Land of a Thousand Hills: Fit for a king

Last weekend, some teachers from KICS took a daytrip to see the king's palaces in Butare...the small cultural town in Rwanda, and home to the National University. We woke up early, and took a bus the 2.5 hours to Nyanza, to see the original and post-colonial homes of the late Rwandan kings. King Mutara III was the last king of Rwanda, and he lived a straw/grass hut like what you see below in the last picture. (Sorry, the pictures are kind of out of order. It took me almost 2 days to upload them because of sparse Internet, and when they finally uploaded, they were all out of order, sorry!) The huts were very roomy inside, and even had a fireplace. The white outer rim that you see at the entrance of the hut was used as a special threshold that only the royals could use to enter the king's hut. All other individuals had to walk to the left of the hut and enter through a small, side entrance.

There were also two huts in the background; one for milk, and the other one for beer. The milk jugs are pictured below. I found it interesting that only a virgin lady could live in the milk hut. She was specially selected by the king for the important job of tending to the milk, and she was never allowed to be married. She kept this position until death. She had to be a virgin because if she was married, the king could never trust the husband with the milk, and would always be afraid that he would conspire to have it poisoned. The beer hut was next door, and this was tended to by a single male, who could also never be married. The beer hut was the only hut that did NOT have one of those white arches at the entrance. We learned that it was because the beer guy routinely tasted the beer and was frequently drunk, and therefore, they knew that he would trip over the entrance archway and spill all the beer. So it was the only hut without a special front entrance. Makes perfect sense! I don't know about everyone else, but I certainly wondered if the milk lady and the beer guy ever got together. Ha! :-) They did live right next door to each other. The second picture below is the king's bed...it was HUGE! Definitely fit for a king, and a lot larger than a king-size bed today!

The red, white and blue house was the first post-colonialism palace that King Mutara III moved into in 1959. There's also a picture of one of the hallways. I found it to be so strange, and disconcerting that the king transitioned from the straw hut directly to this very-modern, westernized palace with running water, toilets, windows, everything. One year, the king was living in the hut, the next year, in this palace....and then when he traveled to Belgium in 1959, he saw that the Belgians lived in even more lavish homes, so he had a larger mansion constructed that we also toured. But unfortunately, the king did not live long enough to move into this bigger mansion. Anyway, it's just bizarre to think about all the effects of colonialism, and to think about these strange, "mzungus" coming into this country and introducing all their strange ways to the Africans, and in doing so, allowing the Africans to think that many of their ways are wrong, just because they are so different. It was sad to see that in one year, the traditional king's home was transformed into a Belgian home. It's like one generation of Rwandans (and other Africans), were introduced to these foreigners' ways, and it was the "new, cool thing" at the time. These foreigners were bringing their new styles, new schools, new clothes, new religion, new ways of doing things into their land...and they also came with gifts and money! It must have sounded so promising for them at the time. How could they have known the terrible effects that colonialism would have on their country in the years to follow? It's sad to think about. We toured the bigger palace, which is now the only art museum in Rwanda. Each year, there's a contest, and one piece of local artwork is selected to be on display in the museum. Then we toured the National Museum, tasted some delicious icecream at Inzozi Nziza, and ate some chewy roadside goat brochettes on the bus before heading back home. I had a great day learning more about Rwanda's cultural heritage!