We drove about forty minutes outside Arusha to Arusha National Park for a one-day safari. Jeeps open, standing as we drove, it was really just the “biggest” place I’ve ever seen. So expansive. We thought seeing giraffes, African buffalo, and zebra from the bus was surreal, until we got out of the buses, and walked to an overlook over the park in the foothills at the base of Mount Meru. After that, we walked up to the giraffes, stopping periodically to learn something about what we were seeing from the rangers of the park, who were two of the friendliest people we’ve met in Arusha so far – vegetation, buffalo, giraffes, and so on. There’s nowhere I’ve been in the states (or anywhere) that’s just been so open. I remember being more aware of my breathing when the hike started to get a little faster, realizing how quiet my surroundings were when we weren’t talking to one another.
I think today is the first day that I’ve fully adjusted to the time change, and been able to remember exactly what day it is. But since I slept about 4 hours in the one-and-a-half days that we traveled, I was able to sleep like a rock both nights. Arusha is six hours head of Carolina and Indianapolis. This morning, we ate breakfast and headed over to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). We started the day by observing the trial of Dominique Ntawkulilyayo – the former sous prefét of Butare, in the south of Rwanda – through glass via several translators between English, French, and Kinyarwanda. The hour we watched included a defense cross-examination of a defense witness, who had also participated in the genocide. It was unnerving to hear the witness admit to his participation in 1994, though remaining evasive and vague in his answers, saying things like “I was present when people were killed” as an answer to the question of whether or not he killed. The prosecutors and investigator – one Canadian, one Botswani, and one Rwandan – who shared some of their expertise and experiences with us were two of the most interesting and eloquent people I’ve ever talked to.
The second session we watched – Edouard Karemera (vice president of MRND and Minister of the Interior) – was even more unnerving, just to see how elusive he was when he answered questions, essentially giving what I jotted down as a “defense of omission.”
A lot of thoughts about the politics of the ‘international community’ are swirling around in my head after discussions with the group, the court officials, and the reading, but they are too disconnected and unintelligible for me to make sense of it all so far. Many of those thoughts are focused on the limited role given to Rwandans, and the constant spectre of the unbelievable failure of the internatioanl community back in 1994 to prevent what happened. And all it would have taken was a few thousand troops.
Other little things: the bananas and mangoes we ate for breakfast were delicious; Arusha is not very lively at night on the streets, and never, ever should a group of 22 go out to dinner at one restaurant.
It went too quickly, but Rwanda is the place that’s been on my mind since before I left. We’ll be there tomorrow.
