Rwanda Diary

Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas and Our Chance to See Them

Rwanda's famed mountain gorillas, trapped for many years in a war zone, have managed to survive, taking a small step back from the brink of extinction.

Over the past few decades, Rwanda's gorilla population has increased by a remarkable 10 percent despite a horrific human genocide, incursions into the park by armed rebels, human-spread disease, occasional poaching, government upheaval and constant pressure from land-starved peasants, who hoe their potatoes less than an hour's easy walk from the gorillas' sanctuaries.

 Today, more than 350 of the world's most endangered gorillas slip through the misty rainforest below Rwanda's towering Virunga volcanoes. Altogether more than 650 of the woolly black gorillas, first described by a German explorer a century ago and made famous by their murdered protector, American primatologist Dian Fossey, survive in two small areas of cool mountain forest in Uganda and on the Rwanda-Congo border.

The gorillas, one of Rwanda's few major tourist attractions, were the country's third-largest source of foreign income in the late 1980s, behind coffee and tea. Tourism has now been rebuilt post-Genocide, and with foreign visitors handing over hundreds of dollars each to see the gorillas, the government has a powerful incentive to protect them. Guards now keep an eye on the gorillas at all times, not just when tourists come to visit. Tourists, once allowed to touch the gorillas, now are kept a minimum of 20 feet away to prevent the spread of colds and diseases. Visitors, brought into the park in very small groups, are also limited to no more than an hour a day with the gorillas to keep stress levels low.

Our Chance to Visit the Gorillas Coming Right Up in November!

In all the times I’ve been to Rwanda and the Congo, I’ve never seen the gorillas.  My schedule has always been spent teaching and training, and I haven’t been able to afford the time or the funds to venture outside of Kigali to see them.  But every time I’ve come here, I’m asked by the Rwandese, “Have you seen the gorillas?”  (These photos were taken by people who have been to see them.)

It was with this in mind that I stopped in to see the manager of the Primate Safari (http://www.primatesafaris-rwanda.com/inrwanda_info.php) outfit in Kigali on February 17^th to arrange a package for the second half of the trip in November for our group.  There are many such companies, but Primate Safari is one of the best and not only focuses on trips to see the gorillas but also to other sites and parks in Rwanda. 

Here’s the exciting itinerary I put together with Primate Safari for the second half of the upcoming trip to Rwanda for those who attend the Symposium:

Day 1: KIGALI  and AKAGERA GAME LODGE

After lunch in Kigali, we’ll check out of the Lemigo Hotel and drive to Akagera National Park. The park is set at a relatively low altitude on the border with Tanzania. Akagera National Park is scenically dominated by a labyrinth of swamps and lakes that follow the meandering course of the Akagera River.  We’ll enter the park for an evening game drive and then have dinner and stay overnight at the Akagera Game Lodge. Akagera is home to a variety of game, and it's an exciting reserve in which to spend some time, and will be an interesting contrast to the more mountainous latter days of the tour. There are plenty of animals around and the birdlife is quite exceptional. Mammals include a healthy population of elephant and buffalo, plus 11 species of antelope including impala, common duiker, defassa waterbuck,  bushbuck, oribi, tsessebe, Cape Eland and the rare sable antelope.  Hippos are present in impressive numbers in the lakes and rivers and Zebra and Giraffe still roam the more open acacia dotted plains.

Day 2: AKAGERA NATIONAL PARK GAME DRIVE and VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK

After an early breakfast, we’ll enter the park for a morning game drive. After game viewing, we’ll drive to Musanze, have dinner and stay overnight at the Gorilla Mountain View Lodge.

Day 3: VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK and the GORILLAS TREK, Then RUBAVU

After the morning wake-up call and breakfast, we’ll report to the park headquarters for gorilla trekking formalities and a briefing by the Volcanoes National Park’s guides on the gorillas’ etiquette.  The gorilla group that you will visit will depend on the assignment of visitors to the seven habituated gorilla groups. Park rangers will have already left to locate the Gorilla groups that are accessible to visitors on that day.  You will be assigned to a specific group of gorillas.  Groups of trekkers will have a maximum of 8 visitors per gorilla family. Your trek will vary in length depending on which gorilla group to which you have been assigned and will commence at about 7,000 feet of altitude in the upper terraced slopes of the volcano. Soon you will enter the forest of bamboo and thick undergrowth. You’ll follow paths and the walking is steep but not overly strenuous.  Nothing can prepare you for the impact of encountering a fully-grown silverback gorilla: up to three times as bulky as the average man, yet remarkably peaceful and tolerant of human visitors. There are no words to describe the thrill of recognition attached to staring deeply into the liquid brown eyes of these gentle giants, which share some 97% of their genes with human beings.  After locating your assigned Gorilla group you will spend one hour in their company before retracing your steps back down the volcano slopes. Lunch will be taken at the lodge. Then we’ll drive to Rubavu (Gisenyi), located on the shores of Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu is a 2650 Square kilometer freshwater expanse and the largest of all the lakes that fill the valleys of Rwanda. We’ll spend the night at Gorillas Lake Kivu Hotel.

Day 4: RUBAVU, THE TWA and KIGALI

We’ll relax by the shore of Lake Kivu and visit the surrounding environs in the morning.  On the way back to Kigali, we’ll stop at the compound where I’ve established relationships with the Twa, if we get permission from the local government officials in advance.  It’s one thing for me to visit them alone, but to have a large group visit and bring clothing and other gifts would be looked upon with great suspicion.  (In fact, we left fairly abruptly when we visited because Pauline noticed two of the officials coming up the hill to see what was going on, and fully expected the Twa to be questioned after we left.) But we’re going to do our best to get whatever permissions we need prior to November.  After our visit, we’ll drive to Kigali and spend the night, once again, at the Lemigo Hotel. 

Day 5: CITY TOUR, CRAFT SHOPPING and DEPARTURE

Our flight is likely to leave at night, so we’ll have a Kigali city tour and then shopping for crafts during the day.  Primate Safari will then provide our transportation to the airport after we check out of the hotel.

We’ll be taking this tour in 5- or 7-seat 4-wheel-drive vehicles in which everyone will have a window seat.  The drivers/guides will all speak English (as well as French and a number of African languages) and know an enormous amount about Rwanda and about the places they’ll be taking us.

What I’ll Do Next

My job, once I get back to Louisville, will be to put together the entire package, inclusive of everything for the Symposium and tour, the flight, the hotels, etc., and begin to let people know that there are only 25 places available for this extraordinary opportunity.  It looks like the dates will be November 8^th to 18^th, 2011, so mark your calendars and remember to let me know if you’re interested in receiving more information about this extraordinary opportunity!

 Next:

An update on the Quaker Peace House and what’s going on with the people whom I’ve trained in the Congo.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally Revisiting the Twa

Wednesday, February 16^th finally rolled around – the day I was promised we would do nothing else until we visit the Twa once again and bring them the school supplies, sorghum flour and sugar I’d purchased in Gesenyi on the previous Monday.  We left Kigali at 8:00 a.m. and an hour and half later arrived at the compound where they were waiting for us to arrive, the children having run down the hill once more to greet us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking with the Elders

Mukashingiro Speciose, the 46-year-old leader of  this group of Twa, greeted us (Celestin, Pauline and myself) at the bottom of the hill and accepted my gifts on behalf of her people.  When we made the hike up to the compound I found that they had arranged two chairs and a low wooden bench on which we could have our conversation. Mukashingiro and the compound’s other elders graciously told me the stories of their people, reaching back into their past as far as they could remember.

Following is some of what I learned from Mukashingiro and others during our time together:

• There are 120 Batwa living in this compound of 21 dwellings.  (She consulted her handwritten tabulation of residents to make sure her numbers were correct.)  The dwellings are generally single room, dirt floor huts, some with relatively intact roofing and many without.  There is no electricity or running water.  The government gave them these dwellings when they were told – upon returning to Rwanda from fleeing to the Congo from what they call “the war”– that they couldn’t return to their previous homes in the forests.  They’ve been living here for 11 years.  No one has a job.

• Prior to living here they were forest dwellers.  They grew much of their own food and lived near the clay pits where they dug the clay to make their pots, a craft they have been practicing for centuries.  This compound is 2 or more hours walk to the clay pit, to which they walk only once a week or so because it’s a long way and clay is heavy.

• Every adult makes pots.  After the sun dries them out, they’re fired in grass and wood fires, not unlike raku firing.  Sometimes they’re painted before use.  Sometimes they sell them, when they can, along the roads.  A pot like the ones pictured might go for 200 Rwandan francs (34 cents), “if we meet a good person."
  

• This compound that was given to them has no place on which to grow anything.  And they couldn’t plant anything even if they did have the land because they don’t have any money to buy fertilizer, a necessity for growing anything in this soil.  Sometimes they beg their neighbors for food.  Countless times they simply don’t eat.

• Many years ago they (the Rwandans) had a Tutsi king and he gave them no trouble.  There were no problems with the rest of the population until after “the war” (their term for the Genocide since they didn’t experience the same kind of mass killings where they resided as did the residents of Kigali, for example). 

• Before the war, they lived their own lives and no one bothered them.  But in 1994 and again in 1999 (they believe these were the years but have no calendars or timepieces to keep track) they were forced to flee for their lives to the Congo.  So many Twa were massacred in Goma when they reached the Congo the first time that the bodies were tossed into mass graves. Mukashingiro’s mother, for example, had 12 children, and all but five were slaughtered in Goma.  The majority of adults in their compound today are women because so many men were killed during those flight years.

• Those who survived the slaughter stayed in the Congo for several years.  To determine the number of years they lived there, Mukashingiro remembered that she got pregnant in Goma and when they came back the baby was running around.  So she figures it was 2 or 3 years during which they temporarily settled there.  UN cars brought them back to their land, and it was during the second return (during what they call the second war in the Congo with guerillas) they were told they couldn’t live in the forests any longer, and were told they had to move.
  
  
  

• The government says where they have to live now.  Others are now using the place where they used to live; while they were away, their land was given to other, non-Twa people.  They’ve tried to reclaim their land, even as late as yesterday when they appealed to the local government office.  They are always told no.

• There are many children in the compound now, too many for Mukashingiro to remember the exact number, but only 19 have been to school.  And even they don’t necessarily go on a regular basis because the Twa don’t have money for school fees, uniforms, supplies and to feed them when they’re at school.  Also, if the children have no shoes, the school sends them home.  (I counted only 3 or 4 pair of plastic sandals among the group.)  And if they don’t have anything to eat, they don’t go to school.  If someone buys a pot, they’ll eat.  Eating comes first, they told me.  School is second.

I asked all of them gathered around to try to imagine what a better life would be and to tell me what that would look like to them.  It took them a very long time to think about it, and this is the sum total of what they were able to imagine:

 

• To have a house and a farm that are closed up so it doesn’t rain on us.

• To have fertilizer.

• To have a little money so we can go farther from here to do business on the road and sell our pots.

• To sleep in a bed.

That’s it.  No one could think of anything else.

When I asked how they sleep now, one of the elders got down on the ground and showed me.  They sleep on the hard ground, using old mats as pillows, covering themselves with used plastic flour sacks.) 
So at the end of the day, they don’t put on their pajamas and crawl into bed.  They don’t have pajamas – they sleep in the same clothes they’ve had on for weeks.  They don’t have beds.  They don’t have blankets.  They don’t brush their teeth because they don’t have toothbrushes.  Or running water.  The kids don’t do their homework because they’re trying instead to find something to eat and a pair of shoes so they can go back to school sometime. 

On the way back to Kigali, I saw the land near the forest on which they used to live.  There were pens with animals in them, and avocado trees, sweet potatoes, beans and arrowroot growing in the verdant plain. 

It was unspeakably sad.

Next:

Arranging for the touring part of the upcoming Symposium.

 

 

 

 

Searching for the Right Symposium Venue

Tuesday, February 15^th, was the designated day for our venue committee to look at hotels and grill hotel managers to find the perfect venue for November’s International Interfaith Symposium in Rwanda.  Six people, including myself, were prepared with a list of questions and eagle eyes to find a wonderful place that could accommodate 25+ Americans, serve our needs as a conference facility, dish up good food, and be reasonably priced. 

What We Needed to Know

My list of questions included:

• What were the guest rooms like?  Could they accommodate people sharing a room?  And the bathrooms?  What amenities were included, e.g. shampoo, soap, etc.?  Were the rooms air-conditioned?  Was breakfast included in the price?  Was there wifi available in the guest rooms?
• What were the conference rooms like?  Were they air-conditioned?  Did they have the capacity to enable simultaneous translation?  What equipment was available?  What was included in the conference package?  Would there be a charge for the meeting rooms if our attendees stayed at the hotel?
• Did the hotel have a pool?  A health club?  What services were available?  For what fees?
• What were the hotel’s meals like, and what was the variety available?
• Did the hotel have a brochure?  An on-line presence?
• Did the hotel offer transport to and from the airport as part of their amenities package?
• What would our price be for the cost of the rooms and meeting rooms?

Visiting – and Scrutinizing – the Hotels

We started with the Sportview Hotel because one of our committee members had attended a conference there and had been suitably impressed.  Not so the rest of us.  The biggest issues were that there was no elevator in a 4-story hotel and there was no air conditioning in the rooms.  You may not think that a place could be hot in November, but unless there’s a pretty good cross breeze, Kigali can be stultifying at any time.  

The next hotel was the Top Tower.  Yes, a/c.  Yes soaps and shampoos.  Yes elevator. But the place wasn’t friendly and seemed to be overreaching despite their telling us that customer care is their priority.

We toured a total of four of the six on our list of hotels before we decided that the fourth hotel – the Lemigo Hotel – was exactly what we wanted and needed.  In fact, the Belgian general manager (to whom I introduced myself) was stolen from another 4-star place in Kigali, the Milles Colines, a famous hotel but not nearly as nice (and twice as expensive) as this one.  Several factors sealed the deal for me.  First, it's owned by Rwandans, and is not a chain owned by an American or European conglomerate.  Second, that manager switch thing.  Third, The Lemigo not trying to be an American hotel, just a wonderful place with African touches everywhere.  Fourth, the food (African, American and European) is outstanding (a fact of which we made sure by having lunch there).  Fifth, any place that offers cappuccino gets my bid.  And fifth, the head accountant  -- the person who negotiates the prices with groups -- is Zainabo's relative and she was one of the people on the committee!  It's nice having someone in the business, whether one is in the States or in Africa. 

The Lemigo has offered a very competitive rate for us and they’ve already e-mailed me their proposal.  They have all the conference equipment we could ever need; the best symposium consulting firm has their office in this hotel; they bake their own breads and all of their food is organic; they have a pool, sauna, massage for $20 an hour, gym, and fresh squeezed juices.  The guest rooms have great showers, wonderful bedding, and loads of natural light.  And have I mentioned the food?  They have a special room in the hotel that has a pizza oven and a barbeque grill for parties.  I’m salivating as I write this.

We didn’t need to see the other sites – the Intercontinental, the Milles Colines and the Novotel – to know that they couldn’t possibly offer us what the Lemigo Hotel does, or beat their price.

Buying Fabric

By 2:00, having finished that wonderful meal on the terrace of the hotel overlooking the pool, we felt we’d accomplished a huge job.  But we’d planned to spend all day, and the afternoon was just beginning.  No problem for Pauline!  Her idea: let’s go buy fabric and have some clothes made!

Truthfully, fabric buying in Rwanda is one of my favorite things to do here.  Walking into the fabric bazaars is like immersing yourself in a visual circus – stalls and stalls of  stacks of cloth in every color and design you could possibly imagine, most of which come in bundles of  three pieces: one for the blouse, one for the skirt (most often a wrap), and one that doubles as a shawl or headpiece.  Most of the best pieces of fabric have been printed in Cote d’Ivoire – the Ivory Coast – where the wax resist batik process has been handed down from generation to generation and whose practitioners are second to none.  Making choices between patterns isn’t really an issue because the fabric is very inexpensive.  Depending on the pattern, where it’s made, and how many and how big the pieces are, you could spend as little as $3.00 up to about $18 for a bundle.  Needless to say, being the textiles junkie that I am, I bought many different pieces.  Just like I did last time.  And the time before that. 

Having Clothes Made

So what does one do with all of these pieces of fabric?  Well, some of mine are still at home waiting to be turned into tablecloths and napkins, and quilts for my grandkids.  But the majority of fabric purchased gets turned into African, or at least African-inspired, clothing.  For example, I’d brought some cloth I’d bought earlier to a seamstress in the market the week before to have some shirts made for a friend.  Sewing is one of the skills being taught to many women whose husbands were killed during the Genocide, and also to those whose husbands are still in prison.  The conditions in which they ply their craft, as you might imagine, would be considered untenable in the United States or Europe – only foot-powered treadle machines are used because of little or no electricity; horribly crowded conditions with many machines going at once with only enough space between them to climb in to the bench; one old iron plugged into the only outlet, used on an unsheltered table by all the people sewing.  Despite these circumstances, their work is outstanding.

During this particular afternoon, after we (over)bought more fabric, we went to a different seamstress and I was surprised to see the shop.  The owner was a gentle giant of a man who dwarfed his machine, and his sewers were all men!  This is pretty unusual in Rwanda, as more and more women are being trained to sew for a living.  Pauline and I both got measured for the clothes he was to design and make, and, in turn, we told him what we wanted.  For myself, I just wanted some simple tunic tops for summer in Kentucky ($8.00 each to make), with coordinating pants for a couple of them (an extra $5.00).  And a two-piece “dressy” African outfit ($17.00).  As I said to a friend, I’m not sure where I’ll wear that, but if I ever get an invitation to a Bar Mitzvah in Rwanda, I’ll be ready.  Pauline asked for a couple of African two-piece skirt/top outfits.  Oh, but he wasn’t sure he could have all of them made by the time we left.  No problem – some of our Rwandan friends would be coming to the States in the next few months and could bring them along then.

By the way, he had them all finished, and finished beautifully, right on time!  We’ve already decided that we’ll make a special trip to his shop after shopping for fabric with the Symposium participants in November – early enough to have the clothes ready for departure!!

 

Next:

The second – and most important – visit with the Twa.

 

 

 

 

To Gesenyi and Back

Many Stops and Many Stories

I thought the agenda for the day on February 14^th was to visit the Twa as our first priority, go get what they needed, bring it back to them and spend time interviewing those who wished to answer my questions.  Boy, was I wrong.  Apparently, the more people in a car, the more mysterious the travel plans. 

Another Horrifying Genocide Story

Immediately after our brief visit with the Twa, we drove for another 30 minutes or so and then turned off the road toward a group of rural houses.  In one of them lived Pauline’s aunt, the eldest sister of Pauline’s mother, with whom the mother was going to spend the day.  The two women had had numerous siblings, but many of them were massacred during the Genocide.  She told me, “When the war reached here, one of the sisters was cooking with a pot over a charcoal brazier outside their dwelling.  She called the killers her children, but they said, ‘We are not your children, but your children will need to see you when they come back.’  So they cut off her head and put it on the pot in the fire as the lid, and then threw the rest of her body out into the road.  Can you imagine seeing that happen, and then living with that as a survivor?” I always think I’ve heard the worst Genocide story.  Until I hear the next one.

Looking for a Single Child

As we drove away from the aunt’s village, watching the older women joyously reconnect, I was told that the next stop would be in Camebuye, another village
about an hour or two down the road.  Pauline had been given some money by an American couple to give to the parents of a 6-year-old child.  The Americans also had a child of the same age and had been given the name and photo of the child by an organization called Compassion, International, a Christian child sponsorship ministry.  To me, this gave new meaning to the term “needle in a haystack,” but Pauline was undeterred, no matter how long it took.  As it happened, the distrust and outright suspicion among the villagers drew out the process into a marathon event.

We were first directed to a rural school by villagers walking along the road who told us that’s where the child could be found.  By then it was noon, and all the children had been released for the day.  But we found an administrator at the school who jumped into the car and said that he’d take us to where the parents and child lived.  After driving another 30 minutes we reached the rural compound where the family lived, but before they could come out to meet with Pauline, someone called the local office of the charity and told them that Pauline appeared about to hand over some funds.  From what I gathered, the local charity official told the caller not to let Pauline give the money directly to the parents.  Instead, she should give it to the charity official and he would give it to the family.  We’re not talking about what we might consider a fortune here, but this small amount of money could feed and clothe this child for many months. 

Pauline was furious, citing her belief that if the funds were given to the local official, he would keep 90% of it and give the family only 10%.  “That is how they keep their jobs and get paid,” she explained.  I can certainly understand taking an administrative fee for running a local office of a charity, but that did seem a bit excessive, if it was more than hyperbole.  So, she made what she referred to as “alternative arrangements.”  While carefully avoiding the school administrator who was still in the crowd that had formed around us, milling about and speaking in low voices, she found someone else who would tell the parents to meet us on the road later that day.

“What time will they tell the parents to meet us?” I asked Pauline.  “Oh, no time will be given.  You are in Africa now.  They will see us when they see us.  That is our life.”  Given the way the day was going, that could be anytime between four hours hence to sometime close to Christmas.  And off we drove, Pauline still muttering to herself about how crazy this whole thing had become because of their suspicions.

(I did ask Pauline, who has lived in the States for 10 years, how big of an adjustment it was to switch from African time to American time.  “I’m not there yet!” she said, laughing.)

Lunch in Gesenyi

By 2:00, we had finally arrived in Gesenyi, directly across the border from the city of Goma in the Congo where I had worked the last time I was here.  As soon as we pulled into the little town – which always reminds me of an old town in a Western movie – Pauline ran into people she knew and started making the rounds.  Although it appears that multitasking is not a part of their culture, it’s certainly part of mine, and when I saw a sign for “paper,” indicating a store that might have the school supplies I needed for the Twa, and a market across the road that

would surely have the sugar, I said to Rachel, “Let’s go!” surprising her, I’m sure. But anything was better than sitting indefinitely in the hot car.  I wanted her to accompany me on this shopping excursion while Pauline caught up with her friends – not just because I wanted the company or her translation skills, but because nearly everything that one buys here is a negotiation.  There’s a muzungu (white person) price, and there’s an African price.  And even with the latter, there’s some room for concession. 

 

Catching Up with the Congo

By this time, Zawadi,  a young Congolese woman, and her parents appeared (pre-arranged, although I was unaware of the plans) and I asked them to join us for lunch so I could get caught up on what’s happened in the Congo since my last trip here.  Both Zawadi – who now works with rape survivors – and her father, Jeremy – who runs the Quaker peace organization in Goma, had been in my training in 2009, and after we’d all gotten settled at an outdoor table, I asked to be caught up.

The biggest news is that all of the IDP  refugee camps that had surrounded Goma  (shown in this photo I took in 2009) were now gone.  At the end of 2010, the Congolese government, in collaboration with  the UNHCR and other agencies, returned all of the refugees to their villages.  (If the results of that reintegration, however, are anything like what happened when the Rwandans returned from the camps in the Congo, the refugees will have found that others have taken over their land and dwellings and they will continue to be displaced, even in their own villages.)

The other news is that it’s now much more difficult to enter the Congo because of something called a “flying visa.”  Formerly, one could purchase a visa at the border for $35, as I did in 2009, that was good for 80 days in the Congo.  However, the government wasn’t seeing a lot, if any, of that money, so they declared the only place one could now get an official visa to enter the Congo was in a Congolese embassy in one’s home country.  No problem.  A few extra steps, but doable.  But that meant the people “managing” the border were cut off from these formerly easy funds, so they instituted what they termed the “flying visa,” costing an extra $250, payable at the border, in addition to the official visa!  Many people have been turned away from entering the Congo because they either didn’t know about the flying visa, they didn’t have the money, or they refused to pay it.

In further news, I was told that soldiers, police and teachers are still making little or no salary.  Many in the Congo feel that if the government would just pay their civil servants, many of their troubles would disappear.  Last year, members of the parliament conducted an investigation to see how the government spends its money.  They found $6 million dollars missing from the office of the governor of Goma.  A report was made to the equivalent of the attorney general, which never reached the provincial court.  All the people heard was, “Your report is not acceptable.” 

And still, vehicles are ambushed, and violence is still prevalent.  Ugandan rebel groups continue to use the Congo as a training and staging ground, abducting people, murdering them and stealing from them to support themselves.  Another Congolese friend told me that during the years of 2007 and 2008, at least 5 people in Goma were killed each night although it’s abated somewhat.

As far as digging for blood minerals goes, that practice was officially stopped, at least temporarily, but the head of the army and his deputies are among those still doing the mining.  (Note: High-tech gadgets like smart phones, mp3 players and laptops don't just offer constant connectivity and instant entertainment, they also link American consumers to the deadliest conflict in the world. The global demand for minerals like gold and tantalum, essential to portable electronics, provides millions of dollars to violent groups competing for control of lucrative mines in the eastern Congo.) When that came to light, the people were told that the perpetrators would be punished.  So, as his punishment, the general was transferred out of the army and given the job of the head of the police. 

Heading Back to Camebuye

After lunch, we headed back toward Kigali.  I was still hoping to make it back to the Twa compound, but it was already 4:00, we had many hours to drive, it had started to rain, and we had yet to find that little boy’s parents to hand over the money.  Not surprisingly, no one was waiting at the road for our return, so we drove back into the compound where the family lived.  The level of suspicion had escalated, if possible.  Finally, with some help from the villagers, a worn out man in tattered clothing was brought to our car, whereupon he told Pauline that he was the father, and after we’d left earlier in the day, the Compassion people told him that if we returned the parents were not to talk to us because we were there to take their child out of the program!  After Pauline explained that that was a blatant lie, he got into the car and we drove for a while until we found his wife, explained what we were really there to do, showed them a photograph of the donating family, and gave them the full donation.  By this time, my camera battery had run completely out of juice, so I used Pauline’s camera to take photographs of the child’s parents holding up a photo of their child and a picture of the donating family so Pauline could report back in the States that her mission was accomplished! 

A Couple of Stops to Go

Still several hours from the Twa compound, I gave up thinking that that mission might be accomplished as planned.  To my surprise, Pauline called the Twa leader on her cell phone – the only one in the entire compound in a country where nearly every person has a cell phone – and told her we would be coming back on Wednesday instead of later today.  Apparently that wasn’t a problem, and on we went directly back to Kigali…or so I thought.  Instead, we happened upon a makeshift roadside market where fresh fruits and vegetables were being sold, and we stopped there for an hour to negotiate a trunk load of that.  And further down the road was a rural butcher where beef was being sold for 1600 rwf ($2.70) per kilo for boneless and 1300 rwf ($2.20) per kilo for beef with the bones still attached. When I asked about different cuts, and named some with which I was familiar, they looked at me like I had 12 heads. The cut of meat didn’t matter.  You either got boneless or meat on the bone.  Many, many kilos of beef were then purchased and stuffed into the trunk.  And, of course, we also picked up Pauline’s mother.

Along the way home, we passed a village where some local defense workers were destroying a house at the side of the road.  “They want these houses gone so they can grow businesses there instead,” I was told.  “They want people to move back, away from the road.”  “Will they provide another house for these people?” I asked.  The answer was a resounding, “No!  People have no rights here.  If they want to move and you refuse, they just destroy your house and then you have to move.”

Next:

The search for just the right facility for our International Interfaith Symposium in Rwanda, and a lot more photos because I recharged my camera’s battery!

 

Visiting the Twa, Part 1

I’m so far behind in writing these blog posts because of my illness that I’m going to stop trying to focus each post on a single day and, instead, write them with a more thematic approach.  This post will be about my first visit with the Twa during this trip.

Some Background Information

For those who have been faithful readers of this blog (and let it be known that I’ve been very generous to you in my will and have erected a gigantic monument to you here in Kigali made from used phone cards and empty water bottles), you might recall that I visited a group of Batwa, most often called simply Twa, the last time I was in Rwanda.  At that time I wrote:

Everyone who knows anything about Rwanda has heard about the Tutsies and the Hutu.  But there is another tribe, the original people, called the Twa people.  There are many reasons the Twa are little known outside of Rwanda, among which are that they have traditionally lived in the forests, keeping to themselves, but also because they are ignored at best and shunned and discriminated against at worst.  They have been moved off their lands by the government into huts and squalor, are desperately poor, and have traditionally subsisted by making pottery for themselves and selling some of it.  Many Twa believe that the Hutu and the Tutsies hate them and that they brought war and killing to their country, so they don’t mix with the other tribes. 

The Twa are also known rather derogatorily as Pygmies and are the indigenous inhabitants of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They’re the last remnants of a people who for thousands of years had central Africa to themselves, roaming the forests, working hard to look for and grow food, yet living in comparative peace and with a sense of well being. Today, they are squeezed into small spaces and try to earn their living in a difficult world that they can’t ignore but which from which they are prevented, in many cases, from joining.  In Rwanda, the complex and recently lethal relationship between the majority Hutu and Tutsi tribes gets all the attention. Fewer than one per cent of Rwanda’s population are from Batwa, and their influence is minimal.  So, in development terms, are their living conditions.

The Twa have become less than second-class citizens in their own countries. They lack marketable skills, no longer have access to their traditional forest economy, nor to most public services. Education, healthcare, land ownership, and equal treatment by the justice system are all less accessible to the Twa than to the general population. While other citizens are issued birth certificates and identity cards free of charge, the Twa must undergo an involved bureaucratic process because the government does not consider them as a sector of the general population that should automatically receive rights. Without these identity cards, it’s difficult to enroll in schools and receive government-funded health care, which are otherwise guaranteed to some other vulnerable people in the country. Without the availability of traditional or state resources, the Twa have become the most exposed, and the most easily exploited, population since the conflicts that began in the 1990s.

Today the Twa population is rapidly decreasing. Since the 1960s, international conservation groups have joined with national governments to forcibly expel them from newly declared game parks and forest preserves. The Twa have been evicted from their homelands and offered no compensation. Living under horrible conditions, they are marginalized and pushed to the fringes of local communities. 

It’s one such compound – too small to even be considered a village – to which I returned to visit the Twa who had welcomed me so joyously the last time I was in Rwanda.

Following Protocol

There’s a strict hierarchy among the Twa, and each group has an elected leader. 
It was important that we first see her to let her know that we were coming, and to find out what they needed me to bring to them.  We found her in the small, dusty town nearest to their compound where she was in a rustic sewing school, learning how to sew on ancient treadle machines at the age of 46 in an effort to make some money for her people.  She remembered me, greeted me warmly, but then became serious when asked what the needs of her people were.  “We have so many needs,” she said, looking off toward the Twa compound.  “It is difficult to know where to begin.  But it would be good to have some sugar, and maybe some supplies for the children who are in school.”  We said that we were going to go up to the compound for a brief visit and would come back soon to bring what she had asked for.

Greeting the Twa 

We drove very slowly down a terribly rutted road, and parked at the bottom of the hill leading up to the compound, not wanting to risk ripping something from the undercarriage.  I was glad to have Pauline’s mother along as she’s the only person who walks more slowly than I do!  The word had already spread that we were coming, and many of the children had run down the hill to greet us. 

We only stayed a short time during this first visit.  More significant time and connections came during the second visit, which I’d hoped would be later that day but which didn’t happen for two days. 

 

 

 

Next Up:

A long trip to Gisenyi, news of what’s happening in the Congo, and an even longer drive back.

 

 

 

 

Getting Better

For the first time in my many years of coming to Africa, I've gotten sick and have started Cipro, which my doctor insists I take along with me for just such occasions.  This is why I haven't blogged for a couple of days -- I've been simply too tired to take the 3 - 5 hours at night it takes to upload.  But don't worry!  It's not malaria -- no chills.  Just flu-type symptoms. 

After 16 hours of sleep, I'm up again, showered and breakfasted.  The update is that I'm still a bit feverish, achey in my joints, dizzy and have some blurred vision, but none of which is nearly bad enough not to work.  I promise to take it easy today, to eat at regular times (which will be easy since Celestin gets hungry when I do!), to take my meds regularly, and to stop when I can't go any further.  This is just a little bump in the road, not an "Icarus flying too close to the sun and having his feathers melt off and then dropping into a huge vat of cow poop while wearing his best outfit" sort of catastrophe.  I can't think of anything worse than lying abed all day, wishing I was out there doing what I want to do.  I did take the giant step of wearing a Rwandan wrap skirt today -- the only fresh thing I have left to wear -- which makes me feel like a million bucks. 

I'll blog later...I promise.  By the way, my second visit with the Twa was EXTRAORDINARY and I'll fill you all in later with details. Here are some photos of the Twa to whet your appetite!

The Best Laid Plans

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain;

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men

Gang aft agley,

An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

                                                    Robert Burns

                                                    “To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough”

Whenever I try to actually plan to do something in Rwanda, I am taken back to this Burns poem,  once memorized in a high school English class.  Translation: better not to plan and just go with the flow.  “If you want to make God laugh,” someone once told me, “make plans.”  And, “TIA,” I am frequently reminded.  “This is Africa!”

 So it was yesterday when my plan was to write all day, summarizing for myself what we had done during the past several days, download my photos to this computer, upload several posts to the blog, and then head out to Pauline’s and Baraka’s parents’ house for dinner.  I had a good start, spending 5 hours at a table on the terrace of the Internet café attached to Le Printemps, and had just ordered something for lunch when Celestin showed up, frantic, 3 hours earlier than arranged.

 “We must go now!” he exclaimed excitedly.  “It is the wedding!”

“Wedding?  What wedding?” I asked.

 Whereupon my query was followed by a convoluted explanation, in a combination of Kinyarwandan, French and some English, none of which I speak fluently anymore or ever, that I could hardly even begin to understand.  But since going with the flow seems to be the thing to do here, I rushed back to my room to drop off the computer, wolfed down the lunch, and we sped off into Kigali traffic in which everybody always seems to be rushing to something. 

The details emerged eventually: Pauline (my Rwandan friend/sister who now lives in Louisville) but was translating here for me during this trip) was to have spent the entire day getting her hair braided – a $25 cost here, $250 at home.  However, her mother reminded her that her cousin was getting married yesterday, the same day as her hair appointment.  And since everyone knew Pauline was in town, it would bring so much shame on the family for her not to attend.  Since Pauline’s luggage had still not arrived, she donned one of her mother’s  traditional outfits and off they went to the first part of the wedding: the traditional Rwandan ceremony. 

Once there, they either realized how wonderful it would be for me to experience such an event, or I was summoned primarily to take pictures since “you have such a good camera.” In any case, they began calling frantically to have me come – an uninvited guest, as it turns out, in cropped pants and a tank top although, luckily, that didn't seem to matter to anyone.

Once at the wedding, I was pushed forward to take photos, along with the hired photographers and videographers.  When they started taking pictures of me taking pictures, I was startled, jumped back, and the whole assembled group peeled in laughter.  (I bet there will be as many photos of the “muzungu” (white person) in their wedding album as there are of the bridal party.)  At some point, take-out aluminum containers of food  were passed out to the guests in their chairs, along with Fanta, the favorite drink here, and people ate heartily.  After a procession     

into the garden house for a group photo, which I was also encouraged to take, we left for the other ceremony: the church service.

Along the way, we passed a paved road where all traffic was stopped.  I was told that the flashing cars were preceding President Kagame’s car, which he was driving himself.  (It reminded me of a time when my children were little and cars were stopped on the expressway in Kentucky for miles in both directions because the Queen of England was on her way to the Kentucky Derby.  Everytime Chloe saw a traffic jam after that she would posit, "It must be the Queen.") I reached down for my camera to get a picture.  It's a good thing my camera strap was tangled because it gave Pauline time to smack it out of my hands.  “Oh, no!  NO ONE takes a photo of the President!  They will KILL you!!!”  In the States, if Obama passes by, everyone has at least a camera phone up in the air to get a photo.  But here, no one other than official photographers gets to photograph the President.  “In Rwanda, the President is like a god.”  Which explains a lot.

So on we went after the motorcade passed.

The couple is Catholic, so we joined their wedding guests – along with the wedding guests of the four other couples being married at the same time – at a large Catholic church. 
The wedding pairs had all changed into Western garb – suits for the men and white wedding gowns and veils for the women.  (Our couple was quite late and arrived when the ceremony was half over, ostensibly because the bride wanted to change her hair along with her dress.)  This was a high mass,
all in Kinyarwandan, with choir, music, communion, saying of vows (which each bride and groom read from a prepared card held up to them by an acolyte), and exchange of rings. 
 All the while, the bridal couples remained stony-faced without looking at each other, holding hands, or acknowledging each other in any way.  It looked to me they were scared out of their wits, but this might have just been part of the tradition.

The ceremony ended in a vague sort of way, with no one (including the couples) knowing exactly what to do, so we all drifted off into the pouring rain, some to the reception – the third part of the wedding – and some to places other than the reception, feeling that they’d paid enough of their respects and being too hungry to wait hours for the food to show up at the reception site while everyone talked talked talked and danced danced danced.  That would be us. 

Pauline’s luggage was arriving at the airport about 2 hours from then, and rather than go all the way back to their home in another province, I treated them to a pre-luggage-pick-up dinner at a buffet restaurant – Karibu – which means “welcome” in Kiswahili.  The Rwandan equivalent of spaghetti Bolognese was on the buffet – the same exact thing I’d wolfed down at lunch – but I piled some on my plate anyway.  Back at the table, I made my second near-mistake of the day.  There was a container of what looked to me all the world like grated parmesan cheese next to my plate.  I dipped a spoon into it, hauled out a large amount, and was about to sprinkle it on my spaghetti when Celestin looked over curiously and said, “Why are you putting milk on your food?”  AACK!  It was powdered milk!  Eeeuuw.  Now when we’re together and I put that in my coffee or tea, he says, “Look!  Nyirurukundo (my Rwandan name) is putting cheese in her tea!!”

Finally back to the room at around 8 or 9 where I finished writing and uploading yesterday’s blog entry.  A long day, but rich with tradition, potential gaffes, and time with loving friends.  And pictures from my “good camera.”

 

 

Symposium Planning with the Interfaith Group

 

Opening Our Ears and Hearts

It's easy to forget sometimes that everyone has a story to tell if we would only take the time to listen. We’re so accustomed to hearing the stories of people in the media that we sometimes lose track of the fact that the random stranger on the street – no matter where we are – also has a fascinating story about where they came from and how they got to be where they are.  The sheer variety of paths taken in this world, from subsistence farmers to CEOs to homeless people to world travelers, is indicative of how much we can learn from each individual. Sometimes the shy, quiet person at work, like the chambermaid, Flora,  here at Le Printemps, has the most amazing life story and the biggest dreams.

Some people travel a path of wealth and privilege, while others struggle with only themselves to rely on, and both have great stories to tell. Each person learns lessons, makes choices, and develops a unique perspective – what I call the equity perspective – that only they can claim and share. Even two people who have had very similar lives will have slightly different experiences, leading them to a different point of view, as we saw in our early exercises here while building this interfaith group in Rwanda.  When we take the time to ask questions and listen, we find that every person has a fascinating story to tell and an utterly unique perspective from which to tell it, even if they seem to be “the same” on the surface.

I’ve had the extraordinary opportunity to approach the world not as an outsider looking in, but in an intense, questioning way inside various borders and homes. Boredom is never an option.  When we retain the spark of curiosity and the warmth required to open someone up, while opening up ourselves, we always have in front of us the makings of a great story.  All we have to do is ask.

 Opening Question

Bearing this in mind, I almost always open training sessions with at least one probing question.  This time, I was meeting with the Executive Committee of the Center for Interfaith Relations in Rwanda (CIRR – the name they chose in 2008 for their group) and they supplied the question for me: “What does ‘interfaith’ mean to you?”  Their answers, all different, were interesting:

  Donatira: We are the sheep and the shepherds, as in Psalm 23.   We all have the same God, but there is diversity from one Creator and from Adam and Eve.  I wonder why we have conflicts since we are all from the same root.

 

 

Cecile: A beauty of the gathering from different denominations.  It is powerful – people seeking peace and reconciliation, seeking answers for conflict, together.  It is unity.

 

Zainabo: Interfaith is a way that different ideas and styles come together for solutions to problems.

 

 

Marie Chantal: What I want to add is love.  We have a joy, and from love there is a beautiful transformation toward peace and reconciliation.

 

 

 

Bucura: I separate “inter” from “faith.”  They are two words.  To put together many different faiths so they can connect and work together, like we are.  Even in my own family we have different faiths, but we live peacefully together.  And even our families will be affected by this work. 

 

 

 Therez: We have different beliefs and faiths with one goal.  Even those who are not the same faith can and will reach that goal, and it is why we meet: to form an association for peace and reconciliation.

 

 

 

 

Tacien: Our faiths are like the foundation where we meet: different people with the same goal – living and seeking peace.

 

 

 

Alexi:  Interfaith helps each one to accept each other, his or her neighbor, without interrupting how they want to live with his or her God.

 

 

Jan: Interfaith is the first step.  If you can find friends among people who are different from you, you can create peace anywhere.  You all are examples of this for your entire community.

 

 

 

I brought small gifts for each of the members of the Executive Committee and I handed them out, letting them choose their own from the stack.  Chocolate was the hands down favorite, followed by the tea collections.  (One would have thought that I would have learned by now to bring only chocolates, but I knew there were some diabetics in the group and I wanted to accommodate them.  Interestingly, they were among the chocolate-pickers, leaving the tea to those who could tolerate the chocolate!)  Rwandans are thrilled to receive gifts of any kind and while they profess that my coming home to train them is the gift, it never hurts to bring something they can eat or at least hold in their hands.  After we divied up the boxes, they insisted on a group photo with their presents.

Bucura set the agenda,  following what we had discussed at our meeting the previous day:

• Talk about the concept of the proposed conference
• Set the dates
• Name it
• Determine the beginning of an agenda for the conference based on their needs
• Brainstorm a list of possible workshops and plenary speakers
• Brainstorm a list of hotels to check out
• Create a list of priorities
• Begin to determine the budget and cost for participants
• Designate a single person who will be conference coordinator in Rwanda with whom I can communicate and who will then pass along the information on a regular basis with other committee members (Cecile Niramana)

Clearly this was a full agenda, but this group had come to work and we got right down to it.

Concept, Name, Dates

This gathering of Rwandans and Americans in Kigali, Rwanda has as its goals:

• To bring to Rwanda one American mentor for each of the 20+ members of the Center for Interfaith Relations in Rwanda (CIRR) who have participated in my organizational, strategic planning and fundraising  trainings;
• This conference would strive to meet the training needs of both constituencies: the Rwandans and the Americans;
• At the end of the conference (and connection with each member of CIRR) there will be 20+ individuals and congregations supporting CIRR’s interfaith work in Rwanda;
• These will become longstanding and growing partnerships.

This concept was enthusiastically accepted by the group, having already heard about it from me when I was last here in 2009 to engage them in strategic planning.

After a short debate about names, there was quick consensus on what they want to call it:

The International Interfaith Symposium in Rwanda, 2011

This indicates that there will be a formal meeting for the discussion of various subjects, and could be followed with a published collection of the results.  Just as theirs is the first interfaith organization in Rwanda, this would be the first such symposium in their country, and they expected both their government and their press would well support it.

Although I cautioned that the magnitude of this project could take a while to put together, they opted for the dates of November 9^th – 16^th for the symposium and other visits, just 8 months from when I return to the States!  (I foresee many late nights of upcoming work for me, but well worth the effort.) The Americans would, therefore, fly into Kigali on November 7^th or 8^th in order to rest before the opening ceremonies, attend and participate in the symposium for four days, spend the next 4 days seeing the mountain gorillas (an extraordinary experience http://www.rwandatourism.com/primate.htm and other natural wonders of Rwanda) and then leave Kigali on the 17^th, well in advance of what one of my friends calls the beginning of the Holiday Trifecta – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.  In addition, Americans would have the opportunity to book side trips to other parts of Africa both before and after the symposium week through our designated travel agent in Louisville, All About Travel. 

 

So this is the first notice to everyone who is reading this blog and beyond: if you are interested in meeting real people who need your assistance in capacity building in a war-torn and traumatized country, and becoming a close friend to at least one of them as a mentor rather than just sending a check to unknown people through a large organization, consider signing up for this trip!

It will change your life!

Of course, details on itinerary and costs will be forthcoming as we continue to plan this event, but if you have some interest, please let me know early at jarnow@iglou.com.  There will only be room for 23 people from the United States.

 Opening Day of the Symposium

The Rwandans will be the primary planners of the opening and closing ceremonies – they’re really good at ceremonies!  We can expect choirs, dancers, visits from high government officials, and other surprises.

 We got right down to working on the structure of the symposium, and had I not known these people, I would have been astonished how eager and single-minded they were.  I’ve worked with many groups in training and planning, and most of my other groups (especially Americans!) would have still been stuck on naming the event.  But once they achieved consensus on one aspect of the symposium, they moved right along as a coherent group to the next task.

 The opening ceremony on the first day will be followed by the first plenary to include three separate speakers who will set the context for this symposium by delivering fairly brief talks on:

• The history of Rwanda and its core values;
• The Genocide;
• The current situation of reconciliation.

Lunch will follow this plenary, and then the entire group – Americans and Rwandans together – will head to the Genocide Memorial Museum where we will have a private tour. The guides at the museum are all genocide orphans themselves, I am told. 

The guides will take us inside, through exhibitions about the Belgian colonization and into rooms that illustrate the killings with videotaped testimony about torture and photos of children with their heads split open, past lighted display boxes, one containing neat piles of femurs; another, variously sized skulls with machete cuts; and a third, empty clothing. Gingham dresses and yellow work shirts float, fragile and unreal as dolls' clothes, with small tears and brown stains that would seem innocuous in another context.  We’ll come to a room with 14 windows, each displaying an enlarged photograph of a dead child, beneath which is a plaque with a short biography. There is Fabrice Cyemezo (Age: 15 months. Favorite food: Rice with milk. Favorite animal: Cat. Enjoyed: Making gestures. Favorite word: Auntie. Killed at: Muhororo Church.). And there is Francine Murengezi Ingabire (Age: 12. Favorite sport: Swimming. Favorite food: Eggs and chips. Favorite drinks: Milk and Fanta. Best friend: Her elder sister Claudette. Cause of death: Hacked by machete.). Then we’ll walk outside, passing an abstract sculpture of a child with the inscription “I did not make myself an orphan.”

After this visit, it’s likely that everyone will return to the hotel for rest and reflection.  Speaking from personal experience, we’ll need it after the visit to this memorial museum.

Workshops, Plenaries and other Symposium Activities

We started brainstorming workshops, some of which they would want to see and some of which they thought would be useful for their American mentors, and over our two days of meetings, this is our beginning list:

• Reintegration post-genocide – the gacaca restorative justice system (primarily for Americans)
• Gender-based violence – Rwanda and the US cases (for both)
• Interfaith children’s rights (for both)
• Personal and group technology (for Rwandans – they really need some help with this)
• Developing a business plan (for Rwandans)
• My new peace curriculum with copies for everyone (for both)
• Workshop based on Terry Taylor’s book, A Spiritality for Brokenness (for both)
• Additional peace education and conflict resolution training (for Rwandans)
• Concurrent workshops for Rwandan youth

We just had a few moments to talk about other plenary sessions, but one they suggested was the history of the interfaith movement in the United States.  We’ve talked about that in some detail during the years I’ve been working with them, but they’d like to hear about it all at once so they might be able to envision a trajectory for their own work within Rwanda.  More work will be done in both countries to come up with a list of interesting and informative trainings and workshops so we can compete the agenda for the symposium.

Included will be an interfaith forum one afternoon – conversation café style – similar to the very successful Faith Leaders’ Forum we did in Louisville some years ago.  This will give everyone an opportunity to meet and talk with all participants at the symposium, Rwandans and Americans alike.

One of the days will be a Sunday, during which each Rwandan will take their American mentor to their house of worship and then back to their home for lunch/dinner.  They were very enthusiastic about having this opportunity to show the Americans how they live and to offer personal hospitality in their own homes.  (We’ll be sure to provide interpreters and transportation where needed.)  You’ll have an opportunity to meet not only their immediate families, but also their extended families and their neighbors, as well!  This is the Rwandan way when they have special guests visit their homes.

Telling Their Stories and Making the Matches

At the top of this post I talked about the fact that everyone has an interesting life story.  As you can imagine, Rwandans are not exempt from this phenomenon.  On the second day of our meeting, each member of the Executive Committee wrote his or her answers to these questions (which will be followed shortly by answers from the entire CIRR group): 

• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Telephone number
• E-mail address
• Faith tradition
• Family situation
• Job
• Personal Genocide story (brief)

As we get applications from Americans to attend this symposium, I’ll match them up with their Rwandan mentees and will send each Rwandan’s biography and photo way in advance of the trip so two-way communication can begin long before departure. 

I’ve now got a lot of work to do.  We made our list of priorities as one of the last tasks of our two days and it’s massive.  But it’ll get done, and we’ll hopefully further build their capacity for doing what they tell me is the most important work in Rwanda – peace and reconciliation.

That’s what we did in two days’ time.  Amazing, complicated decisions made by a cohesive group of dedicated people.  I never fail to be amazed by their joy (which you can see in these post-meeting photos), their perseverance and their willingness to share with me. 

Next: A trip to the market, attendance at a traditional Rwandan wedding, and Information about the coming days!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Again in Rwanda

Back to My Home in Africa

Pictures of snow?  In a blog about Rwanda??  Yes, and mandatory for any trip that begins in Chicago during the snowmageddon blizzard of 2011!  I wanted to be in the city from which my flight for Rwanda would leave instead of being held back in Louisville where flights to Chicago were being cancelled, so I called off a planned trip to New York prior to leaving for Rwanda and instead left early for Chicago.  I survived the snowstorm and its aftermath handily thanks to special friends there. And despite three trips from the gate to the runway only to be returned for de-icing three separate times due to a second, unexpected snow storm, a mad dash in Amsterdam to catch my connecting flight to Kigali that resulted in delayed luggage, and a longer than expected layover in Entebbe, I finally arrived to the shouts, hugs and flowers from some of my Rwandan “family” – Bucura, Therez, Zainabo, and my “son,” Celestin.

Happy to be back in my African home, I checked into the same room I always have at Le Printemps,  a somewhat out of the way spot in Kigali, got some sleep, and hit the ground running the next morning.

 

A Review of the Rwandan Issues

More than a decade and a half has passed since the Rwandan genocide, in which a militant faction of the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, eliminated 85 percent of the minority Tutsis, once favored by the Belgian colonialists. Despite the passage of time, the fairy-tale horror of its images endures: limbless corpses dissolving into bones, piled up in streets and fields and churches, and rivers thick with bodies. It was the fastest rate of genocide in recorded history – more than 800,000 people hacked to death by machetes in 100 days. Having pledged "Never again" after the Holocaust, the West failed to intervene in Rwanda – a decision President Clinton now refers to as one of the greatest mistakes of his presidency.

On a continent destroyed by cycles of ethnic violence, Rwanda seems in many ways a model of recovery and change. While the genocide has left catastrophic problems – more than 250,000 rape victims, many of them infected with HIV; 95,000 children orphaned – and although ethnic tensions persist, efforts at rebuilding this engaging society seem strikingly successful. The old Belgian system of ethnic identity papers has been abolished, and many Tutsi employers hire Hutus – and vice versa. The resounding refrain is, "We are all Rwandans now."  Walking around with $2,000 in cash (credit cards and travelers' checks are rarely accepted) in the capital, Kigali, at 2 a.m. feels safer than it would in Manhattan.  Machetes are once again used as farming tools, although there is a conspicuous re-emergence of many soldiers on the streets at night, heavily armed.  Several Rwandan friends have told me this phenomenon says to its citizens that there is something imminent the government fears – either from insurgent rebel forces coming from outside the country, or a coup d’état from within.  But the soldiers are all they see.  No one speaks officially about anything other than “security.”

Rwanda can be considered, once again, a tourist destination – with market stalls stocked with bright batik fabrics; tracking giraffes, elephants, and baboons in Akagera National Park; boating on Lake Kivu, from whose shores rise the volcanoes where the gorillas live.  Yet scattered throughout the country are places that call for deeper reflection: 200 genocide sites, a number of which have become important spots of pilgrimage and memorial, such as churches whose floors are still littered with the skulls, bones, shoes, clothes, and prayer books of  Tutsis who took refuge there.

Rwanda is the size of Vermont, with something of its lush, lake-dotted look. In French it is known as pays des mille collines—the country of a thousand hills. Every inch of those soft slopes is cultivated with bananas, corn, coffee, and tea; nearly all of its 8.4 million inhabitants work and live at subsistence level.  In a country where most people earn less than a dollar a day, a tip can, somewhat embarrassingly, cause someone to kiss your hand. Rwanda is devoutly evangelical Christian (94 percent), although there are other faith traditions represented within its borders including Catholics, Quakers and Muslims.

Working Again with Rwanda’s Interfaith Community

It’s been more than 3 years ago since this group of about 20+ Rwandans came together for my organizational training and formed the first successful, working interfaith organization in Rwanda.  In the interim, they’ve held an interfaith children’s festival, allowing kids of all faith traditions to meet and play with one another, an event that would have never have been possible prior to the establishment of this group.  We’ve met together to focus next on their strategic planning, and since then they’ve worked hard to learn about each other’s faith traditions and have begun to concentrate together on other projects as well, all geared toward peace and reconciliation in this traumatized country. 

I designed this program as a three- to five-year undertaking. My first visit in 2008 was to organize these grass-roots multi-faith volunteers, at their request, into a cohesive, well-bonded interfaith organization.  My second visit to Rwanda focused on strategic planning and fundraising, while I did Year One in the Congo, which established that country’s first interfaith organization.  This third visit to Rwanda is to plan for a much larger, more ambitious undertaking: a  connection between each of these individuals with an American mentor, all of whom will come back with me in November 2011 for an international interfaith congress held in Kigali.  In this way, the Rwandan interfaith group will have not   just me, but 20+ American individuals and congregations supporting their interfaith work here.  I’ll then be able to do Year Two in the Congo, and I’ve been asked to start this process anew in Burundi, one of the world's poorest nations, which is emerging from a 12-year, armed conflict and ethnic-based civil war.  As part of these next trainings, some of the Rwandan interfaith group will accompany me to Burundi and the Congo to conduct part of the training, giving them the experience to help people in other provinces form their own interfaith coalitions, working together toward peace and reconciliation in communities that are desperate for such healing.

More Coming Tomorrow

I now sit in my room at Le Printemps, breathing in the scent of the roses and tuberoses that were presented to me at the airport, grateful for the fan blowing away the bugs and cooling off the room to a sleepable temperature after two days of working intensely with the Executive Committee of the Rwandan interfaith group.  We’re getting close to consensus on some critical details for this conference, all of which I’ll describe in tomorrow’s post.