It is 20 years since the Rwandan genocide, 20 years since some one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by members of the Hutu majority in just 100 days. The world watched on in horror, but did nothing. Last week, I went to visit the country and was amazed by what I found. It’s a beautiful land, full of terraced fields of banana, maize and what they call Irish potatoes, but theirs is a hard life of subsistence farming. Meat is only eaten on special occasions and the daily chore of tending the fields or looking after the goats falls to every member of the household. Women can be seen carrying 60kg bags of potatoes on their heads or wheeling even greater loads stacked on bicycles to the market; children watch the goats between lessons at the local schools. I saw no old people—two thirds of the population are under 25, but they are at peace, thanks to a strong government. It’s a clean country, almost like Singapore, with all plastic bags banned and a diktat to every member of the population to tidy the countryside once a month.
At the genocide museum in the capital, Kigali, I walked beside the graves of 250,000 men, women, children and babies and saw pictures of churches filled with bodies by those who had sought sanctuary. It was impossible to understand, but out of the horror, somehow, hope has risen.
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'A bluff, honest man in the trappings of greatness': The extraordinary story of the Foundling Hospital, and the sailor who saved the abandoned children of LondonA remarkable charitable endeavour to save abandoned children on the streets of London has a touching legacy in the form of the The Foundling Museum in the very centre of London. John Goodall tells its story; photographs by Will Pryce.
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The elegant country home of a motor racing daredevil who drove round the world in a 1936 Bentley and crashed a Range Rover into his own front porchPeasemore House, with its collection of barns, workshops, stables and more, is an ideal home from which to plan an adventure — something that was a passion of its present owners. Penny Churchill explains more.
