Last Night

Tonight is my last night in Rwanda. It's hard to know what to say about this.

The last few days in Kibuye have been beautiful. We were staying in a hotel on the lake, surrounded by hills and trees and flowers. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. We usually had programming all morning and then free afternoons, most of which I spent sitting by the lake reading. I thought about exploring more, but the fact is, I was on vacation, and I didn't want to explore, I wanted to read a book.

We eventually made it back to Kigali this afternoon. I say eventually because our bus was an hour late, and then we got a flat tire half way through the drive, which set us back almost another hour. But we finally made it, just in time to go to the African Bagel Company for one last bagel with cream cheese. I bought another one to take with me on the plane tomorrow too, because the food on Ethiopian Airlines makes high school cafeteria food seem wonderful.

Tonight was our last meal together as a group. We went to Lalibella, an Ethiopian restaurant we went to at the beginning of the program, the night before we split up to go to our homestays. It seems fitting that we ate there before we split up for the first time, and we ate there before we split up for the last time. Needless to say, I cried a little at dinner, and I wasn't the only one.

Though the program doesn't end until tomorrow, we said our first goodbyes yesterday. My friend Alyssa had to fly out this morning so that she can start work on Monday. The next will be Julie, who's leaving at 2am. I told her that she has to come into my room and hug me before she leaves. Jes is leaving at 9 tomorrow morning, and then I'm next, leaving for the airport at 2. Most people are flying out in the evening, and I'm glad I don't have to be here all day tomorrow to watch everyone else leave.

I don't really know what else to say at this point. It's been quite an adventure. I would like to thank my readers for keeping up with my stories. I was surprised when I noticed earlier that this blog has only 41 posts and over 1000 views. Thanks for the love!

While this will certainly be my final post from Rwanda, I don't think it will be the last. I'm sure I will have some really funny/interesting/awkward stories for you of travel, reverse culture shock, and reintegrating into American life, so it is not quite goodbye yet my dear readers!

Good Day

Today was a really good day. After finishing it last week, I turned in my printed, bound, and beautiful ISP, trying not to think about the pen mark correcting the typo on my title page, turned 2010 into 2012. The rest of it's good, even if the title page isn't.

For the last two days, we've been presenting our research. I went today, second to last, which was unfortunate because I had about nine presentations before me to sit and be nervous. It really wouldn't have been a very big deal if our director hadn't invited all our lecturers and a few other government officials to the presentations. That was scary. Each of our presentations was followed by a time for questions and comments, and a few of those guys were really critical of people's research, though usually their degree of criticism was proportional to how critical the research was of the government. My presentation, on the other hand, was all about how Gacaca is an incredibly unique system and that those who say it doesn't provide a fair trial first need to step back and understand that it's entirely different from the typical Western court system, so, naturally, they loved it. I got some really glowing comments, including from the man I interviewed at the National Service of Gacaca Courts. I'm thinking about doing something similar for my senior thesis.

So that was a really great way to end all of my work for the semester! I am done! No more work! After the end of the presentations I watched a movie with my friend, took a nap, and I've been reading The Help ever since. My friend Jes let me have it after she finished it, and it is a great book. And, later tonight, we're going to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! It has been a really good day. Even though I've had plenty of free time over the last semester, it's different when I don't have any work I could/should be doing.

I should have known it was going to be a great day when I actually had a warm shower this morning. It's been a while.

Tomorrow we are leaving to go to Kibuye for the rest of the week. It's about 2-3 hours from here, on Lake Kivu I think. We're just going to be staying in a hotel, having ample amounts of free time and doing some end-of-program stuff. We'll head back to Kigali on Saturday, and then Sunday I get on a plane to go home! I am so excited! The first thing I'm going to do when I get home is take a hot shower, then do my laundry in a washing machine. I'm hoping some of my stretched-out shirts will regain their shape. Cross your fingers.

I'm scheduled to land in D.C. around 8:30 Monday morning, and then I have a four hour layover before my flight to Atlanta. While I am probably going to be really overwhelmed by the airport busy-ness, I am very much looking forward to that layover. I'm going to get some real coffee, and hopefully a decent breakfast after the gross airplane food, and then I'm going to hunker down and use the free wifi to catch up on my favorite tv shows without having to let each episode load for two hours. I've been trying to watch the same episode of Castle since Saturday. And then it gets even better when Julie picks me up from the airport- with a pink-sprinkled donut! I'm pumped. And then Mom is cooked a really great dinner, and Tuesday Julie and I have a whole fun spa day planned so I can groom myself to American standards again, then Mom is taking Wednesday off work so we can celebrate Mother's Day. So many things to be excited about! I'm going to be in Norcross for about two weeks before heading up to Wilson to work for the summer. I'm glad I go to a school where getting a summer job is so easy, and I'm looking forward to getting to spend my summer with my friends in such a beautiful place.

So, as you can see, I have a lot to look forward to in the next few weeks. Our time in Kibuye is going to be nice and relaxing, but I'm more excited about what comes after it.

Victory!

I just finished my ISP!! 28 pages on how different perspectives on justice and a fair trial fuel the debate on the fairness of the Gacaca courts! I am free! At least until I present it on Tuesday. You know what this means? You'll actually get a decent blog post tomorrow! And by tomorrow I mean later today, because it's after midnight here, and I've been working almost nonstop since 10am. Yikes!
Goodnight friends!

So, Megan, what have you been up to these days?

That's such a good question. My life has not been especially eventful for the past week or so. The most dramatic event we've had here in the house since the late-night hospital trip was last Monday, when we finally got sick of our disgusting, clogged kitchen sink and figured out how to disassemble the pipes beneath our sink so we could empty all the food out of it. Yes, that's an important life skill, but it was also gross. Other than that my days have been mostly quiet, spent in the house doing secondary source research for my paper. I spent most of last week reading multiple Rwandan laws and international human rights treaties, and occasionally going out to lunch and doing laundry. About a month or so ago someone in our group made an amazing discovery: a bagel shop in Kigali! It's owned by a woman from Boston, and they have not only bagels, cream cheese (!), and a variety of toppings for the bagels, but also doughnuts and sometimes even cookies! The first time I went they were just taking a batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. The African Bagel Company is definitely one of my favorite places to eat here, and all of use have to exercise a good bit of self-control to keep from going there every other day.

When we're not eating fantastic bagels, we usually just go up to the market and buy food to cook for dinner. Veggie stir-fry happens a lot, as does pasta or eggs on chapati (or bagels). I'm realizing here that I really like to cook, and I'm looking forward to going home and having more ingredients at my disposal, as well as more utensils, an oven, and a stove that isn't on the floor. Last night my friend and I sauteed green beans, bell peppers, broccoli, and eggplant in a tomato sauce, but no, we don't cook fantastic fresh food every night. Tonight I was feeling lazy, so dinner consisted of some passion fruit, yogurt, and peanuts from the store up the street. That store also happens to sell Pringles, to which everyone in the house is now addicted. Funny thing is, I haven't eaten Pringles since I was in elementary school, but here I just get so excited about Western food that I would eat a can a day if I let myself. Plus it's just impossible to stop eating Pringles, and one can is not that big.

We turn in our research papers next Friday, and I'm trying not to stress about it even though I know I'm in an ok place. My only major obstacle at this point is that I haven't been able to contact anyone from one of the NGOs I need to speak with; the number on their website isn't correct, no one answers my emails, and addresses aren't really a thing in Rwanda so I have no idea how to find their office. I just sent an email to their international headquarters in Belgium hoping they can give me a working phone number. Other than that, I had my first interview today, which went really well, and I'm working on setting up another interview with my friend's host mom. I'm hoping to finish writing everything except the results section of my paper this week, so that all I have to do next week is that final section and maybe some interviews. As usual, when I have work to do I have a hard time taking time out to relax, but my goal for tonight is to chill out and read a book. SIT's small library contained multiple books from my Amazon wishlist, one of which I am going to go force myself to read now rather than doing anything productive, because relaxing while I'm working on a big paper is ok!

Have a good day folks!

So, Megan, what have you been up to these days?

That's such a good question. My life has not been especially eventful for the past week or so. The most dramatic event we've had here in the house since the late-night hospital trip was last Monday, when we finally got sick of our disgusting, clogged kitchen sink and figured out how to disassemble the pipes beneath our sink so we could empty all the food out of it. Yes, that's an important life skill, but it was also gross. Other than that my days have been mostly quiet, spent in the house doing secondary source research for my paper. I spent most of last week reading multiple Rwandan laws and international human rights treaties, and occasionally going out to lunch and doing laundry. About a month or so ago someone in our group made an amazing discovery: a bagel shop in Kigali! It's owned by a woman from Boston, and they have not only bagels, cream cheese (!), and a variety of toppings for the bagels, but also doughnuts and sometimes even cookies! The first time I went they were just taking a batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. The African Bagel Company is definitely one of my favorite places to eat here, and all of use have to exercise a good bit of self-control to keep from going there every other day.

When we're not eating fantastic bagels, we usually just go up to the market and buy food to cook for dinner. Veggie stir-fry happens a lot, as does pasta or eggs on chapati (or bagels). I'm realizing here that I really like to cook, and I'm looking forward to going home and having more ingredients at my disposal, as well as more utensils, an oven, and a stove that isn't on the floor. Last night my friend and I sauteed green beans, bell peppers, broccoli, and eggplant in a tomato sauce, but no, we don't cook fantastic fresh food every night. Tonight I was feeling lazy, so dinner consisted of some passion fruit, yogurt, and peanuts from the store up the street. That store also happens to sell Pringles, to which everyone in the house is now addicted. Funny thing is, I haven't eaten Pringles since I was in elementary school, but here I just get so excited about Western food that I would eat a can a day if I let myself. Plus it's just impossible to stop eating Pringles, and one can is not that big.

We turn in our research papers next Friday, and I'm trying not to stress about it even though I know I'm in an ok place. My only major obstacle at this point is that I haven't been able to contact anyone from one of the NGOs I need to speak with; the number on their website isn't correct, no one answers my emails, and addresses aren't really a thing in Rwanda so I have no idea how to find their office. I just sent an email to their international headquarters in Belgium hoping they can give me a working phone number. Other than that, I had my first interview today, which went really well, and I'm working on setting up another interview with my friend's host mom. I'm hoping to finish writing everything except the results section of my paper this week, so that all I have to do next week is that final section and maybe some interviews. As usual, when I have work to do I have a hard time taking time out to relax, but my goal for tonight is to chill out and read a book. SIT's small library contained multiple books from my Amazon wishlist, one of which I am going to go force myself to read now rather than doing anything productive, because relaxing while I'm working on a big paper is ok!

Have a good day folks!

Adventures in House #122

We've had some good ones and some bad ones. For the sake of having a good ending, I'll start with the bad one.

On Saturday, Brianna and Alyssa got really, really sick. We've seen a fair amount of vomiting in this group, so at first no one, including them, thought it was anything more than the usual contentious food. Eight hours later, things were looking different. It was 2 in the morning, and they were both throwing up water. They hadn't been able to keep any fluids down for hours, and whenever Brianna drank water she was running to the bathroom ten minutes later. I share a room with her, which is why I was awake at 2am suggesting pepto and cipro (a strong antibiotic), neither of which she was able to keep down. They were growing more and more dehydrated, with no sign of improvement, which is when Brianna decided that they needed to go to the hospital. Whenever anyone in our group goes to the hospital we're supposed to call someone from SIT to meet us there to assist with translation etc.. We've done that before, no big deal, but never at 2 in the morning. I took one for the team can called Apollo. I thought he sounded oddly awake considering the late hour, and I learned later that he had in fact not been asleep but had just gotten back from the bar. I'm glad I decided to call him then, because I would've felt bad about waking anyone up that late. Apollo's car was in the shop, so we still had to deal with the issue of how to get them to the hospital. I had the number for a cab driver, but, predictably, he didn't answer. There's very little nightlife in Kigali, so there are very few cabs operating so late at night. During the day they're just driving around town, so Michael and I got dressed, grabbed our umbrellas, and went out into the rain to see if we could find one. No luck. After about 20 minutes of walking I called Apollo back and asked if it would be possible for him to come pick them up. I have no idea how he found a cab that late, but soon enough I was standing outside our gate to wave him down. We got the girls into the cab and Apollo went with them to the hospital. They came back late the next morning after being given four IV bags each and multiple packets of oral rehydration solution, with order to drink two bottles of it everyday. Alyssa is mostly fine now, but Brianna is definitely still working on the rehydration part. Despite drinking multiple bottles of water and rehydration solution, she just came into the living room and proudly announced that she just peed for the first time in days. My worst fear was that they had a virus that would rapidly spread through the house, but apparently it was an intestinal infection, but we have no idea how they got it. It's odd, because they hadn't had anything to eat or drink that someone else in the house hadn't consumed. Anyway, they are going to be fine, and, needless to say, Sunday was a very lazy day.

Here's a considerably more amusing story. Last week, I was sitting in the dining room working on my research when I heard Alyssa shout,"Our kitchen is flooding! Our kitchen is flooding!"
It was raining cats and dogs, really big cats and dogs. We had to yell a little to be heard in the house. I ran into the kitchen, and there was water flooding in from under the back door. Luckily for us, a squeegee is a staple feature of every Rwandan house, and I knew where ours was. I grabbed it from the porch and proceeded to push all the water back out the door, and we shoved a towel under the door for good measure. We also discovered a few roof leaks that day, one of which is over my bed. Not anymore though, my bed is now at an awkward angle and we can't open the door as far we used to.

So, there are our adventures. More to come soon!

Goodbye Homestay, Hello ISP

I moved out of my homestay last Saturday. We all knew it had been coming, and frankly, I was looking forward to it. My last week there overlapped with our last week of classes, meaning it also overlapped with two final essays and my final research proposal, all due the Friday before I moved out. Work I can handle easily, but it's hard to do that in a not-quite family setting, where I have to be home for dinner. All of my siblings were home on school holidays, and while they were very respectful of the fact that I had to work I felt bad for not hanging out with them more my last week there. I think the hardest part was that Eddy was bored because he was home all day everyday, and he recently discovered computer games, so he was continuously asking if I was done working yet or when I was going to take a break so he could use my computer. All in all, I was ready to move out and live with a bunch of American college students who could relate to the amount of work I had to do, but leaving was still harder than I thought. First of all, it seems that no one told my oldest sister, Julie, the 23 year old, who is, honestly, my favorite, that I was leaving, so when I asked her Friday night if she would be around when I left the next morning she was surprised and very, very sad. I agreed to go to church with my family Saturday morning, because we still had to get the keys to the house from our landlord and I had no idea how long that would take. Turns out we had the keys by 10am and I was stuck sitting through one of the 4 annual communion services, which wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't make an already 4 hour long church service an hour longer, when I was already anxious to get going. By the time we got home I was ready to run for it, and the only thing that convinced me to stay for lunch was the logical understanding that there was no food in the new house. That turned out to be a very good decision, for reasons other than the free food. Two of my siblings' cousins had joined us for lunch: Sharon, who was about 15, and Shakira, who looked to be around 8. Turns out they are really funny people, and their jokes definitely lightened my mood. After lunch I wanted to take some pictures with my family before I left, and they turned what I had intended to be just a few snapshots into a fully fledged photo shoot, complete with laughter and silly poses. It was a great way to end my homestay, even though it's not quite over. My family woke me up this morning calling to ask if I would go to church with them. I managed to get out of that, but I'm probably going to go visit tomorrow afternoon. My host mom also said that she wants us to meet in town at some point so we can have family portraits taken that they can put up in their house!

As wonderful and sweet as my host family is, I am much happier in the new house. It makes life so much simpler to be able to live with people my own age who live the same lifestyle I do and from whom I do not have to try to hide all of my weird American habits. There are 14 of us living in this house, so things are a little crazy. There are 6 bedrooms in the house, only three of which have two beds in them. In two of the other rooms we have king size beds, each of which has three people sleeping in it, and one has a double, which has two. I consider myself lucky to have my own bed. We are very much living the poor college student lifestyle here. That and we're only here for a month, so we're trying to avoid buying a lot of things we won't have very much time to use. Our kitchen consists of a sink, a shelf with a few dishes on it, the gas stove and the tank that fuels it. Picture a two-burner stove, only it sits on the floor instead of on top of the oven. There is no table our counter in there, so we sit on the floor while we cook. Fortunately, we do have a dining room with a nice table for the food preparation. Yes, I said food preparation. We are cooking actual meals in this house. We live about ten minutes from the large market that I wrote about a while ago, so we make trips there almost daily to buy fresh fruit and vegetables for dinner. My favorite meal so far has been the veggie stir fry. It's great having control over what I eat. I will never eat another green banana again. Aside from our sparse cooking facilities, we have two living rooms and four bathrooms, unfortunately still without hot water. This house may be awesome, but it's not that awesome. Living with my friends does not change the fact that cold showers still suck. 

In case you were wondering, ISP stands for Independent Study Project, which is what I'm doing with myself nowadays when I'm not cooking on the kitchen floor. We all have one month to research and produce a 20-40 page paper on the topic of our choice. I have chosen Rwanda's Gacaca courts (for a brief explanation of the Gacaca courts, read my post on post-genocide justice). There has been a lot of debate about whether or not they provide a fair trial, and I am researching how different perspectives on justice and ideas of what constitutes a fair trial have fueled this debate. I've spent most of the past week looking at secondary sources online, and I also plan on conducting interviews with people in the government and people at organizations that have criticized Gacaca to discover how they define justice and fairness. A few weeks ago a man from the National Service of Gacaca Courts came and gave us a lecture on Gacaca, and I'm attempting to get in touch with him to get some leads on who to interview, but so far he's been really hard to find. People here do not answer emails as promptly as in America, and he doesn't seem to answer his phone either, so we'll see what happens there. 

Anyway, this has been quite a long post, and I would like to begin cleaning the house now. As you can imagine, things get pretty gross with 14 college students living in one place. I promise another post soon on some house adventures!

Warthogs and monkeys and elephants, oh my!

We spent our last days in Uganda in a national park. We got there Saturday morning, and that afternoon we went out onto Lake Edward, and we saw so many animals! Hippos, crocodiles, water buffalo, and multiple kinds of birds. The next morning we got up way too early to go on a game drive, which turned out to be worth the 6am wakeup. Not only was the park beautiful, we saw warthogs, antelope, monkeys, baboons, and so many elephants! I got a lot of great pictures of elephants. No lions though. I was really hoping to see a lion, but oh well. There's still time right? Maybe I'll just walk out into the savannah with some cat food and see what happens. A steak would probably work better though.

A Sparknotes Version of Uganda's Conflict

Disclaimer: I only spent one week studying Uganda. I've spent more than 2 months in Rwanda and I'm still trying to figure out what's happening here, and Uganda is a much more complicated situation. That said, let me tell you what I know, because I'm sure you know little more about Uganda than I did going in.

While Rwanda only has 3 ethnic groups, the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa, Uganda has many. Like Rwanda, during colonialism Uganda was also subjected to a policy of divide-and-rule, though by the British and not the Belgians, which created a lot of the divisions that still cause problems today. Throughout all of Uganda's independent history, the president (which almost always gains power violently) has favored his own ethnic group and those of his supporters, developing his own home region while leaving others behind. The Acholi people are the primary occupants of Northern Uganda, which has been most affected by the conflict. Unfortunately for the Acholi, they fought for the previous president, President Okello, who was overthrown more than 20 years ago by the current president, Yoweri Museveni. There region has been neglected and impoverished, which is what led for Joseph Kony to start is rebellion. Kony is an Acholi, and not the first to raise a rebellion against Museveni, though he has undoubtedly become the most famous. Kony claims to be a prophet, saying that the Holy Spirit prompted him to begin is rebellion and advises him in its continuation. When he first began is rebellion almost two decades ago, Kony had the support of many Acholi, but he lost it when Museveni cracked down on the region. When his people stopped giving him supplies and even began to alert the army to his presense, he turned against them. He has since gained international notorietey, and the top spot on the wanted list of the International Criminal Court, for the way he has mutilated his own people. Women who raise the alarm of rebel presense have their lips cut off, men who attempt to fight have their arms cut off, and anyone who refuses to obey his commands have their ears cut off. He has also become infamous for his use of child soldiers; once he no longer had willing recruits, he took to raiding schools during the day and villages at night, kidnapping children and making them members of his army. This has created an interesting dynamic in post-conflict restoration in Northern Uganda, because the rebels who have caused so much hurt and elicited so much anger from the Acholi are also their own children, and they want them back.

At the height of Kony's rebellion, Museveni decided that the best way to weaken his opponent would be to rob him of the supplies and recruits he found in the villages. He responded by forcing all of the Acholi into camps, refusing to let them farm because the rebels might take the crops. This decimated the entire population, robbing them of their livelyhood and the space and resources to practice their culture. This did not stop Kony. In fact, concentrating all of the Acholi in the camps gave him a one-stop shop for all the recruits and supplies he could want. When we were in Uganda I often heard people voice the theory that Museveni did it deliberately to impoverish the Acholi. He has often seemed less than enthusiastic about ending the conflict, instead prefering to allow one of the groups who supports him the least to kill each other. In the 90s he even launched a major military offensive against the rebels days after Kony had promised to come out of the bush and end the war. He had asked for only 6 months to demobilize, and instead Museveni said that if he hadn't come out in 7 days he would attack. That was the closest the war has ever been to ending.

For most of his career as a rebel, Kony was supported by the government of Sudan. They disliked Museveni, who supported rebels in South Sudan, so they supported Kony for years before their relationship with Museveni improved. It is widely believed that they are still supplying Kony, though not nearly as much or as regularly as they used to. Combine that with a major government offensive and the help of the international community, and Kony and his rebels have gone on the run. It is believed that he is somewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Central African Republic, and Museveni has sent troops into the bush to find him.

As long as Kony is still at large, the war is not over for Nothern Uganda. However, since he has left the country they have been able to begin rebuilding. By the time we went to Uganda, most people had left the camps and have begun to rebuild their lives. Northern Uganda is still a very impoverished region, and they now face the challenges of reintegrating thousands of former abductees and child soldiers, of accepting them back into the community as unwilling participants in the violence while still somehow addressing the harm they have done. They are still trying to figure out which is the best way.

As I said, that is the sparknotes version, and perhaps even not a good one. I think sparknotes would be more informative, but I have yet to master the art of including everything I saw and learned into one blog post. Feel free to ask me about this when I get home.

(Which, by the way, is in 34 days. When did that happen?)

Uganda Pt.5: Laundry

As I'm sure you are aware, there are no washing machines in Rwanda or Uganda. At my homestay, our houseboy does my laundry for me. We did not have a houseboy in Gulu. I also did not have any clean shirts when we got to Gulu. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I've gotten pretty good at cleaning my underwear, but I wasn't entirely certain how to go about washing my considerably larger t-shirts and skirts. However, my complete lack of a shirt and looked or smelled anything that might be mistaken for clean made it necessary that I make it up as I go along. Fortunately, there was a wide plastic bucket for laundry-doing in our hotel room, so I filled it up with water and hunkered down on the balcony with my bucket, my large pile of laundry, and a bar of soap. I had just started, tentatively rubbing the soaped-up armpit of my tank top together, when one of the hotel maids came out on the balcony. She looked at me, my bucket, and my pile, and asked, “You are washing?” I responded that I was trying. She laughed, then walked over and took my shirt out of my hands and proceeded to scrub it, rinse it, and hang it on the balcony railing to dry, all in under 30 seconds. I know she is considerably better at doing laundry than I am, but I don't think she understood exactly how gross my clothes were. Then she reached for the skirt on top of my pile, asking, “This too?” When I said that it was all dirty, she smiled and tried to take all my laundry to do it for me, saying, “It is fine, it is fine,” but I insisted on keeping it. I told her that I wanted to learn, explaining that I could do it now that she had shown me. I don't think she had any faith in my ability to get my clothes clean, but that's ok, I didn't either at that point. Eventually she smiled and surrendered my laundry, and I was able, much, much more slowly, to make my white v-neck white again, though I noticed later that I'd missed some spots. I got better later, it's white now. I attempted to follow that woman's example, but it wasn't until later that my friend Justine pointed out to me that I was doing it wrong; doing laundry is not supposed to result in huge scrapes on your fingers. I had just been rubbing my clothes together between my fingers, but apparently you're supposed to rub with one hand against the palm or wrist of another, so it's less abrasive on the skin. Now I know. I'm just grateful that my host family didn't notice the scrapes on my fingers before they healed. That would have been rather embarrassing. Despite my initial mishaps, I really enjoy doing laundry. I find it very relaxing. I'm looking forward to doing it more in the future.

Uganda Pt.4: Acholi Dance

Gulu is located in Northern Uganda, a region mostly inhabited by the Acholi ethnic group. On Saturday we met with an Acholi chief, and he gave us a tour of Patiko, an Acholi historical site that was originally a base for Arab slave traders in Northern Uganda, until a British adventurer turned it into a base from which to protect the Acholi from the slave trade. Today it is simply ruins, the brown stones piled in half-walls marking what used to be storage sheds and chapels.

After that we went to the Acholi cultural center in Gulu, where we learned more about Acholi culture, including traditional Acholi dance. The first dance we learned was the traditional courtship dance, where the young men and women of the tribe dance together, each showing off their skills and ending with the women choosing their husbands. The men played drums made from calabashes while they dances. I was very grateful that I didn't have to focus on playing an instrument, because Acholi dancing is hard! There was a lot of hip shaking involved, and this weird forward-backward shimmy thing that I was never able to figure out. It didn't help that we weren't really taught this dance as much as we were simply thrown in and instructed as we went. A large crowd gathered to watch us, including many children who spent most of the dance pointing at us and laughing. I can't say I blame them, I'm sure we look absolutely ridiculous. After spending so long in another culture where I'm not always sure what things mean or what I'm supposed to do, I've accepted the fact that I'm going to make a fool out of myself quite often. I definitely did on Saturday, but it was so much fun that I am 100% ok with that.

Acholi Dance

Gulu is located in Northern Uganda, a region mostly inhabited by the Acholi ethnic group. On Saturday we met with an Acholi chief, and he gave us a tour of Patiko, an Acholi historical site that was originally a base for Arab slave traders in Northern Uganda, until a British adventurer turned it into a base from which to protect the Acholi from the slave trade. Today it is simply ruins, the brown stones piled in half-walls marking what used to be storage sheds and chapels.

After that we went to the Acholi cultural center in Gulu, where we learned more about Acholi culture, including traditional Acholi dance. The first dance we learned was the traditional courtship dance, where the young men and women of the tribe dance together, each showing off their skills and ending with the women choosing their husbands. The men played drums made from calabashes while they dances. I was very grateful that I didn't have to focus on playing an instrument, because Acholi dancing is hard! There was a lot of hip shaking involved, and this weird forward-backward shimmy thing that I was never able to figure out. It didn't help that we weren't really taught this dance as much as we were simply thrown in and instructed as we went. A large crowd gathered to watch us, including many children who spent most of the dance pointing at us and laughing. I can't say I blame them, I'm sure we look absolutely ridiculous. After spending so long in another culture where I'm not always sure what things mean or what I'm supposed to do, I've accepted the fact that I'm going to make a fool out of myself quite often. I definitely did on Saturday, but it was so much fun that I am 100% ok with that.

Uganda Pt.3: Best Road Trip Ever

We only spent one night in Kampala. The next morning we headed off to Gulu, where we would spend most of our time in Uganda. On the way there we crossed the Equator, and we got to stop and walk around for a little bit before heading on into the Northern Hemisphere. For some reason there was a camel tied to a tree at the Equator, and we got to pet it. You know how camels have a reputation for being kind of cranky? Well, it's true. It snapped at a few hands and tried to eat two people's hair. Fortunately no one got spit on. Despite the unnerving level of risk, I still got to pet a camel. It was great.

We drove on for a little while before coming to the next big event of the trip: crossing the Nile. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures because the Ugandan military has a base in the area, but it was big and beautiful and fantastic, and I can certainly understand how it has been the heart of so many civilizations for so many centuries.

I wish we could've gotten out and spent more time admiring the river, but militaries typically don't like to let foreigners wander around at what they consider to be strategic points. However, it was only a few minutes before I received a consolation prize: MONKIES!! I had been wanting to see a monkey since arriving in Africa but hadn't managed to spot one yet, and there were a bunch just sitting by the side of the road, including a baby. My friend Alex said it looked like a fuzzy peanut.

So that day was a day of firsts. I crossed the Equator, petted my first camel, crossed the Nile, and saw my first monkey.

Best road trip ever.

Uganda Pt.2: Kampala

We left Mbarara Wednesday morning and spent all day driving to the capital, Kampala. The Ugandan countryside is beautiful, and the farther north we got the more different it looked from Rwanda. Rwanda is almost all hills and is very green, will almost all the land occupied by either trees or farms. Uganda, on the other hand, is much more flat, with large expanse of grassland peppered with trees, cacti, and giant anthills leading up to a background of rolling hills. I love those hills. Unlike the hills in Rwanda, there is very little growing on them except for grass, so you can see all the folds and rolls of they way they are shaped, as if a wave had just risen up from under the earth and created them.

By the time we got to Kampala it was too dark to see much of it, but I could tell it was a crazy city. It was much dirtier and more crowded than Kigali, which is exceptionally ordered for an African capital. Kigali has also outlawed street vendors, but there were stalls lining the sidewalks in Kampala selling everything from clothes to food to dishes and jerrycans. And the traffic was insane. As much as I say I would never drive in Kigali, I would certainly drive there sooner than I would in Kampala. Our bus actually got into a small wreck with another, smaller bus on the way to our hotel. It was the other driver's fault, but he got out of his bus and starting yelling at our driver, wanting him to pay for the damage to his bus. Too bad for him that everyone from the other bus thought it was his fault too, so they all got out and started yelling at him to shut up. In a matter of minutes a crowd had assembled and everyone was shouting. Someone had called the police, but they hadn't arrived yet. After a few minutes, Selena, one of our staff members who is from Uganda, got out of the bus and joined the fray. She looked alarmingly small in the middle of all the shouting men, but I don't think she was out there for five minutes before she had the matter settled. The other bus driver was going to pay for the damage. Getting back on the bus, she looked at all of our alarmed faces, and, laughing, declared, “This is Uganda!”

Uganda Pt.1: Nakivaale

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for a long one. Our two weeks in Uganda were jam packed. We learned a lot, saw a lot of interesting things and places, and spent A LOT of time on the bus, but, for the sake of your sanity and mine, all of those stories will be spread across multiple blog posts, most of which will hopefully go up today or tomorrow.
And now, to begin.
We left Kigali Monday morning and drove all day, crossing the border around noon and reaching our hotel in Mbarara (wondering how to pronounce that? Yeah, me too) just in time for dinner. On Tuesday we visited the Nakivaale refugee settlement, where we met with a group of Rwandan refugees. Even though the violence ended more than 15 years ago, there is still a significant population of Rwandan refugees in Nakivaale and other refugee camps in the region. Many of them are genocide perpetrators who fled after the RPF ended the genocide, some fearing that they would be punished for their crimes and others fearing that the new, Tutsi-dominated government would take revenge on the Hutus after the genocide. Others left because they feared that the families of those they had killed would take revenge on them. However, not all Rwandan refugees are genocide perpetrators. There are many Tutsi who simply never returned to the country, but perhaps the largest percentage of the Rwandan refugees is made up of people who have left more recently for political reasons, which I will discuss at another time. While we didn't get to hear the stories of everyone we spoke to, the group of Rwandans we met with in Nakivaale seemed to be made up of all of the above, and after months of hearing the official government narrative about how everything is great now, it was refreshing, challenging, and enlightening to hear the refugee's side of the story. However, it was important while listening to them not to forget that they, just like the government, had political motivations behind what they said, and that not everything they would say would be true. And they certainly made some extreme claims: revenge killings and massacres of Hutu by the RPF, government persecution of Hutu, etc. After visiting them I wrestled with how much of what they said was true and how much was false, and, if they were false, were the refugees lying or were they just misinformed? It's hard to get accurate information about live in a country you haven't seen in years and have little contact with, but a refugee cannot retain refugee status if they admit that the country they don't want to go back to is peaceful now. However, whether their fears are actual or perceived, one thing was very clear: this people are terrified of returning to Rwanda. They are convinced that they will not be safe if they go back, to the extent that they have chosen the hard life of eking out survival in a refugee camp rather than risk returning to their homes. But they are being forced to return. The UN has determined that Rwanda today is safe, and that there is no more need for these people to live as refugees. In June 2013, the Cessation Clause will take effect, leaving the refugees with three options: return to Rwanda, apply for citizenship in Uganda (or whatever country is hosting them), or apply for refugee status on an individual basis. It is unlikely that more than a handful of people will be able to take advantage of the second or third options; the RPF was founded by a group of Rwandan refugees in Uganda in 1990, and since then they have invaded Rwanda, defeated the previous government in a civil war, and taken over the country. To them, a large refugee population is a serious political risk, and they are pushing hard to have all refugees repatriate. Even though they will not be forced to leave Nakivaale until next year, pressure is already being put on the refugees to return to Rwanda. Where once all refugees were allowed a plot of land to supplement their rations from the UN Food Program, Rwandan refugees have had their land taken away in order to pressure them to return. Instead they have chosen to survive on their meager rations. They told us also that whenever they go to camp officials with a problem, a need for medicine or some other supplies, they are told simply that their country is safe now, and if they were to return to Rwanda they would have those things. So far most of the refugees have resisted and refuse to go back, but eventually they will be forced to leave the camp. Whether or not their fears will be realized when they return remains to be seen.

Uganda Pt.1: Nakivaale

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for a long one. Our two weeks in Uganda were jam packed. We learned a lot, saw a lot of interesting things and places, and spent A LOT of time on the bus, but, for the sake of your sanity and mine, all of those stories will be spread across multiple blog posts, most of which will hopefully go up today or tomorrow.
And now, to begin.
We left Kigali Monday morning and drove all day, crossing the border around noon and reaching our hotel in Mbarara (wondering how to pronounce that? Yeah, me too) just in time for dinner. On Tuesday we visited the Nakivaale refugee settlement, where we met with a group of Rwandan refugees. Even though the violence ended more than 15 years ago, there is still a significant population of Rwandan refugees in Nakivaale and other refugee camps in the region. Many of them are genocide perpetrators who fled after the RPF ended the genocide, some fearing that they would be punished for their crimes and others fearing that the new, Tutsi-dominated government would take revenge on the Hutus after the genocide. Others left because they feared that the families of those they had killed would take revenge on them. However, not all Rwandan refugees are genocide perpetrators. There are many Tutsi who simply never returned to the country, but perhaps the largest percentage of the Rwandan refugees is made up of people who have left more recently for political reasons, which I will discuss at another time. While we didn't get to hear the stories of everyone we spoke to, the group of Rwandans we met with in Nakivaale seemed to be made up of all of the above, and after months of hearing the official government narrative about how everything is great now, it was refreshing, challenging, and enlightening to hear the refugee's side of the story. However, it was important while listening to them not to forget that they, just like the government, had political motivations behind what they said, and that not everything they would say would be true. And they certainly made some extreme claims: revenge killings and massacres of Hutu by the RPF, government persecution of Hutu, etc. After visiting them I wrestled with how much of what they said was true and how much was false, and, if they were false, were the refugees lying or were they just misinformed? It's hard to get accurate information about live in a country you haven't seen in years and have little contact with, but a refugee cannot retain refugee status if they admit that the country they don't want to go back to is peaceful now. However, whether their fears are actual or perceived, one thing was very clear: this people are terrified of returning to Rwanda. They are convinced that they will not be safe if they go back, to the extent that they have chosen the hard life of eking out survival in a refugee camp rather than risk returning to their homes. But they are being forced to return. The UN has determined that Rwanda today is safe, and that there is no more need for these people to live as refugees. In June 2013, the Cessation Clause will take effect, leaving the refugees with three options: return to Rwanda, apply for citizenship in Uganda (or whatever country is hosting them), or apply for refugee status on an individual basis. It is unlikely that more than a handful of people will be able to take advantage of the second or third options; the RPF was founded by a group of Rwandan refugees in Uganda in 1990, and since then they have invaded Rwanda, defeated the previous government in a civil war, and taken over the country. To them, a large refugee population is a serious political risk, and they are pushing hard to have all refugees repatriate. Even though they will not be forced to leave Nakivaale until next year, pressure is already being put on the refugees to return to Rwanda. Where once all refugees were allowed a plot of land to supplement their rations from the UN Food Program, Rwandan refugees have had their land taken away in order to pressure them to return. Instead they have chosen to survive on their meager rations. They told us also that whenever they go to camp officials with a problem, a need for medicine or some other supplies, they are told simply that their country is safe now, and if they were to return to Rwanda they would have those things. So far most of the refugees have resisted and refuse to go back, but eventually they will be forced to leave the camp. Whether or not their fears will be realized when they return remains to be seen.

Uganda, Pt. 1: Nakivaale

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for a long one. Our two weeks in Uganda were jam packed. We learned a lot, saw a lot of interesting things and places, and spent A LOT of time on the bus, but, for the sake of your sanity and mine, all of those stories will be spread across multiple blog posts, most of which will hopefully go up today or tomorrow.

And now, to begin.

We left Kigali Monday morning and drove all day, crossing the border around noon and reaching our hotel in Mbarara (wondering how to pronounce that? Yeah, me too) just in time for dinner. On Tuesday we visited the Nakivaale refugee settlement, where we met with a group of Rwandan refugees. Even though the violence ended more than 15 years ago, there is still a significant population of Rwandan refugees in Nakivaale and other refugee camps in the region. Many of them are genocide perpetrators who fled after the RPF ended the genocide, some fearing that they would be punished for their crimes and others fearing that the new, Tutsi-dominated government would take revenge on the Hutus after the genocide. Others left because they feared that the families of those they had killed would take revenge on them. However, not all Rwandan refugees are genocide perpetrators. There are many Tutsi who simply never returned to the country, but perhaps the largest percentage of the Rwandan refugees is made up of people who have left more recently for political reasons, which I will discuss at another time. While we didn't get to hear the stories of everyone we spoke to, the group of Rwandans we met with in Nakivaale seemed to be made up of all of the above, and after months of hearing the official government narrative about how everything is great now, it was refreshing, challenging, and enlightening to hear the refugee's side of the story. However, it was important while listening to them not to forget that they, just like the government, had political motivations behind what they said, and that not everything they would say would be true. And they certainly made some extreme claims: revenge killings and massacres of Hutu by the RPF, government persecution of Hutu, etc. After visiting them I wrestled with how much of what they said was true and how much was false, and, if they were false, were the refugees lying or were they just misinformed? It's hard to get accurate information about live in a country you haven't seen in years and have little contact with, but a refugee cannot retain refugee status if they admit that the country they don't want to go back to is peaceful now. However, whether their fears are actual or perceived, one thing was very clear: this people are terrified of returning to Rwanda. They are convinced that they will not be safe if they go back, to the extent that they have chosen the hard life of eking out survival in a refugee camp rather than risk returning to their homes. But they are being forced to return. The UN has determined that Rwanda today is safe, and that there is no more need for these people to live as refugees. In June 2013, the Cessation Clause will take effect, leaving the refugees with three options: return to Rwanda, apply for citizenship in Uganda (or whatever country is hosting them), or apply for refugee status on an individual basis. It is unlikely that more than a handful of people will be able to take advantage of the second or third options; the RPF was founded by a group of Rwandan refugees in Uganda in 1990, and since then they have invaded Rwanda, defeated the previous government in a civil war, and taken over the country. To them, a large refugee population is a serious political risk, and they are pushing hard to have all refugees repatriate. Even though they will not be forced to leave Nakivaale until next year, pressure is already being put on the refugees to return to Rwanda. Where once all refugees were allowed a plot of land to supplement their rations from the UN Food Program, Rwandan refugees have had their land taken away in order to pressure them to return. Instead they have chosen to survive on their meager rations. They told us also that whenever they go to camp officials with a problem, a need for medicine or some other supplies, they are told simply that their country is safe now, and if they were to return to Rwanda they would have those things. So far most of the refugees have resisted and refuse to go back, but eventually they will be forced to leave the camp. Whether or not their fears will be realized when they return remains to be seen.

I Have Returned!

I am back in Kigali and back on the grid! We got back late last night, and this afternoon I bought more airtime for my modem and phone, so I finally feel reintegrated into the world again. Uganda was great, and I'll be writing a nice long post all about it some time later this week. Tonight, sleep.

Off on Another Adventure!

Tomorrow morning we are leaving to spend two weeks in Uganda, just north of Rwanda, to study their conflict and how the concepts we've learned here apply there. Internet is going to be iffy there, so it's very likely that I won't post at all when we're in Uganda and then will have a lot to say when we get back. I'm really excited, for multiple reasons. It looks like we're going to learn a lot of interesting stuff, plus it will be an added adventure. It will also be a much needed break from Eddy. He's a great kid, and I'm starting to have more patience with him, but a whole weekend with him is enough to wear on my nerves. But most of all I'm excited because, if our time in Butare is any indication, the next two weeks are going to fly by, and when we come back we'll only have six weeks left! Crazy!

Post-Genocide Justice

I don't know of justice is really possible after something as horrible as a genocide, especially in Rwanda's case. The Rwandan genocide was unique in that after losing the civil war the Hutu government convinced people that the Tutsis were evil and inhuman and were going to kill them if they took power, so that when they began telling people to kill Tutsis it was carried out by the common people, neighbors killing their neighbors, making it the only genocide to be carried out with such mass participation.

This created huge problems when it came to trying all of these cases after the genocide. With hundreds of thousands of killers, prisons were massively overcrowded, and it would have taken more than a hundred years to try all those cases. For this unique situation, the government created a unique solution.

The pre-colonial gacaca courts had been used to settle small disputes. They were community courts, where disputes were judged and settled by a family elder, and then the person who had done the wrong would provide a calabash of beer and everyone would drink together and all would be well. The government modified this tradition to try genocide cases. There is a gacaca court for each cell (a small unit of community organization). The cases are judged by a group of 9 moral and trustworthy people voted by their community, and the courts cannot meet without at least 100 adults from the community present to hear the testimony of the accused and contribute any information they have. The idea behind this is that the genocide was carried out in full view, so that anyone who was here at the time saw it happen and has some information to contribute. The communities listen to the testimony of the accused and of the victims, if they are living, and they talk about what happened, everyone with someone relevant to contribute sharing what they know to either verify or call into question the testimonies, and then once all the information has been shard the judges decide the sentence. But that's only the spark notes version. While I'm here I intend to do my research project on gacaca, so if you want to know more feel free to ask me when I get back, I hope to know a lot about it by the end of May.

One of the main benefits of gacaca is that is has given victims the right to confront those who have wronged them. It has allowed them to learn what happened to their loved ones, and in some cases even to find out where their bodies were buried so they could bury them properly. Achieving this closure, working to reintegrate the perpetrators into society, and in some way begin to heal the community, is the focus of post-genocide justice. There were so many perpetrators that retributive justice in the Western sense, putting someone in prison to punish them for their crimes, was impractical, and while that is being done for more serious cases, the goal has largely been to serve justice in a way that sensitizes the perpetrators to their crimes, has them pay their debt to society, and then, most importantly, allows them to be reintegrated into society in a way that is effective enough to facilitate healing and ensure that more violence does not break out. There is an emphasis on perpetrators confessing, apologizing, and asking forgiveness, and in prison they are given classes and taught crafts so that when they complete their sentences they will be able to provide for themselves and contribute to the country's economic development. Even many of the sentences are designed so that the convicts help rebuild the society they destroyed; a few years ago, the government created the program Travail pour l'Interet General, work for the general interest, known as TIG. It was designed both to relieve the overcrowded prisons and for the already-stated purpose of having the convicts rebuild society. Those who serve their sentences through TIG live in camps where they work on projects such as building homes for vulnerable families or chipping apart rocks that will be used to pave roads. They serve shorter sentences than they would if they were in prison, and they are able to interact with their surrounding communities, better facilitating reconciliation and reintegration. We got to visit one of these camps yesterday, and I am incredibly grateful for the experience.

The first thing I noticed when we got to the camp was the almost complete lack of security. The fence, like many fences here, was made of bundles of dry grass and was only about chest high. The gate was nothing but a string tied across the opening in the grass fence. There was one armed guard. Our director, Dan, explained to us later that the tigists (those serving their sentences through TIG) rarely run away; in the camps they are given food and water and they get to see their families regularly, but were they to run away it would mean trying to survive as a fugitive in the Congo, where provisions would be hard to come by, and their families would most likely not go with them. Also, in many of the tigists want to be there so that they can repay their debts and hopefully make up for what they've done. We got to meet with a group of them, and I think that was one of the most edifying and enlightening experiences of the trip. When we first met them, I was struck by how kind they seemed. They greeted us very warmly, taking our hands in both of theirs and asking “Amakuru?”, “How are you?”. It took me a minute to remember that they had all killed people. I still like them. They spoke to us very openly about their experiences, about how angry they were with the old government for convincing them that the Tutsis weren't human and that they should kill them.

“They told us they had tails,” one man said, “What kind of person has a tail?”

They also said how grateful they were to have been forgiven by those they had harmed. One man described how he got down on his knees during his gacaca hearing to beg for forgiveness. Another told us how he has told his children everything he did, and that he doesn't want them to think that he is innocent like some children do of their parents because he wants them to learn from his mistakes so that something like that can never happen again. They were truly lovely people. When we arrived they clapped and sang a song about how happy they were that we were there, and before we left they made us get up and dance with them. I am so blessed to have met those people. Yes, they have killed people, but they are still people, and I am no better than they are. I do not believe that the mistakes someone made nearly 20 years ago should define them. Yes, they did something very wrong, and yes, they deserve to be in TIG, but they are still people. I am just like them and they are just like me, we were just born in different places at different times. I have no right to judge them or say that they should not be allowed back into society, because they should. That is the only way for true healing to occur.

Post-Genocide Justice

I don't know of justice is really possible after something as horrible as a genocide, especially in Rwanda's case. The Rwandan genocide was unique in that after losing the civil war the Hutu government convinced people that the Tutsis were evil and inhuman and were going to kill them if they took power, so that when they began telling people to kill Tutsis it was carried out by the common people, neighbors killing their neighbors, making it the only genocide to be carried out with such mass participation.

This created huge problems when it came to trying all of these cases after the genocide. With hundreds of thousands of killers, prisons were massively overcrowded, and it would have taken more than a hundred years to try all those cases. For this unique situation, the government created a unique solution.

The pre-colonial gacaca courts had been used to settle small disputes. They were community courts, where disputes were judged and settled by a family elder, and then the person who had done the wrong would provide a calabash of beer and everyone would drink together and all would be well. The government modified this tradition to try genocide cases. There is a gacaca court for each cell (a small unit of community organization). The cases are judged by a group of 9 moral and trustworthy people voted by their community, and the courts cannot meet without at least 100 adults from the community present to hear the testimony of the accused and contribute any information they have. The idea behind this is that the genocide was carried out in full view, so that anyone who was here at the time saw it happen and has some information to contribute. The communities listen to the testimony of the accused and of the victims, if they are living, and they talk about what happened, everyone with someone relevant to contribute sharing what they know to either verify or call into question the testimonies, and then once all the information has been shard the judges decide the sentence. But that's only the spark notes version. While I'm here I intend to do my research project on gacaca, so if you want to know more feel free to ask me when I get back, I hope to know a lot about it by the end of May.

One of the main benefits of gacaca is that is has given victims the right to confront those who have wronged them. It has allowed them to learn what happened to their loved ones, and in some cases even to find out where their bodies were buried so they could bury them properly. Achieving this closure, working to reintegrate the perpetrators into society, and in some way begin to heal the community, is the focus of post-genocide justice. There were so many perpetrators that retributive justice in the Western sense, putting someone in prison to punish them for their crimes, was impractical, and while that is being done for more serious cases, the goal has largely been to serve justice in a way that sensitizes the perpetrators to their crimes, has them pay their debt to society, and then, most importantly, allows them to be reintegrated into society in a way that is effective enough to facilitate healing and ensure that more violence does not break out. There is an emphasis on perpetrators confessing, apologizing, and asking forgiveness, and in prison they are given classes and taught crafts so that when they complete their sentences they will be able to provide for themselves and contribute to the country's economic development. Even many of the sentences are designed so that the convicts help rebuild the society they destroyed; a few years ago, the government created the program Travail pour l'Interet General, work for the general interest, known as TIG. It was designed both to relieve the overcrowded prisons and for the already-stated purpose of having the convicts rebuild society. Those who serve their sentences through TIG live in camps where they work on projects such as building homes for vulnerable families or chipping apart rocks that will be used to pave roads. They serve shorter sentences than they would if they were in prison, and they are able to interact with their surrounding communities, better facilitating reconciliation and reintegration. We got to visit one of these camps yesterday, and I am incredibly grateful for the experience.

The first thing I noticed when we got to the camp was the almost complete lack of security. The fence, like many fences here, was made of bundles of dry grass and was only about chest high. The gate was nothing but a string tied across the opening in the grass fence. There was one armed guard. Our director, Dan, explained to us later that the tigists (those serving their sentences through TIG) rarely run away; in the camps they are given food and water and they get to see their families regularly, but were they to run away it would mean trying to survive as a fugitive in the Congo, where provisions would be hard to come by, and their families would most likely not go with them. Also, in many of the tigists want to be there so that they can repay their debts and hopefully make up for what they've done. We got to meet with a group of them, and I think that was one of the most edifying and enlightening experiences of the trip. When we first met them, I was struck by how kind they seemed. They greeted us very warmly, taking our hands in both of theirs and asking “Amakuru?”, “How are you?”. It took me a minute to remember that they had all killed people. I still like them. They spoke to us very openly about their experiences, about how angry they were with the old government for convincing them that the Tutsis weren't human and that they should kill them.

“They told us they had tails,” one man said, “What kind of person has a tail?”

They also said how grateful they were to have been forgiven by those they had harmed. One man described how he got down on his knees during his gacaca hearing to beg for forgiveness. Another told us how he has told his children everything he did, and that he doesn't want them to think that he is innocent like some children do of their parents because he wants them to learn from his mistakes so that something like that can never happen again. They were truly lovely people. When we arrived they clapped and sang a song about how happy they were that we were there, and before we left they made us get up and dance with them. I am so blessed to have met those people. Yes, they have killed people, but they are still people, and I am no better than they are. I do not believe that the mistakes someone made nearly 20 years ago should define them. Yes, they did something very wrong, and yes, they deserve to be in TIG, but they are still people. I am just like them and they are just like me, we were just born in different places at different times. I have no right to judge them or say that they should not be allowed back into society, because they should. That is the only way for true healing to occur.

The Millennium Village

The Millennium Village Project was started by the UN to figure out the best way to reach the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating certain markers of poverty by 2015. They selected a few villages throughout Africa to pour resources into and to lift them out of the cycle of poverty, with the intention also to figure out the best way to replicate the improvements all over the world.

The Millennium Village Project (MVP) is a bit controversial, with many people arguing that it has simply made these villages dependent on international donations, and that once the project ends they will be no better off than they were before, if not worse. Whether or not this is true, I cannot tell you, but what I can tell you is that I think the Millennium Village in Rwanda has a better shot than the villages in other countries. It is unique in that the efforts of the MVP are exactly in line with Rwanda's own domestic development program, Project 2020, and so the Rwandan government gives more funding to the Millennium Village than any other government gives to a Millennium Village in their country. In fact, most of the funding for the MV in Rwanda comes from the Rwandan government.

Our first stop in the Village was to visit a farmer. This man grew cassava (which he taught us how to make into flour), peanuts, and three types of beans, in addition to having some livestock. He told us that the UN had brought a specialist into the Village who had taught them better farming techniques, which he had adopted with much success. They had also brought in fruit trees and showed them how grafting the young trees to mature ones would cause them to grow to maturity and begin to bear fruit in one year instead of six. He also showed us the water pump the Project had given him to pump water out of his pond and through a small pipe so he could draw water from a spicket and more easily water is crops. The pump was broken because it was made of wood and termites had eaten through it, but he said that the Project was going to give him a metal one soon so the termites wouldn't be able to eat through it again.

Our next stop was the health center. It is relatively advances for a rural African health center, offering testing for HIV, malaria, and many other diseases and providing free contraceptives of all kinds to the community (Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and they're encouraging people to have less children). The center also had a pharmacy with a medicines for most basic illnesses (for anything they don't have they refer people to the nearby hospital), a maternity ward, as well as wards for children, men, and women, each containing about ten beds. Testing and treatment for HIV, as well as contraceptives, are free (as they are everywhere in Rwanda) and all other treatments are made affordable by the government's universal health insurance program, so patients only have to pay 10% of their medical costs. The center would certainly have been deemed alarmingly insufficient by Western standards, but by African standards it's moderately advanced, and one girl in my group who spent last semester studying public health in Kenya thought it was really great.

The highlight of our visit was the visit to the weaving cooperative. It's made up of a group of women in the village who have been taught to make all sorts of things out of native grasses, from baskets and place mats to earrings and bracelets. We got to meet some of the women there, and they taught us how to weave! We sat down on straw mats, each of us with a different woman, and they showed us how to wrap one piece of grass around the others to hold them together, and how to run a needle through completed rows to give our creations shape. It was an interesting experience for multiples reasons, namely because the women only spoke Kinyarwanda, so the teaching was done mostly by her working on the piece for a minute while I watched and then handing it to me, then taking it from me again when I did something wrong, which happened a lot. I'm really bad at weaving. And no, we didn't get to keep our creations. I didn't even finish mine. Honestly I don't even know what it was, it was just a small ring of grass. Instead we worked on our projects for a little while and then went to their shop and bought things that the women had made, which were undoubtedly much better quality than whatever it was I was making anyway. Don't worry, I did get lots of pictures of me weaving though.

I'm skeptical of the MVP's development model of pouring millions of dollars into bringing basic infrastructures and services into a village for a few years, then leaving with the assumption that the villagers now have everything they need to be healthy and to produce enough to make a profit and begin to improve their own quality of life and lift themselves out of poverty. However, I cannot deny that is seems to have done good things for the people of the village we visited, and I think that the government's support makes it likely to continue to be successful even after the project ends.

Little Things

My Dear Devoted Readers,

I owe you an apology. I am painfully aware that I promised you a blog post about my exciting visit to the Millennium Village last week, and I still have not delivered. I assure you I have a good excuse for my tardiness: this week as been marred by an unexpected deluge of homework. I am all caught up now, and will deliver the promised post some time in the next few days. Until then, here are a few good stories:

I usually listen to my ipod on the bus. Having music makes the hour long commute much more enjoyable. This is why, as I was riding home Monday night, I was almost at my bus stop before I realized that my bus had a tv in it! I hadn't noticed because there was just music, no words, so I thought it was the radio, but it was a silent film. They were playing an Charlie Chaplin movie on my bus.

This story is undoubtedly going to end up being one of my favorites from this entire trip. Somehow the topic of transgender people came up at dinner the other night. Eddy, being 9, had never heard of people changing their gender, and he was rather confused by this. So, Tuesday night, my host mom came home from work with a bunch of information she'd printed out about transgender people and gave it to Eddy to read, and that night at dinner we talked about it and she told him that they're people just like us. :)

Economic Development Is So Cool

My brain is very tired from working on my research project (details on that to come later), so I ask you to forgive me if this post is a little scattered.

This week we've been learning about Rwanda's economic development since the genocide, and it has been so interesting. I have been extremely grateful this week to be a global studies major and therefore have enough of a background to really understand and wrestle with what we've been seeing this week. I find this stuff absolutely fascinating, and if anyone in our group doubted that I am a total nerd, now they know, and I am totally ok with that.

After the genocide, Rwanda was absolutely devastated. The previous government had fled, leaving absolutely no money in the treasury, most professionals had either fled the country or been killed, and the country's infrastructure was almost completely destroyed. Today, Kigali has been completely rebuilt and infrastructures around the country have been restored and improved upon, with significantly more universities and hospitals than before the genocide. The government has adopted an ambitious development plan called Vision 2020, with the goal of extending benefits such as electricity, clean water, and easy access to healthcare etc. to even the most rural areas, and to bring Rwanda to the level of a middle income country by the year 2020. This is an extremely ambitious project, and the government is working very hard to make it happen. How are they funding this, you ask? That is the interesting part. While the country initially needed massive amounts of foreign aid to being rebuilding (since they literally started with $0), President Kagame wants the country to begin phasing out aid from foreign governments, which currently accounts for 50% of Rwanda's annual budget. He feels strongly that this is not a sustainable strategy, and he's right, because aid from other governments is renewed every year, and states are well within their rights to decide that they would rather spend that money on something other than supporting the Rwandan government. Instead, the strategy is to bring in foreign businesses and convince them to invest in Rwanda, with the idea that a company opening up a branch here has more of a vested interest in the country and is therefore more likely to stick around, and Kagame has done a truly impressive amount of international networking to make this happen. For example, he personally reached out to the CEO of Costco, which is now one of the biggest buyers of Rwandan coffee, and he has formed a circle of global businessmen who both bring their companies to Rwanda and enlist their friends as well. For this reason, as well as the encouragement of local business, Rwanda's economy has been growing rapidly, at a rate of around 8% for the last few years. Whether or not I agree with this capitalistic model and the idea that economic growth will eventually spread to benefit everyone and raise the income levels of the poor, the government is clearly doing something right. Seventeen years ago Rwanda could rightfully have been classified as a failed state, with the genocidal government having fled, infrastructure destroyed, and bodies were still in the streets. You cannot see that Rwanda today. It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, and that poverty is still evident in many ways, yet today Kigali is one of the most developed cities in the region, and the government is actively working to spread that development to the rest of the country. The amount of growth that has happened over so little time is stunning, and I am very curious to see where Rwanda will be in another 17 years.

Butare

Last week we too a 5 day trip to Butare, a southern province of Rwanda and home to the National University of Rwanda. I was really excited to get to see another part of the country, except for the fact that we were leaving the school at 7am, which meant that I had to get on the bus at 6am, which meant that I had to get up at 5am. Eddy was really excited about this, as he has to get up at 5 every day for school and cannot comprehend why and how I sleep all the way until 7am every day.

I was the first person to wake up that morning. The house was dark and quiet, and there was no noise from the street outside. As I lay in bed willing myself to get up, I heard the quiet sound of the call to early morning prayer from the mosque around the corner, and as much as I was not happy to be awake that early and really wanted to go home, I was grateful in that moment to be able to be in such a beautiful place.

Despite the early hour, I did make it to school on time. I don't know why I always worry so much about being on time to things, considering that in Africa ten minutes late is early. I hate African time.

It's only a three hour drive from Kigali to Butare, but we left early so that we would have time to make a few stops along the way. We all piled onto the bus, and the first thing we did before everyone went back to sleep was look up the results from the Oscars. I'm so upset that I missed them, and I really want to see The Artist now.

Our first stop was the museum of pre-colonial history. At first I was really unhappy that I'd been woken from a great nap to go to a museum, but it turned out to be pretty interesting. Well, parts of it at least. They've built life size models of traditional homes, including the king's house (before the Belgian king had a Western style house built for him) and the homes of his milk girl, who prepared the king's milk, and the beer boy, who prepared the beer. Unlike all the other houses, the beer boy's house did not have a step outside of it, because they figured he would be drunk from spending so much time making and drinking beer and they didn't want him to fall and hurt himself. The houses were made of dried grasses tied into tight bundles and then packed together. They weren't large, but inside there were still walls sectioning off different areas of the house. It wouldn't have been a bad place to live. I decided later that it was worth waking up to get to walk through a traditional Rwandan house.

Our next stop was the Murambi genocide memorial. At the time of the genocide it was a school under construction, almost complete. Local officials told Tutsis that they would be safe there, but it was a lie. Instead 50,000 people flocked to this place, all to be killed in one day and then buried in mass graves. After the genocide these bodies were exhumed, and 2,000 of them have been preserved and are now displayed in the classrooms of Murambi. Room after room filled with bodies. Two thousand is so many, and almost a million were killed in the genocide.

Our first night in Butare I was sick. I had managed to avoid getting sick up to that point, but all the avoided illness caught up with me that night and I spent most of the night throwing up. I finally went back to bed around 6:15. My alarm went off at 7, and in addition to being absolutely exhausted, I was still sick. If Ruth hadn't given me some pepto I probably wouldn't have gone to class. I brought some with me to Rwanda, but left it at my homestay, because there was no more room in the bag I was taking and I hadn't needed it so far. I bet that I wouldn't have gotten sick if I'd brought the pepto with me.

As you can imagine, I was thoroughly miserable that morning. The night before, as I was sitting on the bathroom floor, I found myself thinking that this was not worth it and that I should've stayed home where I would get to sleep in my own bed and see my friends and would not spend all night throwing up. Despite the fact that I wasn't vomiting anymore, that was still more or less my thought process that morning. The turning point came with my bath that morning. We were staying in the guest house of a Catholic school, and the nuns has brought each of us a bucket of hot water to bathe with. That was the first time I've had hot water since I got here, and being able to pour warm water over my head was an inexpressible comfort. I was equally comforted when I got to breakfast and there was coffee, even though I couldn't drink much of it. So even though I was sick and exhausted, that was one of the best mornings I've had here, and my day would've been infinitely worse without those small comforts. God bless the nuns.

That morning we went to the National University of Rwanda to tour the school and meet with the Student Club for Unity and Reconciliation (SCUR). As you can imagine, walking around in the heat was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, so most of the tour was lost on me, except the part where our guide said that the forest on campus was home to more than 4,000 monkeys. I haven't seen a monkey yet, and I really want to. I feel like it's an obligatory part of a visit to Africa. After the tour we sat down for our meeting with the students of SCUR and to hear about the work they do. I fell asleep almost immediately upon sitting down, so all I know about them is that they go to secondary schools and give students presentations about unity and reconciliation, whatever that means. Honestly I feel like I didn't miss much though, because a lot of people felt frustrated afterwards that the presentation had been very vague and that they didn't feel like they'd learned anything about what these students actually do. I'm happy that I got to nap instead.

That afternoon we visited one of my favorite groups thus far, a women's cooperative located about an hour outside of Butare. This group now includes hundreds of women spread across the province, bringing together widows whose husbands were killed during the genocide and women whose husbands are in prison for committing the genocide. We got the hear the story of this group, how these women initially hated each other, but 16 years later they are part of a community that works together to help each other survive. It doesn't matter now who was a victim and who was a perpetrator, and today there is even intermarriage between the children of these two groups. Meeting these women and getting to hear their story was the most inspiring experience I've had here thus far, and it gives me hope that reconciliation is possible, and convinces me even more that the future of Rwanda depends upon its children.

The other really exciting visit of the trip was when we got to meet with two men who rescued and hid Tutsis during the genocide. It was great to get to hear their stories, and to know that not everyone bought into the hatred and fear promulgated by the government at the time. A recent survey found more than 400 people who rescued people during the genocide, and that was only in some provinces, not all of Rwanda. It is possible that as many as a thousand Hutus rescued Tutsis instead of killing them. So far there have been minimal efforts by the government to find the people and tell their stories, but multiple NGOs are currently working on it. Their stories are inspiring, and they need to be told.

The only other major event of the week was Sabrina's birthday! She turned 21 on Thursday, and, being unfamiliar with Butare, we weren't sure how we were going to celebrate, until Tuesday night when Sabrina met a Swedish guy who owns a club here, and he offered to open it up for us on Thursday so we could celebrate. It was fantastic, and I'm glad I can say that I've now been to a Rwandan nightclub.

We also had a lot of free time in Butare, so I had a lot of much needed time to rest and catch up on journaling before coming back to busy life in Kigali. Our next major excursion is in two weeks, when we go to Uganda for two weeks to study the conflict there. After that we'll have two weeks left with our homestay families before beginning our ISP periods, when we are living on our own and spending all our time on our research. This is going to be over so soon!

A Rwandan Wedding

As I mentioned a few posts back, last Sunday my homestay family and I went to a wedding. One of my “sisters” here, Julie, is actually my host mom's niece, and her brother was the groom. He's older than Julie, and I'm told that he lived here while he was in college.

We were late to the wedding. My host mom told me that we had to leave at 1pm. At 1:05, we sat down for lunch. When we got to the church the bride and groom were already at the altar, but I don't think we were very late. The entire service was in Kinyarwanda, so I couldn't understand anything, I just guessed as to what was going on. It seems that the ceremony starts with a small sermon. The pastor talked for at least half an hour, and the bride and groom had chairs that they could sit in at the altar so that they didn't have to stand the whole time. The service seemed relatively western; the bride wore a big, poofy white dress and the groom wore a tux, and there were bridesmaids and groomsmen who were also dressed in western clothes. The guests wore a mix of traditional and western clothes. Since everything was in Kinyarwanda I wasn't certain what was going on, but it seemed pretty similar to a western wedding ceremony. The only differences I noticed was that when the bride and groom exchanged rings they held their hands high in the air so that everyone could see, and there was no kiss at the end. The bride and groom did not kiss at all throughout the entire ceremony and reception, which seemed rather sad to me, but they have different standards of pda here.

After the ceremony we went to the reception, which was nothing like an American wedding reception. In America, the reception is like a party, with dinner and cake and dancing and general celebration. The only similarity was that there was cake. Here, the dinner is a whole separate part of the wedding that happens after the reception. The reception consists of about three hours of ceremonial dialogues. All in Kinyarwanda. I am glad that I had the opportunity to see a Rwandan wedding, but it was really, really boring. The only interesting part was the troupe of traditional Rwandan dancers that performed periodically between the dialogue. Traditional Rwandan dance is really cool. It consists of a lot of foot and arm movement, with lots of stomping and jumping and turning, and the dancers wear thick cuffs of bells on their ankles that amply the beat of the drum they dance to. It was amazing, and provided a wonderful break in the monotony of speeches by old men I couldn't understand. I'm grateful that we decided not to go to the dinner because my mom was tired and Eddy and I both had to get up so early in the morning. I'm sure if I was Rwandan I would feel differently, but I prefer American weddings, with the fun and few speeches and the language I can actually understand.

A Rwandan Wedding

As I mentioned a few posts back, last Sunday my homestay family and I went to a wedding. One of my “sisters” here, Julie, is actually my host mom's niece, and her brother was the groom. He's older than Julie, and I'm told that he lived here while he was in college.

We were late to the wedding. My host mom told me that we had to leave at 1pm. At 1:05, we sat down for lunch. When we got to the church the bride and groom were already at the altar, but I don't think we were very late. The entire service was in Kinyarwanda, so I couldn't understand anything, I just guessed as to what was going on. It seems that the ceremony starts with a small sermon. The pastor talked for at least half an hour, and the bride and groom had chairs that they could sit in at the altar so that they didn't have to stand the whole time. The service seemed relatively western; the bride wore a big, poofy white dress and the groom wore a tux, and there were bridesmaids and groomsmen who were also dressed in western clothes. The guests wore a mix of traditional and western clothes. Since everything was in Kinyarwanda I wasn't certain what was going on, but it seemed pretty similar to a western wedding ceremony. The only differences I noticed was that when the bride and groom exchanged rings they held their hands high in the air so that everyone could see, and there was no kiss at the end. The bride and groom did not kiss at all throughout the entire ceremony and reception, which seemed rather sad to me, but they have different standards of pda here.

After the ceremony we went to the reception, which was nothing like an American wedding reception. In America, the reception is like a party, with dinner and cake and dancing and general celebration. The only similarity was that there was cake. Here, the dinner is a whole separate part of the wedding that happens after the reception. The reception consists of about three hours of ceremonial dialogues. All in Kinyarwanda. I am glad that I had the opportunity to see a Rwandan wedding, but it was really, really boring. The only interesting part was the troupe of traditional Rwandan dancers that performed periodically between the dialogue. Traditional Rwandan dance is really cool. It consists of a lot of foot and arm movement, with lots of stomping and jumping and turning, and the dancers wear thick cuffs of bells on their ankles that amply the beat of the drum they dance to. It was amazing, and provided a wonderful break in the monotony of speeches by old men I couldn't understand. I'm grateful that we decided not to go to the dinner because my mom was tired and Eddy and I both had to get up so early in the morning. I'm sure if I was Rwandan I would feel differently, but I prefer American weddings, with the fun and few speeches and the language I can actually understand.

Excursions

We have visited a lot of really interesting places since we've been here, and I'm afraid I've neglected to post about them as we've gone. So, here is a description of everywhere we've visited thus far, because they are all really cool places and I want you to know about them.

The Genocide Museum: This was our first visit. It's a museum describing the civil war that preceded the genocide, the breakdown of the Arusha Peace Accords, and the genocide itself. It was really informative, but also intense, including the stories of individuals who were buried alive (the chains they were tied with were displayed in the museum), videos of survivors telling their stories, and rooms and rooms full of pictures of people who were killed. The museum is surrounded by beautiful gardens where many victims have been buried, and I am grateful that they have been laid to rest in such a peaceful place.

Gisozi & Ntarama: These are two churches where massacres occurred, which have now been turned into memorials. During the genocide there were many massacres in churches. Tutsis fled there en masse because they believed that no one would kill them in a church. They were wrong. Today the clothes and other personal effects of thousands of victims are on display in Gisozi, almost 10,000 in Ntarama. The clothes of people who were killed there, stained with blood and dirt from the mass graves they were thrown into, cover the benches of the church, claiming forever the seats where a congregation once worshipped. I do not understand how someone could do something so horrible in a church.

Institute for Research and Development for Peace: This place was really cool. It's an NGO that conducts group interviews with people all over the country, discovering how everyday citizens of all groups feel about important issues such as education, justice, and ethnicity. They record each of their interviews and make them into documentaries, one of which we got to watch. It was very enlightening, and I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to hear more about what Rwandans think and feel, even if it was indirectly. My favorite thing about this group is that after the interviews they consolidate the various opinions and into one report, which they then present to government officials, keeping them informed on what the population is thinking so that they can meet people's needs better. It was a very cool example of how representative democracy might better keep in touch with grassroots opinions.

Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village: This is a beautiful place located about an hour outside of Kigali. It was started by a New York woman who heard about the genocide and wanted to do something to meet the needs of the many orphans it left behind. Inspired by similar villages created in Israel after the Holocaust, she began the process of creating Agahozo, which is today home to 500 orphans and other vulnerable children. They find children for the school by going into each sector or the country and asking community leaders to identify the most vulnerable children in the community, not only orphans, but children who have been abused, whose parents can't adequately care for them, etc. After assessing each child's situation, they choose only the most needy, because the village only has room for 500 children. Agahozo is also a secondary school, so children must be around age 15 and have finished primary school, otherwise they would not be able to keep up academically. Once at Agahozo, children are given therapy to whatever degree they need it, because the philosophy of the village is to heal the heart and then to go out and heal the world. Therefore the first few years children are at the village focus on healing their wounds and ensuring them that they are now in a secure environment where all of their needs are met, and the last two are oriented towards community service and learning to be an active citizen in their communities. It is also set up to feel as much as possible like a family environment, with children living in houses in groups of about 15. Each house has a house mother who lives there, and every night they have family time where they all come together to talk about the day. Students who share houses are called brothers and sisters, encouraging the feeling of family. Students do not leave the family once they graduate; there is a guest house reserved for any alumni who want to come back and visit, and the staff works to create lifelong relationships with the students that they can always count on. I could say so much more about this village. I was very impressed by the way their philosophy pervades every aspect of life at Agahozo, and by the way they combine individual healing of the students with educating and encouraging them to contribute to the healing of the larger community.

I think we visit places more often than we have lectures. It's a very useful way to learn how Rwandans are coping and where the country is 17 years after the genocide. We will be visiting more cool places this week, so there will be more to come soon!