This book is fantastic. Ferguson tells the story of this tragedy with respect & feeling. It tears your heart out. He interweaves the tale with touches of everyday humour and running gags that bring pleasure to what would be a very hard read. I need more of this author. ( )

Fantastic!
( )

It's not easy to write a travel book set in Rwanda. On the one hand, Ferguson has to get across the history, especially that leading up to the genocide. But then, like in any travel book, he still has to convey the culture, the feeling of the place, the more recent history, and, especially, the people—and make it all entertaining. I think Ferguson struggled in the first half of this book, when he talks more about the history, mixed in with some travel anecdotes and short stories from Rwandans of their genocide experiences. Most readers probably already know the history, but not all, and it is tricky to satisfy everyone. I think the book gets much better in the second half, when Ferguson leaves Kigali. The travel aspect of the book gets much stronger, and Ferguson focuses more on the experience of his companion who escaped the genocide and lives in Canada. Overall, I liked Ferguson's Japan travelogue "Hokkaido Highway Blues" better, mostly for its many conversations, but this was also interesting.

> Sugar cane and marshy plains. Papyrus islands in a sea of reeds. A secretive river twists through; we caught glimpses of muddy water in the grass, snaking around this hillock and that. There is beauty here as well: sun-dappled Monet arrangements of lily pads; flamingos lifting off, improbably white against the green; pelicans taking flight; storks in still water.

> Church and state have always been intimately linked in Rwanda. After the conversion of the Tutsi king in 1943, the entire population followed suit, making it one of the quickest and most thorough mass conversions ever recorded, described by missionaries as a "tornado." Almost overnight, Rwanda had become a Christian kingdom in the heart of Africa. … Under two successive dictatorships, the Catholic Church became the most powerful organization in Rwanda (after the government itself). The archbishop sat on the central committee of the ruling party, and the Church had a lock on education. It supported ethnic ID cards and racial quotas and actively encouraged the insidious Hamitic myth that had entrenched these divisions. High-ranking bishops were often outspoken in their support of the genocidal regime, arguing that Tutsis were irredeemably "bad" by nature, a form of original sin, a mark of Cain. … When the drivers balked—not out of concern for the people inside, but over desecrating a House of God—they were reassured by the priest not to worry. The chalice and Bible had already been removed, so it was no longer a church. Just a pile of bricks, waiting to be dismantled. Once the cockroaches inside had been killed, Seromba promised he would build a new church.

> They'd been on the night tour of the park and, taking my wan smile as an invitation, set about regaling us with details of how they'd seen a leopard with its kill, hippos flouncing about in the open, elephants riding a unicycle, a zebra playing the banjo—that sort of thing. This did not surprise me in the least. I had long since come to accept, indeed embrace, the fact that I will always be on the Wrong Tour. You would do well, on seeing me at a muster point in an art gallery or before a nature walk, to head in exactly the opposite direction.

> "We have a saying in Rwanda, kind of like a proverb. ‘Imana yilirwa ahandi igataha i Rwanda.' It means, in the daytime God travels far away, but at night he returns to Rwanda. Every night he comes home to these hills. God sleeps in Rwanda." ( )

For some reason finding books by this author Will Ferguson, here in the United States is very difficult, which surprises me since he is a Canadian author, so it is not like he is only published in Albania. That being said I have read multiple books by this author and they are all fantastic.
He writes both fiction and non fiction and each one is worth your time especially Beyond Belfast, Hokkaido Highway Blues/Hitching Rides with Buddha, two excellent sort-of travel narratives.
419 is fiction rooted in Fact, regarding annoying email/phone solicitation scams, that are run from Ghana.
Then there is Road Trip Rwanda. This is a sad, tragic, yet somehow redemptive story of one country who after suffering a genocide so horrific, so unspeakable, you can’t possibly read this book and not be shaken, not be moved, not be amazed that the country has somehow moved on.
There are people who don’t believe there is evil in the world. I defy anyone to read about the genocide in Rwanda, and still cling to this belief. This wasn’t “the government turning on a portion of the population, this was the wholesale slaughter of 800,000- 1,000,000 people. Neighbor turning on neighbor, lifelong friends being slaughtered. You can not travel anywhere in the country where whole towns weren’t killing dens, churches where Tutsis were lured under the promise of a safe haven, when the reality was it would be easier kill that many more of them in one place.
The author struck up a friendship with his travel companion for this book Jean Claude, while in Canada and was moved by his thoughtfulness, kindness and generosity, and they decide to visit the country that Jean Claude was born in and escaped at the start of the genocide.
At one point in the book the author asks jean Claude why he is so giving so generous and Jean Claude replies (I am paraphrasing) “it haunts you, why did I survive. Why did I get out. A 19 year old kid, I wasn’t married, I didn’t have children, I wasn’t important to the economy, why did I live when so many other were slaughtered?
Nearly as difficult to fathom is how Rwanda has moved on. How so many of the killers were never punished. How survivors see the very people who slaughtered their entire families, walking freely, down the same street they are on.
Yet Rwanda has moved on, some things are questionable regarding how they have moved on, but they have and on a continent with nothing but screwed up countries they have excelled.
The book is not all doom and gloom and depression, there are some parts that are quite funny, which makes the story that much more accessible.
Finally you will also learn how guilty/useless/ the UN, The Catholic Church and the French government acted and behaved, in enabling this to happen, and the aftermath.
This is easily one of the best books I have ever read. ( )

This road trip into Rwanda was an eye opener for me. It was enlightening and heartwarming to learn that Rwanda has picked itself up and moved forward. That is no longer is a sad and depressing place and that hope lives in this country. I learned all this through the wonderful narrative of Will Ferguson . He uses humor, andidotes , and descriptive language to bring a people and their environment to life. ( )