CNN on Rwanda

Catch interview with President Kagame on CNN this Sunday!

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/07/17/zakaria.rwanda/

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Obama reached out to Africa earlier this week with a wide-ranging address praising the continent's steady achievements, but he called its persistent violent conflicts "a millstone around Africa's neck."

"Despite the progress that has been made -- and there has been considerable progress in parts of Africa -- we also know that much of that promise has yet to be fulfilled," Obama said in a speech to the Parliament of Ghana, a western African nation seen as a model of democracy and growth for the rest of the continent.

Ghana, with a population of 24 million, was once a major slave trading center. Obama visited the Cape Coast Castle, a British outpost where slaves were held until shipped overseas, along with his daughters.

CNN spoke to author and foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria about Obama's trip and the status of Africa.

CNN: "When President Obama was in Africa last week, he visited Ghana, but you think there's another country that's a bigger and better success story?"

Fareed Zakaria: He was smart to focus on a success story, of sorts, like Ghana. But I would say the biggest success story out of the continent is Rwanda.

You remember what happened in there just 15 years ago -- over a period of 100 days 800,000 men, women, and children were killed -- most of them slaughtered with knives, machetes, and axes by their neighbors. It is perhaps the most brutal genocide in modern history.

By the time it ended, one tenth of the country's population was dead. Most people assumed that Rwanda was broken and, like Somalia, another country wracked by violence, would become a poster child for Africa's failed states. It's now a poster child for success.


CNN: Meaning what?

Zakaria: Well, the country has achieved stability, economic growth, and international integration. Average incomes have tripled; the health care system is good enough that the Gates Foundation cites them as a model, education levels are rising.

The government is widely seen as one of the more efficient and honest ones in Africa. Fortune magazine published an article recently titled "Why CEOs Love Rwanda."

CNN: Why has Rwanda succeeded when so many other African countries have failed?

Zakaria: Much of it has to do with its president. President Kagame was the leader of the forces that came in and ended the genocide. He has led the country since then and implemented some controversial programs to help build stability in the country following the horrific events of 1994.

He had to find a way to reintegrate the perpetrators of the brutal genocide into their original homes, often living next door to their previous victims.

Rwanda is very unique in its post-conflict makeup. As the New Yorker writer, Phillip Gourevitch, points out, in Germany, the Jews left for America and Israel. In the Balkans the warring groups spilt up geographically. In Cambodia, the class that perpetrated the violence was easily identifiable and separated. In Rwanda, however, the killers and the victims live side-by-side, in every village and community. Can you imagine Nazis and Jews living next door to one another?

CNN: So what did President Kagame do?

Zakraia: The only way President Kagame could see to make peace was to reintegrate these communities. He came up with a specially crafted solution -- using local courts called Gacacas.

In each village, the killers stood before their neighbors and confessed, and in turn were offered forgiveness -- part court, and part community council. It has made for a fascinating historical experiment that seems to be working.

CNN: Can it really be working? How can killers be allowed to roam around the country free from prosecution? It doesn't seem fair.

Zakaria: We have President Kagame on the show this week and I asked him that very question. It is obvious he has thought deeply on the issue and couldn't come up with any other option. As he states, "If we incarcerated everyone who committed a crime we wouldn't have a country."

"There are many killers; there are hundreds of thousands because the genocide that took place in our country involved a huge percentage of our population, both in terms of those who were killed and those who killed. And if you went technically to try each one of them as the law may suggest, then you would lose out on rebuilding a nation."

CNN: But is the fact they've emerged from the genocide with some political stability enough to call the country a success?

Zakaria: It might be fragile. Beneath the veneer of reconciliation, there might well be much hatred. And it might be that Kagame is holding it all together because of his personality and toughness -- perhaps like Tito in Yugoslavia. But he says his goal is to build institutions and have this process outlive him.
Hope you will be able to watch the interview with him.

What a trip

So...it's official: I think I might be the worst blogger there ever was!  I'm fully prepared for no one to read this, so maybe I can be a bit freer with my words...  

We've had the most precious time these last ten months.  They've been trying, oh so trying, but our new friends and colleagues have made our time in Rwanda so fruitful.  Dan and I are leaving Rwanda in just a days to head back to the US where Dan will begin business school at Duke.  We're also expecting our first little baby in December, so lots of changes for our teeny family.  We will miss Rwanda immensely.

Our last few months have been chock full of meaningful friendships, good time just the two of us, great sightseeing, hosting dear friends from home, and a little bit (make that a lot) of morning sickness.  We head home with a few fewer suitcases than we came with, a little doggie who's become a member of our growing family, and most importantly, lasting friendships with Rwandans whose life stories we couldn't have dreamt up.  

A visitor from home...

My work at King Faisal Hospital since January has really paralleled our experience in Rwanda--tough but rewarding.  Hospitals aren't easy places to manage with the mix of clinicians and administrators, all working for their patients but on completely separate tracts.  I was asked to come to the hospital to help publicize our care nationally and internationally, but realized when I got here that there was some "tightening up" to do from the inside out before we started blasting the hospital's story to the world.  Don't get me wrong--there are MANY great things going on here (we just facilitated 35 cornea transplants last weekend) but I don't think that any KFH staffer would disagree with me when I say "we need better patient care in the hospital."  

So far, my favorite project has been teaching customer service classes here.  Dan drew up a National Customer Service Campaign for Rwanda, and we've simply followed his lead.  Rwanda's customer service stinks.  In these classes, I always say "Do we have diamonds?  No.  Do we have oil?  No.  We don't even have wood.  We get it from Congo.  Then what do we have?"  People are stumped at this point.  "OUR PEOPLE!" I say.  And they cheer.  The importance of good customer care in a country where tourism will float the economy for decades to come isn't really measurable.  Kind of weird that we're starting at a hospital, but you gotta start somewhere.  Our staff has responded in noticeable ways that make me so happy--you can see them saying "Karibu" ("Welcome") and smiling at patients where this didn't happen before. 

  

Some of KFH's wonderful faces

Other really interesting projects include starting the organ donation "conversation" with a country so foreign to the subject, connecting US-based companies and hospitals to King Faisal, bringing over some great interns from the US, a LOT of policy-writing and editing, and helping to build general capacity among staff.  And soon, we'll have a great new website here (this project began the moment I got here and has taken a full 6 months to even begin to choose the designer because of the procurement process).  So stay tuned in the coming months for that new website (and don't even think about checking out the existing website...).

Enough about my fun job.  What will we miss about Rwanda?  We'll miss gorgeous weather all the time.  Simple, witty truths spoken by good friends like Chantal who, in an African way doesn't need many words at all (she told me recently that "money itches her" when it's in her pocket).  We'll miss the long, lazy Saturdays that we'd never had before we came to Kigali, and the conversations that come with them.  The 2-inch gecko that hides every time I walk by the guest bathroom--I hope he makes it to adulthood when new folks move in.  Smiles of the children who realize you're actually smiling at them first.  And the giggles that come after our saying "good morning" or "good afternoon" (or anything!) in Kinyarwanda.  I'll miss the wonderful mix of humor and strength of the women here--those women who bear babies, hoe the fields, cook over charcoal stoves, and take care of their little ones while their men are doing God knows what.  Laughing with Dan about the absurdities of life here for a muzungu.  And much, much more.  We love this place, and there is surely something more special about it than meets the eye.  You just have to stick around for a little bit and get into the nitty gritty with folks to see it.

So we go with heavy hearts but knowing we'll be back very soon, God willing.  We're so, so thankful for the opportunity to have been able to learn much, when we thought we were going to give much, over these short months.