Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Of a kind,' Boston snorted, and rolled his eyes towards some bushes on the edge of a
small park. 'Look.'
Behind the bushes, a group of men were all holding automatic rifles.
'Police,' Boston said, 'in plain clothes. It is
umuganda
.'
Umuganda
, Boston explained, was a custom particular to Kigali itself. On the last
Saturday of every month, the entire population of Kigali is required to devote itself to the
city's upkeep. For one day a month, business in Kigali comes to a stand-still and every
man, woman and child turns out to sweep the city's streets, tend its parklands and hedges.
It is a remarkable feat of civic co-operation, but as Boston directed my gaze to the police
guarding over the
boda-boda
taxi drivers tending the park, I understood it as something
more: here was a great leveller, Hutus and Tutsis both being forced to work for one com-
mon goal, on the streets of the city they were obliged to share. In the quest to reach some
form of reconciliation, the government was using every tool at its disposal - and force has
always been one of Africa's most effective methods.
'They don't have any choice,' said Boston. 'They're like prisoners.'
It was not the last time we were to see the way the government exerted its influence
on the population in an attempt to find a resolution to its recent bloody history. Between
Gisovu Prison and the first suburbs of Kigali the perfect paddy fields had been tilled by
prisoners. Agents of the genocide, dressed in orange and pink boiler suits, these prisoners
were both the convicted and the accused - and here they were, in hard labour, twenty years
after the atrocities were committed. Some had been captured, some had handed themselves
in - in what was, I suppose, a mass-assuaging of guilt - but it was evident, in every corner
of Rwanda, that those events of twenty years before still defined the country. In a village
three days back along the river, Amani had introduced us to a local pastor. The pastor had
welcomed us with a feast of cassava, bananas, beef and hot milk - a platter of delicacies
compared with the provisions we were carrying - and, as we ate, he told us all about his
work in peace and reconciliation. Like Amani, the pastor was a Tutsi, and had lost close
friends and family members to the extermination of 1994. As he spoke, Boston grew in-
censed at what he saw as Amani's one-sided tour. The current policy, he exclaimed, was
for the country to engage in an act of wilful amnesia, and simply forget the truth of what
happened. But Amani fixed him with a look. 'How would you feel if your mother had been
gang-raped and beaten to death in front of your eyes as a ten-year-old boy? That's what
happened to many people.' In these circumstances, Amani suggested, forgetting was just
one of many useful tools in moving on. These were the kinds of questions that Rwanda
grappled with daily. How do you judge and sentence half a population? Is forgiveness a
real possibility, and how can we collectively put paid to the past? In this context it was not
so surprising to be watching Kigali's citizens being forced to sweep the streets. It seemed,
in that moment, as much an act of collective penance as it was a scheme to force co-opera-
