Renner in Rwanda (Part 2)
September 28, 2011
Written by Dr. Michael J. Renner, Drake University
Our itinerary has shifted.
Great Ape Trust Senior Conservation Advisor Peter Clay and Madeleine Nyiratuza, in-country director of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, have been invited to make a presentation at the National Conservation Forum in Kigali tomorrow (Thursday). It is a wonderful opportunity to brief our partners in Rwandan government agencies, as well as other non-governmental conservation groups, on the Gishwati project. After the meeting tomorrow evening, we will drive to Gisenyi (where the GACP offices are located) and then on to the field station at Kinihira on Friday morning.
We took advantage of the one-day delay to let me investigate some of the educational opportunities that would be available to Drake students if they come to Rwanda to work on the project. It also gave us a little more time to get over jet lag and adjust to the altitude. Rwanda is sometimes called “the land of a thousand hills;” The city of Kigali is built on some of these hills at an altitude of over 4,000 feet; the forest at Gishwati is higher.
This morning, we visited the Kigali Memorial Centre, one of the most sobering and overwhelming places I have ever been. In addition to being the final resting place for the remains of 250,000 Rwandans who died in the 1994 genocide, it is an education and research center dedicated to the study and prevention of genocide. It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the Rwandan atrocity; over a million people died in a planned massacre of one group by another in a matter of just a few weeks. The country – its social fabric, its governmental infrastructure, its self-concept – was effectively destroyed. Over 99% of the population personally witnessed violence, and 91% thought that they would die in the conflict. The Memorial’s account of this is unflinching, documenting the historical and cultural circumstances, the events of 1994, and the aftermath. Education is presented as the best hope of preventing future tragedies, as captured in the traditional Rwandan proverb that is etched into glass at the memorial: “A tree can only be straightened when it is young.”
The national reaction in the years that followed, however, has been awe-inspiring. In a country where social identity had been defined for generations first by whether a person was Hutu or Tutsi, the question is now socially taboo; people identify themselves simply as Rwandan. National unity is an organizing principle in much decision-making. The city of Kigali is clean and friendly, with a vibrant commercial center and obvious attention to safety and infrastructure. The 17 years since the devastation of 1994 have brought remarkable changes to Rwanda; I feel privileged to be a witness.
We spent the afternoon climbing up and down a few of Kigali’s hills, walking through some of the markets, and visiting the Rwandan Natural History Museum. Just opened in 2007, the museum tells the story of the place called Rwanda – from its geology and geography to its wildlife and ecology – in the home built in 1908 by the German naturalist Richard Kandt. The museum staff told us that the construction of this home served as the catalyst for creating the city we now call Kigali. Although already worthwhile, the museum is still taking shape; it will be fascinating to watch how it continues to develop in the years to come.
It was a good day, and tomorrow’s meeting will be important, but I’ll admit that I’m anxious to get to the forest!
