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Dispatch #5 from Rwanda
It's Sunday morning. The birds are going crazy...I love
the sounds of all the different birds, kind of like a
bird orchestra! In the background I hear church music
and singing either coming from the cathedral on the
next hill, or perhaps the church down the road.
There's the odd cock's crow mingled with the rhythmic
thump of an axe hitting wood.
I'm starting to feel as if Butare is my home, my
community. Very rarely now do kids follow me asking
for money from the muzungu. Instead, people have
realized I'm here for a while. One morning as I walked
to school a man on a bicycle rode by and very quickly
said "mwaramutseho" (good morning). I replied back
with "mwaramutseho". He then said "amakuru" (how are
you?). I replied "ni meza" (I'm well). I thought he
was going to fall off his bike! The Rwandans
absolutely light up when you say even a couple words
in Kinyarwandan...it's like breaking through an
invisible barrier. So I continue to try to learn more.
I also gave the housekeeping staff copies of my
English-Kinyarwanda "dictionary" which really is just
a few pages of some basic words and phrases...they were
absolutely thrilled!
There was another earthquake last night. Scared the
poop out of me. I leapt out of bed and stood under a
door frame (supposedly the strongest part of any
structure) and waited until the rumbling and shaking
stopped - a good 15 seconds. My heart pounding, I
crawled back under my mosquito net into bed and
eventually fell back asleep. Weird, I had been
dreaming of being at a news conference given by
Egyptian President Mubarak. My sister and people from
my high school were there...then the rumbling started.
School has been keeping me busy. I've got 4 tiny
mini-DV cameras to work with so have split one course
into 4 groups of 5 or 6....a bit unwieldy, but hey, you
do what you can. They were so incredibly excited to
start using these cameras (which had just arrived the
week before from the US) and learning to shoot and
edit. I've only got one editing station set up but
hopefully I'll get another one within the next week or
so. But I think what's been most exciting is acting on
one of the student's ideas to do a TV program dealing
with HIV/AIDS and youth in Rwanda. I brought the idea
to the students and they were so excited, so I've
decided to revamp the course somewhat and have each
group do a short segment, each dealing with HIV/AIDS,
and then we'll put together the segments, make a show
and get TV Rwanda to run it!
In addition to my course duties, I've also been made
head of a radio program also dealing with HIV/AIDS and
Rwandan youth. Apparently the Minister of AIDS asked
Ines to start some preliminary work on this and she's
basically handed it to me. So, Ines and I met this
week and sketched some ideas out and we'll begin
working with some students on this project as well.
For me personally it's very exciting as I've always
been interested in doing more work in this particular
area.
Now that the wedding is over I think the next few
months will be quite a bit more intense. I've got my
courses, the AIDS radio program, this week will be
spending a couple days in Kigali to work with TV
Rwanda and I may also be going to Makerere University
in Kampala, Uganda to do a week of teaching or some
workshops. I'm so excited about my work and what I'm
doing here, time is just passing a little too quickly
and I just hope I'll be able to accomplish all (or at
least, most) of my goals!
This Monday is a holiday so I have a long weekend
which is nice. I wish it was a happy holiday, but
Monday is genocide commemoration day. Every evening of
this past week, TV Rwanda has been airing
genocide-related programming. It is some of the most
gruesome and disturbing video I've ever seen....people
hacking others to death with machetes slicing off limb
by limb until only the torso was left, children with
massive gashes in their heads, tens of bodies lying in
the streets and fields and hundreds and thousands of
corpses, bones and skulls lying on display at the
various genocide sites around the country. I have yet
to visit one of these sites. In 1994, people gathered
in churches and schools thinking they were safe and
then were either hacked to death or the interahamwe
threw grenades inside and just blew every one up.
Others yet were forced to dig their own shallow graves
before being slaughtered and dumped. Approximately one
million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100
days - 3/4 of the Tutsi population at that time. It
took the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia four years to kill
one million Cambodians in that genocide. I still
don't know how human beings can be so inhuman, so
inhumane and just simply evil and filled with hate.
My adventure of the week was hopping on a
velo-taxi. Velo-taxis, or bike-taxis as I call them,
are bicycles usually painted in yellow and black
stripes (seriously!), have little license plates on
them and a big rectangular padded seat behind the
rider's seat to carry a passenger. They're all over
the place and often you see one with a woman passenger
in a long dress riding "side saddle". Well, I had
sworn I would never get on these. They just looked
plain dangerous particularly when they come into
contact with motorized vehicles!! So I had avoided
them, though was intensely curious as to what they
were really like.
Well, Saturday I had been invited to a luncheon with
some other expats on the other side of town. The skies
looked a bit grey but I proceeded to head out on foot.
Within a few minutes it started drizzling, so I took
my rain poncho from my backpack and managed to get it
on just as the skies completely opened up (this is the
rainy season, after all). I keep walking. I figure
it's just rain and yeah, I'll get wet, but who cares!
Well, by now it's really coming down when one of these
bike taxis pulls up and with a big toothy grin the
young man asks me in Kinyrwanda if I want a ride (at
least I assume that's what he said!). Without any
hesitation I grunted and nodded my head. He tried to
wipe off the little seat and I crawled aboard! It was
so exhilarating flying through the rain, into the
rain, hanging on to the rider's little seat for dear
life, hoping my little flip flops wouldn't fall off.
As we went down the street at a wonderful speed I
looked at the Rwandans all gathered under overhangs to
wait until the rain passed. I could only imagine what
they thought as they saw this velo-taxi being pedaled
furiously into the rain with the muzungu in her brown
poncho hanging on for dear life, legs flailing! Yup, I
can only imagine!
My driver dropped me in the center (I had to grab a
bottle of wine) at the Hotel Ibis. I asked him how
much and he told me 100 francs (20 cents). I gave him
200 and proceeded to head to the terrace and waited
under the overhang for 10 minutes while the worst of
the rain passed. I then bought a bottle of South
African wine and headed out of town to the muzungu
area of nice houses and lush gardens. As I walked
along the main road people kept staring at me (I was
still wearing my poncho) while others said hello as
they rode by while the mini-buses slowed down asking
if I wanted a ride (it was still drizzling). I
declined for I was enjoying my mini-adventure and my
walk in the rain. Before long, the rain stopped and I
found myself on a muddy side street - slippery as
hell. I kept thinking I was going to fall on my butt
and actually laughed at this prospect as I'm sure the
Rwandans would have loved that - a muzungu face down
in the mud! Slowly, slowly I made it to JC's where we
enjoyed a fabulous lunch in the setting of beautiful,
scented gardens with fruit trees and avocado trees,
their branches heavy with ripening fruit. An
absolutely glorious afternoon.
Michelle
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