“…this is really the story of a love affair between a woman and a country. It took some time for this love affair to take hold. But take hold it did, and it has been going on now for almost fifty years.” – from Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr with Ann Howard Halsey
Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr with Ann Howard Halsey (Hardback – Viking, 1999; Paperback – Plume, 2000; out of print, but easily found used or through a local library)
“And so it was that I came to Mugongo as plantation owner – or at least part owner… That was in February of 1955, and Mugongo has been my home ever since.” -- Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr with Ann Howard Halsey
American-born Rosamond Halsey Carr has now lived in Rwanda for over fifty years, refusing, even while others understandably fled, to abandon the land and people she loves. In her memoir, Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, she shares her years in Rwanda with readers, from the mid-1950s until the late 1990s. There is no way to leave the book’s pages without a clearer and fuller picture of this troubled country – the landscape, the people, and the history and politics that led to the 1994 genocide.
Although Carr occasionally steps back into history to provide background, for the most part we follow Carr’s years in Rwanda – from Belgian administration to the unfathomable genocide in 1994. We learn about Rwanda’s three ethnic groups -- the Batwa pygmies, “the original inhabitants of Rwanda;” the Hutu, agriculturists who arrived “many hundreds of years ago, forcing the Batwa “from the plains into the forests;” and the Tutsi arrival centuries later, forcing them [the Hutus] into the forests.” It is a tense and violent history they share, but Carr also shows relationships that reach beyond ethnic tensions, including the Hutu and Tutsi who worked side-by-side on her plantation and the children who live together in the orphanage she founded after the genocide, the orphanage she named Imbabazi z’l Mugongo, meaning “Mugongo is a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give.”
Carr shares her family history; her marriage to explorer Kenneth Carr that first brought her to Africa and their subsequent divorce; and the many friendships she has fostered over the years, including her most challenging one with Dian Fossey and her longtime friendship with Sembagare Munyamboneza, who she hired “as a houseboy” when he was only seventeen-years-old, but who eventually became her business partner and “closest friend.”
Carr also describes the wildlife and native plants of Rwanda. She shares the beauty and nuisance of elephants; her fear of leopards; the privilege of “meeting” gorillas at Dian Fossey’s Karisoke; along with descriptions of monkeys; bushbacks; thorn trees; “white strawflowers that abound in the lower regions of the volcanoes;” and so much more.
Flowing through the text is the landscape itself, the “land of a thousand hills.” She describes the fertile “Mutura district in northwestern Rwanda” where she lived; the volcanoes; forests; beautiful Lake Kivi, “shimmer[ing] in the sunshine,” and Lake Nagondo, “a small picturesque lake situated on the lower slopes of Karisimbi.” And, of course, she writes about her beloved Mugongo Plantation, “ninety hectares” in 1955, “half of which was planted in pyrethrum,” her “small and square house, built of whitewashed brick and covered with a delicate vine called creeping fig.” By book’s end, though, we understand that much of Rwanda’s land, like its people, is in need of healing after years of conflict and neglect.
Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr, with Ann Howard Halsey, is a gift to all of us who crave an understanding of Rwanda. She also deepens our hopes and concerns about its future.
Our children [at the orphanage] come from all three ethnic groups – Hutu, Tutsi, and Batwa. Many of the Tutsi children saw their parents, brothers, and sisters killed during the genocide, and many of the Hutu children lost their families to the cholera epidemic that swept through the refugee camps in Zaire. They are all very brave and have enormous faith in God. Their love for one another is extraordinary, and it is our fervent prayer that this love will last all their lives and that the Banyarwanda will one day live together in peace. – from Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr with Ann Howard Halsey
Reading Guide
http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/land_of_a_thousand_hills.html
Rosamond Carr, who happens to be my aunt, is one of the true heroes of this world, and my love and admiration for her are simply beyond measure. She would be the last to admit that her life has been characterized by greatness. But the young woman, so unsure of herself, who arrived in the Kivu fifty years ago, has certainly left her mark on this land and its people. Her courage and compassion have touched countless lives over the years and continue to inspire countless others. Although her life is in Gisenyi now with Sembagare and the children, her heart will always remain at Mugongo. She goes back to visit from time to time, to wander through the empty rooms and sit in the garden and remember how good it all was. There is so very much to remember. – from “Epilogue,” by Ann Howard Halsey, in Land of a Thousand Hills : My Life in Rwanda, by Rosamond Halsey Carr with Ann Howard Halsey
Gorillas in the Mist, by Dian Fossey (New York : Mariner Books, 2000)