Mere Words

30 March, 2010

I received my packages today. With much excitement and the use of a surprisingly large knife, I carved my way into the mess of cardboard and tape that protected my treasures from across the great blue. With several people standing around in tense anticipation, including our very Christian, very conservative assistant, I opened the first package, the one filled with underwear.

Corine had told me that everyone had wanted to send something in the package, and she refused to tell me about anything that was included (aside from the underwear, I was really excited about that), so everything I found was a surprise.

I’ve been here now for 3 months, exactly half the amount of time that I will be here in total. When you study abroad, you read a lot of different analyses of what they call “culture shock.” Each study abroad agency has a different one, and I haven’t really found any of them to be accurate, except for their nominal capabilities. In each one that I read, I find new words to describe how I’m feeling. Half way through my experience, which happens to be about 2 months longer than the typical study abroad, I should be: in the disintegration stage (the lowest point before reintegration); feeling homesick, helpless, and depressed; or frustrated, embarrassed, tense, and confused. Most of these analyses are depicted by a line-graph. The main point of the graph is that my emotional state will dip very low before I gradually become accustomed to the foreign culture.

Receiving these packages, though it made me realize just how much I miss all my friends and family, did much more than that; it was a wake-up call. While I’ve been here, of course I’ve felt the homesickness and confusion and tension and definitely the frustration of a foreign culture. Africa can be a frustrating place, especially for an American who wants everything right now. Not only that, but I’ve been dealing with frustration with the program I chose to study abroad with. My classes haven’t been challenging, and I haven’t felt as though my time here was being well spent. I found myself angry and disappointed with my teachers and other authority figures. I wanted to drop out of one of my classes simply to make a statement of principle.
Last week was perhaps the most challenging week since I have been here. It started out pleasantly enough. On Friday we traveled three hours to Lake Kivu on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although this geographical region is a focal point of refugees and civil unrest, our time there was relaxing and enjoyable. Aside from being a “home” to the Banyamulenge among several other refugee groups, Lake Kivu is a tourist destination. The water is a cool, blue-green, and clear enough to see the slippery rocks on the bottom. The climate, high in the mountains of Western Rwanda, was breezy and warm. We took a slow-moving wooden boat out to one of the islands on the lake called Napoleon Island. Once there, we began hiking to the top. Along the way, our guides ran ahead of us into the dense forestation on the mountainside, and we heard loud claps. In just a few moments, the sky was thick with bats flying overhead. Thousands upon thousands of large, black and brown bats emerged from the woods to put on their aerial display. Being a small island, the path to the top was steep. The ground was loose with grey and black ash-like dirt, and centipedes lazed in the shade of guava trees. The sky was grey that day, and the top of the island provided a cool and breezy environment to relax. From the top I could see the hillside horizon that was the DR Congo. The water swirled far below me, almost like the top of a rain cloud.

That night we met a couple of German guys that were also staying at our hotel. They worked for a German development NGO; I think it was focused on water purification. It was an uproarious occasion, and late into the night Marcel decided that he wanted to call Corine, after Morgan told him how attractive she is. Instead of hitting on her like I expected though, he decided to tell her that I was in prison because they had found me “in a very dark room.” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, but it was truly hilarious. After a few minutes, I think she heard the girls laughing and I got on the phone to tell her that, “I’m just hangin’ out with some Germans.” I’m not sure Corine liked it very much.
So it looked as though my week would be an enjoyable one; what with such a great start, it couldn’t go too far downhill. It turns out I was wrong. We returned to Kigali on Sunday, and immediately began packing for a week in Matimba in the Eastern Province. I’m not sure if we just weren’t given much information about what our week would be like, or if I just wasn’t listening. Either one of those options has been proved quite likely during my time here. After another three hour drive across this tiny country, we arrived at TTC Matimba, a teacher’s training college in a rural area. I think it is important to mention that everywhere in Rwanda is basically rural excepting Kigali. The students at TTC are mainly 18 to 19 year olds that scored lower on their tests and couldn’t get accepted into one of the universities in Rwanda. I found it ironic that the school system here sends the students who score low into a teaching career. Nevertheless, the students immediately surrounded us, eager to practice their newfound English speaking skills with native speakers. Some of the questions we were asked were quite entertaining. The conversation would generally go something like this:

Student: I would like to ask you a question.
Rob: Sure.
Student: From where are you in United States?
Rob: Arkansas.
Student: ? (puzzled look) How much money to get to Canada?
Rob: Uhh, probably like three or four hundred dollars.
Student: Oohhhh.

And while this sounds mildly entertaining, it became much less so after it occurred 10 to 20 times. It became even less entertaining when it occurred as I was sitting in my bed reading. While their curiosity was inspiring, I came to resent it. I found it intrusive and boring.

During the week we stayed in the boys bunk, a large concrete and brick room filled with around 15 bunk beds. Throughout the week, I came to understand their lifestyle less and less, each day was a new surprise that further confused my Western sensibilities. Each night the students kept the lights and radio turned on until around 11 pm. After that, they walked around to each other’s bunks to chat in Kinyarwanda until midnight or later. Several times during the night, I woke up to see a small group huddled around a flashlight in the middle of the room. Then, around 5 in the morning all the boys woke up. The radio was switched on along with the lights, and people began to take bucket baths, to dance, to talk, and most of this was done stark naked. Every day, I got out of bed around 7 after a few hours of cocooning myself beneath my sheets and my pillow. Every morning we had a plain omelet and a large piece of maize meal bread. Then we went out into the surrounding area to interview vulnerable families about their lifestyle. Every day we would inevitably be followed by a group of 5 to 35 children that were either too young to go to school, did not have the money to pay school fees, or were wearing their uniform and had just gotten out for lunch time. These children didn’t want anything from us; in fact, they weren’t really interested in communicating with us at all. They simply wanted to stare. In Rwandan culture, mzungus are seen by children as ghosts, and often told that if they are not good, the mzungu will come and eat them. At the same time, however, there seems to be a mysterious attraction to my pale skin. Sometimes, when the crowd of children becomes overwhelming, we all turn around at the same time and growl at them, only to see that their fear is real as they run away screaming.

Interviewing some of the poorest families in one of the poorest countries in the world was a completely life changing experience. Since I’ve been here I’ve been questioning my definition of poverty constantly, and this experience was perhaps the most intense period of redefinition. I found myself looking at people who had a tin roof without holes and more than 1 hectare of land as the wealthy. I said to myself, “These people seem to be doing really well.” Reflecting on those thoughts brings out how ridiculous they really are. I find it amazing that a family with upwards of 10 children finds ways to survive with half a hectare and no other source of income. Access to water generally requires a 2 to 3 hour walk, and that’s on the days that the tap is functioning. Some families had so many children that it became difficult to remember all of the names.

If all of this wasn’t frustrating enough, I was still dealing with my own Western, mzungu problems. For lunch everyday we had a boiled egg, more maize bread, and a tree tomato. This is a good lunch compared to the families that eat maize meal and beans twice a day. Most families only have meat 1 to 3 times a year.

Coming back to Kigali at the end of the week was a relief. I hadn’t showered in 5 days and had tried to tame my bowel movements so as to avoid the boys’ bathroom that smelled like a dirty elephant cage in the zoo. By the time I left, I had mastered the art of squatting over a hole in the ground. Against this background, Kigali became the center of civilization with both Internet and running water. Before I left for the Eastern Province I found myself missing things like Cheezits, good wine, and Waffle House. The frustrations that I felt before I left, or while I was there, have become obsolete. Thinking about staying here for another three months doesn’t intimidate me as much as it used to. Most of the culture shock charts emphasize the development of coping mechanisms. Maybe that’s what is happening. I’d like to think though, that I’ve developed a sense of contentedness with my life at this point.

Getting my packages, with all the comforts of the US, and all the letters from all of the people that care about me even from 5,000 miles away, showed me that my time here isn’t just about how my worldview is changed while I’m here. All of the shallow tensions and frustrations that I’ve experienced are just that, shallow and meaningless. While I value my sanity, I acknowledge that my anger and disappointment with my teachers, with Rwandan public transportation, and the service industry here in general is minute. The ways in which I can see that I’ve affected other people’s worldviews, your worldview if you’re reading this, is what is important to me. Many of the leaders that I’ve met with have urged me to be an ambassador with Rwanda, to share the story of this country, its obstacles, its successes. Although it may not have seemed like much all the way in America, the chapstick, the underwear, the cookies and the candy brought with them a powerful message- a message of success. I have, on some level, made an accomplishment, through all the tension and frustration. It makes me proud of myself to realize that my time here can do something, that it can change the way other people view the world. Thank you all for reading and encouraging and raising me. And now I’m happy that I can finally give something back, even if it comes in the form of mere words.

Puzzles

4 March, 2010

Back in Rwanda

I haven’t posted anything new in a while. This post will bring my time in Kampala to close and explain my first few weeks back in Kigali.

We left Kampala on the 23^rd. We boarded the pastel painted Japanese-made bus early in the morning. My bag was hastily packed, and I’m almost positive that I will never see some of my possessions again. That’s alright though because I don’t want to carry a fully loaded 50-pound bag across Europe. As I crammed myself in between the mounds of luggage and into a small and uncomfortable seat, I thought about my memories of Kampala. Our last few nights in Kampala were some of the best. We finally went out to the big clubs in the middle of town with our friend Kizze. We met the so-called “50 cent of Uganda”; his name is Bobi Wine. Look him up on Youtube, it’s entertaining. At one point we realized, in the midst of pounding club music and a packed dance floor that Kizze had left. Luckily we found a ride with a new friend Peter, and we made it home safely. There’s something about Ugandan men that drives them to almost immediately to fall in love with women, at least the women I spend my time with. So the next day, unannounced, Bobi Wine’s friends showed up at our house in two trucks, driving furiously into our compound. They wanted us to go with them on their boat, where we later found out that they had shot bats and most likely drank a lot of waragi (Ugandan gin). It’s too bad that we didn’t go. I’ve always been interested in hunting bats on Lake Victoria. Now it’s etched in pen on my bucket list.

By and by, my time in Uganda was well spent. We went to class; we went out to eat; we went out to various night venues; we went into the city. It was hot and exhausting and completely full of life. I’ve never seen a city that was so vibrant. Nevertheless, I feel a sense of regret about my time there. I don’t know if it’s unwarranted, or legitimate. I don’t feel as if I did enough “important” or “meaningful” things. It took work for me to think about the issues. It was easy for me to distract myself with the pleasures of globalization. When I really reflect on my time there, however, I realize that this is the problem with studying abroad in such an environment, especially with development work. I had it in my head that I was there to do something, to make some sort of difference, to make things better. And I wasn’t. I couldn’t have. The only difference to be made was in myself. And I did make that difference. I think the time I spent in Uganda gave me a very different image of the African experience than I had previously. For Americans, it’s easy to think of Africa has the destitute, sick continent across the Atlantic, with no running water, and shanty towns that spring out of the savannah. Those places do exist. I’ve been to them. But Kampala… Kampala is a capital city; with many of the luxuries we find in the U.S., it’s easy to get lost, to lose sight of your goals. I wish that I could show everyone reading this the images and memories that I have in my head of the middle of Kampala- the smell of exhaust and the body odor of the bustling crowd, the crunch of a plastic bottle covered in mud as I step into the dense and apathetic traffic, or the street vendors that take up half the sidewalk with their random wares. It all seems so disgusting when I put it into words, but there’s a hidden beauty. Looking back, I reminisce, and I feel nostalgic. I came and went and now I’m gone without much of a trace. But I take with me something more than souvenirs and a few good stories. I’m not sure quite yet what that is, but I think that it’s something good.

After leaving Kampala, we embarked on a long and tortuous bus ride through the Ugandan countryside. One minute I remember being on the rolling hills outside of Kampala, and the next we were surrounded by the towering mountains of the east, covered in banana plantations, with baboons coming out of the forest to cross the street. We went on a two-day long safari. At the safari camp we stayed in dorm-style housing, and ate in the sub-par restaurant that ended up giving one of the other students food poisoning that lasted the rest of the trip. But the safari itself was absolutely fantastic. The first day, we went on a boat tour to see innumerable hippos, water buffalo, and the full spectrum of African birds. Near the end of the tour, we past by a small lakeside village where dozens canoes had pulled up onto the bank. In their midst, a hippo, dead from a masculine brawl floated limply on its side. I took a picture of one of the canoes. It had “Manchester United” painted on the side. Later, we went on a game drive and were lucky enough to see a pair of adolescent male lions lounging at the edge of the bumpy dirt road that our bus managed to meander its way down. At dusk we started for home. With the sun setting, we could see the Rwenzori mountains in the distance (Africa’s 3^rd largest mountain range) painted purple and blue by the equatorial sunset.

We have been back in Kigali for two weeks now. My first week was mostly spent in bed because I was running a high fever and there were suspicions of malaria. I went to an austere Asian doctor after the first night of my sickness, he ran a blood test and an hour later told me that I had neither malaria nor typhoid fever. I spent another two nights with a fever before I went to the eccentric Belgian doctor working out of the Belgian embassy. So, as it turns out, my sickness wasn’t all bad. I got to go to Belgium. The Belgian doctor also told me that I didn’t have malaria. Instead, I just had a virus and would have to wait it out. The next day, I continued to take my Tylenol regularly, and by that night I was well again. I hadn’t pooped for three days, and I drank so much water that my stomach felt like it was going to explode. Sickness in Africa is better than I thought it would be, but maybe that’s just because I wasn’t really that sick.

Friday of last week there were two grenade attacks in Kigali, one of which being no more than a 20 minute walk from our house. There aren’t really any grand schemes or opposition parties in Rwanda that would take credit for such an attack. The country is remarkably stable. Elections are coming up in August though. As they get closer, there are more stories of repressed opposition. After the genocide, political parties based on ethnicity were outlawed, preventing many activists from forming parties outside the RPF (the ruling party, mainly associated as being the Tutsi military force that helped to end the genocide). As elections ensue, more and more parties have been formed, and there have been more and more conflicts over the legal legitimacy of said parties. In my opinion, this is an attempt by the RPF to maintain political power and influence. There have been news stories about the members of opposition parties being beaten in the streets by mobs with ambiguous motives. Leaders of opposition parties are called genocidaires, and their parties are dismembered and ridiculed. Therefore, it seems as though these grenade attacks are an attempt by the people who oppose the RPF and Kagame to tarnish the record of safety and stability that has become synonymous with the name of the Rwandan president. I don’t know if it will happen again, the grenade attacks, or if the RPF has successfully stifled their opposition. This is simply my point-of-view as an American living in the capital.

Regardless of the political implications of all of this, the grenade attacks have severely limited my exposure to the city during the past few weeks. We can no longer take public transportation after five o’clock or on the weekends. Seeing as our classes end at 3, and it takes 30 minutes or more to get into the city from our house, I haven’t been able to do much exploring. We take private transport to and from class, and we walk around the 10 minute radius of our neighborhood. There are some good finds around here. We live near the large blue, white, and yellow stadium where Peace Corps volunteers host benefit concerts and they have an aerobics class on weeknights. Ndoli’s is nearby, where we get junk food and cigarettes. Behind Ndoli’s are the Star Café and La Nouvelle Planete, restaurants and supposed tearooms. We went to La Nouvelle Planete a few days ago hoping for some good African tea (milk steeped with tea and ginger), but all we walked away with was warm milk with a hint of ginger and the largest avocado I’ve ever eaten for a dollar. Also close by is Sole Luna, an Italian restaurant with delicious pizzas and a delightful atmosphere. The only English the owner knows is “I don’t speak English,” but luckily he speaks French so I get to practice. From under the ivy laden terracing, I can see the lights of Kigali at night while I snack on the giant caprese salads that they serve with pillipilli olive oil.

I would like to think, though, that I’ve done more than walk around my neighborhood and eat. And that’s because I have. Although our classes aren’t particularly challenging, we do get to go on meaningful field trips. Yesterday we went to the genocide memorials at Ntarama and Nyamata. I had already been to Nyamata, and I’ve written about it in this blog. Ntarama was a similar concept, but completely different. After I went to Nyamata the last time, I thought my days of genocide memorials were over. It’s so emotionally draining to visit these sites and to experience just a small part of what the genocide means to the people who were affected. Ntarama was much older than Nyamata when it was the site of the killing of 5,000 people, it was much more fragile, and unlike Nyamata, the memorial is much more in your face. As I walked through the gate, I saw that they had constructed metal roofing over the original building, sort of like a large tin carport. The memorial consists of a few building, each of which has a different story, and different significance. The first building was the sanctuary, and immediately upon entering you have to edge your way around a large metal shelf, like something you would see in someone’s garage with power tools and gardening gloves. Instead, the shelf was unabashedly covered with skeletons, skulls, femurs, etc. There is no glass separating you from the bones; it’s simply the shelf, purple and white ribbons, and human remains. Like Nyamata, the rest of the sanctuary is scattered with all of the clothes of the victims, and the smell of mold and death is heavy. At the front of the church, to the right of the altar, are the personal effects of the people who were killed there. It’s mainly shoes and thermoses, but there are also rosaries, a sign of the faith that people maintained until the end, until they were ruthlessly slaughtered in the house of God.

The other significant part of this memorial was the children’s Sunday school room, a building by itself. It wasn’t much to look at, a few concrete pews, tiny enough so short legs would dangle. A grenade had blown out the window; the doorway had caved in. Inside though, it was peaceful, serene. The floor was clean, and a solid beam of light shone into the darkness. On the back wall the was a large brown, dripping stain where the genocidaires had killed the small children by throwing them against the wall.

Today, we went to a gacaca trial. The gacaca system was developed 10 years ago when the court system could no longer prosecute all of the cases from the genocide. The gacaca system relies on communities. Gacaca means “grass-roots.” People are nominated from the community to serve as judges, and to oversee each trial in the community. The courts have the authority to sentence offenders to lengthy prison sentences, or to forgive them completely. The main goal of these courts is so that the community is able to confront the perpetrators and uncover the truth behind the events of 1994. The courts serve as a forum for forgiveness. Today I was able to witness these proceedings first hand (and by first hand, I mean through a translator). We drove 2 hours into the Rwandan countryside. On the typical, African dirt road we were on, we stopped several times to ask for directions to the town where we knew the trial was occurring today. We received that dreaded wave that means “you have a long way to go.” Once we arrived, I realized that the trial wouldn’t actually be outside, on the grass. The building was relatively new. It was simply a large concrete room, filled with wooden benches. Several policemen surrounded the building. A large group of observers waited outside. Several people followed us in. There were sixteen of us, so we took up quite a bit of space. I was wedged between our translator and an elderly woman who walked in with her stick and the colorful fabric wrap that is typical of her age group. There were three cases on the docket. The first was a man who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison and was appealing his case. At his first trial, he had not admitted to all of his offenses, and had not asked for forgiveness. Today, after much prodding from the crowd, he admitted to all his offenses, which included the killing of over 15 people. Through my translator I understood that he was made to recount his part in the genocide, beating his neighbors with a large club and leaving them in a latrine to die. The strange part of this experience was how I viewed this man. When I came in, I was sure I was going to hear a land dispute or something dry, and potentially boring. This man didn’t look like a perpetrator, whatever that looks like. He was wearing a prison pink short-sleeved button-up shirt with matching shorts. The judges, four women, had to keep telling him to speak louder. As members of the community raised questions about his story, he looked at them with deep sorrow, and I could sense his fear.

The second man was much less apologetic. He wore matching prison pink as well. Same as the first man, he was appealing an earlier sentence where he had received 15 years in prison. He spoke much clearer than the first man, and he raised his hand when he felt over-powered by the judges. He was much less straightforward when asked about his offenses. At first his story was innocence. In fact, he had hidden a Tutsi in his home. After an uproar in the crowd (including the elderly woman who sat next to me) his story changed. Now it was that he had only been going to get a beer, and had been caught up in a group that was wandering around the neighborhood and killing children. Another uproar came from the crowd. The argument surrounded this man’s involvement with a mass killing at one of the nearby churches. He said he lived next to the church, and so that is why he was seen close-by. The woman next to me, frail yet powerful, stood up to say that his house was nowhere near the church. Then his story became something like he had just been killing people outside of the church. There was another tangent about the man being seen dumping bodies in a latrine near the church. From what I gathered overall, this man was a part of a group of men who perpetrated the genocide. The days in question he had assisted in the killing of several children, and eventually had involved himself in the mass killings at the church. Our professor told us later that he would most likely receive a higher sentence. Looking back, I wonder. Why would he attempt to skew the truth? These courts are a venue to admit wrongdoing, and to gain forgiveness. From what I have seen and heard, the Rwandan people are very forgiving, almost unbelievably so. So why lie?

I am still attempting to understand the genocide, and why these memorials are such an integral part of the Rwandan experience. I see them now as small, indistinguishable puzzle pieces, like when you have to put together the sky on a 1,000 piece. Alone, they reveal nothing, or very little. Together, there’s not much more than a cloud. I’ve spent a total of one month, non-consecutively, in Rwanda. I’ve been to three memorials. I’ve seen a survivor talk to a perpetrator. I’ve been to a gacaca court. I read every article I can find on BBC and I’ve been skimming through innumerable books about the history and future of this country. Still though, I feel as if I only have two or three clouds to hold onto, not even dense cumulonimbus clouds, but whispy cirrus clouds. What I know, or think I know, seems so fleeting, so temporary. Things are changing everyday. I have all of these tiny, blurry puzzle pieces, and I don’t know how to put them together.