RwandaEssay Preview: RwandaReport this essayA stench like youve just woken up the day after a night on the town and found your best friend dead and half rotten under the bed. Nakedness, starvation and war is everywhere. Little children with swollen bellies and missing limbs pointing AK47s at you, staring with hollow eyes. Im in Rwanda. And I ask myself why. Why would anyone want to go here? Its fucking hell here. A place where it takes 800 000 people 3 months to die isnt exactly my idea of a nice place for a vacation.
Rwanda is a country split up by ethnical differences. The two main ethnical groups are the Tutsis and the Hutus. In colonial times, the Tutsis were treated way better by their white masters, and were therefore somewhat of an upper class when the civil war broke out. Now, the civil war happened in times of real economic despair and things werent made better by the president Habyarimanas loss of popularity ratings. Some Hutu radicals formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front with the ambition to overthrow the current Tutsi president. After months of discussion, a peace treaty was signed, and ignored, as the RPF supposedly shot down the presidential airplane, killing president Habyarimana. Revenge was sought out by the presidential guard, and under their influence, a militia of vengeful Tutsis formed. It didnt take long for mayhem to break out. War was all over, innocent people were shot, not-so-innocent people lived, and the powers of the west didnt give a shit. And then there was GENOCIDE.
I was there for about a week in June, staying at a Best Western in Kigali with a gang of other reporters from around the world. We didnt see much of the destruction, because we spent most of the time sitting scared as hell in our hotel rooms, waiting by the radio for another UN report of what was going on. But none of us understood anything at all, it was all too big and nasty for us. The few times we dared go out were horrible. Things werent that bad at all in Kigali, compared to what was going on in villages around the country, but still. There were little kids wobbling about in the streets, and older kids waving machetes and guns, screaming at each other. It was like all the adults had gone away, and left their young to take care of things. I soon understood where the adults had gone. They were either dead or on their way to Tanzania. As we were escorted by jeeps around town by hired
Our first stop was in Kigali, a little under a mile away, from the country’s top shopping destination. Around 2:30 AM, our group drove to a spot on the road leading up to the town. But nothing more was known of this place, until the men in the jeeps, wearing red helmets and black masks, turned up with some information from one of our guys and shouted: ”Look, the World Bank says this is the next major city to be hit by climate change. I know what this has been. They are saying it has been worse than what is being predicted.” They said that we are being attacked. They said that we are on our way to attack the U.S.! At that point, we became convinced that we should make an effort to cross the U.S. border and help the UN make a statement or make an agreement to stop the war. So we stopped the jeep and began our long-distance adventure. We decided to go straight over the border, though, as we do every day, as in our regular life here you are always on your own. And when we arrived at the U.S. Embassy, we had to have a meeting of our allies and the State Department to discuss matters, to go through those discussions before they made any serious agreement. As we left the building in the airport, the jeep rolled out into a corner and headed for the nearest embassy, where our American comrades told us we could be anywhere. We drove a few blocks to the embassy entrance, where we met up with our French comrades at breakfast to tell them where we had been, where we were headed and what we were going to do. We told them that we were going to meet some other guys and tell them how to find the people that were going after us. We had been waiting two days for a possible meeting, but instead we got a call: our consulate was busy, but we were still about to come to an appointment, when we were shot at and struck by a bullet. Once it turned up, the bullet went straight from me to them, then he hit me and I fell to the ground, dead. I am only saying this to show to the people that despite all the violence going on, the people of Tanzania have always been treated equally. And I want peace for them, not for the world.
Afterwards in Kigali, we found out about the war, and then did something I never imagined before. We began to realize exactly what was going on. People were going mad, and in Kigali, it was being used up as a cover to get people to flee. Not to mention, the town was already suffering, to an extent that is still disturbing to learn how the people of Tanzania have used it to hide their own atrocities against those that have followed us. By the time I returned to Tanzania, I had realized that as I walked around the country, my head still hurt. It made me feel helpless and helpless, unable to go back to school, I had come here to look for peace. And I remember thinking that if the people of Tanzania actually were willing to accept that this really wasn’t going to be a success in Africa then it would become the beginning of something great. And now, in the wake of the World Bank’s statements on climate change, I am reminded of nothing, not even the World Bank