A second piece on Rosamund Carr in Africa. This one has many personal
details about her life, including her age, her marriage, etc.
Subj: American: Peace Unlikely in Rwanda
Date: 97-08-24 12:54:32 EDT
From: AOL News
BCC: Pat Noble
.c The Associated Press
By DIANNA CAHN
MUTURA, Rwanda (AP) - Rosamund Carr recalls the time when
visitors steadily streamed past her fields of yellow, blue and red
flowers, and found their way into her ivy-covered stone home.
An American who left the life of a New York fashion designer for
Africa 47 years ago, Carr today doubts that her conflict-riven
adopted homeland can find its way back to peace.
The 85-year-old woman in sneakers and slacks tends to her
blossoms, picking off a dead leaf here and there, and worries not
for herself but for the Rwandans who work her flower plantation and
for the 74 orphans who live in a converted flower-drying shed.
``It's terrible,'' she said over a recent lunch after warmly
welcoming unannounced visitors. ``It's very hard on the children.
They are used to having visitors and they love it.''
Carr's hospitality is well known in Central Africa and beyond.
She was a close friend of Dian Fossey and a featured character,
portrayed by actress Julie Harris, in the film on Fossey's life,
``Gorillas in the Mist.''
The plantation and orphanage, known as ``Imbabazi'' or ``care''
in the Kinyarwanda language, sit in the foothills of the Virunga
volcano range that forms the border between Rwanda, Uganda and
Congo - a restive area that has been the scene of conflict for more
than a century.
In three months of 1994, Rwandan Hutu militants led a slaughter
that killed at least 500,000 minority Tutsis. Carr tried to protect
her Tutsi neighbors at her house, but Hutu mobs frightened them
into fleeing.
When a Tutsi-led government took power and ended the genocide,
Carr was hopeful for peace. Renewed bloodshed has ruined her
optimism.
In November, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus walked past
Carr's home on their way back from three years in exile in Zaire,
which was renamed Congo after a rebellion there. They had fled
Rwanda because they feared punishment for the genocide.
Carr, her employees and the orphans also watched thousands of
Rwandan Hutu militants return in April and May, ready to fight to
topple the new government. Many of the rebels now hide in the
forests near her plantation.
When a single gunshot went off recently, Carr said she ``jumped
a mile.'' Meanwhile, the children - Tutsis who lost families in the
genocide as well as Hutus who returned from exile - only laughed.
``The children don't seem to be very scared,'' Carr said.
Defense Minister Paul Kagame has said he will wipe out the
rebels and reconcile a divided people. Government figures show at
least 1,800 rebels, 100 soldiers and 300 civilians have been killed
since April, but the battle is not over.
Hutus fear that soldiers in the predominantly Tutsi army will
seek vengeance against villagers they suspect of assisting the
rebels, Carr said.
Carr said her Hutu employees are uneasy, even though the
soldiers who guard her plantation day and night have promised to
keep them safe.
All her Hutu employees insist on getting home before dark. The
cook, who lives opposite a military camp just 500 yards away from
the plantation, insists on leaving earliest.
``He's scared,'' Carr said. ``When I asked him why, he said the
other workers walk across the fields to get home. He told me,
`Madame, I live in front of the guns.'''
Carr is no stranger to conflict. She has witnessed rebel
uprisings and genocide since coming to Africa in 1950, when she
married an Englishman and set up a farm with him. They separated in
1955, but Carr stayed. She had fallen in love with the land.
The recent deaths of a young couple related to a senior
government official, three local aid workers and a family of five
have made Carr lose faith in any short-term solution.
``I am so pessimistic now,'' said Carr, wisps of gray hair
drifting across her face as she shook her head. ``When the war
first ended, I was so optimistic. I thought Kagame was so good. But
since the return (of the Hutu militia), the killings have begun,
and I don't think there will be reconciliation for a long time.''
Life is deceptively calm on the grounds of Carr's 7-acre
plantation. But events of the past months have left their mark.
Carr's meager resources - profits from flower sales and private
donations - aren't enough for the orphans, whose number swelled
from 45 to 74 as aid agencies were unable to find the families of
returning Hutu children.
The new arrivals brought sicknesses with them, she said.
Foreign doctors from international aid agencies who used to
visit the plantation weekly no longer venture along the dangerous
route to Carr's home. There is a local clinic, but the very sick
must be taken to a hospital in Gisenyi, an hourlong drive along
dirt roads through ambush territory.
Carr said she is worried not for herself, but for the children,
her Rwandan friends, and the country she now calls home.
``Oh my God,'' she exclaimed with a chuckle. ``I am not afraid
for myself. Suppose I was shot and killed - which I won't be. But
even so, it would be much better than dying an old lady in a
nursing home in New Jersey.''