Over the last seven days I have had the experience of a lifetime. I’ve been in Rwanda making three films about the Rwandan genocide, life in Rwanda today and the 44 Conservative MPs and activists who have been spending two weeks on VSO backed social action projects.
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If you had been David Cameron, what would you have done? Gone to Rwanda or stayed at home and given sympathy to victims of the terrible floods? Frankly, he was damned whatever he did. Imagine the headlines if hadn’t gone. CAMERON CANCELS TRIP AS TORIES DESCEND INTO TURMOIL would have been one of them. The fact is that politicians need to get out of the Westminster bubble. The media is so cynical of any attempt to learn about different issues that they pan any politician who does something out of the ordinary. The whole Rwandan trip was dismissed as a PR stunt, yet all the lobby journalists on the trip found it to be anything but. Will Woodward from The Guardian wrote of Cameron’s trip to the Genocide Memorial: Occasions like this make the two-day visit seem less of a stunt and more of a necessary rite of passage for any aspiring British leader. The Sun’s David Wooding wrote that the Tory volunteers: "the real face of the modern Conservative Party". Francis Elliott of The Times told the Rwandan New Times newspaper: “The Tory Pary are doing very commendable work here. Anyone would be mean-spirited to suggest they aren’t doing anything”. And this demonstrates the problem of the modern journalist. On the ground they can see for themselves what is happening, but their newsdesks are constantly demanding stories of failure, criticism, splits, furore and, preferably, gaffes.
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One of the first things you notice when you drive around Kigali is the total absence of litter on the streets. The government has banned plastic bags, which has really made a difference. Also, on the fourth Saturday in the month everyone has to help clean up their local area. And the thing is, everyone does. I have never been to a country where everyone is totally committed to making their country better. There’s a palpable feeling of pulling together and optimism. Bearing in mind that only thirteen years ago they were killing each other it’s an incredible achievement. I’m sure that underneath the surface there are still tensions, but the Gacaca courts, where people can tell their own stories and come face to face with the people who killed their families, have contributed hugely to the process of reconciliation.
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Last Sunday we had an early start to drive south to the village of Marambi, the site of one of the worst episodes of the 1994 genocide. It's also the site of a National Genocide Memorial. We were going at the invitation of Mary Blewitt, who lost 60 family members in the genocide. Since then she has started an excellent charity called SURF - the Rwandan Genocide Survivors Fund. Andrew Mitchell MP, the organiser of the whole trip, is on its board and she has done brilliant work in raising the profile of Rwanda and its problems throughout the political spectrum in Britain. She's also raised more than £7 million to help survivors of the genocide.
The day did not start well, when after only an hour into the journey I started getting stomach cramps. Knowing that there were two more hours to go until we reached our destination I was facing the embarrassment of having to ask the coach to stop for, er, well, shall we call it a pit stop. Luckily the cramps gradually went away!
It took more than three hours to get to Marambi, three hours of very dangerous driving by our coach driver. None of us knew what to expect when we got there. What we experienced will affect every one of us for a very long time indeed.
As well as the mass grave, in which 50,000 Tutsis are buried, there are at least a dozen rooms with dead bodies laid out, all cased in lime. The smell was something which will stay with me forever. One room was full of bodies of children and babies. It was at that point I lost control of my emotions. Alice, my cameralady, was extremely upset and tears were rolling down her face as she filmed. I did a piece to camera which was, shall we say, highly emotional. We were then shown a site where French soldiers built a basketball court on top of a mass grave. I cannot tell you how hated the French are in Rwanda. Their soldiers were sent to Marambi and actually protected the killers, who had hacked to death 50,000 Tutsis in 48 hours. It is not overstating it to say they were complicit in the genocide.
We then met one of only six survivors of the genocide at Marambi. He had a huge bullethole in his head. Because he had a bullethole the Hutu militias left him for dead. He escaped by walking through the hills to the border with Congo.
I then interviewed Mary Blewitt. She is such an inspirational figure. Her brother was one of the first to be killed in the genocide. She recently received a letter from the government asking her to exhume his body as they wanted to build on his burial site. So yesterday, thirteen years after his death she had to rebury him. The interview was very emotional for both of us.
