Much progress made, but many challenges face a post-genocide Rwanda

BY PERRY BEEMAN
Des Moines Register
December 20, 2009

Photo:
Government wants to cut soil erosion while still allowing people to make a living. Here, a hill in the foreground grows tea plants that hold the soil and provide one of the country's most lucrative crops. In the background are grain fields that lose far more soil. In the back, what's left of a woodland. (Cortesy photo)


Kigali, Rwanda- It's almost unimaginable.

Fifteen years ago, Rwandans killed nearly 1 million of their own.

Today, the country's economy is starting to pick up steam. Tourism has become the top industry. Residents acknowledge the genocide, but go about their business. Some live doors away from the person who killed their family members.

Contradictions pervade Rwanda as the government tries to pull off ambitious plans to modernize the nation with an eco-friendly economy. This country, where a collection of Iowans is investing expertise, money and passion, appears poised to become one of Africa's great success stories, but the view on the ground shows it won't be easy.

Signs of progress mixed

The Land of a Thousand Hills has more than a thousand challenges.

The hills boast bountiful agriculture, but also severe erosion that leads to lifeless streams that clog hydroelectric dams. A new center looks to make biodiesel in a country in which few own vehicles. President Paul Kagame pushes for modern agriculture, but in five weeks in Rwanda, I never saw a tractor, or even an ox pulling a plow.

Young urban professionals dance the night away at the upscale Kigali Business Centre, while a man with one arm and no legs sprawls at the edge of a street to beg, among a noticeable population in the city missing arms, hands or fingers.

Rwandans can grow about anything, said Vincent Karega, minister of state in charge of environment. The country's agriculture experts are thinking about adding apples and nuts to the mix. But the soil is tired, fertilizer is expensive, and every year the nation loses its ability to feed another 40,000 people because erosion has washed away the soil.

The Rwandan who coordinates an Iowa-connected conservation project based in Gisenyi, Madeleine Nyiratuza, just delivered her second daughter. Her living room has a TV and a DVD player. If she wants light, she flicks a switch. But in the village where she does much of her work, Kinihira, almost no one has power. Nyiratuza's employer, the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, runs a research station there with a solar panel.

You'd think there would be nothing but good reviews coming from a restaurant called Heaven. But the co-owner of the upscale eatery overlooking Kigali complains that it's hard to improve restaurant offerings because of a shortage of workers trained to meet demands of the growing hospitality industry.

Even tourism, which has become the top industry here, has its challenges. Cratered roads make the trip feel backbreaking, and seeing wildlife can mean a tough hike.

Then there's the price tag. Seeing the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park costs $500 for just the permit. At Nyungwe National Park, where the government hopes to increase business, rangers have been known to charge an extra fee to tourists who paid close to $100 to see chimps when they happened to see monkeys, too. (Monkey-viewing permits are sold separately.)

Kambogo Ildephonse, Nyungwe's tourism warden, admits the chimps there aren't used to people, and therefore they're difficult to see. Often, the apes hide in treetops, if they stay near visitors at all.

"At Kibuye (in Uganda), you can see chimps at 200 meters," Ildephonse said. "Here, it's, ‘There is a chimp behind there, see?'"

A two-day wildlife-viewing trip to Akagera National Park, including round-trip transportation from Kigali, was running $1,200 for two people recently.

Hope lies with people

If most things are good news, bad news in Rwanda, the good news is starting to win out.

New construction rises at every turn. Rwanda-style concrete-block strip malls line major highways, with hair salons, clothing stores, gift shops and grocery stores.

And in this place that has known so much misery, signs of hope are everywhere — literally. Virtually every mall houses a business that calls itself "Vision" or "Hope."

Whether those words become more than store names ultimately rests with Rwandans.

The country's president, Paul Kagame, is pushing his country hard. The government frequently beats its timetable for improvements, although agencies often are accused of being loose with the facts.

Watch Kagame's speeches on government TV, and you'll hear him criticize some of his own ministers for flirting with their assistants on the job. Those don't last long. Kagame regularly reshuffles his government team, promoting those who can keep up with the warp-speed changes he wants for the country's work and economy, and sending others to look for work elsewhere.

With a per-capita income of $520, there's an immense amount of work to do. That figure is half of Kagame's target for 2020. So he's ordered everyone to begin work at 7 a.m. and to come in for a half-day Saturday. Not just his employees — everyone.

All adults are expected to spend one Saturday a month doing community service. The task, picked by local communities, can be picking up trash, building a community facility or painting, as examples. Often, Kagame joins in the work.

The Rev. John Rucyahana — Bishop John to everyone here — has seen Rwanda at its best and worst.

Across Rwanda, signs say, "Never again," pleading that genocide is in the past. Still, Rucyahana, an Anglican bishop and author of "The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amid a Pile of Bones," harbors doubts.

"No one should deceive you that Rwanda has performed magic," the bishop said this fall during a speech at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. "No one can guarantee there won't be a genocide again."

Hutus continue to kill Tutsis in next-door Democratic Republic of Congo. In Rwanda, people fight hard to put ill feelings aside, but it's an ongoing process.

The depth of the pain in Rwanda propels people's resolve to come together after so much horror.

Rucyahana returned from exile in Uganda in 1997. He has become widely known for helping orphans of the genocide, including 600 in a school of 1,070 students in the Musanze area. The genocide orphaned an estimated 100,000 children. AIDS has left still more children with no parents.

Rucyahana said the orphans have shown it's possible to move on to a promising new life, even as they overcome the loss of limbs, their homes, their parents.

"This is a traumatic lot," Rucyahana said. "They have become a family. They love each other. They nurture each other. They have the humility to make a difference in their country."

The bishop has his own horror story. He returned his niece to a village after the genocide ended. "That very night, they killed her. They peeled her flesh and left bone bare from shoulder to wrist. They cut her neck."

But Rucyahana — and his country — can't move forward while dwelling on anguish.

"Have I remained angry? No, it would have consumed me."

President Kagame, in an April speech, noted Rwandans' staggering resilience and hopefulness:

"It should be understood that building on the ashes of the lives of a million people is not easy. … We will never be able to solve our problems unless we face them. We have managed to achieve a number of things that were at the time judged to be beyond our capacity, and there are many more that we must achieve. In the last 15 years, since 1994, we have managed to do things that I personally never thought we would be able to do."

Related Materials:
Rwanda works to power up with clean energy

A new, green day dawns in war-wracked Rwanda

Rwandan peasants on the brink of extinction

Rwanda: World Bank (WB) agrees with International Monetary Fund (IFM): Rwanda is off track to attaining most of its millennium development goals (MDG)

On The Myth of Economic Prosperity in Rwanda

More than 50% children in Rwanda are stunted

Rwanda: Economic Growth Sustained Through Free Labor

Planting bio-fuels, in Rwanda, while Rwandans go hungry

Rwanda: campaigners say the country is starving while the government says criticism is unfounded