What a day!

Friday, May 28th. Okay, this day was not what I expected. But I have to begin with yesterday when Phil and I and Appolon and Parfaite (the two teachers in the educational program here at the centre) are called into the boss’s office. Why is Phil at my workplace? Because he’s working on the Murambi exhibit, that’s why. (See my post, the road to Murambi). Where’s Phil, I’m asked daily. How’s Phil? Anyway, this call has nothing to do with Murambi. It’s because there’s this genocide denier is in town.
Before I go any further let me tell you that memory is always contested terrain, I know that from 30 years of work as a trauma psychotherapist. Here there are people here who feel their stories of victimization are not fully acknowledged at a societal level, or not acknowledged at all. Be that as it may, there is no room in Rwanda, and there should be no room here, for denying that there was genocide in 1994, a planned extermination of the Tutsi. This fellow is a lawyer who unsuccessfully defended an accused at the International Criminal Court for Rwanda and he’s just come from a conference in Europe (of defense lawyers and others), ostensibly to lawyer for this woman who wants run for president who I’m told is descended from the first president of independent Rwanda who came to power on an anti-Tutsi campaign.

So anyway, the teachers descend on the boss’s office with paper and marker pens and we are set to work making slogans for a demonstration that’s supposed to be in half an hour. Why us? Because Freddy the boss has figured out that I can write and Phil can write. So we brainstorm away, Phil and I being old slogan writers from way back and everyone joins in.

Let me tell you I have no problem with all this. I researched this fellow on the internet and in Canada if someone made up stories so far from the truth about the Holocaust as this one is from the genocide here, they’d get into all sorts of trouble. I found an open letter he wrote in 2006 to our very own Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and because I have read extensively on Rwanda, the untruths and distortions in this letter made me hopping mad.

So what happened is that the demo didn’t’ happen yesterday, it was postponed to this morning and at 9:30 all the staff that are willing and able cram into all available cars and head off. Where’s Phil, people keep asking me as we stand around waiting for this march to begin. He’s coming, I say. By the way, I love that Phil is hanging around my workplace, I love working with him on the Murambi project (I’m doing the major editing on the English text for the exhibit), and not only is all that going well but having a husband and such a nice guy too raises my profile. Sad, but true! Eventually Phil zooms up on a moto (motorcycle taxi) but he’s left his cute hat stuck in the moto helmet and has to join the march with my pink handkerchief tied around his head!

Is it ever hot! Someone says authoritatively that the rain is finished now until September or October. I sincerely hope not, although if true it ended spectacularly a couple of days ago, blasting thunder and dumping torrents of water. Once we finally start we walk to the Ministry of Justice and then miles to the American Embassy and then to the Police Station. And please don’t worry about us being out on the streets in a foreign country, we won’t get in trouble as the government shares our opinion.

Some photos for you. Here’s the boss, Freddy Mutahguha. He’s standing on a truck and making a speech.

Here’s my Dutch colleague, Wim Breugen, with the assistant director Solange Umulisa, both of them very hot. (The paper reports the next day that the demonstrators braved a scotching hot day!) I don’t have a hat either and I’m practically toast by the end of the day, collapsed on my bed from heat exhaustion.

Some street scenes.

Outside the monolithic and daunting American Embassy

We  arrive back at work about two pm, hot and sticky and, to greater or lesser degrees, with blistered feet. It’s a great reward for our solidarity to be told we should all just go home. Which we do, Phil and I dropping by the department of immigration to finally pick up our residents permits so we’re legal here now.

But, we learn later, after four days in the country, the genocide denier has been arrested.