Small stories from a big world

(Visual graphic from https://www.kwibuka.rw/)   Good Friday is a day of silence for Christians worldwide, the day when the death of Christ is remembered. This year, Good Friday was on 7 April. Here in Rwanda, 7 April is a day etched in the collective memory. It is the day of the start of the genocide against the Tutsi, 29 years ago now. In 1994 a ruthless massacre took place. The immediate trigger was the shooting down of the plane in which the then president was returning from peace talks. The plane's debris landed in the garden of the presidential villa. However, the cause was much more complex and had its roots in years of abuses, attacks, discrimination, exile, bad governance both before and after the colonial period. On 8 April, 10 Belgian paratroopers were killed. Belgium decided to withdraw its troops from the peacekeeping force that was already here, making the UN peacekeeping mission even more flimsy than before. It opened the door to an unprecedented and very wel...

  A phenomenon I experienced here for the first time is the fact that you can hear the rain coming. Yes, you read that correctly. You can hear if rain is coming. In this region, rain often falls in heavy downpours. Tropical showers with a force you rarely see in Europe. In Rwanda, het country of the thousand hills, those showers can be very local. One hill is transformed into a muddy mush and on the hill next to it the dust is still enthusiastically blowing in your nose. But usually that storm moves gradually over the city. Where I live I look straight at Kyovu, another hill. That's where the business heart of the city is and therefore where most of the tall buildings are located. When a storm hits that area first, that stretch of hill just disappears from view. The heavy rains form a curtain with no see-through. But even when I am not standing on my terrace watching the curtain closing, I can hear that the rain is coming. This is how it works: the rain falls with force on th...