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Archive for October, 2010

Fascinated by Kagame; A Review of “A Thousand Hills,” by Stephen Kinzer

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Read “A Thousand Hills” if you are intrigued by Kagame and wish to learn a few more facets of him. As a book about Rwanda however, I was not that impressed. The book repeats much of the contents of “Shake Hands With the Devil”, by Romeo Dallaire, and also presents a disjointed summary of some notable acheivements by well known Rwandans and Westerners during the recovery period.

But if you are trying to understand this Enigmatic leader of Rwanda then do dive in. The author interviewed Kagame extensively and provides Kagame’s commentaries on several issues and points of Rwanda’s history. I find Kagame’s perspectives riveting!

This books also presents a few aspects of Rwanda’s story that I had not fully appreciated before.

For the first time I felt the pain and isolation of the Rwandan refugees who grew up in neighboring countries and struggled to live without an honorable identity or home. The decision by the Habiyarimana regime not to allow them to return was a fatal political position that caused pressure to build up within the refugees and incensed them to a level of war. Kagame ingeniously raised up a rebel army inside the Ugandan army, using Uganda’s resources and military context to train his own army. That aspect of Kagame’s story and Rwanda’s history is beyond remarkable. I had also never read about the story of the extreme suffering of the RPF army in the mountains while training, and outpouring of help from Rwandans around the world to bolster the RPF army to takeover Rwanda.

I also was unaware of the long tail of the genocide. I think many westerners believe that Kagame came in and “stopped” the genocide and began recovery. The real story acording to Kinzer, is that the Hutu extremists fled to Congo where they continued killing and invading Rwanda. For several years Kagame continued to fight them and these extremist continued to try and finish the genocide. Kagame battled to the point of overthrowing the President of Congo in order to get enough control of Congo to defeat his enemies. The hutu extremists used refugee camps and innocent populations as human shields, and the RPF armies took the innocent people down as casulties of war. The realities of these post genocide battles are harsh and messy, and give rise to huge controversies today over war crimes and human rights. I had no idea that Rwanda was violent for so long after the genocide, and had barely settled down by the time I started visiting in 2002. Rwanda’s current stability is much younger than I realized.

Getting back to Kagame’s quotes, in sum, I would say from reading this book, that Kagame values posession of Rwanda and security of his country, above all else. All else.

Anything that threatens those values, cannot stand before him. I have to stop and deeply ponder that kind of man. For one, I have never been in a place in my life where I needed to value security above all else. I mean, everything else…before God, before my family, before my personal values. I am not sure if I believe it’s right or wrong, because I’ve never been forced to push my morality to that kind of essential choice. I confess that it doesn’t sit well with my faith and Christian values. But my Christian faith has bloomed in the highly secure and free United States. And I also know that Kagame has suffered, endured and achieved what few humans would ever experience. He undoubtedly has a perspective that few humans in history have ever had.

Here is one Kagame quote from the book that sheds light on this burden of security that he carries. This quote was given in response to his decision to put an alleged genocide criminal in a position of power in his new government:

“The moral aspect of the thing comes later. People first must be safe. The moral dilemma is always part of the equation, but you don’t just look at that. If that’s your only factor in decision making, you don’t move fowarward with what you might otherwise achieve…”

More thoughts about this book in the days to come…

Posted in Books about Rwanda, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

What I Say is Not What I Feel

Monday, October 11th, 2010

For me, a big takaway from the book, “The Antelope’s Strategy by Jean Hatzfeld,” is that Rwandans may speak very differently from, or even the opposite of how they feel.

This reality is revealed over and over in the testimonies of survivors who live along side killers, and killers who returned to villages to work along side survivors. Those who have been traumitized believe they are not free to exress their emotions. And even with Gacaca, the killers have very little opportunity to speak openly to the families of their victims. It makes me wonder what will be the long term impact of all of this repressed emotion?

I already knew that Rwandan people communicate indirectly, from my many experiences there, and from reading African Friends and Money Matters by David Maranz. (If you’re working in Rwanda and you haven’t read this book, stop everything right now and read it!)

Reading the quotes and testimonies of those interviewed in “The Antelope’s Strategy” astonished me to a greater degree. Those interviewed by the author reveal how their hearts differ vastly from their lips.

We Westerners can get a head knowledge of this issue, but it’s hard for us to deeply grasp and work with this way of communication. In America, we pretty much speak openly about what we feel or think. In fact, our society is overwhelmed with too many people speaking their mind. It’s a challenge for us to wade through the ocean of full expression.

In my Rwandan relationships, I still find myself responding as if people are speaking openly to me, even though I have a head knowledge that possibly they aren’t. My style of communication is deeply ingrained, and it would take many years being immersed in another culture to respond differently.

So what does this mean to us Westerners who are trying to partner with the people of Rwanda? To me it means a lot of time, patience and committment to listen and understand. It means humility of realizing that we don’t have superior answers (because we likely don’t even understand the problem). It means we should take longer to develop partnership plans than we would in the West, so that we have time to understand more deeply. This is one reason why I am driven to learn Kinyarwanda; so that I have more skills to be able to listen and learn.

Posted in Books about Rwanda | 1 Comment »

About me, and a little from “The Antelope’s Strategy,” by Jean Hatzfield

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

I discovered Rwanda in 2000, when I met a Rwandan pastor Charles Buregeya. Since then I have visited 15 times, helped raise up an NGO in Rwanda, and created SpeakRwanda. Along the way I’ve read a lot of books, probably something more than 20. In the beginning they were so hard to understand. In my early days of reading, I could grasp only a fraction of the political facts and the humanity issues. I would focus on one or two issues and ponder those for a while, leaving the rest alone because I just couldn’t process so much at once. I saw the political issues very simplistically, mostly focusing on the evil of the genocide and those that perpetrated it. As the years go on, I find that I am able to let many more issues interact in my mind, and I feel like I am getting to deeper levels of understanding of this vexing country. After ten years of diligent pursuit of Rwanda, I now feel great excitement when I read a new book. I feel like each new book ads one more puzzle piece to a picture that is actually getting to be visible.

So I would like to talk about Rwanda here, starting with some of the great books I’ve been reading lately. Hopefully other topics will intertwine along the way.

To start out this discussion, I would like to leave you with a quote from “The Antelope’s Strategy.” This book gives interview quotes from villagers, who are both survivors and perpetrators of the genocide. The quotes are their answers to the author’s questions about what it’s been like to live in Rwanda after the genocide. These quotes are not the opinions of the author, or of me. But it’s quite astonishing to see inside the minds of some of the villagers who have lived through it all. Here is one:

Innocent Rwililiza:

“If you think about it, who is talking about forgiveness? The Tutsis? The Hutus? The freed prisoners, ther families? none of them. It’s the humanitarian organizations. They are importing forgiveness to Rwanda, and they wrap it in lots of dollars to win us over. There is a Forgiveness Plan just as there is an AIDS Plan, which public awareness meetings, posters, petty local presidents, super-polite Whites in all-terrain turbo vehicles. These humanitarian workers lecture our teachers, bring our communal councilors on board. They finance various assistance projects. As for us, we speak of forgiveness to earn their good opinion–and because the subsidies can be lucrative. But when we talk among ourselves, the word forgiveness has no place; I mean that it’s oppressive. For example: You see Adalbert return. He led the killings in Kibungo Hill, he was pardoned, he parades around Kigali, he wields his machete once more in his fields. You, you’re from Kibungo, living five hundred meters from his house, and you lost your mama, papa, two sisters, wife and little boy. You run into Adalbert downtown. He to you, you to him–who’s going to say that world forgiveness? It’s outside of nature. The times we live in just shove everything down our throats.”

The Antelope's Stragegy, Living in Rwanda After the Genocide

Posted in Books about Rwanda | 3 Comments »

About Speak Rwanda

Tony & Serena Morones are founders of Speak Rwanda and are actively involved in the lives of many Rwandans through ministry and business. They live and work in Portland, Oregon.