On one of many hills

Posted on May 16th, 2010 under Rwanda

Gahini, Rwanda

Every day I walk up and down the same hill three times, once for breakfast, once for lunch and another for dinner. I live at the top. My food is at the bottom. I have mentioned this hill in an earlier blog entry; it’s the one I like to walk at night. The hill is nothing too extraordinary at plain sight. It’s just a dark brown-red dirt road etched with footprints and tire tracks. Rain-worn trenches a couple feet deep run parallel on each side. Past those trenches are some slender trees, flowers and plots of farmland. Past the crops and through the trees you can make out an opposing hillside garnished with glimmering metal roofs and fuming kitchens. (I do mean fuming kitchens. Either Rwandans never thought of making chimneys or they do not care for them. I’m not sure which but no one has them. They cook over fires and just let the smoke rise and fill the kitchen ceiling until it climbs out the windows and door.)

One morning, an enormous rain had swept in from across the lake while I was eating my breakfast. Rains do not last too long here so I decided to wait it out with an extra cup of tea. (By the way, tea and coffee are Rwanda’s two main exports. I asked to have coffee in the mornings, thinking it should not be any problem. My mistake. My server brought a bag of ground coffee on a tray but with no way to filter. When I tried asking for a filter she did not understand. I asked the manager. He did not understand. Turns out Rwandans heeded Tony Montana’s advice; they do not to use their own stuff.) Anyhow, I had the extra cup of tea and worked on a tray of fruits. I only brought my journal and pen with me and since I would not be going anywhere for a while I decided to review some of my notes then doodle a few people I met the day before.

So picture it: Evan in a concrete, hut with nothing but a card table and plastic chair, some banana peels, crumpled passion fruits and papaya rinds; the rain is pouring on all sides knocking dirt up against walls; he along with everyone else in Gahini is hiding out from the rain.

About an hour passed. The rain eased to a drizzle and the sun just barely peeked from behind one of those ominous storm clouds. That was good enough for me so I set out for the hill. It was not until this morning I realized how strange this hill actually was. (Maybe it was the extra time at breakfast to reflect. I dunno.)

This hill does not seem like too much at plain sight. Like I said, the walk is mostly dirt, plants and the somewhat discernable adjacent hillside. It is not the sight of the hill that gives it its peculiarity, though; it’s the history. People have been giving me bits of its history for me to string together over these past couple weeks. In 1935, Gahini’s hill was the host of a Christian revival. Missionaries had come here in the early 1900s and made a place for themselves when it was still just a hill of brush, insects and wild animals. The 1935 Gahini Revival was one of their master plans and from what I hear, the birth-ground for Christianity in all of East Africa. Thousands came then and thousands more will be coming in a few weeks for a round-two, memorial revival/conference. I leave the day after the conference ends.

This hill was not just a nursery, though, cradling new believers for the future of Africa. In 1994 it was the graveyard for many murdered in the genocide. During the genocide, some of the military personnel and unofficial militia patrolled this same hill. They hacked people to death with machetes in the same fields I stroll along. Almost anyone who is my age or older could tell you a story about it, list off names of friends and family who were murdered. I have not heard too much about the genocide since I have arrived, though. How could I? I only know a few words in Kinyarwanda. I cannot have conversations with most of the people here but that makes things all the more strange: I know they know.

At the foot of the hill is Lake Muhazi. I can see it from my front porch at the top of the hill. Across the lake is President Kagame’s ranch. When the sun’s out, it’s where I bathe. It’s where I swim and watch the pied kingfishers dive for fish, the weaver’s weaving nests, the African Paradise Monarch flit its long tail in the reeds and occasionally, all this in the company of otters. (Fifteen years ago, I’d be swimming with hippos and crocodiles. Fortunately for me they were driven about 4km to the other end of the lake.) Yesterday, I was swimming while all the locals kept to the bay filling their barrels and jerry cans with water to haul back uphill in their truck beds and bicycles. I had been staring up at the hill thinking about its past when I was struck with another thought. I turned and asked the only friend who swims with me, “Why don’t I ever see anyone else swimming in this lake? I only see a few float in it with their boats.” He lowered his voice, “They are usually taught to stay away from water in schools for different reasons. Many of them just never learned to swim but I also have been told many people don’t want to come in because this is where the militia threw the bodies during the genocide.”

You can imagine ever since I have arrived here there has been much to take in. Walking this hill fifteen minutes up, fifteen minutes down gives me some time to think about the things I have seen and heard. Sometimes I can do this with my head upright, eyes darting across the horizon, ears pricked to cows’ slovenly hooves shuffling through the grass, nose whiffing every guava tree in range. Just as often, I’ll take this walk staring off only a few feet ahead, inattentive to smell and sound, caught up in thinking on yesterday or tomorrow.

Many would call this time in Rwanda an exciting experience. They are right. Many would say it is a valuable and precious time in my life. It is. All the same, I have been away from home for over four months now and by the time I get home, I will have missed five months of the lives of each family and friend. They will have missed five months of mine and once when I do get home we will only be able to recount so much to one another. All there was to be known in the casual, day-to-day company will be far gone and I don’t like that. I don’t like that I do not have my brothers walking this hill with me, talking about all that is inevitably forming me. I don’t like that when I reach the bottom there are no familiar friends greeting me at the table; we cannot tell one another about the day. Any words I have from those friends come through letters and when I read those letters they beat a great joy into me. Still, the words seem to only retain half the meaning by the time they reach my eyes from their hands. The words do not come with facial expressions, with tone or pace; they do not come with any of those subtleties that change a word’s meaning. I don’t like that either. So while the time here is good in many ways, I must say, having been away for four months, it is getting a bit lonely. I am beginning to feel strained.

So the hill has a past. It’s a place I consider the present and at times the future. Sometimes I walk it alone and to go eat alone but other times I do walk it with a few new friends and eat in good company. It is what it is. Can you see why I might find it a strange one to walk every day? Would you call it exciting? Eerie? Charming? Grim? Beautiful? I mean what do you call a place that has been both a cradle and a grave? Imagine a mother was pregnant with twins and when she delivered, the first came shaking with life but the other slid into the midwife’s hands motionless and silent. What would you say to that mother? What would you call her?

For whoever’s interested, plug in these coordinates into Google maps. Click on the satellite option and you can see the area I am staying. The coordinates mark the road on the hill:

-1.841856, 30.476010

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