2025 08 Rwanda, Kigali and the Twin Lakes

Every morning at eight, Jeanette Dusengimana arrives. She is the cleaning and washing lady in the modest hotel where I’m staying, just around the corner from Kabeza market in the Remera area of Kigali. Her presence is quiet, almost invisible — except for her smile, a small ray of light that brightens the tiled corridors.

On her back, wrapped tightly in a cloth, she carries her eight-month-old son, Aurore Ishimwe. He spends the day pressed against her, dozing, watching, sometimes crying softly, while she works with steady rhythm. African style, as people here say. Jeanette earns about thirty euro cents per hour.

Woman Power

In Rwanda, (as in many parts of the world), women carry a lot — literally and figuratively. With an average of five children per household, and with much of the work still manual, strength is not a choice but a requirement. Two-thirds of the population live at subsistence level, and Jeanette is among them.

“In Rwanda, women carry a lot — literally and figuratively.”

Rwanda is the most densely populated country on mainland Africa, comparable to the Netherlands in its scarcity of land. Someone described Rwanda to me as “Africa light.” At first I hesitated at that phrase. But I see what they meant: poverty is here, yet it doesn’t overwhelm the senses the way it does in other places.

Cleaner than Europe

Politeness, or maybe better, reticence, is the air people breathe. Voices are rarely raised. Community comes before the individual. Once a month, during the traditional and legally enforced community clean-up day, everyone participates.

“Rwanda is cleaner than many European countries.”

Plastic bags are banned, smoking is almost unseen, and blaring street music is forbidden. The import of low-quality clothing and shoes (mostly from China) is banned, as are small internal-combustion engines — a push that accelerates the electrification of transport. Even more remarkable, a national health insurance system manages to cover the poorest too.

A Fish Breaking the Surface

Beneath the politeness, unease sometimes flickers. Like a fish breaking the surface, conversations can suddenly shift when certain subjects arise — most of all the genocide.

“Rwanda feels serene — but edged with the knowledge of what cannot be said aloud.”

President Paul Kagame, who ended the atrocities is now in his nineties and tolerates no dissent. Critics vanish, sometimes quite literally in “traffic accidents.”

Twin Lakes, Northern Rwanda

The harmony between people and nature is striking, and very notable in the twin lakes district. Lake Burera and Lake Ruhondo were formed by volcanic activity. The soil is emminently suitable for the production of bricks. Agriculture here remains largely unmechanized, and so hills, valleys, and fields still look as though they breathe together with the people who work them. The hydropower installation connection both lakes and running on the height difference does not disturb the peace at all.

“There is no rupture, no violent line between human activity and landscape.”

Every morning, Jeanette reminds me of that harmony. Her smile, her strength, the child asleep on her back. She carries more than laundry. She embodies the quiet and light of this country.

explanatory text for this article:

Why Neighbors Turned Killers in Rwanda

The Madness of the Human Brain

For a visitor it is almost impossible to grasp: that in the 1990s, within just a hundred days, around 900,000 Rwandans were slaughtered by their own neighbors. It is impossible to highlight this country and not touch this horrible event.

“It doesn’t take much. A political spark. A whispered fear. A manufactured label.”

And this in a country not divided by religion — the vast majority are Christian. Not by language — everyone speaks Kinyarwanda. Not by food, customs, or daily life — all strikingly uniform across the land.

Perhaps buried deep in the human brain lies something ancient, a remnant of our Neanderthal past. A raw mechanism that insists on splitting the world into us and them. A primitive instinct that, once awakened, shatters harmony with terrifying speed.

Seeds of Hatred

It probably really started with Belgian colonialism, grounded in ignorance and a profound misunderstanding of African culture. Missionaries and “scientists” began pushing the idea that the labels Tutsi and Hutu were not social markers, but fixed ethnic identities.

They measured skulls and ascribed racial traits to groups that were, in reality, inventions rather than observations.

In truth, the difference in name was simple: Tutsi owned one or more cows, Hutu did not, living instead from agriculture. This economic divide ran through all 350 or so “clans” that made up the Rwandan kingdom at the time. One could become the other by buying — or selling — a cow. With a cow you were likely better off, though not always. Marriage, too, crossed these lines. The distinction was fluid.

“The distinction was fluid — until outsiders froze it in ink.”

Then the Belgians locked the labels into identity documents — a move that later proved lethal. A mild social distinction suddenly became a rigid, black-and-white marker.

Much has been written about the fatal events. In short, populists seized on this artificial difference, hardened it into political reality, and used it for their own gain (as seems to happen endlessly). They organized slaughter, Holocaust-style.

“People were pulled from buses and murdered on the spot, based solely on the designation in their identity card.”

This chilling efficiency was possible only because obedience had long been drilled into the psyche of the Rwandans.

An Unsettling Truth

Rwanda was not the first. Nor will it be the last. Bosnia, the Balkans, and countless other places remind us this madness is not uniquely African, nor bound to any single culture.

“Genocide (and all hatred) is not an aberration, but a serious possibility. Not a monstrous act by others, but the consequence of allowing injustice and unacceptable views to take over society.”