lighter than yours anyway.
But these thoughts are poisonous and circular. If I feel this way, why stay? That’s what they would ask me. That’s what I ask myself. But I’ve made up my mind by now and the reasons are carved in stone. I will not leave until it is time. I stare at the ground a lot when I walk now. So that I can ignore the spectacle that I make as I carry my groceries home in a bag on my shoulder. I pretend to myself that the stares are friendly curiosity but on some days it’s just intrusive and abrasive. For a while I would have staring contests with people to see who would blink first. But I would always win because I would end up glaring and the other person would look away in confusion and then I would feel like shit. I’m tired. After 6 months without time off I will be ready for R&R in July. One week off. I’m planning to go to Kampala where I still might be stared at but probably not as much and at least I will be able to communicate with people and that makes all the difference in the world.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
May 3 Kigali
The light bulb shifts from bright to dim, flickering back and forth like a malfunctioning lightening bug caught in a thunderstorm. Outside, lightening flashes over familiar terrain turning it into an otherworldly landscape. Invisible dragons soar over the hills, white fire exploding from their mouths, the smell of scorched earth in their wake. I drift in and out of sleep.
May 5 Goma
Across the chaotic border, Goma roars to life. A full-on assault on the senses. Ten minutes ago the tranquility of rolling hills and waterfalls lulled us all to sleep and now someone has pushed the fast-forward button and cranked the volume up high. The cacophony of motorbikes dodging vehicles and pedestrians, money changers calling out, and planes rumbling overhead in the blazing sunlight overwhelms us. Bienvenue, the driver yells. I can’t stop smiling.
After the ceremony marking the launch of the project in Goma, the coordinator tells us that the government officials were annoyed because they didn’t receive money for the speeches they made, other than the transport money that we gave to everyone. He said they probably won’t come to any of our functions again. The project manager told him that he did the right thing in not paying them. You shouldn’t have to pay government officials do their job. Especially when the project is already supporting the government by doing the very things that they say that they want to do. The problem is that other NGO’s pay government officials to attend their functions. So they expect it from us too. It’s really annoying how some of them throw money at people to get them to participate in their activities. That is not development. We have faced this problem of money as motivation for attending workshops and trainings in all three countries. People will come if they are paid and they will participate but after you leave they are not going to continue doing those activities. There will be no motivation. We want people to participate for the right reasons. The PM tells us that he would rather have 10 committed people participate in this project because they want to solve problems in their communities, than 100 people who show up just for the money.
May 10 Kigali
The tiles are coming up in the living room. It’s as if there was a small volcano under the floor. It happened overnight. I made the mistake of telling the landlady about it. She completely loses it. She says the tiles will have to be shipped from South Africa, that I have to pay for everything. It doesn’t matter that it happened overnight, that I didn’t do anything to make them come up. In the end I evaluate the cost and stress of moving from a place with a really great view to someplace new with unforeseen disasters waiting to happen. I decide it’s worth it to pay to fix it. But I do research. I take a piece of the tile, jump on the mini-bus and in 15 minutes I am in town, on a scavenger hunt for the store that sells the right kind of tile. On the bus I meet another muzungu. A slightly drunk elderly Scottish man. He is wearing a white fedora hat with a black band, a daffodil yellow shirt and khaki pants. He squeezes in beside me and asks me where I am from. I say, the US and he begins a monologue that lasts all the way to town on how Americans aren’t really as bad as everyone says they are and that most of us are pretty good people, generous, just a bit misguided on how to help people development-wise. I smile and nod a lot. The conversation amuses me and I can’t feel the least bit insulted when I am so enchanted by his accent. When we get to town he pulls out a tiny slip of paper with his number and email address. He says, I would like to have coffee some time and talk some more. Then he says, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve had some beers. Its 10 AM. Of course I’ll have coffee with him. I like hearing him talk, plus I want to find out what an old Scottish guy is doing in Kigali. In town, I finally find the right tile store. They have my tiles. They aren’t too expensive and they certainly do not have to be shipped from South Africa.
May 19 Bujumbura
Sunlight is filtered down through a permanent haze of dust. Its fading fast when I finally reach Pacific Hotel. A shabby set of buildings with a built-in restaurant. At $17 a night I can’t complain. But there is no towel in bathroom, the bed takes up the whole room and the mosquito net is full of holes. The fan works though which a necessity in the Burundi heat. Also on the upside, it is so loud that it drowns out the sound of shelling and any other mischief that the rebels might be up to at night. I sleep on top of the covers, not willing to venture underneath the ragged bedspread.
Evenings in Burundi stretch out longer than usual. I don’t know anyone in Bujumbura. So I sit by the water at Circle Nautique and talk to the stray cats. I eavesdrop on conversations in Italian and French. I watch a small family, a white UN type guy with an African wife and beautiful little boy. They are lost in a private domestic little world. I wonder what their lives are like. I wonder if they are happy. Taxi’s are cheap so I float from place to place, stopping anywhere that looks interesting. At first I let the driver choose the restaurant for me. But that didn’t work out so well because they took one look at me and drove me straight to the Chinese restaurant. One night I lost my phone and spent several hours retracing my steps in a vain effort to find it. I knew I wouldn’t find it but the taxi driver was nice and didn’t mind driving me all over town. It was the second phone I had lost in less than a month. The first one broke when I threw it across the room.
The road to Cibitoke follows the Congo border. The Country Director tells us that this road is exceptionally dangerous in the evenings. In fact we will have to leave Cibitoke by 2pm so that we can get back to the city before dark. He says that rebel soldiers often ambush vehicles along the road. He tells a story about a minibus driver traveling towards Rwanda who was stopped by rebel soldiers. They asked him to give them money. The driver said that he didn’t have any money because his minibus was not working well and he had repaired it several times and it cost a lot of money. The soldiers asked if he was refusing and he again said that he didn’t have the money. So they told everyone to get off of the bus and then they set fire to it and burned it up right on the road. Then they said to the driver, now you won’t have to worry about your vehicle costing you money anymore. The moral of the story is that you always pay the soldiers when they ask, you never say no. Apparently the rebels simply cross the border into Congo whenever they are pursued by government soldiers.
May 27 Kibuye
The road to Kibuye curls around the Rwandan hills in an unyielding embrace. It has so many sharp turns that people often become sick when the driver goes too fast. Our vehicle turns a corner and we pass through a small town. Coming towards us are two men on motorbikes driving side by side in the same lane holding hands. It was an unusual sight and made an impression on me. There may be some aspects of this culture that I don’t like but I do appreciate the part of the Rwandese culture that allows men to be openly affectionate with each other.
Rounding the final bend in the road, Lake Kivu unfolds in all its glory before us. The turquoise green water and little islands just off-shore are tempting. A wooden boat is parked at the dock and a boy calls out, only 5000 francs for one hour. But I’ve already been out on the boat and today I have too much work to do. We chat with journalists and camera men from Kigali. The journalist gets distracted, so he asks me to take notes for him on the launch. No problem. I write down everything about the project that I want people to know. It will be on the news tomorrow. I don’t have a television so I won’t know if he used my notes or not, but either way, It’s all there.
It’s dark when we reach the outskirts of Kigali. Small lights are glowing on a thousand hills. A Townes Van Zandt song comes to mind. “Living on the road my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean, but now you wear your skin like iron and your breath’s as hard as kerosene.” Sometimes I’m not sure if this life will lead me further down the wide road to destruction or if in the end, it will serve to purify me. I’m gambling on the last one. Mostly because this life does not allow me the dangerous luxury of forgetting the suffering that exists all around us. If I can not learn to stretch out my hand and touch the sick and the sad, the wounded and the oppressed in this place, than I will never learn to do it. God help the unbelief that clouds my mind at times, and lead my feet to trod on the narrow rocky path, that leads to paradise.
The light bulb shifts from bright to dim, flickering back and forth like a malfunctioning lightening bug caught in a thunderstorm. Outside, lightening flashes over familiar terrain turning it into an otherworldly landscape. Invisible dragons soar over the hills, white fire exploding from their mouths, the smell of scorched earth in their wake. I drift in and out of sleep.
May 5 Goma
Across the chaotic border, Goma roars to life. A full-on assault on the senses. Ten minutes ago the tranquility of rolling hills and waterfalls lulled us all to sleep and now someone has pushed the fast-forward button and cranked the volume up high. The cacophony of motorbikes dodging vehicles and pedestrians, money changers calling out, and planes rumbling overhead in the blazing sunlight overwhelms us. Bienvenue, the driver yells. I can’t stop smiling.
After the ceremony marking the launch of the project in Goma, the coordinator tells us that the government officials were annoyed because they didn’t receive money for the speeches they made, other than the transport money that we gave to everyone. He said they probably won’t come to any of our functions again. The project manager told him that he did the right thing in not paying them. You shouldn’t have to pay government officials do their job. Especially when the project is already supporting the government by doing the very things that they say that they want to do. The problem is that other NGO’s pay government officials to attend their functions. So they expect it from us too. It’s really annoying how some of them throw money at people to get them to participate in their activities. That is not development. We have faced this problem of money as motivation for attending workshops and trainings in all three countries. People will come if they are paid and they will participate but after you leave they are not going to continue doing those activities. There will be no motivation. We want people to participate for the right reasons. The PM tells us that he would rather have 10 committed people participate in this project because they want to solve problems in their communities, than 100 people who show up just for the money.
May 10 Kigali
The tiles are coming up in the living room. It’s as if there was a small volcano under the floor. It happened overnight. I made the mistake of telling the landlady about it. She completely loses it. She says the tiles will have to be shipped from South Africa, that I have to pay for everything. It doesn’t matter that it happened overnight, that I didn’t do anything to make them come up. In the end I evaluate the cost and stress of moving from a place with a really great view to someplace new with unforeseen disasters waiting to happen. I decide it’s worth it to pay to fix it. But I do research. I take a piece of the tile, jump on the mini-bus and in 15 minutes I am in town, on a scavenger hunt for the store that sells the right kind of tile. On the bus I meet another muzungu. A slightly drunk elderly Scottish man. He is wearing a white fedora hat with a black band, a daffodil yellow shirt and khaki pants. He squeezes in beside me and asks me where I am from. I say, the US and he begins a monologue that lasts all the way to town on how Americans aren’t really as bad as everyone says they are and that most of us are pretty good people, generous, just a bit misguided on how to help people development-wise. I smile and nod a lot. The conversation amuses me and I can’t feel the least bit insulted when I am so enchanted by his accent. When we get to town he pulls out a tiny slip of paper with his number and email address. He says, I would like to have coffee some time and talk some more. Then he says, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve had some beers. Its 10 AM. Of course I’ll have coffee with him. I like hearing him talk, plus I want to find out what an old Scottish guy is doing in Kigali. In town, I finally find the right tile store. They have my tiles. They aren’t too expensive and they certainly do not have to be shipped from South Africa.
May 19 Bujumbura
Sunlight is filtered down through a permanent haze of dust. Its fading fast when I finally reach Pacific Hotel. A shabby set of buildings with a built-in restaurant. At $17 a night I can’t complain. But there is no towel in bathroom, the bed takes up the whole room and the mosquito net is full of holes. The fan works though which a necessity in the Burundi heat. Also on the upside, it is so loud that it drowns out the sound of shelling and any other mischief that the rebels might be up to at night. I sleep on top of the covers, not willing to venture underneath the ragged bedspread.
Evenings in Burundi stretch out longer than usual. I don’t know anyone in Bujumbura. So I sit by the water at Circle Nautique and talk to the stray cats. I eavesdrop on conversations in Italian and French. I watch a small family, a white UN type guy with an African wife and beautiful little boy. They are lost in a private domestic little world. I wonder what their lives are like. I wonder if they are happy. Taxi’s are cheap so I float from place to place, stopping anywhere that looks interesting. At first I let the driver choose the restaurant for me. But that didn’t work out so well because they took one look at me and drove me straight to the Chinese restaurant. One night I lost my phone and spent several hours retracing my steps in a vain effort to find it. I knew I wouldn’t find it but the taxi driver was nice and didn’t mind driving me all over town. It was the second phone I had lost in less than a month. The first one broke when I threw it across the room.
The road to Cibitoke follows the Congo border. The Country Director tells us that this road is exceptionally dangerous in the evenings. In fact we will have to leave Cibitoke by 2pm so that we can get back to the city before dark. He says that rebel soldiers often ambush vehicles along the road. He tells a story about a minibus driver traveling towards Rwanda who was stopped by rebel soldiers. They asked him to give them money. The driver said that he didn’t have any money because his minibus was not working well and he had repaired it several times and it cost a lot of money. The soldiers asked if he was refusing and he again said that he didn’t have the money. So they told everyone to get off of the bus and then they set fire to it and burned it up right on the road. Then they said to the driver, now you won’t have to worry about your vehicle costing you money anymore. The moral of the story is that you always pay the soldiers when they ask, you never say no. Apparently the rebels simply cross the border into Congo whenever they are pursued by government soldiers.
May 27 Kibuye
The road to Kibuye curls around the Rwandan hills in an unyielding embrace. It has so many sharp turns that people often become sick when the driver goes too fast. Our vehicle turns a corner and we pass through a small town. Coming towards us are two men on motorbikes driving side by side in the same lane holding hands. It was an unusual sight and made an impression on me. There may be some aspects of this culture that I don’t like but I do appreciate the part of the Rwandese culture that allows men to be openly affectionate with each other.
Rounding the final bend in the road, Lake Kivu unfolds in all its glory before us. The turquoise green water and little islands just off-shore are tempting. A wooden boat is parked at the dock and a boy calls out, only 5000 francs for one hour. But I’ve already been out on the boat and today I have too much work to do. We chat with journalists and camera men from Kigali. The journalist gets distracted, so he asks me to take notes for him on the launch. No problem. I write down everything about the project that I want people to know. It will be on the news tomorrow. I don’t have a television so I won’t know if he used my notes or not, but either way, It’s all there.
It’s dark when we reach the outskirts of Kigali. Small lights are glowing on a thousand hills. A Townes Van Zandt song comes to mind. “Living on the road my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean, but now you wear your skin like iron and your breath’s as hard as kerosene.” Sometimes I’m not sure if this life will lead me further down the wide road to destruction or if in the end, it will serve to purify me. I’m gambling on the last one. Mostly because this life does not allow me the dangerous luxury of forgetting the suffering that exists all around us. If I can not learn to stretch out my hand and touch the sick and the sad, the wounded and the oppressed in this place, than I will never learn to do it. God help the unbelief that clouds my mind at times, and lead my feet to trod on the narrow rocky path, that leads to paradise.
Monday, March 31, 2008
This is a typical IDP hut. A whole family will live in a little hut like this. This is in Bunia and it is not an IDP camp. It is a group of IDP's living within a village. This is a bit better than being in an IDP camp because although they have to live in this tiny hut, the community is able to help support them.
Friday, March 14, 2008
into the lion's den
The road bends and the path that unravels in front of you is completely different from anything that you had in mind. It’s death staring you in the face. It’s vomiting 10 times in one night. It’s the earth shifting beneath your bed. Its breaking all of the promises that you made to God.
Suddenly the thrill of crossing into rebel territory isn’t so newsworthy. It’s just another tale to tell. A conversation starter. I was in a tiny remote mountain village controlled by Nkunda’s forces. It was beautiful, lush, holy, pristine and almost all of the people that lived there, now live in IDP camps along the road to Sake. The camps are full of miserable little straw huts clustered together with pieces of UNHCR tarps clinging to the tops. Rounded alters built to the god of war. The most desperate kind of living imaginable. Pure survival. But so many don’t.
A new survey by NRC tells us that 5.4 million people have died of conflict related causes in DRC since 1998. 45,000 people continue to die each month. And in the US of A people are stressed out because they think that they are too fat or too thin. They are afraid that the person they love doesn’t love them or that the person that loves them will find out that they are cheating on them. They think that the lines on their faces make them less beautiful. I know this because every time I go home I become one of those self-absorbed people. It is so easy to let a depressive fog settle over you and to forget what it means to live on the edge of darkness.
There is a quote that rings in my head over and over like the tolling of the bells in the church steeples on Sunday. “There is a way to be good again”. This is a quote from one of the characters in the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It’s a man telling another man that there is a way for him to redeem himself after he betrayed his friend in the most terrible way. It reminds me of what this work has come to mean to me. It is more than just curiosity now. It exceeds my desire to expand my views and my mind. It exceeds my need to travel, the never ending restlessness. There is a purpose slowly taking shape. It has something to do with finding goodness. Not in myself because that is not where goodness lives. But within the outrageousness, the tragedy, the brilliance, the unbearable lightness of life lived in constant metamorphosis. It lies within the people that I see on a daily basis, who continually reinvent themselves in order to survive and who continue to try to work for peace, in a region that most of the world has given up on.
Suddenly the thrill of crossing into rebel territory isn’t so newsworthy. It’s just another tale to tell. A conversation starter. I was in a tiny remote mountain village controlled by Nkunda’s forces. It was beautiful, lush, holy, pristine and almost all of the people that lived there, now live in IDP camps along the road to Sake. The camps are full of miserable little straw huts clustered together with pieces of UNHCR tarps clinging to the tops. Rounded alters built to the god of war. The most desperate kind of living imaginable. Pure survival. But so many don’t.
A new survey by NRC tells us that 5.4 million people have died of conflict related causes in DRC since 1998. 45,000 people continue to die each month. And in the US of A people are stressed out because they think that they are too fat or too thin. They are afraid that the person they love doesn’t love them or that the person that loves them will find out that they are cheating on them. They think that the lines on their faces make them less beautiful. I know this because every time I go home I become one of those self-absorbed people. It is so easy to let a depressive fog settle over you and to forget what it means to live on the edge of darkness.
There is a quote that rings in my head over and over like the tolling of the bells in the church steeples on Sunday. “There is a way to be good again”. This is a quote from one of the characters in the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It’s a man telling another man that there is a way for him to redeem himself after he betrayed his friend in the most terrible way. It reminds me of what this work has come to mean to me. It is more than just curiosity now. It exceeds my desire to expand my views and my mind. It exceeds my need to travel, the never ending restlessness. There is a purpose slowly taking shape. It has something to do with finding goodness. Not in myself because that is not where goodness lives. But within the outrageousness, the tragedy, the brilliance, the unbearable lightness of life lived in constant metamorphosis. It lies within the people that I see on a daily basis, who continually reinvent themselves in order to survive and who continue to try to work for peace, in a region that most of the world has given up on.
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