2 February 2006

Yesterday was Heroes’ Day here. It’s a holiday to commemorate the Rwandan Patriotic Army, Paul Kagame’s boys and girls who started their war in 1990, stopped the Genocide in 1994 and have ruled a progressive yet single-party state since then.

Despite what you may have heard, Rwanda, my friends, is not a representative democracy. For example, the RPA, whose political arm was the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is now the governing party here, won the war in July when they stopped the Genocide. Yet Heroes’ Day is celebrated on Feb. 1. No one knows why. One theory in the newsroom is that Feb. 1 is Kagame’s birthday, but I have no evidence for that. It could be that the war started on Feb. 1 in 1990. The point is nobody knows. Big Paul (from now on my informal name for the president) decided Feb. 1, and that was it.

Big Paul’s office invited me to the festivities yesterday. It was at 8 a.m., and the president’s media guy said it would be short, only two-and-a-half hours. At least they were honest this time. I was only going to take pictures, because no one outside of Rwanda cares and the paper I’m helping to run in Rwanda is a monthly. We don’t come out until March, so we just needed a picture with a caption and that’s it.

Well, getting the photo would be harder than I thought. I showed up a few minutes early because this is Rwanda and I know to expect all sorts of problems even when I’m on the list. So I started talking to the protocol officer, who had no idea what I was talking about. He then called his boss, the man in charge of the media, who had no idea what I was talking about. The first protocol guy then took me up to the metal detectors to let me in. I wasn’t on that list and no one knew what I was talking about. We then got the president’s chief of protocol involved. She had no idea what I was talking about either.

Then I noticed Rwanda’s one newspaper photographer (I wish I was making that up) at a separate entrance. “Is there a second list?” I asked and walked to where Photographer George was. Sure enough, I was on that list. Rather than just let us in we had to go back to the metal detectors where we started. Doesn’t anyone here talk to anyone else? Ever? No. What’s wrong with you, white boy?

Then I found out that mobile phones were not allowed for people near Big Paul (there’s this paranoia that someone is going to pack their phone with C4 explosives, receive a call and blow everyone up. No one who wants to get at Big Paul is that smart), and since I had no place to put the phone, I went home. The soldiers of course didn’t have a basket to hold people’s phones in, and of course there was no announcement beforehand. I should’ve just stayed in bed like I wanted to.

And then I started to realized what makes me crazy here in Kigali. I never thought I’d say this, but I need a little bit of order around me to function. Newsrooms are inherently chaotic, people coming in and out, making a lot of noise, cursing like sailors. But there’s an order to it, some procedures.

What makes me crazy is trying to impose order on the insanity around me. The reason the newsroom at Focus makes me happy is that, aside from doing good work and creating something new, I make the rules for the reporters. I’m imposing order on the chaos. There are procedures. They’re democratic and I’m not dictatorial. But deadlines are respected. Reporters are learning how to copy edit, things like that. It’s my island of sanity.

You might want to sit down before reading this, but I’m the detail man here. I even spent the morning showing Vincent the designer how to organize his files. We’re in worse shape than any of you thought.

Speaking of that, we’re still waiting for the first edition to arrive from Kampala. Apparently there were some problems with the printer. Ugh. Some of you have requested that I send copies. Hopefully there won’t be enough to send to you; they’ll all be sold. But I’ll have some for myself to show off next time I’m home.