In My Home There is No More Sorrow: Ten Days in Rwanda

by Rick Bass

When I got the latest issue of McSweeney's, bundled with it was In My Home There Is No More Sorrow, a travelogue of sorts by Rick Bass, detailing his short trip to Rwanda in 2011. Bass travelled to Rwanda with his wife, daughter, and close friend, writer Terry Williams, to assist her in a two-day workshop for writers at a university in Kigali.

Bass opens the book with a visit to some of the churches that have been made into memorials for the genocide that took place there in 1994.  These churches were promised as safe havens for Tutsis looking to escape slaughter at the hands of their Hutu neighbours, but they were in fact used to corral the victims more easily.  Many of these sites have been turned into memorials, displaying skulls and bones, bloody clothing, or in one instance, the barely-decayed bodies of the dead.

Bass visits these sites as an American outsider, and his perspective is probably the only one I would be able to relate to.  His guide at one site, who he discovers wishes to be a writer herself, becomes a central figure in the book, with her quiet determination and dignity.

The writers' workshop takes up the centre of the book, and it is probably the only instance I can think of where a discussion of writing has ever affected me as emotionally as this one has.  Bass and Williams recognize that their contribution is small, but they are in a country with no publishing infrastructure at all.  The young writers that make up the audience do not have any outlet for the stories and poems they write largely for themselves, although they desperately crave one.  When one student takes Williams to task for avoiding the difficult issue of the genocide, she returns the next day determined to open a door into the traumatic childhoods of the participants.  It's like opening a floodgate, legitimizing their feelings and need to tell their stories.  This part of the book is immensely powerful.

Following the workshop, the author and his group travel to the north, to visit the national park where Dian Fossey studied gorillas, and so that the Americans can see some themselves.  Bass is an incredible writer, and he conveys a great amount of wonder in this part of the book.  The family tries to find their lodge in the middle of nowhere on their own in the dark, and the apprehension of Bass's passengers, as he drives along switchback roads in the middle of the night near the border to Uganda is palpable.  Even better though, is the writing about the next day, when they travel into the jungle and observe a group of gorillas at play.

There are two things this book does exceptionally well.  It gives a small platform for Rwandan writers to share their stories.  There are four pieces (three poems and one story) by the participants in the workshop included at the end of the book.  While they are not quite as strong as they could technically be, they mark the first time that I've read actual Rwandans writing about the genocide.  Prior to this, the only accounts I've read have come from North American writers (I cannot recommend Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families enough), so it's good to experience that authentic response.

The other thing that Bass does well here is show us that Rwanda is not what it once was.  We are given example after example of happy, well-adjusted people, a vibrant social life, and pride in what the country has to offer (while being very realistic about the state of its ecology).  The people are shown as kind and solicitous, eager to help or look after visitors from another place.  Reading this book makes me want to visit the country, and especially go see the gorillas before there are none left.

World Changers

The holiday issue of the New Yorker this year is not on a 'Winter Fiction' theme, but is instead concerned with individuals or organizations who are involved in making the world a different, and better, place. It is one of the better issues in recent memory, with a plethora of good articles.

The Ice Retreat
by Fen Montaigne
This article is ostensibly about the Adélie penguins of Antarctica, who are finding their usual habitat no longer hospitable to them, as temperatures at the bottom of the globe rise. The real core of this article lies in Montaigne's profile of Bill Fraser, an 'ecologist and penguin expert', who has been spending years studying these unique birds.

It is clear that this population is in grave danger, as the numbers of nesting pairs have dropped precipitously, and quite recently.

Hearth Surgery
by Burkhard Bilger
One and a half million people die each year from cooking, and cook-stove related injuries in the developing world. At the same time, people forced to use inefficient open-hearth wood fires are responsible for almost matching the carbon emissions of people in richer countries.

Bilger chronicles the efforts of an eccentric group of people, many of whom are connected to the Aprovecho Research Center, to construct more ideal stoves. The article chronicles many of their attempts and failures, and paints a portrait of a group of semi-obsessed hobbyists who may manage to create a great deal of positive change in the world.

The Monkey and the Fish
by Philip Gourevitch
This is a fascinating article about Greg Carr, an American who hundreds of millions of dollars in the tech industry before retiring to work in philanthropy - namely in managing the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. He spends tons of his own money in attempting to improve this region - repopulating animal species, planting seedlings, and negotiating with local leaders to improve the park, the lives of the people living around it, and the ecology of a large swath of land.

Carr is an interesting character, and Gourevitch describes both his optimism, and the monumental nature of his task. This was an excellent, well-balanced, read.

The Life After

by Philip Gourevitch

My understanding of the events commonly referred to as the Rwandan genocide that took place fifteen years ago is almost exclusively the result of Philip Gourevitch's articles that began appearing in the New Yorker following the end of those days, and the ushering in of some form of order in that small African nation.

His writing was so vivid and the events he displayed so horrifying, yet at the same time such testaments to mankind's ability to endure, that I also read his book, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," a truly amazing piece of history and reporting.

In this article, Gourevitch has returned after an absence of many years, to Rwanda to mark the 15th anniversary of the genocide. While he has the opportunity to interview the president, Paul Kagame, he does not make politics the focus of his piece. He manages, in a small amount of space, to convey a full sense of the political and social challenges being faced in the country, as well as the remarkable success the Rwandan people have created in rebuilding.

He tracks down both victims and genocidaires that he interviewed in his previous visits, and shows that the gacaca courts (the Rwandan version of Truth and Reconciliation) have managed to please almost no one, which is in itself, the proper position for the people to be in.

He also explains the current situation with regards to rebel groups still active in DR Congo, and discusses the challenge of convincing rebels to give up their fight and return to their homeland and reintegrate into society.

It has been a while since there has been an article of such force in the New Yorker.

The Activist

by Nick McDonell

I've been trying to get caught up on magazines that have piled up on me, so I grabbed this today, and serendipitously found another article on Sudan and Darfur, which, when read back-to-back with the New Yorker article I wrote about below, gives a much more complete picture of the conflict.

This article is about Alex de Waal, a British professor at Harvard who is most likely the world expert on Sudan. The article is written by a former student of his, who accompanies him on a trip to Ethiopia and Sudan, including a visit into Darfur.

De Waal meets with people involved at all levels of the conflict, and this article is barely able to scratch the surface of the complexities of the situation in Sudan, made all the more complicated by the International Criminal Courts recent request for a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan.

This article is an essential primer for anyone wanting to learn more about this issue.

Lives of the Saints

by Jonathan Harr

Harr spent time a year ago among the international aid workers that are assigned along the Chadian border with Sudan. He describes the history of the UNHCR efforts in that region, as refugees from Darfur have flooded into Chad, and as Chadian rebels have been active in the same region for a number of years.

The stories from this part of the world are always brutal. These aid workers, mostly it would seem from other African nations or from France, live lives of great hardship, separated from their families for six-week blocks of time, and are required to stay there for two years. Reading the article, you really begin to gain an appreciation for the sacrifices that they make, and how much their lives are lived at the mercy of corrupt governments, rebel activity, and climate and weather patterns.

One thing that I think is worth comment is that it has been a year since Harr left the region, and really very little has changed in that time, none of it for the better. Darfur has been a cause celebre for a few years now, and yet there has been so little action beyond toothless condemnations and denouncements from the UN and the richer nations of the world.