His eyes are glossy and unwavering, the milky red a token of his struggles with meningitis and malnutrition as a child. He answers each question with pride and humility, proud of how far he has come and humbled by it. He symbolizes who President Kagame urges his countrymen to become – self-made and not reliant on foreign pockets. Here is a man, born into a world which had given him the bare minimum, who took it upon himself to create opportunity.

Like many Africans born into conflict and poverty, he could only guess his birth date – “around ’74 or ’75” – and his homeland seemed distant and unreal. When Rwanda’s northern volcanoes erupted in civil war in 1990, Greg returned to the camp – he had left a year earlier to learn car maintenance in a nearby town’s garage – with the hope that the war’s inevitable conclusion would bring him home.

The fake ID Greg used to get a driver’s license before the legal age – a keepsake that reminds him to keep doing what it takes to succeed.

Yet the war dragged on for four years. It ended with the victory of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a Kagame-led rebel group that delivered Rwanda from a brutal three-month genocide in the summer of 1994. As bodies still rotted on Rwanda’s streets and floated down its rivers, making their mournful procession towards Lake Victoria in the east, Greg boarded a UN truck and returned to the country he didn’t know. He settled on the eastern flatlands and for three years awaited inevitability’s push.

By 1997, tourism was ripe for future growth. An old Ugandan friend encouraged Greg to move to the northern town of Ruhengeri, the gateway of the famed “gorillas of the midst”. He soon found a niche in a tourism industry still suffering from continued insurgent raids, which had menaced the region ever since the genocidairies were exiled to the Congo. Because travelers were still uneasy about a prolonged tour of Rwanda’s extraordinary attractions, Greg focused on a short-term approach to attract clients. He borrowed local trucks to take clients from the Ugandan border-town of Gisoro into Rwanda, where they would see the gorillas and return to Gisoro by day’s end. He earned his living on commission and tips, and slowly began building reputation and income.

From 1999 to 2001, the government’s campaigns to stabilize the country were finally coming to fruition. The northern region “started breathing easily” again, a sign for Greg to make his next move. Tourists at this time were high-rolling adventurists dropping by for a quick glimpse of the gorilla, to compliment the lions of Kenya and the great migration of the Serengeti wildebeests. Greg decided to focus on a different offer to a different breed of traveler. He established Ruhengeri Community Ecotourism, a network of guides committed to showing their clients the traditional Intore dance, basket weaving, traditional healing and other pillars of a beautiful and unseen culture. His clientele was middle class – backpackers, NGO workers, teachers and volunteers – and his aim was to show them the real Rwanda.

In 2002, a German doing research on community-based tourism contacted Rwanda’s Office of Tourism, which referred him to Greg. Upon their meeting, Greg was immediately encouraged to formalize his business. With the German’s tutelage and capital – he had seen enough in this young Rwandan to make an investment – Greg put all of his ideas under one umbrella, branded them with a name that embodied his country’s strides towards reunification (Amahoro Tours – amahoro meaning ‘peace’), started a website, processed the necessary papers and was approved as a business in 2003.

Three years later he was hosting over 800 clients annually. As much of an accomplishment as this was, Greg saw one obstacle hindering his path towards unlimited growth – he knew nothing of costing, accounting and the other key fundamentals in running a business. He decided to spend a chunk of his earnings on a flight to Berlin, to attend a fair hosted by the International Tourism Board – this being his first flight and first trip out of East Africa – where he spent a week discussing business principles with the world’s most experienced tourism experts.

The payoff was immediate and significant, as Amahoro pulled in a thousand more clients than it had in an already successful 2006. Greg “made the good money…bought the first car,” and in June of the same year bought two Land Cruisers. The reaping of Berlin’s visit made manifest, he went again in 2007.

The following year, two more Cruisers were added to meet the demands of an expanding client base. As the larger companies in Kigali staggered beneath a crumbling global economy, losing high-end clients who could no longer afford extravagant trips across the sea, Amahoro took advantage of a growing middle-income clientele (more of the West’s youth were escaping their failing home economies to backpack or volunteer in developing countries like Rwanda). The larger companies were not structured to meet the demands of this type of customer, so Amahoro stepped in to pick up the slack. Today Amahoro runs a comfortable piece of the market, operating under Greg’s credo of offering unique, culture-based tourism to clients who have traded luxury for productivity.

I am listening to this story on a grassy clearing overlooking Camp Green Hill, Greg’s quaint and charming property that sits above the dusty streets of Ruhengeri. Amahoro’s office sits beneath us, where two secretaries are currently busy calling next week’s clients. Greg’s calm and confident gaze on the streets beneath us contrasts sharply with what we see – a group of old women carrying heavy baskets of potatoes to the market, children selling candy at the bus station, an old man pushing his goats across the road – and it’s easy to envision what Greg could’ve been. I ask him what lessons from Camp Kyangwari, learned long ago in a desolate corner of Uganda, shaped him into the businessman I see today.

“I accept the challenges and know how to deal with them…I don’t give up. And I have never taken a loan. All our growth has been based on our savings.”

New challenges for Greg – the high costs associated with growth, controlling an expanding number of employees and adapting to an ever changing tourism industry – still remain, but I know he’s up to the task. He tells me about his ideas to reduce the number of cars and outsource, thus cutting maintenance and driver costs; use better management techniques; focus more on entertaining clients than allowing the hassles of owning a large fleet to interfere with a trip. His sound sense of business rings a familiar tone, reminding me of my days reading case studies at university. Yet Greg has never opened the Harvard Business Review or discussed the Theory of Constraints with a gray-bearded professor. The world did not give him these things. The world gave him a tree to study under and UN ration lines. He has taken it upon himself, the hardships of his youth pushing him forward, to become the self-reliant and innovative entrepreneur he is today.

The trip presented me lasting images of the reasons that ultimately convinced me to return next January for another year. I’ll explain.

The plan was to pitch my tent on the dominating hill passed countless times on my frequent bus trips from Kigali to Musanze, in the north. Yet a heavy afternoon rainfall assailed this particular bus ride; when the clouds cleared and I could see beyond the roadside hills, I realized that we had passed my target destination many kilometers earlier. I pounded on the window for the bus to stop, angrily threw my pack on the road, and climbed to a vantage point to scan the landscape for a nice back-up hill. I found nothing with an uninhabited summit, so I walked aimlessly, head downcast, for a spell. I cast my eyes up to see a sign, “Lac Ruhondo”, and a dirt road disappearing into a river valley. My head was again cleared, and my first image seen: There is no direct path to solutions in Rwanda. But once the clouds clear and perseverance holds its test, an alternative can always be found. And a further portrayal of the rural farmer was reaffirmed: every hilltop can be farmed. There is no open land for the journeyman.

Evening was approaching, so I hopped on an old clunker of a moto-taxi and bounced into the valley. The road cut into the steep sides of terraced hills, overlooking beautiful waterfalls and river pools below us. My scenic tour abruptly halted when the motorcycle’s bottom frame clunked to the dirt road. We haggled on the fair price due (he insisted on our original agreement, which the principle of Services Rendered prohibited me from paying). I continued my journey afoot, and the second image was soon revealed: the government has a long road ahead in infrastructure development. It will take many more expensive contracts with the Germans and Chinese to achieve its ambitious goal of linking the whole of Rwanda with efficient roadways. Will public-private partnerships achieve one of the pillars of Vision 2020, to create a middle-income economy in a decade’s time? Will the government find sustainable forms of finance to see these projects through, so that in twenty years time this road will be asphalt-black?

I approached the lake under a drizzling cloud, ate my Pringles under the curious eyes of four children, and watched a johnboat of policemen approach the dock. A twenty-minute dialogue resulted in me joining their evening circuit, which was really a personal photographic tour of the lake. The local chief sat in the back as Theoneste, the ‘English-speaker’, explained various dynamics of the lake to me in the front.

“What kind of bird is that on the shore, Theoneste?”

“That is a lake bird. There are many birds,” he’d reply.

“What are they farming on that island, Theoneste?”

“They are farming. There are many farmers,” he’d reply.

I soon learned what the purpose of the evening round was – to persuade the lake’s fishermen and dug-out ferry boat rowers to wear life jackets. Old men with leather hats – each with a lifetime of work and survival on the lake – groups of young rowers at their command, looked at the chief with incredulous eyes. They responded with nods of compliance, but I could see their thoughts – “Thanks for the advice chief, but I barter my day’s catch for my family’s dinner, not for some strange air bag to wear around my neck.” The third image then hit me: No matter how well intentioned its initiatives are, every government is prone to ineffective revenue spending. Here were three policemen using their time, energy and an hour’s consumption of government gas to persuade the hard-working people of Lake Ruhondo to start wearing life jackets. A noble pursuit, no doubt, which would save lives if implemented. Yet fishermen and farmers, surviving subsistently one day to the next, will not value a life jacket over food. Well-intentioned, but mindlessly bureaucratic, strategies to help the poor will not advance the country’s goals.

Muhabura Volcano loomed over the lake as the sun set. We raced back to the dock where I set up camp before dark. That night I sat in an old, wooden covered boat and listened to the roaring thunder echo across the water. As fishermen crept by in the moonless black, launching out to net the lake’s tilapia, my phone rang. A vision, a paradox, hit me thus: as fishermen performed their centuries-old duty of the nightly catch, each rowing a boat carved from cyprus, I sat talking to my friend in the city. Cell phone coverage is available throughout the country, even in hidden corners like Lake Ruhondo. It’s an African phenomenon. Just as the great herding tribes of the Maasia use cell phones to determine the most opportune time to bring their livestock to the market, Ruhondo’s fisherman do the same with their tilapia. It points to even greater telecommunication strides Rwanda has taken the past year, mainly the laying of fiber optic throughout its ‘thousand hills’ – a development that will bring high-speed Seacom broadband to a country focused on becoming an exporter of ICT and knowledge-based services.

I awoke the next day and walked along a maze of farmers’ paths that lead to Musanze. The sun was shining bright and kids were playing in the river pools. They were also working, a reminder of the resourcefulness and work ethic of the Rwandan youth. At the end of the path, a Reco & Rwasco truck (of the publicly-owned energy provider) was speeding towards Musanze. I motioned for them to stop and hopped on the tailgate. As we bounced along a swampy field, where Ruhondo’s river ran from the valley, one final image rushed into my head: that same valley would be blanketed in complete darkness once the sun set. As it is in many African countries, most of Rwanda’s citizens remain without electricity (electricity penetration is estimated at 9% of the population – Rwanda to Double Electricity Connections) . Yet I remembered the large pipe I had seen running into a large hydroelectric plant on the lake, and that such projects were sprouting up all over the country. This is largely due to the government’s dedication to increase its capacity – it signed a 70 million dollar deal with the World Bank in February – through such projects. There’s also plenty of outside investment, as seen in Contour Global’s 325 million dollar efforts to turn Lake Kivu’s deadly methane into energy (Rwanda harnesses volcanic gases from depths of Lake Kivu). That said, innovation, government commitment and foreign investment have painted a much brighter future for a presently unlit, rural Rwanda.

I reached the bus station at noon and headed back to Kigali. The briefcase awaited, neatly packed and ready for its duties. A week has since passed, with much work still to be done. When I board the plane this Monday, I’ll know this: all of Rwanda’s stakeholders, including me and Ruhondo’s fishermen, have a steep hill to walk; but at the top we will see a country filled with roads and cables, lights on every hill, and a far-reaching middle income class, one that can afford much more than lifejackets.

Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?

Proverbs 24: 10 – 12

________________

On June 10, 1994, two months into the massacre in Rwanda, the U.S. State Department spokesperson was asked, “How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?” A UN resolution in 1951, in response to the European Holocaust, obligated those countries that accepted the treaty to take serious action against “genocide”, if so defined by the UN Security Council. She responded that day in 1994,

“That’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer.”

“Well, is it true that you have specific guidance not to use the word ‘genocide’ in isolation, but always to preface it with these words ‘acts of’?”

“I have guidance which I try to use as best as I can. There are formulations that we are using that we are trying to be consistent in our use of. I don’t have an absolute categorical prescription against something, but I have the definitions. I have phraseology which has been carefully examined and arrived at as best as we can apply to exactly the situation and the actions which have taken place … “