Today was a very important holiday in Rwanda: The celebration of old and current heroes. In the morning, the community gathers to tell stories about those heroes. There are three different kinds: Inema, Inienza, and the last one I already forgot again. Damn it!
Laura (classmate), Alice (my friend from the guesthouse) and I went to a local community meeting up the road. People sat and listened to a number of men telling stories about different heroes. Everything was in Kinyarwanda, but this is what I got about the colonizing story:
The colonizers or Wazungu (many white people/ foreigners) came to the African continent and drew lines arbitrarily, creating nations where there had been tribes before. They named them Kenia, Uganda, Zambia, ... and went on to rule them directly or indirectly.
The story showed one thing very clearly and nicely: Rwandans are very aware of the many negative things that colonization brought with it and questions the ridiculous way of distributing land between "Big White Men".
The story continued with the differentiation between "Tutsi" and "Hutu", terms that are generally not used in Rwanda, as state diction is that everyone is a Rwandan, with no difference. Many people have also underlined, that contrary to what was propagated in the time of colonization, in the years leading up to and during the civil war and the genocide, there is NO ethnic difference between the two groups. They were simply class names for cattle herders and farmers. It was absolutely possible to switch from one group to the other, and intermarry. What the German colonizers started, making a difference between the two groups, the Belgian colonizers brought to a new level: They created ID cards stating the supposed ethnicity, and favored Tutsis for many decades. When radical Hutus rebelled, the Belgians switched sides and now supported the rebels. The genocide ensued. This is just a short recap. If you wanna know more, I can recommend a number of books. Germans, also see this site, the English sources are manifold:
https://www.bpb.de/internationales/weltweit/innerstaatliche-konflikte/54803/ruanda
What's most important to note is that there is no clear story about what happened, who was involved or why it happened. Many different people give you another analyis and that's I guess what will happen with any historical account. A very interesting and mind-opening series to watch is on Netflix: Black Earth Rising, about the things that happened after the 100-day genocide.
What we didn't see coming: The community was already sitting in the guesthouse's yard and having "half-cooked" sweet corn. The week before at Umuganda, they had collected money to buy soft drinks, beer and corn, for everyone wanting to celebrate Heroe's Day. We said around in a circle and everyone tried to stick it out in the rain as long as possible. In the end though...
Laura (classmate), Alice (my friend from the guesthouse) and I went to a local community meeting up the road. People sat and listened to a number of men telling stories about different heroes. Everything was in Kinyarwanda, but this is what I got about the colonizing story:
The colonizers or Wazungu (many white people/ foreigners) came to the African continent and drew lines arbitrarily, creating nations where there had been tribes before. They named them Kenia, Uganda, Zambia, ... and went on to rule them directly or indirectly.
The story showed one thing very clearly and nicely: Rwandans are very aware of the many negative things that colonization brought with it and questions the ridiculous way of distributing land between "Big White Men".
The story continued with the differentiation between "Tutsi" and "Hutu", terms that are generally not used in Rwanda, as state diction is that everyone is a Rwandan, with no difference. Many people have also underlined, that contrary to what was propagated in the time of colonization, in the years leading up to and during the civil war and the genocide, there is NO ethnic difference between the two groups. They were simply class names for cattle herders and farmers. It was absolutely possible to switch from one group to the other, and intermarry. What the German colonizers started, making a difference between the two groups, the Belgian colonizers brought to a new level: They created ID cards stating the supposed ethnicity, and favored Tutsis for many decades. When radical Hutus rebelled, the Belgians switched sides and now supported the rebels. The genocide ensued. This is just a short recap. If you wanna know more, I can recommend a number of books. Germans, also see this site, the English sources are manifold:
https://www.bpb.de/internationales/weltweit/innerstaatliche-konflikte/54803/ruanda
What's most important to note is that there is no clear story about what happened, who was involved or why it happened. Many different people give you another analyis and that's I guess what will happen with any historical account. A very interesting and mind-opening series to watch is on Netflix: Black Earth Rising, about the things that happened after the 100-day genocide.
Community hero storytelling
We cooked some Rwandan lunch afterwards...
Even made our own chips, which turns out is very easy if you have enough oil (right photo below).
What we didn't see coming: The community was already sitting in the guesthouse's yard and having "half-cooked" sweet corn. The week before at Umuganda, they had collected money to buy soft drinks, beer and corn, for everyone wanting to celebrate Heroe's Day. We said around in a circle and everyone tried to stick it out in the rain as long as possible. In the end though...
... we sought shelter and the drinking/ eating/ singing/ dancing commenced there.
When Rwanda's clouds think "rain", they make it "RAIN!!!". Since we were taking the bus to Uganda later that afternoon, we ended up taking a taxi (with a beautiful roof). Everyone else eventually made their ways home as well. Alice told me that she went out with her friends later that day, to close off the day celebrating properly with alcohol. What a nice tradition. Is that something we can take back to Europe? Preferrably celebrating heroes who have done extraordinary things for civil society, no military action...
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