Rwanda Reborn
From the horrors of genocide, this tiny nation is emerging as a surprise success story in Africa. But can it truly overcome its past?
In a recent daylong gacaca session under a hot sun in the village of Nyamiyaga, the judges struggle to get through a dozen different cases, all involving murder charges. The entire village has turned out, gathering under a small cluster of trees. The easiest cases are the full confessions, such as the one by Jean Nzabanita, who admits being part of a group that killed neighbors and stuffed their corpses into septic tanks. "We buried them like dogs," he tells the rapt audience. "During the genocide, we became like mad animals, and we lost our humanity. I think often that we would have been capable of anything." Relatives of his victims take their turn to stand up and confront him, demanding the truth. Under questioning from his neighbors, he reluctantly admits to attending meetings to plan who, exactly, would be killed.
Tangled cases. But most cases are far more complicated for these amateur courts. Louis Ngaruriye, a former mayor of the village, is pleading guilty to murder charges, but at the same time he denies participating in the genocide. "I didn't kill myself, but I was in the group of killers, and I didn't protect anyone," he says, prompting scornful laughs from villagers. Several witnesses come forward to testify that Ngaruriye was in charge of village security during the genocide and ran the roadblocks erected around the village to search for Tutsis. He continues to deny the accusations, but the judges still find him guilty. His case now awaits an appeal, but villagers were dissatisfied by the outcome. "During the genocide, they killed people with pleasure," scoffs one observer. "Now, they try to make themselves out to be angels."
If reconciliation is the biggest obstacle facing Rwanda, almost as serious is Rwanda's deep poverty. Nearly 90 percent of Rwandans live off subsistence farming, and the country's rural areas remain largely untouched by development. The bulk of people are subsistence farmers, cultivating every possible tiny plot of land in one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Annual per capita income is a paltry $230, well below the poverty level. "With the people we work with at CARE, I don't feel like I see a change in their purchasing power and economic situation," says Delphine Pinault, a health adviser in Rwanda for the international aid group. "There is no money circulating in the rural areas."
There are some encouraging exceptions, particularly in the coffee sector, Rwanda's most important export. "You could not create a more perfect environment for producing high-quality coffee," says Timothy Schilling, an agronomist from Texas A&M University who runs SPREAD, a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to improve coffee cultivation and other crops. "Rwanda offers more attention and TLC per coffee plant than anyone else in the world." The average farmer cares for as few as 150 trees, compared with thousands in coffee powerhouses like Nicaragua. Despite its fertile soil, plentiful sunshine, and high-altitude climate, Rwanda was not a player in the high-end coffee world until very recently. In his seven years in Rwanda, Schilling has helped some 60,000 farms join the gourmet coffee market, taking sales from nothing in 2001 to nearly $4 million last year, in large part by standardizing the processing of the raw coffee cherries. Customers today include Starbucks and a variety of smaller U.S. roasters. Now the government hopes to do the same for the country's well-regarded but antiquated tea industry. Rwanda is also eyeing the market for essential oils for perfumes and aromatherapy.
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