I visited Nkamira Transit camp, 22 km east of Gisenyi in the north of Rwanda yesterday. Refugees have been arriving at the camp from Masisi in North Kivu province, eastern DR Congo since Friday 27 April. The influx appears to have peaked on Sunday. The UNHCR tells me around 3,500 individuals have so far arrived in Rwanda. I did a piece for Reuters on the unexpected crisis from both the camp and the border crossing between Rwanda and DR Congo. I interviewed a number of refugees. I’ve added the raw testimony from three of them below.

I met Olive Kukamujeni (pictured above), a 31 year old mother of three just after she crossed the border. She looked exhausted on her first ever visit to Rwanda. Five months pregnant, with a child on her back, she told me what she had seen just a few miles away over the border in her village in Masisi,

“Just war. It was fighting. We left without anything,” said Kukamujeni. “I lost two children. The fighting was so hard, everybody ran. I don’t know if they died or not. I don’t know if I will go back or not.”

Among the masses waiting in line for food in Nkamira was Justin, a 20 year old student from Masisi, sporting a a red Club Deportivio woolly hat to keep out the mountain chill. He looked up at the mist shrouded mountains that line one side of Nkamira camp and recalled the events a few days earlier that brought him to Nkamira,

“The soldiers came to kill me, that is why I came here,” said Justin. “They shot my parents, my relatives. They killed my parents, my younger brother. Me, I’m here myself.”

Arsene, a fifteen year old student from the village of Mushake, wearing a donated sweater in the colours of the Rwanda flag, said he left because of the fighting.

“Because of the war, the rebels against the government soldiers,” said Arsene. “I saw the people running and the rebels and the government soldiers fighting, but no other things I saw. Only I run, myself, my friends and my relatives. The people are coming and the soldiers fighting.”

“I don’t think I will return there. Only, I wait for the decision the UNHCR will take for us. Only to stay here what they will tell us, we will see.”

“I am not with my family at this moment because when the war happened everybody run for himself. Me too, I run for myself, but my family, until this moment, I don’t know where they are.” (Arsene told me there are seven people in his family)

“In my mind, everything at this moment, it’s bad, because my family I don’t know where they are. At this moment, I’m in this camp, I’m very happy because I’ve just arrived and in this country, at this moment, I don’t see the rebels. Only I see the refugees as me.”

“All my clothes, my bags, they’ve just stolen. The soldiers came to where we were and took all the things. The chance we had because they didn’t kill us. Many soldiers, you can’t count soldiers. Many, many.”

“(They said) nothing except, “Give me phone”, “Give me money” “If you refuse, we will kill you” All the things we had, they took.”

“I saw a soldier killed.”

UPDATE: Here is an edit of the video report I work on with my Reuters colleague:

The coffee harvest is underway throughout Rwanda. The harvest normally starts in March, but this year some farmers began picking the precious cherries from as early as mid-February. Good rains at the end of 2011 helped the crop along, so I’m told. I spent a day in Ruhuha sector in Bugesera district in the south of Rwanda last week to talk to coffee farmers and learn how the harvest is going.

Here’s the report I put together for Reuters. One snippet that didn’t make the final version of the Reuters report is at once both surprising and blindingly obvious when you think about…

There is no coffee culture in Rwanda. Rwandans generally drink tea, often very milky, or sometimes of the ginger variety. In fact, outside of Ethiopia, there is no coffee culture in this part of Africa. All of which means it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that most coffee farmers in Rwanda have never tasted so much as a single shot of their own coffee,

Under the burning sun in the dry fields of Ruhuha, Jean Minani plucks berries from one of twenty or more coffee trees on his small plot of land and throws them into a plastic basin.

After washing in Ruhuha, they are sorted, roasted and bagged in Kigali, before winding up in the cafes and supermarkets of Europe and the United States. But, has the man at the beginning of the coffee chain ever tasted the drink made from the fruits of his farm?

“I’ve never tasted coffee,” said Minani. “We don’t know how to make coffee, so we cannot taste it.”

Not to mention, espresso machines and cafetières are less than ubiquitous in rural Rwanda.

Photographs taken from my Flickr account.

Leon Mugesera was formally charged with “planning genocide, inciting the masses to participate in genocide and distribution of arms” at Nyamirambo court in Kigali on 2nd February.

The case is adjourned until April 2 to give the defendant time to find a lawyer and prepare his defence.

Mugesera moved to Canada in early 1993. He’s been fighting extradition for the last sixteen years. He was finally deported on 24 January, 2012.

He arrived at the court in a regular police pick-up. There were no escort vehicles and there was no extraordinary security inside or outside the courtroom. He was handcuffed at the front, wore a grey suit, looked in good health and remained placid throughout.

Roughly fifteen journalists awaited his arrival. There were three video cameramen. The muzungu count was a total of three – all journalists.

The benches in the courtroom slowly filled. I counted 80 – 90 people inside the court, plus 4 or 5 police officers. However, there were still seats for more and no-one was left standing squashed in at the back.

The court was very quiet. The proceedings started at 9AM, were in Kinyarwanda and lasted thirty minutes. There were no microphones and speakers making it very difficult for those near the back to hear anything.

This case, and others set to start soon, is a major turning point and a major test for Rwanda’s justice system. A successful, smooth trial could mean more genocide suspects are sent back to Rwanda.

As Carina Tertsakian, of Human Rights Watch, told me recently – “we are likely to see a sort of snowball effect”. It’s a question I put to President Paul Kagame at a press conference in Kigali yesterday,

“Long overdue… It should have happened long ago… It’s a very good thing, I’ll go with that.”

“And, of course, it’s in a sense a breakthrough… There have been all sorts of debates with human rights groups, with all kinds of people. People who even don’t want to see some of these genocidaire tried at all. There are all kinds of people who, one way or the other, make things difficult for Rwanda to see justice done…”

“…The justice system in Rwanda has registered very significant progress…”

“…I’ve no doubt that they’ll be handled to everybody’s satisfaction to see that justice is properly done. Then, I’ve no doubt that it eases the possibility of having more cases coming over to Rwanda. For me, which is a good thing as far as seeing justice being done.”

For more on the case of Leon Mugesera, have a look through these story links. And below is a brief slideshow of images from his first appearance in a Rwandan court.