Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda

By Leslie Cohen
Women Writers
November 24, 1999

From Shakespearean sonnets to Hallmark greeting cards, poets have traditionally used images of flowers to represent the beauty and innocence of children. Therefore, it is fitting that a former flower-grower has founded an orphanage.

Rosamond Halsey Carr's memoir, Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda, chronicles her love affair with the Kivu -- the area in which she settled as a mature woman -- and its native tribes. It describes a panorama of exotica, with milk sold by the calabash, beer made from bananas, and transportation for the privileged via tipoy. In addition, the book provides cameos of Sembagare, Carr's native assistant, who became her full partner in business, and Dian Fossey, who was her close friend. Most significantly, it explains the background to the genocide in Rwanda.

Carr came to Rwanda with her husband, Kenneth, a big game hunter and photographer. While their marriage faltered, Carr's attachment to Rwanda and its people grew. When she divorced, Carr became the plantation manager of Mugungo, where she grew pyrethrum - a type of chrysanthemum containing a strong natural pesticide. Carr has remained at Mugungo for almost fifty years.

In simple terms, Carr explains the complex relations between the Banyarwanda - Rwanda's native Tutsi, Hutu and Batwa (pygmies) - and how Rwanda's independence ( from the European colonists) in 1962 led to a resurgence of tribal conflicts. Happily, independence was followed by a wonderful era of reconciliation, during which both democracy and business flourished. During the 1980's, Carr's pyrethrum business started becoming profitable, and she began to grow other flowers commercially, as well. She recycled the money that she earned into a scholarship fund for Banyarwanda children, so that they could receive a much-needed secondary education.

Sorrowfully, tribal conflicts were renewed in the 1990's, culminating in the mass slaughter of 1994. One official remarked, "Eighteen years of extraordinary reconciliation have been undone in three days." Carr was forced to leave Rwanda in April, 1994, and viewed the nightmare from America, feeling like a stranger there. She returned to "the most dangerous place on earth" in August, to find the country and her plantation a shambles. At the age of 82, she converted her former pyrethrum drying house into a dormitory and opened an orphanage named "Imbabazi z'i Mugungo," meaning "Mugungo is a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give."

While Rosamond Halsey Carr has made neither headlines nor history, her work has improved the lives of thousands of people. With the burgeoning of the memoir as a literary form, Land of a Thousand Hills exemplifies the value of that genre.

Note:
This review originally appeared in The Dallas Morning News. Leslie Cohen is a member of a kibbutz, a freelance writer, and she teaches at two teacher education colleges in Israel. She can be contacted at leslie_c@ein-hashofet.co.il

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