Living history

We recently visited the north of Rwanda, where we spent a couple of nights with friends in the former house of Rosamund Halsey Carr. Ros Carr came to Rwanda in the middle of last century with her game-hunter husband, but after their separation she started a pyrethrum farm near Gisenyi. In those days the crop was at risk from the ravages of elephants which seem to have been abundant in the region. Later she was a friend of Dian Fossey, who did so much work with the gorillas and after the genocide, by now in her eighties, she started an orphanage which is still running. She died last year.
The house has a spectacular setting right underneath the volcanoes and because it is so high it can be quite cold. We had a fire in the hearth the 2 nights we were there. There is also a large formal country garden : when the mist is down you could almost be in England.
There is history everywhere : furs on the bed (these had to be hidden when Dian Fossey visited!); elegant china; one of the household staff, trained by Ros Carr, who serves dinner in a white jacket; loads of interesting books.
One of the most memorable parts of the time there was reading the local history of the genocide in the house where it happened. Before her forced evacuation, Ros Carr was in the house surrounded by an angry mob demanding that she hand over some of her staff. She knew many of the people in the crowd, had seen them grow up in the neighbourhood, but they were still at the roadside shouting at her as the troops drove her back to the main road and Kigali. It’s all so calm and friendly now that it really is hard to believe, but that is so often the case with Rwanda’s history.