Road Trip Rwanda: A Journey Into the New Heart of Africa

313 Pages·2015·6.14 MB·English

by  Will Ferguson

ROAD TRIP
RWANDA
ROAD TRIP
RWANDA
A Journey into the New Heart of Africa
WILL FERGUSON
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Rusumo Falls
PART ONE
A Thousand Hills
PART TWO
“We Are All Rwandans”
PART THREE
King Kong & the Shroud of Turin
PART FOUR
The Road to Rusumo
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
IN 2006, RWANDA REORGANIZED its administrative boundaries, merging twelve
smaller provinces into five larger ones. Regional cities and towns that bore the
names of the older provinces had their names changed as well. This can be
confusing for visitors, especially those with an interest in Rwandan history.
Books and testimonies about the genocide, for example, do not refer to “Huye”
but Butare, not to “Rubavu” but Gisenyi. I’ve employed the older names
throughout, while acknowledging the new ones in parentheses. On the maps, I
have reversed this, listing the current names followed by “formerly…”
RUSUMO FALLS
THE BRIDGE AT THE END OF RWANDA crosses the Akagera River in a single,
graceful arc: a thin span joining the scrub hills of southern Rwanda with those of
northern Tanzania.
Below the bridge, a drama is playing out. The milk-tea waters of an
otherwise languid river narrow suddenly into the bottleneck of Rusumo Falls, a
tumult more heard than seen. Only a trace of mist hints at the waterfall’s
presence.
Transport trucks from Tanzania rumble across the bridge, the din from their
engines drowning out the sound of water, but Rusumo is always there, just out of
sight.
I want to walk out onto the bridge and peer down at the falls but I can’t, even
though the two Rwandan soldiers posted there—a young man and a young
woman in heavy olive-green uniforms, rifles slung over shoulders, faces sheened
in perspiration—shrugged and gave me a weary “go ahead” wave when I asked.
Just don’t go past the middle of the bridge, they advised, because after that I
would be Tanzania’s concern.
This is the crux of the conundrum I face: I have permission, but I don’t. Or
rather, I have two conflicting sets of permission, one granted by the soldiers at
the bridge, the other being withheld by an officious little man who has
disappeared with my passport and papers. Normally, I would say take your cues
from the people who are armed—in my experience, an AK-47 generally trumps
a stamp pad—but one never wants to underestimate the power of a mid-level
bureaucrat to ruin one’s day.
So.
I do not walk onto the bridge.
Instead I sit, sticky-shirted in the heat, under the rapidly diminishing slice of
shade afforded by the corrugated overhang of the roof at the Rwanda Customs
and Immigration—well, hall is too grand a word. Bungalow is more accurate.
It’s a squat, cement-walled structure with a warren of offices in the back and a
pair of bank-teller-type windows out front where forms are duly shuffled and
stamped.
A procession of tired-looking Tanzanian truck drivers, paperwork in hand,
moves past me. And is there anything more wilted or damp in this world than the
paperwork of a Tanzanian truck driver? At times, this procession becomes a
crush of bodies, the air pungent with perspiration, and as the men push through,
they give me sympathetic nods and deeply curious looks. A muzungu, flesh the
colour of boiled pork, forced to wait? Unfathomable.
I appreciate their concern, even if none of the drivers offer to smuggle me
across. Under a sack of coffee beans, say.
So I sit here, marinating in the heat, and I wonder what has become of Jean-
Claude. I wonder whether he has been arrested. I wonder whether I will be
arrested. More importantly, I wonder what we’re going to do about lunch.
I’m stuck in a no man’s land, the term a tad misleading at a border crossing
packed with drivers and vehicles, trucks wedged in every which way like a giant
game of Jenga. At the top of the hill, Rwandan taverns are cooing promises of
Primus beer and welcoming shade. But I can’t retreat and I can’t move forward.
I can only wait.
As one hour drips by, then another, I make friends with a succession of
Tanzanian truck drivers. They speak French, Swahili, and a bit of Kinyarwanda,
with a smattering of English thrown in more for style than substance.
Fortunately, I speak Truck Driver, a form of male-speak found in most
countries. Using a range of gestures (often involving eyebrows, puffed-cheek
exhalations, and the pantomimed fanning of one’s brow), we are able to come to
an agreement, for example, that it is very hot out. We likewise agree that a beer
would be good right about now. We are also in favour of women. Other points
covered include: man, is it hot; too hot, really; someone should sell beer down
here, they’d make a lot of money; women, eh? Cor!
They ask me where I’m from. Really? They have a
cousin/aunt/uncle/brother-in-law there! Is it hot like this in my country? And can
I sponsor them? Truck driving is hard work, you see. Too hard. And the women
in my country? Are they, you know, heh heh? (That last query is delivered non-
verbally for the most part, involving the further artful use of eyebrows along
with a leering grin, a leering grin being the International Symbol for Women, eh?
Cor blimey!)
Hiding under a sack of coffee beans is looking better and better. Maybe I’ll
become a truck driver’s turn boy, one of those assistants who guide the massive
rigs into car parks. Maybe I’ll work my way up to my own rig, become a
mythical figure, a wild-eyed muzungu of the plains, crazy from the heat, who
made a fortune selling Primus beer outside of immigration offices. They’d write
songs about me. Women would run alongside, waving as I passed. Boy, is it hot.
Someone should really sell beer down here. They’d make good money.
Before I can slip dreamily into that other life, Jean-Claude reappears,
mightily irked by the slow-motion ordeal he’s been put through.
He’s had enough of the Rwandan customs official, that small hovering man
who has followed him out and is now pleading for us to wait. This insubstantial
gentleman needs to hear from his superiors in the district office on what to do
about us. But today is Saturday, and no one is answering the phone.
“It is a simple request,” Jean-Claude says to him. “Can we go out on the
bridge and take photographs or not?”
But our hovering official doesn’t know. He is caught in an administrative no
man’s land of his own.
“Are you detaining us?” Jean-Claude demands. “Are you placing us under
arrest? I didn’t think so.” He turns to me. “Come on, let’s go.”
We walk out onto the bridge, leaving the anxious clerk behind, wringing his
hands to no avail.
“Did he want a bribe?” I ask.
“This is Rwanda,” Jean-Claude says. “We don’t pay bribes.”
The two soldiers nod as we pass.
Jean-Claude and I walk out to where the river is spilling over the boulder-
strewn narrows, water splaying across the rocks. Murky currents. Earth-scented
air. A permanent rainbow. This is where the bodies would have tumbled …
As trucks roll by, the bridge bounces with a disconcerting sproinginess.
“I remember that!” Jean-Claude says with a sudden smile. “I remember it
bouncing. I thought it was just my imagination!”
He has never seen this bridge before, though he remembers it well. When he
crossed twenty years ago, he was hiding under coffee sacks in the back of a
transport truck.
“What would they have done?” I ask. “If they had caught you?”
“Oh,” he says. “They would have killed me.”
He says this without rancour or melodrama, but as a simple statement of fact.
If they’d caught me, they would have killed me.

PART ONE
A THOUSAND HILLS