June 11, 2006
This past Sunday we got up and enjoyed a big breakfast as has become our custom. We planned to walk downtown and look at some of the shops. Before we left, I asked Ken if he needed to take his cell phone and anticipated he would say no, just leave it. Anyway, his response was “Take the phone because you never know when a colleague might be in distress and I just may be the one to receive the call”. The day before, he had attended a U.S. Embassy presentation about personal security while in Rwanda so perhaps that had something do with it. Well, that’s life in a foreign country so I tossed the phone into my bag and off we went.
The day was sunny and warm with a welcome mist of rain in the air. After an enjoyable uphill and downhill walk for a couple of hours, we decided to stop in at our favorite Indian restaurant, Minar, for lunch. The restaurant is located about a story or so above street level and you can sit in an outdoor area with an extensive view of the city. The food is excellent without fail, so I knew they would not disappoint. They did not; it was superb. We took our time, enjoyed good food and conversation then started the hike back home.
I guess we had walked about an hour from the restaurant and had maybe another half hour to go when we came upon a crew working on the road and decided to cross over to the other side. There were four lanes of traffic moving in two directions with a median in the middle. We crossed the first lanes, the median and then the second lanes to get to the other side. As soon as we got to the other side, a uniformed Rwandan guy stops us and says something in the local language. We later found out this person is part of the civilian defense force that augments the police department but have neither training nor weapons and they don’t get paid. None of us can communicate with the other but it’s clear he’s not happy for some reason.
Ken tells the guy he doesn’t understand what he’s saying and we start walking away. The guy then steps in our path, puts his hand on Ken’s arm and repeats himself. We now can tell this is about to turn into an unpleasant incident so Ken pulls out the cell phone and calls the embassy security person who had given the briefing the day before. At this point, I tell Ken come on let’s just go but Mr. Uniform was not having hit. He once more puts his hand on Ken’s arm to impede him and that’s when I lost it and shouted at him to take his hands off of my husband. Amazingly, he seemed to understand that.
Again, we start to walk away and this guy yells something to a group of guys passing in a truck. We’re cautiously walking along and here footsteps running behind us. We turn around and not only is this guy coming behind us but he has about six of his counterparts with him, two of them have rifles and there’s a police vehicle pulling up. Ken is as cool as a cucumber and I’m about equal parts angry and terrified of going to a Rwandan jail on an obvious humbug. Next, another local guy not in uniform walks thru the crowd and says in English that he’s a police officer, saw what was happening and stopped to see if he could be of assistance. I put in plain words to him that this first guy is detaining us and we don’t know why. Some dialogue flies back and forth in the local dialect and he tells us the first guy says we did not cross the street at the crosswalk in order to avoid walking on the grass. Naturally I wanted to say, “How the hell were we supposed to know it’s a crime?” Instead, I found the grace to say we did not know it was unlawful. After asking us where we were from, he says we’re free to go.
By now, the embassy security guy had figured out where we were (remember, no street addresses here) and picked us up in his truck. Evidently, he had contacted his Rwandan security counterpart who arrived shortly thereafter. We all drove back to the location of the first guy who had stopped us and the Rwandan security guy gave him what to my ear sounded like a good old fashioned ass chewing. The embassy security guy then gave us a ride the rest of the way home and other than my ruffled feathers, everything was alright and no one was harmed. I shudder to think what may have happened if one, we had left the cell phone at home and two, the off duty, English speaking officer had not intervened. So folks, the obvious lesson here is when you travel in a foreign country, it really does make sense to have the number of the American Embassy. Greg, the embassy security guy said if you get into a situation, the first thing you want to say is that you want to call the American Embassy and unless you really have done something major, they will back off.
It absolutely perplexes me to think that this country has such severe rules about defending grass yet they place so little worth on the safety of a child that there’s an elementary school next door to a prison, separated only by a flimsy wire fence. Go figure.
A History of Rwanda
The earliest known inhabitants of Rwanda were pygmoid hunter gatherers, ancestral to the modern Twa people who today comprise only 0.25% of the national population. Some 2,000 years ago, agricultural and pastoralist migrants from the west settled in the area. Oral traditions recall that prior to the 15th century a ruler named Gihanga forged a centralized Rwandan state with similar roots to the Buganda and Bunyoro Empires in neighboring Uganda. Comprised of cattle owning nobility and agriculturalist serfdom majority – the precursors respectively of the modern day Tutsi and Hutu – this powerful state was able to repel all early attempts at European penetration.
Rwanda became a German colony following the 1885 Berlin Conference, although it would be a full decade before a permanent German presence was established. In 1918 Rwanda was mandated to Belgium, which implemented a system of indirect rule that exploited and intensified the existing divisions between Tutsi and Hutu. In 1962, under Prime Minister Gregoire Kayibanda, Rwanda became an independent republic, an attainment marred by frequent clashes between the newly dominant Hutu majority and historically more powerful Tutsi minority, culminating in the slaughter of an estimated 10,000 Tutsi civilians in 1963.
In 1973, Major General Juvenal Habyarimana ousted the repressive Kayibanda regime, and over the next 20 years, the country’s political situation became ever more complicated due to simmering ethnic tensions exacerbated by events in neighboring states, several of which harbored significant numbers of Rwandan refugees. On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana died in a mysterious plane crash, sparking an already planned genocide. Two days later, in an effort to prevent the genocide, the exiled Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded the country, capturing Kigali on July 4 and forming a Government of National Unity under President Pasteur Bizimungu. Within three months, the genocide was all but over. An estimated one million Rwandans died over that period, and twice as many had fled into exile.
(source: The Rwanda Office of Tourism and National Parks) www.rwandatourism.com.)
