Tracking the footprints of ivory traffickers (starting the end)

Between November 2021 and March 2022, my fellow journalist Olivier Muhizi and I worked on an investigative story of ivory trafficking between Tanzania and Rwanda.

My name is Kelly Rwamapera a Freelance journalist in Rwanda, a central African country that is also a member of the East African Community bloc.

Between November 2021 and March 2022, my fellow journalist Olivier Muhizi and I worked on an investigative story of ivory trafficking between Tanzania and Rwanda.

We had received a grant from the Global Initiative Against TransnationalOrganized Crime, the Henry Nxumalo Foundation and Oxpeckers InvestigativeEnvironmental Journalism to investigate and tell a story of how ivory trafficking was being done from Tanzania into Rwanda.

We knew where to begin but we didn’t know that the ground would shift beneath us and find ourselves lost and without where to begin.

This is the story behind the story we submitted to the funders.

Starting the end

I gazed at the hill ridges of Gahara ka Kirehe, my weary eyes resting on the maize plantations whitened by their blossoming flowers on top and darkened by the thick leaves below.

They were so beautiful in the evening breeze, waving goodbye to the day's sun that was drifting in the direction of Kigali.

Yet we came here to investigate the story of ivory trafficking.

For the past month, we had been following the footprints of ivory traffickers in eastern Rwanda but at this point, there was no more hope for chances beyond.

The evening sun of December shone on the maize on top of the hills while the maize in the valleys was in the shadows of the hills, the sun was hurryingly vanishing into twilight.

As the sun was disappearing, so the same way our chances to find ivory traffickers were disappearing into obscurity.

Our hope was too small to promise us beyond the mountain of disappointment that stood high before us.

We couldn’t believe that we had reached the end; that all the convicts and suspects in an ivory trafficking case we knew were nowhere to be seen.

The information we had was that we could find one Rukundo in this border community with Tanzania, who had been released on a presidential pardon.

A mere thought on the sad truth that it had all ended here at Rama, Gahara Sector, Kirehe District was more burdensome than all the hills and valleys we had gone through the whole Gisaka in our investigation.

We walked some yards on the route that had brought us to Rama ya Gahara as we waited for the motorcycles from Nyakarambi, about 20 miles away.

We didn't have a story to submit to our funders but in one month of scouring east Rwanda for former convicts of ivory trafficking, we had a story to tell about our experiences.

It was here at Rama, according to the information we relied on, that a group of about a dozen people who were trafficking ivory was arrested at Rukundo’s house with more than 100 kilograms of ivory.

But all had receded in obscurity.

That's how we left Gisaka back to Kigali.

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