I had a surreal moment the other day.

There I was sitting at the bar of the Hotel Milles Collines – a rather non-descript, but very appreciated 5-star establishment on top of a beautiful hill in downtown Kigali. That sentence alone would be enough to convey something a little out of kilter...what the hell was I doing in downtown Kigali?!? Many people have asked the broader question of what we thought we were doing going to Africa, but in my mind Rwanda, and specifically its capital, were just craziness.

 

The simple answer is I followed my wife. I did the car, she did the itinerary, and off we went...so Rwanda, Uganda, and other former warzones were what would be coming my way, simple as that. Somehow for me, Rwanda represented something new, the next level of Africa, no longer “Africa for beginners” as people refer to Malawi and other Southern African states. This no longer had the developed infrastructure of Tanzania, or the touristy and amazing beaches of Zanzibar, this (in my mind) was where, as an ex-lecturer put it, “the rubber really hit the road”.   

 

Many people wondered why we thought we were equipped to handle a trip through Africa as we were preparing to get on our way. As I’ve said before, we weren’t, and if we had all the answers to the various questions, we’d probably never have attempted it, but there was always a confidence that things would be OK. “You don’t know anything about car mechanics”, OK, I’ll learn. “You’ve never driven off-road”, OK, but what’s the worst that can happen? We’ll get stuck. “You’re going to Africa!” Yes, I know, isn’t that amazing?!?!? But there we were at the border to Rwanda, and the only question in my mind was “What the hell am I doing here?!?”

 

You probably only know the name “Rwanda” for the same reason that I did...it was the scene of an almost incomprehensible genocide in 1994 (Which genocides are ever comprehensible?). The only images I had in my mind of a country that I admittedly knew nothing about, were those of a failing UN, self-serving White House press correspondents and the shear brutality of neighbours, friends, family members and a general civilian population butchering one another...oh, and CNN.

 

Which is why I found it strange, no, totally surreal, to be sitting at the bar of the Milles Collines on my laptop “filing my story” (writing a blog) just as those TV reporters had done 17 years ago.

 

Naomi and I went to two churches – places where thousands of people died as they unsuccessfully attempted to shelter from armed, government-backed, civilian gangs – often comprised of people they knew, who had the sole goal of killing them at any cost. We also went to the genocide museum where the full scale of the atrocity has been well-documented and carefully explained...but how do you explain something like this?

 

We drove around Kigali on the best roads, with the most controlled traffic, to the fanciest shops that we’ve seen since leaving Cape Town. We sat in cafes and had the tastiest cappuccinos and fastest internet access since leaving the UK. Simultaneously, as we drove through the streets connecting the suburbs of this city which is spread over a series of hills, it was so easy to recognise the places where 17 years ago (almost to the month), roadblocks were put up, and people were systematically pulled from their cars and quite literally hacked to pieces.

 

We often found ourselves questioning as we passed someone old enough to be involved; what was their role? If they were young, did they lose a family member (87.5% of people did, according to records) If they were old, what role did they play – were they a lucky survivor, or one of the perpetrators?

 

Casper, our guide at one of the churches, summed up the situation succinctly: “I lost 10 of my brothers, and both my parents, I was part of the village resistance when the militias came. Now I am re-building my family’s house so that they’re not forgotten, and will live there with my wife who is the sole survivor of her entire family and our child. I will honour them”.  “People ask me what I think of the Hutus (the ethnic group largely responsible for the killings) and I say this...I have no opinion of Hutus. Those who murdered I hold accountable, those who didn’t are Rwandans, just like me”.

 

So Kigali and Rwanda as a whole were surreal for many reasons:

It’s not a warzone; it’s a country that’s seemingly very busy “getting it right”. It’s a country trying to move on from its past, without trying to forget. It’s a tiny place – smaller than Wales from what I’ve read – where 1 million out of 8 million people died over 3 months, meaning one person roughly every 8 seconds.

 

It’s lush, and green, and (because of the genocide) incredibly young.

 

It’s a place that forced the world to ask “How could we have let this happen again?!?” – 50 years after it was forced to ask “How could we have let this happen?” while every day, somewhere around the world, someone asks...”How can this be happening”?!?!....

 

Note on the title:

*The International Community knew that to define what was happening in Rwanda as “Genocide” would necessitate a reaction from at the very least, UN member states, if not the wider Western World in accordance with an international convention to prevent genocide signed in 1948. Due to various reasons, but now chiefly acknowledged as being the then recent deaths of US soldiers in Somalia, during a now infamous White House Press Conference, Christine Shelley, a spokesperson refused to use the term genocide with reference to questions about the “unrest” in Rwanda posed by Alan Elsner, a Reuters journalist. She instead opted for the more questionably accurate, though infinitely more convenient “Acts of Genocide” – a term which saved the world any further involvement, but cost 1 million Rwandans their lives.