I am amazed by how prosperous Kigali has become, with its palatial houses and internet cafes. "The people from exile, they're building everything up," says Beatha to Lindsey Hilsum
The plane bumps through low cloud and we're descending into Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. They call it the Land of a Thousand Hills, but for me it's the Land of a Thousand Memories. A decade ago, in February 1994, I came to work for Unicef here. Two months later, on 6 April, the downing of the president's plane triggered genocide, with the government of the day leading the majority Hutu people to slaughter their neighbours, the minority Tutsis. It's six years since I've been back. Most of the time, I push the memories away - the hacked bodies, the desperate friends begging me to save them from the mob, my impotent despair - but now I must face it again, to make two films about the tenth anniversary of the genocide for Channel 4 News. People in London often ask whether I was frightened in Baghdad during the war last year - to which the answer is that nothing in this world could be as terrifying as those days in Rwanda.
The Rwandan government wants memorials to honour the 800,000 who were killed in the genocide. Surprisingly, the prime movers are two plump and balding brothers from Nottingham, James and Stephen Smith. In 1995, they founded the Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre in Sherwood Forest, but they soon realised that "Never Again" had little meaning - another genocide was unfolding on their TV screen. On my first day, I visit Gisozi, a hill above Kigali where tens of thousands of genocide victims have been buried. James shows me round an empty building and then gets out his laptop to give me a virtual tour of how it's meant to look for the tenth anniversary in April - multimedia displays, photographs, historical explanations. Their ambition is breathtaking, given the time available. James introduces me to his wife, a beautiful young woman called Beatha, a survivor of the genocide, who tells me her story. Her entire family was wiped out and she is haunted by the memory of her mother, who was killed and thrown in the river by their neighbours. One day, the thugs caught Beatha and made her wait in line to be killed - she watched them slash half a dozen people to death before managing to break free. "What about you?" she asks. "Weren't you frightened in Baghdad?" No, I say quietly. I don't think it really compares.
I am shocked by the misery in which the survivors of genocide live, and, by contrast, how prosperous Kigali has become. Palatial houses, internet cafes, new buildings everywhere. After the genocidal government was toppled, Tutsis who had been living in exile flooded back. They are young and confident, speaking English and Swahili on their mobile phones, doing business deals, eating in restaurants. They didn't experience the genocide themselves, and saw Rwanda as a land of opportunity. My Rwandan god-daughter, a survivor, told me how a diaspora Tutsi once called her a Hutu - the implication being that she must have been a collaborator to survive. It's the same suspicion that met those who emerged from the concentration camps. Beatha, who has suffered similar cruel remarks, is generous. "The people from exile, they're building everything up," she explains. "But for us, the genocide keeps pulling us back."
We drive along the red clay roads through the green hills covered in banana trees and maize to reach Ntarama, a church where 5,000 people were slaughtered. They have left the skulls, skeletons and clothes inside as a memorial. A survivor called Dancilla shows visitors around. She tells us that, recently, the film-maker Raul Peck got the villagers to re-enact the genocide for a film he's making. Two survivors became traumatised, she said, but everyone else was happy - including those who took part in the genocide - because they were paid 12,000 Rwandan francs, about £11. That's far more than the average monthly income. The boom in Kigali doesn't seem to have spread beyond the city limits.
I meet up with my friend Esther, another survivor, who is here from Germany, where she now lives, for her niece Florence's wedding. The night before, we gather at Esther's sister's house, a solid block structure built on a muddy slope above the town. Everyone drops by for a beer or a soda: Hutus, Tutsis, the odd foreigner. Rwandan families are almost incomprehensible to outsiders: Esther is a Tutsi, but her sister married a Hutu, so her sister's daughter is a Hutu. But she was brought up by Esther's parents, who were Tutsis killed during the genocide. So she is also a survivor. She is marrying a Hutu. Being a Hutu or a Tutsi is an integral part of someone's identity, but now the government has decreed that everyone is a Rwandan and it's taboo to mention the words Hutu and Tutsi, as if not talking about something would make it go away.
One week in Kigali, and I'm immersed in the whole painful business again. But I'm leaving now - back to London, on to Baghdad. I realise that for me, ten years is a long time. So much has changed, and I have moved on. But for the survivors, it's a different story. "Ten years, 20 years, 50 years - it makes no difference," says a widow called Perpetua, seven of whose children were murdered. "Nothing can make us forget."
For info on the Gisozi Memorial Project, visit www.aegis.tv/rwanda/gisozi/
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