Authors: Paul Rusesabagina
He never quite recovered. Though he had the skills and the ambition to become an engineer, the only job he could get was selling
banana beer in a stand by the side of the road. He later moved to Kigali, where he landed a clerical job in a bank. But he
was always plagued by the image of what he might have become had he been allowed to continue his education and use all of
the formidable talents that had rotted inside of him. When we were both much older I tried to get together with him for beers
from time to time, but there was a taint of sadness, and even anger, that always hung over our friendship. I was one thing
in the blood and he was another and there was nothing either of us could do to change it. He was a Tutsi by accident and he
had to live the rest of his life under that taint, occasionally in fear for his life from the public safety committees and
destined to work in dead-end jobs. It was an appalling waste—not just of a man but of a potential asset to Rwanda and the
rest of the world. Gerard had something to give. It was not wanted.
As one born into the favored class, my accidental path would be different.
I SUPPOSE THAT
every capital city in Africa—even those of the poorest countries—must have a place like the Hotel Mille Collines near its
heart.
All the impoverished nations on earth, in fact, have these few basic things: a flag, an army, borders, something resembling
a government, and at least one luxury hotel where the rich foreign visitors and aid workers can stay. When operatives from
the Red Cross in Geneva or researchers from Amnesty International in London come here on their missions, they don’t stay in
local guesthouses. They stay where they are treated to high standards of comfort—even though they’ve come to work on uncomfortable
problems like AIDS, deforestation, torture, and starvation. So there is always a demand for a spot of opulence in a nation
of mud houses. It is not all bad. A few hundred locals get decent jobs as chambermaids, waiters, and receptionists. Some elite
suppliers get food and beverage contracts. Most of the profits, however, are shuttled back to whatever multinational company
owns the property. The cost for a room is usually equal to the yearly income of an average person in that country. I am not
saying this is right. But this is the reality of modern Africa. And so in every impoverished nation on the continent, from
Burkina Faso to the Central African Republic, you can inevitably find that one hotel a short walk away from the embassies
where fresh laundry and gin and tonics are taken for granted and where there is an aura around the place that prevents any
peasant from ever thinking of going inside.
In Rwanda, that place is the Hotel Mille Collines.
It is a modernist building of five stories, with a facade of stucco and smoked glass. From the outside it would look perfectly
at home near any large American airport.
The Mille Collines was built in 1973 by the Sabena Corporation, which was the national airline of Belgium until it went bankrupt
a few years ago. It was founded as the
Société Anonyme Belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne,
a mouthful of a brand name later shortened to the acronym Sabena. It started off flying short cargo runs between Boma and
Léopoldville and branched into passenger service. The executives foresaw the demand for an island of stateless luxury in the
dirt streets of Kigali, and so they built the Hotel Mille Collines, aimed primarily at the diplomatic and humanitarian trade
but with an eye toward snaring the occasional adventurous tourist on his way to see the gorillas in the north.
There is only one way in or out of the Hotel Mille Collines: a two-lane driveway leading to and from the gate inside and the
paved street outside. You could walk, it is true, but almost anyone who stays there would be driven in. The gate leads into
a parking lot landscaped with colorful African plants and shrubs and surrounded from the outside world with a fence of bamboo
poles. A line of flagpoles flies the national banners of Rwanda and Belgium and the corporate flag of the airline. There is
a turnabout for cars to deposit their passengers at the lobby. You can feel the crisp blast of the air conditioner a few feet
in front of the door. The lobby is tiled with sand-colored flagstones and decorated with potted plants and wicker couches.
The staff behind the reception desk has been trained to greet all visitors cordially in French and English. There are a few
shops that sell all the things a tourist might want: suntan lotion, aspirin, a carved figurine or a colorful African-print
shirt as a gift. The indirect pinkish light filtering in through the big windows to the north and the tasteful fruit colors
in the lobby give the place a tropical feeling. I have been told the entrance of the Mille Collines resembles that of beach
vacation resorts in Fiji or Mexico. Off to one side is a small suite of offices for the general manager, the assistant general
manager, and an agent of the airline.
Upstairs are 112 guest rooms, each one furnished according to the standards of upscale Western lodging. There are televisions
with hundreds of satellite channels in multiple languages, beds with firm mattresses, shaving kits wrapped in protective plastic,
circular cakes of soap. There are bedside phones guaranteed to give you a dial tone, a shower with safe water, a small strongbox
with an electronic combination for your passport and money. The rooms smell like lavender cleaning solution. Those facing
the pool are more expensive and have balconies shaped like half diamonds, where you can step out for a view of Kigali. Those
facing the parking lot have false balconies so the sides don’t look flat when viewed from the outside.
On the top floor is a small cocktail bar and also a set of conference rooms for visiting corporations or aid groups to hold
their presentations. There used to be an unwritten rule in the elite circles that if your meeting wasn’t held at the Mille
Collines it wouldn’t be taken seriously.
Down the hall from the bar and the conference rooms is the Panorama Restaurant. Here you can get escargots or chateaubriand
or crab soup of a quality—and at prices—that match what you’d find in Brussels, Paris, or New York. Every morning there is
an extensive breakfast buffet with good strong Rwandan coffee and five kinds of juices and a staff of waiters lurking discreetly
in the background, watching for an empty cup or a dropped fork. If you’re dining as a couple two servers will deliver the
food to your table all at once so you will be disturbed for as brief a time as possible. The restaurant has no north wall—it
opens up to a striking al fresco view of the Nyabugogo valley. You can see houses clinging to the far hillsides and the Boulevard
of the Organization of African Unity, which runs to the north side of town and the airport. On the farthest hill in the distance
is the black doughnut of the national soccer stadium, with banks of lights rising on poles from its outer walls.
The air in Kigali is sometimes hazy from farm dust and heavy with truck exhaust, but the view is always gorgeous and the sun
never hits the dining tables directly. The Belgian architects saw to that by orienting the restaurant on a diagonal of the
compass, away from both the sunrise and sunset. And when it rains, they simply close the blinds.
The most important place in the Hotel Mille Collines is on the lowest level. This is the rear courtyard, where there is a
tidy lawn, a huge fig tree, and a small swimming pool without a diving board. There is also an open-air bar with about twenty
tables and a few ceiling fans to push the air around. Ten more tables—the best ones—are set up in an L pattern around the
pool.
Around this small square of water is where the real business of the Mille Collines is conducted. What takes place here far
surpasses the day-to-day management worries of the hotel. Some people have even called it the shadow capital of Rwanda. You
can probably guess why. It is
the
spot where the local power brokers come to share beer and ham sandwiches with aid donors, arms dealers, World Bank staffers,
and various other foreigners who have some kind of stake in our country’s future.
Worlds intersect here. Whites and blacks mingle comfortably here inside a thin cloud of cigarette smoke and laughter. Rick’s
American Café in
Casablanca
had nothing on the Mille Collines. I have seen cabinet ministers dispense appointments here, Army generals buying Russian
rifles, ambassadors telling casual lies to presidential flunkies. The poolside is a place to advertise that you are a man
with contacts and friendships. This is one of the best ways to climb the ladder in Kigali. These casual acquaintances are
what can separate a wealthy man from a beggar.
I first laid eyes on the Mille Collines when I was nineteen years old. As a typical bored young man on my hill I hitched rides
to Kigali whenever I could to wander the streets, browse through the markets, gawk at girls, and drink in the bars, all the
typical idle pastimes of youth. The hotel had just been constructed and everybody was coming by for a look. It was then the
tallest building in Rwanda and the first with an elevator. Few people had seen such a thing before. The big coup was to sneak
inside and see if you could ride the elevator to the roof, where you could get a truly marvelous view of the valley below.
Much to the envy of my friends back at home, I was able to charm my way past the bellboy and take that elevator ride up to
the forbidden roof, where I savored a few stolen minutes of beauty. I remember feeling impressed with the hotel and proud
of my country, thinking this place represented progress, and that a better way of life was on the way for all of us.
I had no idea just how large a role this strange new place was going to play in my life—or in the life of Rwanda.
I am a hotel manager by accident. The idea of having a career in the luxury hospitality business is certainly a laughable
one for the son of a banana farmer from an impoverished African village. I never could have dreamed such a thing, nor could
any of my friends.
I was supposed to have been a church pastor. This was a path that seemed preordained for me from a very young age. Everybody
said I was suited for it because of my willingness to work hard, but even more because of my temperament. My peers in school—even
those I wasn’t close friends with—seemed to trust me with their secrets, and I always gave them advice that seemed practical
to them. (You might say it was
igihango
all over again.) The teachers were also impressed with my ability to memorize sections of the Bible and rephrase them in plain
language. They encouraged me to become a man of the church. It was always seen as the way up, at least to the people who ran
my school. They belong to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a very distinctive branch of Christianity. The Sabbath is celebrated
on Saturdays, for instance, and Adventists make it a habit to avoid eating shellfish, pork, and other foods forbidden to the
Jews. The most devout Adventists are vegetarians. They also do not believe in the idea of hell and live in intense anticipation
of the second coming of Jesus.
On the top of a high hill overlooking the beautiful Ruvayaga Valley, missionaries had built a church and started a school
for boys in 1921. They chose that piece of land because it had been used as an execution ground by a previous
mwami
and nobody from our area wanted to live there for fear of bad luck or death. The missionaries wanted to show their new followers
that the old religions of Rwanda had no power and that their god was the only one. They eventually moved away to spread the
gospel elsewhere, but their hilltop school remained. We called it a “college, ” but it was intended for students of all ages.
It was designed in a simple but elegant manner, with the academic buildings arranged around a quadrangle. A row of teachers’houses
lined the broad dirt avenue that led into town, surrounded with the now mature orange and guava trees planted by the pioneer
churchmen. The centerpiece of the campus was a small stucco church in the European cathedral style, painted a soft blue. There
was a large main classroom hall that looked like a railway station divided into four classrooms, each with tall windows and
furnished with rows of severe wooden desks that had seats and footrests built into them. The plaster walls were painted the
same baby blue as the church. Each room had a rectangle of black paint on the front wall that served as the blackboard.
I learned French at age eight, English at thirteen. I still remember the cover of the first book I ever owned, a textbook
called
Je Commence,
or
I Begin.
I struggled the first year and resolved to do better. The next year my scores were among the highest in my grade and I saw
my father’s pride when my name was called during the honors assembly on the grassy quadrangle.
In religion classes they taught us Christian hymns. Some of them were tedious, but others were quite beautiful. My favorite
was a mournful song called “The Salesman of Vaud” about a glamorous Swiss lady who wanted to buy some jewelry from a tattered
old peddler, but all he had to give her was a copy of the Bible. She read it and her soul was saved. I had seen very few European
ladies at the time, but those words seemed so sweet and wistful as we all sang them together inside the squat hilltop church:
Oh! Look at, my beautiful and noble lady,
These gold chains, these invaluable jewels.
You see these pearls of which the flame
A flash of your eyes would erase?
Though I seemed headed for a life of Christian modesty, there was always a streak of the entrepreneur in me. Even as a ten-year-old
I was gathering up peanuts and reselling them for a profit. Hard work appealed to me. Where other teenage boys liked soccer
and girls, my hobby was painting houses for people in the village. This was where I first learned the art of negotiation.
I would start my price far above what I expected to receive and coyly ratchet it down according to what I saw in the face
of the man who wanted his house painted. I earned a reputation as a tough bargainer but a conscientious painter. There was
never any spot uncovered, and I used attractive shades of blue and indigo. I would get up very early in the morning to start
a job, eat something small for lunch, and keep working through the fading light, until I could hear the gasoline generators
in town start up.
Though I earned good money I was never prey to bullies or to jealous thugs. I suppose I was adept at using the same skill
at negotiation that made house painting such a lucrative business. If anybody tried to threaten me I would simply look him
in the eye and ask him in a firm but friendly voice, “Why?” The bully would have no choice but to engage me verbally, and
this made violence next to impossible. I learned that it is very difficult to fight someone with whom you are already talking.
On September 13, 1967, at the age of thirteen, I was baptized in the waters of the Rubayi River and was allowed to choose
a new first name for myself. This is a ritual that merges a bit of traditional Rwandan culture with the Christian rite. To
the endless confusion of outsiders, members of a single family here do not usually share the same last name.