Borehole puts a stop to the cycle of Ill health and poverty

This is an article I wrote for World Water day that got posted on reuters: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/lwf/12698661542.htm

Charity pulls on her dress and quickly picks up the remaining jerry cans from the kitchen. She hears her mother calling and turns to see her family close by gathered around the borehole. The yellow jerry cans glisten in the morning sunlight; her sisters giggle, splashing each other with the clear water that gushes so freely from the pipe. Her mother, pumping effortlessly, greets neighbours as they get in line with their cans for the morning fill. Charity smiles - life is as it should be.

Water is vital for survival. It commands us - we are at mercy to its power. Water - for this reason - is a basic human right, yet for many communities around the world this right is not being met. In northern Uganda, with a reported 40% of people not having access to a safe water supply (Unicef.org/infobycountry/Uganda-statistics.html) , communities often pay a very high price to have access to any water at all.

Most families in Charity's village have only recently moved home from the inhumane and congested camps they were forced into because of the 20-year long civil war that rampaged northern Uganda. Although happy to be home, the joy of resettlement is not without its challenges. 'Coming home' often means returning to a piece of land marked simply by a mango tree: homes have to be rebuilt from scratch, land cleared and reopened, and schools reconstructed. Access to clean water - the most vital resource of all - is ironically often the hardest feat for communities to achieve.

Without the tools, skills and money to buy supplies, communities are unable to drill into the ground to access clean water. Providing this infrastructure is just one of the ways the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) supports communities in Uganda. In 2009 alone, the organisation drilled 62 boreholes, providing clean water to thousands of people.

Before the LWF drilled the borehole in Charity's village, the 63 recently returned households used to draw their water from a dirty stream deep in the bush. This water - polluted and shared by cattle - led to a constant cycle of ill health within the community. 'My children and neighbours constantly had diarrhoea, skin rashes and eye infections', tells Christopher, Charity's father. 'Now we have the borehole these complaints have stopped. My children have put on weight and have more energy and my neighbours have the strength to work harder to rebuild what we've lost.'

This borehole has dramatically altered the quantity of water now accessible to this village. When collecting from the dirty stream, all families were limited to one jerry can per day to ensure the source did not dry up. With this one jerry can, whole families - with an average of six children per household in Uganda - would have to wash themselves, cook meals, and use it for drinking water. The result: each family only had enough water to cook one meal a day. People went hungry. The borehole on the other hand allows each family to draw practically inexhaustible amounts of water daily, ensuring all necessities are fulfilled.

Plentiful supplies of water allow for washing hands after using the latrine; it enables people to wash themselves everyday decreasing bacteria in their homes; it allows for utensils to be washed, decreasing cross-contamination. The ease with which water is collected saves women time every day, freeing them to concentrate on income generating activities, such as harvesting crops, to pay for their children's education, for medical costs, for food, and for basic necessities.
LWF has taken every step possible to ensure the sustainability of the borehole. A Water User Committee has been established, responsible for ensuring the borehole remains in good condition, villagers pay a small fee to cover the cost of any repairs needed, and a pump mechanic has been trained. The community feels empowered: they can now ensure that clean water, and therefore health, remains a priority in their lives.

This borehole has brought hope to the people of Charity's village, drastically changing their quality of life. Escaping the confines of the camp, this community has already rebuilt many homes, reopened land for agriculture and cattle grazing, and now - with the clean water source - they are living healthier, happier lives.

Being mugged and the Ugandan justice system

Yesterday put my previous blog – ‘Kampala – a city of different perspectives’ – in context. Two people’s starkly different lives, a thief’s, and mine, truly did coexist and collide.

This hasn’t been the best weekend, but it has been very interesting and taught me plenty about the justice system over here and how crime and the police work.

At roughly midday on Saturday I was mugged. Sitting on a boda boda in between Adam and the driver, we were moving along at a slow pace through busy lunchtime traffic in down town Kampala. A thief – completely in my blind spot – ran at me and with what I can only describe as intricate skill, pulled my necklace free from my neck, breaking the chain in two. I wish it had just been a necklace and not my most precious possession, but such is life.

Before I had time to realise what had happened, the man shot across the road. I let out a yelp and mumbled something about ‘necklace’ before Adam comprehended what had happened. As I said – this man had skill and was quick. Without trepidation, Adam leapt off the motorbike, removed his flip-flops and ran out across the road. How he didn’t get run over I don’t know, but within a second he disappeared also. In a panic I told the boda boda driver to follow them. Luckily, by chance, we’d picked a driver who was also a university student with impeccable English and quickly we were in hot pursuit.

When we entered the road they’d run down I couldn’t see Adam and I was scared. This man had mugged me with such ease, I was sure that he was a professional thief and could have a weapon on him. The panic grew and with it fear. The realisation that the necklace was gone and that Adam may be in danger threw me into hysterics. Quickly a crowd surrounded me and people were asking what happened, and if they could help. I didn’t realise this at the time, but there is a very strong mob culture in Uganda. People hate thieves, to the point that if they catch one, they often batter them to death – or close to it. I was having problems articulating myself, when all of a sudden Adam reappeared breathless, but fine, and then two police officers (out of uniform) were saying they knew the guy and where he would run. One officer climbed on the back of my boda, and Adam and the other officer on another, and we were off.

I’ve had some pretty scary boda rides since I’ve been here, but nothing like this. We were weaving in between cars at high speeds; cars had to break to let us through and in the end I closed my eyes in submission. That morning before we set off we thought about taking our helmets and decided against it – if only we’d known what the day would involve, I’d have thought again!

As we continued – I had no idea where we were going – we saw the thief and his accomplice on the other side of the road, clearly having no idea that we were chasing them. As soon as they saw us, they started running down a path that led straight into the slums. Within an instant, Adam and the two officers were off the bikes running after them. My boda driver followed at high speeds and many times I thought we were going to crash or that the persistent bumping would throw me off. I could see Adam in the distance very close behind this man and I thought that they were going to catch him, but by the time we caught up, all of them had entered the deep maize of tin-roofed shacks.

At this point I was still very shaken up, and quite honestly I didn’t trust anyone. So quickly had people come to help and these ‘police’, out of uniform, made me suspicious that this was a ruse, an elaborate plan to get money out of stupid muzungus.

The bike couldn’t enter the slums and so I stayed on the edge with the driver and again a huge crowd of people gathered around me. People were asking what he’d stolen – I presume they’d seen the chase and guessed what was going on. Again I grew nervous. They had been gone a while, and I felt so insecure about Adam running around the slums with people who claimed to be helping us, but could be tricking us. People were on their phones, speaking in Lugandan, and I had no idea what was being said. Adam still hadn’t reappeared, but the driver and some other person – I really can’t remember the chain of events that clearly – told me we needed to get back on the road and meet the others further up. I didn’t trust this, but without Adam and being alone in the slums with people eye balling me – at least that’s how it felt - I really didn’t feel like I had much to lose.

Back on the road, with the driving becoming more erratic as we went, I still had no idea what was going on. We were trying to join a busy road when another boda driver let us out. I remember thinking, ‘nice man’. Seconds later however, something behind rammed hard into the back of us and I heard a screech and a loud crash behind us. I turned to see this same man sprawled on the floor with his bike on its side next to him. Panic rose in me, but for a completely different reason than before. In Uganda, if you knock someone off their bike you are told to keep driving and as quickly as possible. This is not because people don’t care or that people don’t feel guilty, but because of the consequences of mob culture. If you knock someone off their bike and they are severely injured, or dead, even if it is not your fault, the surrounding people in their vehicles will attack you. An eye for an eye is very much the ethos of this country.

I remember looking around to gauge the faces of the people; I remember looking at the man and willing him to get up and to be fine. Luckily he quickly recovered, his reaction being to hurl abuse at us. I breathed out – we were going to be ok and so was he. Across the other side of the road, Adam and the police officers were suddenly there and we turned the bike around. They’d lost the thieves again, but people knew with 100% who it was and apparently our next step was to go to the police post to make a statement. En route, one police officer received a call from someone in the slum saying that they had the necklace and were bringing it to us. We stopped the bike and waited; waited for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually someone turned up. I naively thought that this was it; I was about to get it back and all would be over. How wrong I was. The man unclenched his fist to reveal the chain all twisted and distorted, but the pendants were missing.

To explain, the necklace had a gold ring on it, with engravings in French and a small gold envelope with engravings on the back, that opens up to reveal a little gold letter inside. Both have huge sentimental value to my family and me, and both are very old. They’d given back the chain, but not its precious companions. The chain means nothing and presumably the thieves knew this too. The difference is they mean something to me not for their value – in reality neither are worth much, they’re just a little gold.

I think I realised at this point that it was game over. Either the pendants had fallen off or the thieves had them, but had no intention of giving them back. We spent the next couple of hours giving statements to the police. They said that they wanted to take us back to the slum to find and arrest the thief, but we were going to have to pay them 20,000Ush for the privilege. Although this is only the equivalent of about 7 pounds, it is four times what the journey was worth in petrol.

This bribery didn’t really surprise me. Although I’d had no contact with the police up to this point, I’d heard many stories about how the police will only help you if you pay them. I had also been told that you only do this post help, because otherwise they take the money and do nothing. This bribery, a common place activity, they legitimately call ‘facilitation’ i.e. they told me, “You must pay a facilitation fee”. As illegal as this may be to the British mindset, the reality is that the police get paid little and irregularly and this is the only way to motivate them.

While we were waiting at the police post, we got to know the boda boda driver that we started out with when I was robbed. His name is Henry; he’s a university student studying communication, however he wants to become a police officer. He was very knowledgeable about crime, most likely picked up from being a boda boda driver in central Kampala. He told us that he worked until six o’clock latest, because it is well known that boda drivers are often ambushed by thieves, who steal their bikes and kill the driver in the process. Sometimes drivers are even decapitated. This really put getting bodas in perspective. Adam – only once, but still once – had got a boda on his own late at night. He was fine, but he was lucky. We think by and large that it’s the boda driver you have to watch out for, and obviously that is a risk factor, but you also have to be careful that while you’re on the boda you don’t get ambushed by thieves who then rob and kill you – and if you’re a girl, most likely rape you.

We also asked Henry what he thought would happen to the thief once he was arrested. He told us that either they take them to prison and then to court, however with some notorious thieves the police simply kill them. Obviously this made Adam and I very uncomfortable. No matter how much I wanted the pendants back, I did not want this man to be killed. I don’t even blame the thief. He’s poor and there I was with gold hanging down from my neck. I understand why he did it and I’m just grateful he didn’t use other means to attain it. I do feel like an idiot, but simultaneously I do think I was very unlucky. It was broad daylight in busy crowds and I was between two men. Considering this man would know all to well about mob culture, he was pretty brave to have done what he did.

Going back to Henry, out of everyone that day, he was the only person that I trusted. He advised us on how to handle the police, telling us when to hand over money, what to give details about and what to conceal.

After waiting for the police to get organised, we paid our 20,000 for ‘fuel’ and we headed back to the slum. Adam rode with the police officers in the car, and I – because I was having trust issues – rode on the bike with Henry. Going back to the slums was not an enjoyable experience. Being white and turning up with the police in hindsight doesn’t reflect well on us. The police are corrupt and cause just as much trouble as the thieves to poor communities. I very quickly became aware that our presence may not be viewed positively.

On the main trading path we spotted the thief and the police jumped from the car to chase him. I suddenly felt afraid and sat in the car. I didn’t want to be there and to be honest there was no reason for us to be. Our faces were being banded across the community – the troublemakers. We were assured by Henry that firstly, to Ugandans, all white faces look the same and secondly, that the community wouldn’t view us badly, but still it worried me.

The police returned some minutes later with a suspect. I couldn’t tell if it was the thief in question, but they put him in the car. Adam and I got on with Henry and we all headed back to the police post. They took the man into the shack and made him sit in the corner of the room. They said they’d searched him and there was nothing in his pockets. He eventually admitted to doing it, but said that the pendants must have fallen off and that he didn’t have them. Later he changed his story and said that if he was released, he would go back into the slums, talk to his gang and bring the pendants back. It was impossible to discern what was the truth and what was his desperate attempt to better his situation. Regardless, he will go to prison, so what incentive does he have to give them back even if he does have them? He knows that the police would intercept any money that I offered, so there really is no reason for him to do anything.

Eventually the police said they were taking him to the central police station and that they would follow up with us later. They tried to elicit more ‘facilitation’ from me, saying they needed incentive, and that they hadn’t eaten all day because they were helping us. We sternly told them that we hadn’t eaten or drunk either and that I would give a reward if I got the pendants back, but nothing before. I explained that I had no guarantees, so why would I give them money. They seemed to accept this, and after signing statements we left with Henry.

As much as I feel like I can trust Henry, Adam and I didn’t want him taking us back to our door. He already said that he couldn’t go back to that slum because his face would be remembered and he’d be seen as a police ally. We didn’t want to put ourselves in a situation where he knew where we lived, if for any reason these thieves wanted to find out. We got him to drop us by our local supermarket, close enough to walk, but far enough away for us not to be traceable. This may sound very paranoid, but its gives me peace of mind.

So that ends the ordeal. As I said at the beginning of this entry, it was a bad day, but it was very insightful all the same. It’s a day later as I write this and already I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that the pendants are gone. I may have lost some things very precious to me, but Adam and I weren’t hurt and that’s the important thing.

I didn’t want to be the type of person that doesn’t wear the things that they treasure and I suppose I knew the possible consequences of that decision. Although this has happened, I don’t want to become someone that puts things in a box at the back of a draw, scared of the possibilities. With anything we do in life there are risks, but wearing that necklace everyday brought me so much comfort and I would never regret that.

The police are hopeful that they’ll recover the pendants and we will follow up with them, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Rwanda part two: climbing Bisoke volcano

After leaving Kigali we headed west to the Parc National Des Volcans. The volcano range sits right on the border of Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo, and one of the volcanoes can actually be said to reside in each of these countries depending on what side you’re climbing!

The national park is better known as a haven for gorillas rather than a location to trek volcanoes, however for the price of $500 per hour to see the gorillas, we sadly couldn’t take advantage of that opportunity. We’d heard, however, from other similarly cheapo Bisoke volcano trekkers that some people happen to stumble upon gorillas by chance – much to the guides’ annoyance – so we had our fingers crossed.

We reached the guesthouse at dusk and spent the evening reading books and snuggling up on sofas by a big open fire in the lodgings. Up at six, we ate a hearty breakfast of eggs – with unappealing grey yolks – and hideously greasy bread, with the only joyful experience being the exceedingly strong coffee and the sweetest baby bananas.

That morning I decided that dawn and sunrise beat dusk and sunset hands down. There have been many occasions since coming to Uganda where I’ve been out and about just after sunrise and I’m always mesmerised by the light. Waking up in this Rwandan volcano range was no exception. From the high terrain I looked down over an expanse of undulating hills. In between the treetops, the clouds lightly clung and layered themselves with such breathtaking grace. I attempted to take some photos to illustrate this (see previous blog), but to my dismay I couldn’t do it justice.

After paying our park fees of $75, we met our guide Ignacious. At this point, other than looking up at the formidable volcano, I hadn’t really considered what we were about to attempt. In the lonely plant East Africa guide book, all it says about Bisoke is ‘the ascent takes you up the steep southwestern flanks of the volcano to the summit, where you can see the crater lake’. Nothing too frightening or challenging in that sentence, and what defines ‘steep’ anyway? Well, in this case, ‘steep’ was about a 45-degree angle. I would like to say that it was even steeper because of the pain I was in, but maybe that would be an exaggeration.

The four-hour climb was relentless in terms of the steepness; there was literally no let up until we reached the summit. As you head higher up the volcano the vegetation changes quite dramatically. In the beginning the walk is very green and lush, trekking through thick forest, however as you climb higher – and the ascent in terms of altitude is very quick – the vegetation changes to become more alpine, with the streams of slippery mud, turning into pathways of smooth, but surprisingly non-slippery rock.

The few days before, the area had experienced a lot of rainfall and so for 75% of the walk we were trekking calf-deep in thick, extremely unstable mud. To say we fell over a lot would be an understatement. The park guides and porters must have seen us coming, because two porters offered their services right at the beginning, and we very firmly told them that it wasn’t necessary. They followed us up anyway, and just as they had obviously predicted, about ten-minutes into the climb, two of the girls in our group requested their services. I think we all realised quite quickly that this wasn’t going to be an easy feat, and the porters became very useful by helping to pull the girls up the volcano through all the mud.

The first half was manageable and I felt like I was coping quite well. I was out of breath constantly, but my legs were behaving and doing what I told them to. As I was climbing and scrambling around, tripping over and grabbing whatever was available, it reminded me of a time in Bristol many years ago when my Pupa suggested that we climb a rock face that was just as steep. At the time he was in his mid seventies and already walked with the aid of a stick, but I suppose we thought ‘if he thinks he can do it then so can the rest of us!’ I walked behind him, thinking that maybe we’d need to grab him as the pieces of rock loosened under his feet, but in the end it was him and his stick that saved me: I lost my footing and as my feet fell beneath me, I was holding on with just my hands. He turned and held his stick out to me and pulled me up.

This time I had Adam at my side, pushing my bum up when naturally formed steps carved into the volcano were too high for my legs to meet unaided. By the time we were a third of the way up, the two girls who’d requested porters were a little way behind and we decided to split up into two groups. This very quickly made me the weakest link, but hating defeat and refusing to ever give up on a challenge, I kept going as fast as I could. The last third was painful: my legs were shaking and I began counting to three, mustering up energy, when I came to a step that was exceedingly high.

All day the weather was playing games with us: the clouds would set in so quickly we were sure the rain was coming, but instead ten minutes later the sun would break through and clear the air again. It got colder as we climbed and the cloud thickened, but this was such intense exercise that the coolness of the clouds forming around me was a great and welcomed relief. In the last fifteen minutes of the climb the clouds dispersed and the sun came out as if to reward us for our efforts. The views from the top were awe-inspiring (see previous blog). We were 3711m high, which is not particularly high, but we could see all the way to the ground below, making us feel like we’d come a long way. My legs were truly like jelly by this point, and as great as it was to reach the summit, I was very aware that we were only halfway through the challenge.

After a rather hideous lunch of greasy cheese and greasy bread sandwiches, we headed back down. I have to say that I enjoyed this part much more. It was mainly strenuous for my legs, but with less cardio vascular pressure, we were able to chat for most of the way down. Near the bottom, we found out from the guides that on the way up we’d been literally metres from one of the three gorilla groups that are habituated. The guides were not allowed to tell us this, as we hadn’t paid, but still it was extremely annoying. As we were discussing this frustration, we heard and saw the bushes moving to our right and Lorna (I wish I could say this too) saw the black fur of a gorilla! So, as little as this glimpse was, we’re claiming that we saw a gorilla!

Just past this point of jubilation, the terrain began to plateau and the true damage to my thighs became apparent. Within a few minutes I realised that I could no longer really walk. Lorna gave me her stick – I already had one – and I used them as crutches to get me down. Two minutes into this, I suddenly became very light headed and my nose felt very hot. I put my fingers to my nose and realised I was having a nosebleed. Adam and Lorna came to see I was OK and then I sort of fainted. I didn’t pass out, but a feeling of ecstasy came over me and I lost all control of my body for a few seconds. Ultimately, I was fine!

So this was the end of the volcano trek; an exhilarating, but exceedingly challenging climb, that left me unable to walk properly for a week!

To end this entry, there are a few things I want to mention about tourism in this area and the affect on the villagers. From one angle it can be said that the way tourism is handled here is excellent. For the gorillas, yes they are habituated to human presence, but people do not encroach on them all day every day. Only one group is allowed to visit them per day and once they are located, this one group are only allowed to stay there for an hour. Tourism has also created business within the area in terms of accommodation and eateries, but there is a negative side that seems quite out of hand.

The children here beg; they chase the cars with little awareness of their own safety, holding out their hands to the car windows. Some run alongside holding up pictures they’ve drawn of the gorillas, hoping for money. At some point, some expats, or tourists have made the catastrophic mistake of giving money to these children and in that second a precedent was set. You would think that the parents of these children would discourage it, but they actually are teaching their children to beg. We passed one woman on foot at the beginning of the climb and she told her toddler to hold out his hand to us. It is so tragic and I can see it will be a very hard thing to try and change. The guides on the other hand are aware of how negative and unproductive begging is and firmly tell tourists to not give the children anything, and tell the children to stop begging and to go home, but this does little to discourage them.

They see muzungus heading up the volcano everyday and they know that we are rich. Even if 9/10 times they beg and get nothing, they know there will be some ignorant, conceited tourist, who thinks they are ‘saving children’ by giving them a few dollars. But for these children, they are growing up to think that dependency is a good way of life, when instead they should be learning to be self-sufficient, relying on themselves for survival.

Rwanda part two: photos of Bisoke volcano

Views from the top of the volcano - 3711 metres high crater lake at top



Gorillas in the Mist lady

We climbed this! 4 hours of vertical climbing in sloppy mud!

Rwanda part one: photos

morning view of mountains raised above the clouds in Rwanda

views on the drive to Kigali

Lunch in Kigali - cheese fondue! or should I say, fondue de fromage!

slums close up

View from the memorial centre of the slums

gardens at Kigali memorial centre

plaque of child's comment on the genocide

On the way to Kigali

In Uganda, people often get L and R mixed up!

Rwanda part one: Kigali memorial centre

Our journey began at four o’clock in the morning, when our trusty driver, Paul, picked us up in his 10-seater van. After collecting our fifth recruit, Susanna, we headed toward the Ugandan-Rwandan border.

Eight hours of driving later, we had to stop for three hours to fix the breaks…apparently they weren’t working properly! While we were stationary we received a text from a friend telling us that Kigali – Rwanda’s capital and also the city we were heading towards – had been subjected to a series of coordinated grenade attacks the day before. As scary as that sounds, and I’m not denying that I wasn’t frightened, I’ve learned since being in Africa that this type of activity is a common occurrence. Most often it’s politically motivated; in Rwanda, its national elections are this summer and the attacks were a product of the pre-election tension that is so common in Africa. I don’t think complacency is the right word, but I guess I’ve adjusted to my circumstances. If this had happened in London then the whole country would have been in disarray, yet in Africa, incidents like this are viewed as minor inconveniences when compared to decades of civil war, colonisation and genocide that so many African countries have experienced.

Back on the road by three pm we got to the border two hours later. Adam and I had budgeted to spend $60 each for visas, however it turns out that the British supposedly helped to end the genocide and therefore Brits can enter for free. The same applies to the Americans – so our friend Hannah was exempt also, however Susanna, an Aussie, had to pay her 60 bucks. I’m not sure what I was expecting once we entered into Rwanda. We thought officials at the border would notify us of the terrorist activity, but no one said anything. By the time we’d done our due diligence and were back on the road it was getting dark. The road leading into Kigali hugged steep precipice-ridden hills to the right, with sheer drops into darkness to the left. Uganda and Rwanda had experienced several landslides in the preceding few weeks, and the remnants littered the road. I was a little scared; scared of being stoned to death by the loose rock above me, and also of what we might be faced with when entering the capital city.

It turns out there was nothing to be worried about. Entering Kigali there was no behaviour to suggest that anything was out of the ordinary. When we got to our hotel we asked the staff about it and they played it down. Whether that was because they were trying to protect us as white tourists coming to stay in their centrally located hotel, or whether they really did view it as a minor, run-of-the-mill pre-election incident, I’m not sure.

The following morning we got up early and headed for the Kigali Memorial Centre. The centre opened on 7^th April 2004, marking the ten-year anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda where over 1,000,000 people were murdered over a 100-day period. On average, 10,000 Rwandans – mainly of the Tutsi tribe – were killed per day. The centre is built at the site chosen for the mass burial of the 250,000 victims of the genocide in Kigali. The memorial has three exhibitions: one is to document the genocide in 1994, one is a children’s memorial, the last an exhibition on the history of genocide around the world.

What can I say…I walked around the exhibitions for two hours with tears streaming down my face. I had to keep reminding myself that this only happened 16 years ago – in my lifetime. I can’t believe that the international community let it happen. The human rights abuses and atrocities that occurred are unbelievable. My understanding of the genocide is so much greater now, and that meant learning some horrific things; the main one being that the genocide was indirectly caused my Belgium. Belgium occupied Rwanda during World War One, and consequently was given a mandate to indirectly govern the country from 1923 up until Rwanda’s independence in 1962. With colonialism came identity cards, segregating the 18 different clans that previously lived together harmoniously. The Belgians made these distinctions racial and elitist, with the Tutsis wrongly identified as being 15% of the population, because they had more than ten cows per household. 84% were again wrongly identified as Hutu with less than ten cows. The Rwandans were split up according to their wealth and with this came tensions.

Simultaneously the Catholic Church – imposed on Rwandans during colonisation - increasingly conveyed the ‘Hamitic’ ideology that portrayed the Tutsis as the superior group. Subsequently most chiefs and sub-chiefs were Tutsi, with Hutus rarely gaining any privileged positions in society.

After independence Rwanda became a highly centralised, repressive state with a single-party system. The regime was characterised by the ethnic cleansing of Tutsis. When the Hutu, Major General Juvenal Habarimana, gained power through a coup d’état in 1973 he established the Interahamwe, an extremist Hutu youth militia that gained enormous popularity. Their ‘Hutuness’ was promoted at the expense of Tutsi lives and by 1990 the ideology of Hutu power and the eradication of the Tutsi influence was largely established.

The second thing that shocked me is that the genocide was rehearsed; it was planned to the extent that every Tutsi’s name in Rwanda was written down in a document used to systematically kill every living tribe member. The death lists had been prepared in advance. As early as December 1990, Kangura – a leading propaganda newspaper – had published the “Hutu Ten Commandments”, which stated that any Hutu associating with Tutsi neighbours and friends was a traitor. In the end, more than 20 newspapers and journals incited the hatred of the Tutsis. A weapon that they used in their propaganda was to claim that the Tutsis were planning a war that would leave no Hutu alive. This was a lie.

The third absurdity was that the UN could have put a stop to the genocide before it began. An informant code-named ‘Jean-Pierre’ who was a former member of the security for the President of MRND, Hutu President Habyarimana’s party, came forward with information that was ignored. He told the UN that 1,700 Interahamwe had been trained in army camps and were registering all Tutsis for an extermination plan that would kill up to 1000 Tutsis every 20 minutes. He was willing to warn about the dangers of Hutu extremism in return for his security. His protection was not provided. The head of the UNAMIR passed this information on to secretary general’ s military advisor in New York. No action was taken in response to the fax. Not long after this Jean-Pierre disappeared, his fate never to be known.

When the genocide began, the violence spread like wild fire. Women were beaten, defiled, humiliated and in the end murdered often in front of their children and husbands. Any sharp object was used to smash, pulverise and abuse children. People that were shortly before friends, who ate dinners together and looked after each other’s children, turned on each other. Moderate Hutus, who refused to enter into the bloodshed, fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Uganda to avoid being murdered or imprisoned themselves as traitors.

The fourth horrifying truth is that 5000 UN troop members were sent in to Rwanda simply to take non-nationals safely out of the country. A UN commander, Lt. Gen. Dallaire, estimated that it would have only taken this number of troops to stop the genocide altogether. Instead, the UN mission was recalled.

From the start of the genocide, not one additional peacekeeper or armoured personnel carrier arrived in Rwanda before the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) victory in July. The international community stood back and watched as millions of people were systematically brutalised and murdered.

The consequences of the war for the people of Rwanda are immense. The few women whose lives were spared were often raped by men with HIV on purpose to spread the infection. Burying the dead in dignity was almost impossible due to the costs. Mass graves are all over Rwanda, with no idea of who is beneath the ground. For those that survived, the trauma they will forever experience is unimaginable. But being a poor country, the means to counsel and support these people is lacking. What’s more, the Tutsi victims are living day by day with neighbours who are Hutus, some of whom would have murdered someone they know. The wounds of the country are far reaching.

To my complete surprise however the city of Kigali was so developed compared to that of Uganda. The roads were clean – no rubbish to be seen. They have strict road systems and gardens of flowers that line the streets. There are street lamps and endearing gates. It is remarkable. Some theorists argue, such as Paul Collier, that after a civil war a state has its greatest opportunity for reform and change in policy and this may be the case in Rwanda. Uganda is a different story. The civil war only affected the north of the country, yet the south does not have the infrastructure or the policies of Rwanda. I can’t say I know the why they are so different.

The memorial centre was a fantastic insight into the genocide. Rwanda’s story is so sad, but on the surface they seem to be coping and recovering remarkably well…despite the grenade attacks.

Pics from Sembabule, SW Uganda