Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tion. On the surface, Rwanda has turned itself from a country destroyed by hate and racial
violence to a seeming paragon of virtue - but, like Amani's insistence that the country has
made accommodation with what happened here, it is all a façade. The orderliness of Kigali
is the result of heavy policing and arbitrary arrests. Human rights are commonly flouted,
boys regularly abducted by government officials and families torn apart. In Kigali, you
can go to Chinese markets and African bazaars, stay in luxurious hotels and visit glisten-
ing modern banks - but while the country has taken several steps forward, the hearts and
minds of its citizens seem yet to have caught up.
'I want to see the crocodile,' said Boston, his face breaking into a half-deranged smile.
He had been talking about it all morning, as we traipsed from one market to the next on
still-swollen feet. At the back of a bazaar where cheap new imports from China were being
sold alongside secondhand European goods, I had found a small tailor's shop, where a one-
eyed tailor hunched over a fake Singer sewing machine and fixed two new pouches to the
sides of my rucksack. For the few minutes' work he had charged the exorbitant sum of $15
- he had clearly seen me coming, but it was worth it. This was the last place in Rwanda I
would be able to get them attached. That was one of my first lessons about Rwanda - out-
side Kigali, there is virtually nothing. It is as if the entire economy is built around creating
a surreal urban veneer that bears no relation to the rural reality.
The crocodile Boston was intent on seeing was on show at the Natural History Museum
of Kigali. A sixteen foot monster, it had been killed in April 2012 and the taxidermist
tasked with preserving it - badly, as it turned out - had discovered a pair of shoes and a
woman's hair braids inside. 'A man-eater,' Boston kept saying, clearly quite taken with the
idea. It reminded me, unnervingly, of the stories he had told about his great grandfather,
the cannibal king.
On this occasion, I was happy to give in to Boston's whim. There was another reason to
see the Natural History Museum, one more closely aligned with my own quest - the build-
ing used to be the home of one Dr Richard Kandt.
Richard Kandt is not a name as famous in the pantheon of great African explorers as
Burton, Stanley and Speke, but he holds a special place in my heart, and he felt especially
important to this expedition. It was Kandt who first explored the Nyungwe Forest and, in
1898, declared it the true Source of the Nile.
Kandt was born in Posen, in latter-day Poland, in 1867. A physician by training, he had
explored swathes of German East Africa around the turn of the century and, in 1908, been
appointed Resident of Rwanda. Residents, of the time, were effectively government min-
isters asked to take up residence in another country - and their duties often amounted to a
form of indirect rule. It was in this capacity that Kandt had founded Kigali itself. His name
has lived long in the memory here, and he is still, more than a century later, a feted citizen.
