Wicked Long Update... prepare yourself.

Waramutse,

So I just got back from Butare in the south of Rwanda. Rwanda is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen. The whole drive down to Butare was over and around increasingly larger hills that are just spectacular. It also made me realize how small and full of people Rwanda is. For the entire drive houses lined the road and there was not one hillside that had not been terraced or altered in some way for growing crops. The valley floors are covered with fields, literally every inch of land is used for crops or housing. But I will talk more about Butare later.

HOMESTAY

I am now, as of a week ago, living with a Rwandan family. We live in the Nyamirambo part of town in the Rwampala section. The Nyamirambo district is a really vibrant and modern section of town. Every storefront is brightly colored and there is a music studio on every block.  The majority of Kigali’s Islamic population lives here as well and in the main section there are two sizeable mosques. I live down a long steep dirt road that is really horribly maintained, driving down it at night is comparable to bumping down a very slow and old wooden roller coaster, slow and painful but fun. Every morning to catch a taxi to class I have to climb up the hill and make my way to central Nyamirambo. During the day the ascent actually provides pretty nice views of Kigali.

I live in a sort of compound. There is a central courtyard with a number of adjoining rooms. I live off of the living room in a really great room complete with mosquito net and side table; unfortunately the mosquito net has now fallen down. I hope my malaria meds do what they are supposed to do!

My home stay family is wonderful. I live right across from my host brother, Ashiraf, who goes to boarding school during the week but lives at home on the weekends. He is fifteen. My home stay sisters are Camilla and Lamia and they both live at home and go to school at a local day school. My home stay father lives in Dubai I don’t think I will actually get to meet him but he seemed like a nice guy from a quick phone conversation I had with him. My home stay mom is great, but speaks very little English, so communication is sometimes hard. There is an older brother, an aunt, her child and two “house people” a.k.a. servants who live here. There is a visiting uncle as well, Semy, who lives in Belgium normally. His English is impeccable and he is very interesting to talk to.

The grandmother also lives here but unfortunately after I returned from Butare I learned that she had fallen into a coma the day before I got back. It sounds like she had a stroke. She is now in the hospital and it sounds like she is not doing well at all. I am in an awkward position seeing as I have only been here for a few days; I’m not quite sure how to handle the situation. I figure I might just lie low for a while and stay out of my family’s hair. Thoughts?

So I mentioned that I lived in a strongly Muslim neighborhood and that means that there are many mosques nearby. My family is a Muslim family, which I am very excited about. I think it will be fascinating to learn more about Islam especially with all the hatred so many Americans direct towards it. It has to be one of the most misunderstood religions in the world and I can’t wait to be right in the middle of it! But, as I mentioned, there are many mosques nearby which is interesting and great, BUT it also means that the calls to prayer at around 5:30 a.m. are seriously disrupting my sleep pattern.

Now a little about Rwandan food. I think I can sum it up in one word: Starch. Lots and lots of starch. For lunch and dinner EVERY SINGLE DAY we are served rice, spaghetti (?), cassava, French fries, beans, banana, and the occasional vegetable. Meat dishes differ; I have had goat, beef and fish. And when I say beef, I mean any part of the cow that may or may not be certified by the FDA. And when I say fish, I mean the entire freaking fish, head, tail, and scales. I also consume large amounts of tea. Rwandan tea is pretty great. I know this sounds strange, but if you drink the tea black with a spoon and a half, it tastes like you are drinking Fruit Loops. Awesome.

BUTARE

So in the middle of this past week I traveled with my group to Butare, a town two and a half hours to the south of Kigali. The drive down was beautiful. Two of the guys in my group, Robbie and David, and I caught a ride down with our Academic Director, Stephanie, and her cousin Micah, although I don’t think you spell it that way. The rest of the crew was in a matatu (taxi). Win for us. I don’t know if I mentioned this before but my group is awesome. Lots of really great people. There are fourteen of us in Kigali, wait, thirteen of us now as one girl unfortunately had to go home because of issues at home, Frieda will be missed. So now there are four guys and nine girls. Needless to say, us guys are bonding pretty well.

Once we got close to Butare we stopped in Nyanza to visit the palace of the last king of Rwanda. This place was incredibly interesting. They had created a replica of a traditional Rwandan house. It is basically a huge nearly dome shaped structure. In front is a horseshoe shaped porch. The interior of the structure was made of wood and the outside was thatched. Even in the midday heat, the inside of the building was incredibly cool.

The strange part of the place was the house the last King actually lived in. It looked like it was an adobe house straight out of the American southwest. Bizarre.

Our next stop was the Murambi Genocide site. I mentioned my visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial earlier (also known as the Gisozi memorial). The Gisozi memorial was just a museum that had the intent to inform and explain the events and actors in the genocide. It played strongly to the intellectual and informational side in explaining the genocide to those who did not know about it. Murambi was a totally different experience.

Murambi itself was the actual site of the massacre of 50,000 Tutsi. Many of these people had been hiding in churches but the pastors and priests convinced them that a safer place to be would be the new Murambi technical school that was near completion. Little did the people know that the clergy were in league with the genocidaires. So Tutsi from all around flocked to the school. There they stayed thinking that they would be safe. A few days after their arrival, the Interahamwe (the militia responsible for the genocide) surrounded the school and proceeded to starve the Tutsi camped there. After a number of days, the killing began. The Interahamwe were sickeningly efficient. They killed up to 50,000 men, women, and children over the course of about a week. They then dug massive graves and dumped the bodies.

The site today is set up in order to maximize the emotional effect of the genocide on the outside observer. The memorial starts with a new mass grave for the victims of the site. Then you are taken to the classrooms in the back of the school. Here, they have taken the bodies uncovered from the mass graves, preserved them with lime, and have lain them out on raised platforms. The rooms are rife with the smell of death. The bodies are paper white because of the lime and all that remains are the bones and flesh. Some rooms contain just the bodies of men, others women, and other rooms have the bodies of children. It really brings home the fact that genocide is the literal attempt at extermination of an entire race or group. No one is spared.

They then show you the site where the French troops raised their flag. And also where they set up their volleyball court, which just happens to be a mere ten feet from the mass graves. It is not widely known but the French had a large role in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. They helped supply the Hutu militias and train them before the genocide. Because of the support of the French the perpetrators of the genocide rightly believed that it would take the international community a long time to acknowledge and bring and end to the genocide. Something the international community never actually did.

Then they show you the clothes of all the people they unburied at the mass graves. Rows and rows of dirty, torn clothing.

It is incredible to me how quickly and efficiently the Interahamwe and Presidential Guard were able to carry out their sinister task. It is said that they were able to kill 1,000 people every 20 minutes. Just incredible. Genocide is not simple something that sneaks up on a country or people. This took many months of preparation and years of propaganda.

As you can probably guess the site at Murambi really affected a lot of our group very strongly on an emotional level. As hard as it was, I found it necessary to understand the true horrors of 1994.

We had the rest of the night off to relax and cope in our own ways with what we had seen that day. We stayed in a hostel run by nuns and, in a possibly sacrilegious bonding experience, moved all of our mattresses into one room and had a huge sleepover. In the morning the nuns were confused but amused.

That morning we went to the National Museum of Rwanda. It was an interesting place to go after the Murambi site. The museum focused entirely on Rwandan life and culture before the Genocide. It went over the natural history of Rwanda and then showed how traditional Rwandans made their houses, clothes, how the hunted, made baskets (really detailed, they take a whole week to make), and the games they played. They also showed how to make banana beer, basically you bury bananas with herb for three days, remove them and squeeze the juices out and then let those ferment for 3 more days and voilá… banana beer. We found out later that it taste like apple cider with a sharp vinegar aftertaste, yum?

In the back of the museum were a number of workshops where they wove baskets, made pots, and forged certain traditional items. All of the workers were orphans that the museum had taken in and trained in these skills. The museum then buys their products from them and sells them in the museum store. An interesting project but one wonders what these people are able to do after their apprenticeship is over; I am not sure how applicable to modern life in Rwanda skills like those are.

That afternoon we went and visited a women’s cooperative about an hour outside of Butare. The story behind the association is that after the genocide a Catholic (I think) priest came to their area and began to help these people find God in the aftermath in order to help them cope and begin to reconcile. He ministered to the victims on Thursdays and the perpetrators on Sunday. The post-genocide government told him that by teaching them separately he was only increasing the void between them and hurting the chances of reconciliation. So, he combined the groups, the widows of those who were killed and the wives whose husbands were in jail for killing the others husbands. At first, the widows of the victims were understandable entirely unforgiving, they hurled stones and the women who were bringing food to their incarcerated husbands. But, amazingly, over time the women realized that they were going to have to live the rest of their lives with these other women. Now, sixteen years later, the women work and live together. They mostly farm to support themselves and their combined work together helps them exist. It’s truly an amazing system of reconciliation. It takes almost super-human ability to forgive the transgressions of the genocide but these women were able to do it.

The visit, as Robbie remarked, was the first overwhelmingly positive thing we had done on the trip so far. After all the monuments to the genocide it was really great to see how actual people are dealing with issues of forgiveness. Everyone on our trip left feeling happy and positive for probably the first time this trip.

That night we all decided we were craving food from home as we were growing quickly tired of rice and beans. There was an “American” restaurant in town so we all got burgers, quesadillas, and croissants. It was a valiant attempt at American food and we were all very appreciative of the change in diet for one meal. Unfortunately the greasy food made some people queasy, but all in all I would say it was totally worth it.

We again had a sizeable sleepover at the convent and the next morning rose relatively early and made our way to the National University of Rwanda in Butare. Founded in the 70’s, I think, by the Belgians, I think, the University now has 12,000 students. The campus is very pretty with lots of greenery, gardens, and courtyards.

My favorite part of the university had to be the names of the dorms. Each student dorm, or hostel as they called them, was named after an important event at the time of their construction. The all-girls dorm was named “Vietnam,” another was “Cambodia” and the best of all was “Titanic,” not after the sinking of the Titanic, but because of the movie. I’m glad there were no more important events in the world at the time than Titanic. So great.

The dorms themselves were very interesting. In the US when we are possibly made to room with 3 people in a room we get frustrated. But think, each person gets their own bed, pretty great right? In Rwanda, the students might have two beds in a room, but that means that four people live there, they double up in the beds because the school wasn’t built to accommodate so many people! Think about that next time you get sick of your roommate.

After touring the dorms we went to a classroom and had a conversation with the University’s Reconciliation Club. I was expecting them to be very open and honest with our questions about the university and how the Hutu and Tutsi students interact. When we talked to them though they very much took the government line in claiming that everything was all right and that there was no animosity at all between any of the students. We were told that if any students expressed “genocide ideology” they were taken before a committee and tried, and it sounded like they were most often expelled. The students were very eager to tell us that three people were expelled for this last year. The problem for me with this approach was two fold. First, it was very vague what constituted “Genocide Ideology.” I have been told that it is very easy for the government to accuse someone of this is they express any opposition to the current regime and it’s policies. Second, it seems hard to reconcile if instead of listening to opposing points of view and engaging in discourse, you simply banish opposing points of view from any sphere of discussion. I also feel like if someone feels hatred against a certain group, there is probably a reason behind it, rational or not, and preventing them from getting an education, and possibly a job, the hatred can only increase. I do realize that there are totally reasonable reasons to fear people who might express “genocide ideology” but after witnessing the Women at the Women’s cooperative I feel like interaction is the best way to change minds and overcome differences.

BACK TO KIGALI

After our visit to the university we hopped on the public bus and headed back to Kigali. I returned home to a house in mourning as my host grandmother had a stroke the day before and was in a coma. She is still in the hospital and I think I am visiting her today.

All right, in closing for this epically long entry (my apologies) I will end on a more lighthearted note than last time. In the past few days I have met two little baby boys around the house. One in a month old and lives in my compound and the other was probably a year or two old and was the son of a visiting aunt. I’m not sure if this is just total odd chance, but the boys were named Nasri and Fabregas. I mention this because Nasri and Fabregas are both players for Arsenal in the UK. Apparently, like the dorms at the university and the taxis around town, naming even a child after international idols or celebrities is totally commonplace. Another interesting discovery in Rwanda!

Urabeho,

Muzungu currently in Kigali, Rwanda

UPDATE

A Death in the Family

Today I went and visited my ailing host grandmother in the hospital. There were about twenty family members there who were visiting. Ashiraf, my host brother, and I went in together to see her. She had been in a coma for about three days after having a stroke.

After our visit we went back home and gathered mattresses for the family members who would be spending the night at the hospital. After dropping the mattresses of I went into town to meet a few people in my group for dinner, I wanted to get out of the house so my family didn’t have to worry about me while they had so much else going on. While I was at the Hotel des Milles Collines (from “Hotel Rwanda”) having a snack, I received a call from Ashiraf telling me that my host grandmother had died. I offered my condolences and after dinner headed home.

While I was walking down the hill to my house, I saw the road lined with cars. Large amounts of people were gathered outside the house. I walked into the courtyard to find probably fifty people all gathered in white chairs in the courtyard. In each room, groups of people were gathered to pay their respects to my grandmother. I have never seen anything like it. Apparently her body had been put into her room and people could stop in and pay their respects to her. Every family member and neighbor had come to the house. Incredible.

Also, in the Islamic tradition, once a person dies the funeral happens as soon as possible which is typically no more than 24 hours after their passing. So tomorrow the funeral is at 10 a.m. I am very interested to see how a funeral like this works. More to come…

Muzungu currently in Kigali, Rwanda

PICTURE POST TO COME SOON. I promise.