PAUL RUSESABAGINA’S OASIS OF UBU-MUNTU IN
Hotel Rwanda:
A REVIEW ESSAY
Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
Associate Professor of English and African American Literature
Department of English Language and Literature
University of Northern Iowa
"Paul Rusesabagina, You’re a good man!" --Hotel Rwanda
"Napfuye mpagaze. Abahutu bapfuye bahagaze. The Hutu have lost their humanity. Their Ubumuntu. Bataye ubumuntu. They have become worse than things. Worse than Ibintu. Abazima bafashwe nk’abazimu. Les vivants qui ont l’intelligence sont considérés comme les vivants privés de vie -- Ah! Bantu-Rwandan philosophy of essence!" Thus muses Dr. Asy-Lee at the beginning of my novel project on the Rwandan genocide, drawing on Alexis Kagame’s work on Bantu-Rwandan philosophy of being, La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l’Être. According to Kagame, the only difference between the living (Abantu/Abazima) and the dead or spirits of the dead (Abantu/Abazimu) is that the latter are Abantu deprived of life. In Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hotel des Mille Collines house manager in Kigali, Rwanda, maintains his Ntu (essence of being) while all around him abantu/Abazima (humans endowed with life) are becoming Ibi-ntu (things) and abazimu (human beings deprived of life).
According to a Rwandan saying, men do not cry-"Amalira y’umugabo atemba ajya mu nda." Actually, the right translation would be that a man’s tears tumble down in his stomach. Only women and children cry because they must keep the promise they made to Nyangara a long time ago. According to the story, Nyangara was a lonely man who possessed a cow. When he was about to die, he tried to leave the cow to men, but they all refused to take it. They refused to celebrate him by crying. Eventually, Nyangara decided to slaughter the cow and invited women and children to come and eat it on one condition: they would have to cry in his memory.
I broke the Rwandan saying while watching Hotel Rwanda, a film based on the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan Hutu who saved 1268 Hutu and Tutsi during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 while a house manager at l’hôtel des Mille Collines (the Mille Collines Hotel) in Kigali, a luxury hotel owned by Sabena Airlines--("Mille Collines" means "one thousand hills, a reference to Rwanda. In tourism Rwanda is known as "Le pays des mille collines" or the country of one thousand hills).
Hôtel des Mille Collines is also the setting for Un dimanche à la piscine de Kigali (2002)--A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (2003)--a novel by Gil Courtemanche, the Canadian journalist that the Rwandan genocide turned into a novelist. A movie version of the novel is being made. In A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, Courtemanche describes Hôtel des Mille Collines as a meeting place for "habitual clientele of international experts and aid-workers, middle-class Rwandans, screwed-up or melancholy expatriates of various origins, and prostitutes. All around the pool and hotel in lascivious disorder lies the part of the city that matters, that makes the decisions, that steals, kills, and lives very nicely, thank you" (4). Although Courtemanche gives HIV/AIDS to almost every Rwandan character (Hutu and Tutsi alike) in the novel, including his Rwandan girlfriend Gentille and her father, and makes everyone uncivilized except the Québécois Bernard Valcourt, his portrayal of Hôtel des Mille-Collines is very accurate.
In the lobby of Hôtel des Mille-Collines in Hotel Rwanda, we see two prostitutes, one a Hutu and the other a Tutsi. Sitting on the counter probably waiting for a beer, an American journalist asks a young Rwandan man what are the differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi. When the Rwandan man tells the journalist that according to the colonial history told by the Belgians the Tutsi are tall and the Hutu are short and stocky, the foreign journalist turns to the two Rwandan ladies seating on his right and asks them their ethnicity. They respectively identify themselves as Tutsi and Hutu. While telling the Tutsi one that they will hook up later, he looks at them and then concludes that one could have mistaken them for twins. Thus goes the distinctions between the Tutsi and the Hutu. During the genocide, some Hutu were massacred because they "looked" Tutsi and some Tutsi survived because they did not look Tutsi enough.
There are also plenty of expatriates and aid-workers at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. When the killings start and the hotel gets imperiled, the United States and European countries evacuate their nationals from the hotel, leaving Rwandans at the killers’ mercy. Educated Rwandans--educated mostly in Europe--and other middle and upper-class Rwandans also conglomerate there. In a sense, Hôtel des Mille Collines is a Belgian exercise in neo-colonialism.
This was my first time sitting in an American movie theatre, albeit I have been in the United States since July 1989. I usually wait until movies come out on VHS or DVD. But I felt compelled to see Hotel Rwanda, a movie that has won accolades around the world, including Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. This was a movie about my country, re-telling the horrific story of the Rwandan genocide to Americans as if the majority of them were not alive when the genocide was unfolding in Rwanda. Their government not only opposed a UN resolution that would have sent more UN peacekeepers to Kigali, but it took it a very long time to even call what was happening "genocide." In Hotel Rwanda, a female voice of a spokesperson for the US State Department is heard answering the question of whether or not what is happening in Rwanda is genocide. Instead, she tells the journalist that according to some formulations they use in the State Department, the massacres in Rwanda are not genocide but "‘acts of genocide’". Disgusted, a Rwandan hotel employee angrily turns off the radio.
So, I cried when Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) said goodbye to the Sabena Airlines president in Brussels, whom he had been talking to on the phone and telling him that all the Europeans have abandoned Hôtel des Mille Collines. The Sabena boss promised to call and ask President Mitterrand of France to intervene, as France was supplying arms to the Rwandan army. There is a short moment of hope later in the movie, and the Sabena boss confirms that he made phone calls to the French and Belgian governments.
The second time I broke my "Rwandan tradition" occurred at the end of Hotel Rwanda, when Paul, Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), his wife, and their children, eventually find the two children belonging to Tatiana’s brother Thomas and his wife--Paul and Tatiana are also taking a dozen or so orphans with them to the buss that will take then to Tanzania. Earlier when Thomas and his wife went to Hôtel des Mille Collines to ask Paul Rusesabagina to shelter them, as someone had tipped them that they would be killed that day, Paul Rusesabagina naively told then to go home. These were rumors and someone wanted Thomas’s job, he told them. He still believed in the goodness of man. So, the perfect reunion made me cry and then froze. The end.
When Hotel Rwanda opens, Paul Rusesabagina is being driven by Dube, his hotel driver, to Kanombe International Airport in Kigali--it turns out that he is going to pick up Cuban cigars, among other things, a symbol of style worthier than thousands of Rwandan francs. "Umqombothi," a song by the South African pop singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka--the song was a hit in the 1980s and I play it today on my The Talking Drum, an African music show to reconnect Africa to African through music on KBBG FM 88.1, the only African-American-owned radio station (based in Waterloo) in Iowa--is blazing the loudspeakers of Hôtel des Mille Collines’ Toyota van. Before that, a voice on RTLM (Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines or Independent Radio Television of One Thousand Hills) was shouting "Hutu Power!" and "‘Rwanda is our Hutu land!’" and inciting the Hutu to kill the collaborators of the Belgians, the Tutsi.
At first, Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s hit song about an African beer seems out of place in a movie about a Rwandan man who saved 1268 people during the genocide in Rwanda. And an American audience may not even pay attention to "Umqombothi" at all. Yet Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina uses beer, expensive imported wine and scotch whiskey, and Cuban cigars to entice General Augustin Bizimungu into protecting the Tutsi and Hutu who have sought refuge into Hôtel des Mille Collines. Indeed, General Augustin Bizimungu saves Paul Rusesabagina several times from Interahamwe and soldiers’ attacks. In one scene, Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), a stand-in for Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the UN peacekeeping operation in Kigali, comes to the hotel with the names of those who have received visas to go to various African and European countries. Refusing to leave the refugees by themselves at the mercy of the killers and hoping there would be a second round of evacuation from the hotel, Paul tricks his wife into leaving with the UN convoy. At this time, he is unaware that Grégoire, an extremist Hutu employee who works at the hotel, has called the RTLM radio to let them know that Paul Rusesabagina has been hiding "cockroaches," understand Tutsi, in Hôtel des Mille Collines and that a convoy was heading to Kanombe International Airport. As soon an RTLM broadcast announces that "The graves are not yet full" and that "cockroaches" and the traitors that protect them must both be killed, there appears a group of Interahamwe chanting "Ramba, Ramba! O Ramba, Ramba! Ramba Ramba Habyarimana Perezida [Long live! Long live! Oh Long Live! Long Live! Long live President Habyarimana]--this was a popular song praising President Habyarimana before the war and the genocide. When a hotel employee alerts Paul Rusesabagina that RTLM has asked Interahamwe to ambush the convoy heading to Kanombe International Airport, he calls and pleads with General Augustin Bizimungu to halt the ambush, which he does. The convoy returns to the hotel. Then there follows one of the challenging moments for Paul Rusesabagina and his wife. Visibly shaken by the narrow escape from Interahamwe--one young Interahamwe had a machete ready to slit her throat when he suddenly realized that the soldiers had arrived and were shooting in the air ordering them to leave the convoy alone--Tatiana angrily throws the wedding ring to her husband, arguing that he left her and that it should have been a family decision. It takes a few minutes for Tatiana to accept her husband’s apology.
In Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina is presented as a man of ingenuity and quick thinking as illustrated when General Augustin Bizimungu shows up at the hotel to claim crates of beer as a reward for having stopped the ambush only to be told that the cellars are empty. No sooner does the general learn that the cellars at the hotel are empty than he tells Paul Rusesabagina that he will no longer protect him from Interahamwe. "‘Let the UN take care of you,’" the general angrily says while storming out of the hotel. But Paul Rusesabagina’s quick thinking reminds him that there may be some beer left in a locked safe at Hôtel des Diplomates, another hotel run by the Sabena Airlines, where he used to work,. So he runs after the general and begs him to drive him to the other hotel.
Another example of Paul Rusesabagina’s ingenuity and quick thinking occurs at the Hôtel des Diplomates. As soon as General Augustin Bizimungu realizes that the safe contains a few bottles of Scottish whiskey and a golden bracelet--he takes the latter and orders a soldier to take the whiskey bottles to his jeep outsides--he tells Paul Rusesabagina that as long as he will join him in the convoy to Gitarama, where the government is relocating, he should not to worry about anything. But Paul Rusesabagina refuses to go to Gitarama without his family. It is also clear that he is concerned with the safety of the refugees at Hôtel des Mille Collines. This is when Paul Rusesabagina risks his life by informing the general that the Americans have him on the list as both a war criminal and the mastermind of the massacres. As the general angrily pulls a pistol from the bolster to shoot Paul Rusesabagina, the latter cogently argues that if he kills him, no one will tell the Americans that General Augustin Bizimungu protected the hotel. In an earlier scene, Paul Rusesabagina had told the general that the Americans were spying on what was happening in Rwanda through a satellite. Moments later, General Bizimungu escorts Paul Rusesabagina to Hôtel des Mille Collines where soldiers and Interahamwe are about to kill the "cockroaches." It is after this scene that Colonel Oliver, taking advantage of an accord between RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) and the Rwandan army to exchange prisoners, arrives at the hotel with UN trucks to evacuate everybody to behind enemy lines in an area controlled of RPF. This is where Paul Rusesabagina’s family reunites with Thomas’s two girls.
After the credits at the end of the movie, the audience reads that General Augustin Bizimungu was captured and taken to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, and charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Throughout Hotel Rwanda, General Augustin Bizimungu is portrayed as an intelligent five-star general with clout who can change things if he wanted to. He is the commander-in-chief of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). As mentioned above, he saves Paul Rusesabagina, his family, and the refugees at Hôtel Des Mille Collines several times in the movie. Yet no one sees him on television or hears him on RTLM ordering Interahamwe and soldiers to destroy the roadblocks and stop the massacre. The movie leads the audience to deduce that he is complicitous. It is worth noting that Hotel Rwanda hardly shows RPF committing atrocities, except in the brief scene where Paul Rusesabagina and others are being driven to behind the enemy lines. When one refugee in one truck gleefully mentions that those who are shooting at Interahamwe are the rebels, the audience infers that they (RPF) are the good guys.
Paul Rusesabagina further displays his ingenuity and calmness in his dealings with George Rutaganda--Don Cheadle mispronounces George’s name as "Rutagunda" but the audience can read the inscriptions at the door as "Rutaganda’s"--the leader of Interahamwe who clearly works with General Bizimungu. George Rutaganda is Paul Rusesabagina’s main supplier of beer, rice, and imported wine and whiskey. In Kinyarwanda, the name "Rutaganda" comes from Rwandan traditional war and pastoral poetry and means "the one who is not lazy in war." Throughout Hotel Rwanda George Rutaganda lives up to his name. The first time we see Paul Rusesabagina at Rutaganda’s, a worker accidentally drops down a box that falls apart while machetes are being scattered on the ground. Rutaganda picks up one machete and jokes about how it cost some cents in China. For Dube, however, the scene is ominous as he later informs the incredulous and still naïve Paul Rusesabagina that RTLM has announced that machetes would be used to cut down the tall trees (the Tutsi).
The second time we see Paul Rusesabagina at Rutaganda’s is during the massacres. Outside Rutaganda’s compound, Interahamwe are heard shouting, "Abo batutsi bose tubice [Let’s kill all those Tutsi]." Some naked women and others in their undergarments can be seen outside Rutaganda’s gated compound--these macabre images are meant to remind the audience how rape was used as weapon of genocide. This time, Rutaganda looks like Rambo or Chuck Norris in one of his Viet Nam movies, and it is clear that he has been cutting the tall tree. He tells Paul Rusesabagina that he should give him his "fat cow," meaning his wife, and let him kill the "cockroaches" hiding in Hôtel des Mille Collines.
Yet, Paul Rusesabagina appears also to be a colonial mimic. On his way from Kanombe International Airport in Kigali, he brags about smoking Cuban cigars like white people and the diplomats in Kigali. Holding a Cuban cigar in his hand, he proudly tells Dube, the driver, that smoking a cigar is worthier than possessing ten thousand Rwandan francs. It is a style. Visibly impressed, Dube muses and gleefully repeats the term "style" several times. But when all the whites at Hôtel des Mille Collines are evacuated, priests leaving their parishioners and orphans to the mercy of Interahamwe, Paul Rusesabagina realizes that the soldiers sent by France are not going to stop the slaughter. He becomes introspective. For the first time in the movie, he acknowledges having been a fool who has both accepted cigars from Europeans and led to believe that he was one of them. A "Mimic Man," V.S. Naipaul would say. "Almost the same, but not quite white," Homi Bhabha would tell us. Disillusioned, he accuses himself of having been swallowing everything European that came his way. "‘I have no memory. I have no history,’" he vociferates. Then we remember how the international community stood by while 500,000 to 800,000 Hutu and Tutsi were being hacked to death.
If Terry George’s objective, in addition to telling Paul Rusesabagina, was to be part of the genocidal narratives whose aims is to reiterate the "Never Again" as in Schindler’s List, then he has not fully succeeded, albeit Paul Rusesabagina is certainly a "Rwandan Schindler". Probably fearing an R rating, Terry George has tone down the violence scenes. Even when we see an Interahamwe raising a machete, we do not see heads rolling down. The audience sees some beatings and people bleeding but hardly any corpses, except one poignant scene when Paul Rusesabagina and Grégoire--this is the one who leaks the information about the convoy from the hotel to RTLM and usurped the presidential suit at the hotel to escape "the smell of cockroaches" until General Augustin Bizimungu ordered him to get out and resume working for Paul Rusesabagina--are driving back to Hôtel des Mille Collines with bags of rice and crates of beer from Rutaganda’s. It is early dawn. Suddenly, the road turns bumpy and Paul Rusesabagina tells the driver to stop before they fall into the river. But when Paul Rusesabagina steps out of the van and falls on dead bodies, he realizes that they have been driving over dead bodies not off the road. As far as the eye can see, Paul Rusesabagina notices that the road is littered with corpses. Covering his mouth to restrain himself from vomiting on the corpses, he orders the driver to turn back and find another way to the hotel. This is the only macabre scene in Hotel Rwanda and the only one that truly distresses Paul Rusesabagina. Once at the hotel, he hides in a room and unable to put on his tie--struggling with the tie looks he is about to hang himself--he breaks down and cries like a baby.
Regarding the macabre scene, Mike Snider informs us in the February 18, 2005 edition of USA Today that it never happened--so goes the so-called "based on a true story"--the filmmaker reconstructed the macabre scene from Paul Rusesabagina’s "memory of roads covered by bodies."
The bigger flaw in Hotel Rwanda is linguistic: neither Don Cheadle nor Sophie Okonedo speaks any work of Kinyarwanda or French--Sophie Okonedo and Nick Nolte pronounce the name "Rusesabagina" better than Don Cheadle does!--throughout the movie, this for a house manager of a hotel where most people speak French or Kinyarwanda (among Rwandans). Older people, who normally would speak Kinyarwanda, are heard thanking him in English once they cross the enemy lines to safety. Even the calls he makes to the Sabena Airlines are made in English. But that is Hollywood and the movie is intended for an Anglophone audience, one would suggest.
Perhaps unintentionally, Terry George makes Kinyarwanda the language of Interahamwe and genocide, as the few phrases or words heard throughout Hotel Rwanda are pronounced by Interahamwe, except maybe some songs sung by a group of children around the empty at Hôtel des Mille Collines. Granted, this is a movie in English intended for an American audience, but having Rusesabagina and his wife speak some words in Kinyarwanda and French could have added more realism to the film. Further, an effort should have been made to include well known Rwandan musicians to the music score, including Bikindi’s infamous song "I Hate these Hutu," which constantly played on RTLM to incite the Hutu to hate and kill the Tutsi. Paul Rusesanagina, who served as a consultant for the movie, was certainly aware of the richness of Rwandan music, and singers like Cecile Kayirebwa, Masabo Nyangezi, and Paul Samputu (who now resides and records in the United States) are well known to the world.
All in all, however, Hotel Rwanda is a good movie. It shows that not all the six million Hutu set out to murder their Tutsi and Hutu neighbors. If many Tutsi survived, it is because many Hutu like Paul Rusesabagina risked their lives to hide them. But amid the worldwide hunt for Hutu killers and the search for justice in Arusha, Tanzania, and the seemingly traditional Gacaca courts in Rwanda, this is the story that has hardly made headlines in the western media.
Works Cited
Courtemanche, Gil. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. New York: Knopf, 2003.
. Un dimanche à la piscine de Kigali. 2000. Québec, Canada: Boréal, 2002.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families:
Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998.
Kagame, Alexis. La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’être. New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1956.
Snider, Mike. "A Quick Guide to Movies Up for Top Awards." USA Today 18 Feb. 2005: 9E.Translated by Judit T. Czingili and Roland Kiss