Kitgum

Greetings from Gulutown,

Early this week the group and I traveled up to Kitgum. As usual, the roads were abysmal but the landscape around here is beautiful and it more than makes up for it. We have turned to card games to break up the monotony of the van rides because each trip takes at least two hours and staring out the window with an iPod in is only entertaining for so long. Spades and hearts are the two games of choice and we have fierce competitions, normally in the back seats of the matatus. I figured out that over a two-day span I had played eight hours of card games… wow.

When we reached Kitgum we headed straight to a hotel for a lecture/ discussion with the Kitgum district representative from the National Resistance Movement (NRM) about decentralization in Uganda. It ended up being a 45-minute talk about how the government in Kampala was doing everything in its power to bring all districts in Uganda up to the same level of development with well-placed and well-timed grants. Even when confronted with the reality of Kitgum, a place so obviously ignored by the government in Kampala, he stuck to the government line. No amount of questioning could get him to spout anything but what he was paid by the government to spout. He tried to avoid all of our questions about the continued poverty in the north by stating statistics about the growth of the Ugandan economy. All in all, an incredibly frustrating experience. Most, if not all, of us left feeling indignant.

I mentioned in an earlier post the high level of alcoholism and the abundance of cheap, bagged booze. Well, in Kitgum, I had the chance to sample some of this potent liquid. For 500 UGX or about 25 cents I bought a 120ml bag of Rider Vodka, produced right in Kampala so you know its high quality. The listed ingredients were as follows: Potable Spirits, Purified Water, and Permitted Food Flavors. Now if that doesn’t make you want to ingest the contents of that plastic sac, then who knows what will. It was surprisingly drinkable though and had a slight pineapple hint to it. Maybe that explains why so many people can put so much of this down.

LAMWO DISTRICT and PADIBE GIRL’S SCHOOL

The following day we took what we were told would be a 15-minute ride that took 2 hours (We should start to realize these things sooner) to the neighboring Lamwo district, created last year as a new district separate from Kitgum district. The local government was just establishing themselves in temporary housing while their new district offices were being built. We were able to talk to three district officers, all of whom happened to be members of the NRM. But unlike our last encounter with NRM party members, this meeting was surprisingly open and honest.

By far the most colorful character was a schoolteacher turned politician by the name of Abraham. He was a jolly man with a cheerily rotund waist who dressed to the nines and rocked a pink tie. He was very theatrical when telling stories (He shook Joseph Kony’s hand at the Juba Peace Talks) and smiled a lot. After he told us about his role in the governance of the district, we were able to ask him some questions. It turns out that he used to be a member of an opposition party but realized that his political ambitions would come to nothing if he were not a member of the NRM. He said that as he was an old man he didn’t want to fight the powers that be, as it would cause unneeded stress in his life. When asked about why the north was doing so much worse than the rest of the country in terms of development he told us straight up that the government in Kampala simply had no interest in the region. He told us about a new electricity project in Lamwo district and how it was only going through because the district representatives were all from the NRM. He had a slight infatuation with electricity and its benefits so if the NRM was his road to getting power in his district then by all means he was going to support them. It was an interesting insight into the local politics of the region and made our group realize that it wasn’t all that different from American politics in that some people sacrifice their base beliefs in order to get what they want or need for their constituents.

After a lunch of Nutella, bananas, and chips we were told, for the first time, that we would next be heading to a local school for an organized program. Our program assistant, Rafela, jokingly told us that we could walk, only the guys took her seriously and we set out on a trek through the bush. We made our way along paths worn in the grass over rivers and past huts. We made it to the school mere minutes after the rest of the group coated in a nice layer of sweat and filled with man-pride at having made it without asking for directions.

We were quickly taken to be seated in front of a crowd of about 200 students from the school under the shade of a large tree. We were asked to introduce ourselves and there was plenty of laughter, as the students could hardly understand us when we spoke in our rapid, Americanized English.

After a brief introduction by the head of the school, the head girl came forward and gave a speech. It was basically a list of grievances to the head of schools in the district about the poor condition the school was in. She begged from more security, more dorms, a functioning library, and textbooks. It seemed a desperate plea for assistance to a person who seemed to have little interest in her speech and who probably didn’t have the resources to meet any of the stated needs.

After some more speeches and songs by the students, they opened a forum for the students to ask us anything and for us to ask them anything. We found out quickly that most of the students had been living in IDP camps for most of their lives and some had even been abducted by the LRA. Their lives were full of traumatic events. All of their questions were about how they should cope with the loss of parents, friends, and sibling, and how they should find the motivation to go to school when their parents weren’t alive to encourage them. They couldn’t have asked a more woefully unqualified group. Our combined traumatic experiences couldn’t equal even one of these children’s experiences. It is we who should have been asking them how they dealt with these things in their everyday life. I personally could not answer any of the questions as I had no words to even come close to doing their questions justice. A few people in our group gave really great responses but they were all basically stock answers to give some response to questions none of us had answers to.

The program closed with the students performing the Acholi Royal Dance for us and then wishing us well on our continued trips in Uganda. We returned to the hotel and the next day headed back to Gulu.

Overall our time in Kitgum showed us the reality of Ugandan politics on the local level and opened our eyes to the trauma that many Northern Ugandan children have experienced and still experience on a day to day basis. We head to an IDP camp tomorrow to bear witness to the places where these people were forced to live for almost 20 years during the LRA war.

I will close on a happier note. Yesterday I was interviewing someone at my mothers NGO offices for a paper and when I was introducing myself my mother followed up by stating my Acholi name! Apparently she was waiting to tell me until Sunday for our Homestay farewell party, but she let it slip. She gave me the name “Omara,” which means “beloved” in Acholi. Works for me!

I hope everything is going well where ever you may be. Happy Halloween!!

Muzungu with an Acholi name currently in Gulu, Uganda, disappointed that he has to miss both Halloween AND Thanksgiving!

Slavery, Slaughter, and Sudan (Not as heavy as it sounds… I promise)

Hey!

After a long week of classes we finally got to head out on some excursions here in Uganda. I would be lying if I though these excursions were necessary to my learning experience here, but I think they contributed heavily to my life experience. I experienced rough African roads, excessively long car rides with frequent breakdown and we were able to go to the no man’s land between Sudan and Uganda.

BAKER’S FORT

But first, we went to Baker’s Fort. We have been learning a lot about the recent conflict in Uganda and East Africa but this excursion was to make us realize that there has been conflict and suffering in Uganda for much longer than we had really thought about. Every American school child learns about slavery’s impact on America and how hundreds of thousands of slaves were brought from the African continent to work the cotton fields of the South and how they were basically the engines behind the economy of much of the US. We learn incredibly little about the African side of things though. Baker’s Fort today is the remnants of a once flourishing slaving post. It is built upon a beautiful section of exposed rock that over looks the plains of Northern Uganda. From this vantage point, slavers were able to see for miles around and locate any threats that might have troubled them.

The slave trade in this region was begun by Arabs who made their way up the Nile River and realized the potential for acquiring slaves in this section of Africa. They established the post and began to enslave the local tribes. Once the tribes caught on to the fact that their people were being enslaved, the Arabs armed them and had them raid other tribes for slaves. The business proved extremely lucrative to the Arabs who then sold the Africans in Asia. The tribes however were deprived of most of their able-bodied men and women and suffered extremely economically and socially.

In the 1800’s when Britain was beginning its exploration of “British East Africa,” an explorer by the name of Samuel Baker stumbled upon this slave post and assaulted it, running the Arabs out and releasing the slaves, hence the name Baker’s fort. He was later given the title “Sir” by Queen Victoria for his exploits.

As I mentioned before, the boulders at this site are magnificent and were immensely fun to climb on. There were about two rock formations that looked like Pride Rock from “The Lion King” and one giant rock that looked like a largemouth bass. Apparently Joseph Kony, head of the LRA, came here and had “visions” that further encouraged him on his destructive mission, an interesting tie in to the history of this place.

WTU and AWA

The roads in and out of Gulu are abysmal. They are all dirt, full of potholes, and when it rains they turn into swamps. The government in Kampala turns a blind eye to the needs of the people up in the North because of their ethnicity, different from the president’s, and because of their distance from the capital. A huge amount of trade goes through Gulu from Southern Sudan but the condition of the roads severely limits the efficiency of overland transport. The North of the country would benefit immensely if the government paid to pave the roads but as of now Museveni is only focused on building roads out West to the new oil reserves.

Regardless, the roads provide exciting rides to those travelers (my compatriots and I) who aren’t used to such, shall I say, interesting conditions. On the way to Baker’s fort we experience a fair share of jostling but on the way back we just missed a rainstorm. Good news for us we though, but we thought wrong. We may have missed it, but it did some nice work on the road ahead of us. Our group was split between two vehicles, a white matatu, later named “Lucy” for reasons unbeknownst to me, and a school bus yellow euro van. I was in Lucy for this experience and, tenacious as she was, she became stuck in the mud at the start of a 100-200 meter long swampy stretch. We spun our wheels for a good long while but to no avail. This, of course, did not go unnoticed by the local population and a crowd began to gather. They lined the raised embankments of the road and shouted encouragement, and “Muzungu,” in between bouts of laughter. After a few minutes of making faces at them and laughing back, we realized that these folks could be valuable in our quest to extricate ourselves from the mud. Soon enough we had a mass of Ugandan youth pushing the back of Lucy and in a few minutes we were free of the swampy stretch of road. Our matatu roared in appreciation and joy…

But wait, the yellow van was still on the other side. But then, above the din, we heard the roar of an engine being revved. The impossible was about to be attempted. The yellow Euro van (Y.E.V.) flew across the few feet of solid ground it had to work with and hit the mud at an alarming speed, it went straight along the road for a few meters but soon slid into the right embankment only to ricochet off like a bumper car. Using its momentum and total blind luck the YEV kept on its path, narrowly avoiding a bicycle, Lucy, and thirty small African children. It came to what would have been a screeching halt if the road had been paved. Our friends were all in the very back seat with looks of total astonishment on their faces. The driver simply smiled at a job well done.

ATTIACK

The next day we set off to visit the Atticak Memorial Site and the Ugandan/ Sudanese border. I was in the YEV this time and unfortunately we broke down about an hour into the trip. Our driver hopped out at disappeared into the surrounding bush. Fifteen minutes later he emerged with a long length of wire. Where he got it, I have no idea. We asked Rafela, on of our program coordinators, how he had found such a thing in the surrounding bush. Us: “Where did he get that? Did he steal it?” Rafela: “No, he got it.” Us: “So he stole it.” Rafela: “No, he got it.” I guess the bush holds secrets we may never truly understand. Regardless, the driver, who me might as well bestow with the title “Miracle worker,” fixed the YEV with this mysterious piece of wire and we were back on our way.

The town of Attiack appeared no different from any of the small villages we passed by on our three and a half hour trek but we did not know the history of this place. In 1995, the LRA had been around for almost ten years, but most of its exploits had been assaults on government troops, attacks the local population was generally supportive of. But on April 20^th, 1995, they changed their tactics. Led by Vincent Otti, himself from Attiack, a group of 200 armed LRA soldiers descended on the town. Over the next few hours the soldiers would kill almost 300 residents in this village of a few thousand. Their stated goal was to show Ugandans that the government had no power to protect them. This assault began almost ten years of extreme violence and abductions in the region.

The monument to the victims was in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by a chain link fence. Due to a lack of funds in the community the memorial had been erected by USAID. For such a horrific and important event, the memorial seemed, I hate to say it, but underwhelming. Maybe after the memorials to the genocide in Rwanda a regular memorial just doesn’t have the same effect. Or maybe it’s just that the people here, since the conflict is over and holds too many bad memories, just want to forget the past. The memorial might not even be meant for outsiders, why do we care where the memorial is or how it is presented if it works for those who actually experienced the event? We only spent five minutes at the monument before we hopped back in the vehicles headed for the border.

NO MAN’S LAND

Borders are interesting things. In America a big deal is made about our borders, especially the southern one. I illegally crossed the border into Canada once. I was leading a pre-orientation trip for Bowdoin and my co-leader, Annabel, and I simply missed the last exit in Maine. We got chewed out by a Canadian border guard (eh?) and we were detained for a few minutes at the US border. They were pretty serious about it, understandably, but we explained our stupidity and they let us on our way. The border itself was well maintained and pretty well guarded. Yesterday, I found myself at the Ugandan border with Sudan. Needless to say, this was a different experience entirely.

The first sign we came across reminded us to “Be aware of landmines,” and illustrated the point with colorful pictures of different explosive devices. On the reverse side it reminded you to not touch or pick up any foreign objects. Things just got real.

The border between the two countries includes a few kilometer wide stretch of land that belongs to both Uganda and Sudan. In this pleasant little corridor reside the armies of both countries. After talking briefly to a border guard who, when asked, had no idea how many trucks crossed the border on average everyday, we walked carefully (landmines!) into No Man’s Land. Amazingly, Southern Sudan looks a heck of a lot like Northern Uganda. After five minutes (just to make sure we really were in both countries at once) we decided to return to Uganda. Some of us went to the moneychangers, a common sight at the border, and, just to prove our proximity to Sudan, exchanged some Ugandan Shillings for Sudanese pounds.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other half of the SIT program told us that the men received numerous offers of cattle in exchange for some of the ladies on the program. Their maximum offer was fifty-five cattle. We decided to try our luck and with the right amount of bartering and good salesmanship, the other guys and I were able to negotiate a bride price for Hannah of one hundred cows. She will be missed but I think our sorrows will be drowned in the delicious beef we will enjoy for the remainder of the trip.

Before we left, David and I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase some Muchomo (In Rwanda known as Brochette, and to our group as meat on a stick). I don’t know where we got off thinking that African-border-meat-on-a-stick was a good idea but we went through with it anyway. Lukewarm and tough would be the best two words to describe what we ingested. But my bowels have yet to turn on me so I think I am in the clear. So now I can say I avoided landmines and ate meat on a stick at the Sudanese border with Uganda, I would chalk that down as a grade-A certified life experience.

Before I go any further, I just wanted to make clear that we didn’t actually sell Hannah. I think it is against SIT policy to barter with your fellow students.

On the trip back, the white matatu, Lucy, broke down a number of times. We ended up all piling into the YEV and making it to a town to find some spare parts, but out of nowhere Lucy sped into town and worked fine the rest of the way.

The last hour of the trip we could see a thunderstorm looming in the distance, the lightning illuminating the plains. It was headed right towards Gulu, as were we, so contact was inevitable. Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies” came on my iPod right as we approached the storm. I love coincidences.

WTU and AWA

I realize I titled a section above as WTU and AWA and I did not explain those acronyms that probably led to some confusion (or perhaps not). WTU stands for “Welcome to Uganda,” it is a horribly culturally insensitive phrase that we use when ever something absurd happens e.g. van driver emerging from the bush with wire, or Lucy suddenly finding new life. It’s a way of coping with the things we find strange in Ugandan daily happenings. We also use AWA. This one more relates to the African notion of time. Our program coordinator in Rwanda, Apollon, said one of his European friends would uses this acronym when ever he had a meeting in Africa that started a hour or two past the scheduled time (a common occurrence here). It means, “Africa wins again” as in “Is this meeting really starting at 9 or is it going to be AWA and start at 11?”

Well that does it for me this time around. I hope all is well in your respective part of the world and may the next few days until my next post treat you kindly. I am off to Kitgum until Wednesday, more updates after that!

-Muzungu currently in Gulu, Uganda, packing for an excursion to Kitgum.

Reality and the Cold Hard Facts (The unignorable situation in Uganda)

Apwoyo,

I again write from Gulu and about Gulu. In Rwanda we were never in the same place form more than a week. We traveled to different towns for a number of days and we never once had class for five days in a row, each week had some excursion planned. Gulu is a different story so far. For the past few days we have had three lectures a day, as sad as it sounds, its kind of overwhelming and draining. We have our first excursion this weekend when we visit the Atiak Massacre site, and on Monday we head up to Kitgum for a few days. Kitgum is a town about two or three hours farther north that was hit very hard by the LRA and its tactics of abduction and killing. At some point we visit the border with Sudan, which I eagerly await. Apparently when the last group was there the border guards offered one of the guys in the group, Jason, a couple of hundred dollars (or a few head of cattle) for Zuri, one of the girls in the group. Seeing as there are nine girls in our crew, us guys stand to make at least a few thousand dollars each or seriously increase our livestock holdings. But I jest…

Good news! Telenovlas (Mexican Soap Operas) exist in Uganda too. Just like in Rwanda, I get to spend most of my evenings watching the high drama lives of these wonderful, wholesome people with their concubines, illegitimate children, and lover’s spats. Good clean fun.

Speaking of good clean fun, Uganda has the highest consumption of alcohol per capita in the entire world. As I mentioned before, women do a lot of work and there are a lot of men who lounge around during the day and just drink and play cards. Gulu itself is an impoverished town so that also lends itself to increased consumption of alcohol and alcoholism. The cheapest booze here is sold in plastic packets of about 200-ml. Empty packets cover the ground of almost every street. Every time I return home I pass by circle of men playing cards (surprise!) and sipping out of these packets. Even when I leave in the morning the same men are there, still drinking. It’s a troubling situation that I only hope will begin to change once the effects of the LRA conflict fade into the past and the local government realizes the detriment that the overconsumption of alcohol has on the community.

Before I get much further in my blogging here I wanted to give you a quick (I promise) background to Uganda and why it is in the shape it is today. So in five sentences or less… here goes nothing. 1. Britain claimed Uganda as one of their colonies in Africa and used “divide and rule” tactics to control the colony by pitting different ethnic groups against each other, most importantly the Northern Acholi vs. the Southern/ Central Buganda. 2. Uganda gained independence in 1962 from Britain and came under the rule of Milton Obote, a politician from the North, who ruled for about nine years until he was overthrown by Idi Amin (Last King of Scotland, anyone?). 3. Idi Amin ruled Uganda with an iron fist and killed many Ugandans in an often senseless manner, therefore he was over thrown by Milton Obote in 1979 (same guy from before) who had been gathering his forces in the bush; unfortunately for Obote in 1985 he lost power to one of his generals, Tito, who then lost power to another general, Bagaisa. 4. In 1986, Yoweri Museveni, with an army chock full of Rwanda Tutsi, toppled Bagaisa and claimed power establishing a regime that he still leads as president today. 5. After his victory a number of members of his army broke off and formed resistance movements, the most important being the LRA by Joseph Kony, a movement that intended to bring Uganda under the rule of the “New Ten Commandments” and which led to almost twenty years of guerilla warfare in the Northern part of the country.  Basically, in the past 27 years Uganda hasn't had a peaceful handing over of power. Phewwwww, that was rough and incredibly basic, but it’s something.

But as the war ended only in Uganda three years ago and the man behind most of the violence is still at large and abducting and killing in the DRC and Sudan, the affects are still very real. The atrocities committed by the LRA under Kony’s rule were and are almost unbelievable. His army goes into villages, abducts children, and brings them to the bush to train them and brainwash them with their ideologies. The male children are trained as killing machine and the girls are taken as wives. In one Homestay family in our group the mother had nine children abducted, and eight returned. After a few weeks or months in the bush, the LRA would have the children lead attacks on their own villages and in many instances force them to kill members of their own family in order to completely sever the ties with their home. Can you imagine? One of our lecturers told us that he was talking to one returnee child soldier while he was reading a magazine. The boy was six. When the man turned a page in the magazine to a picture of an old man, the boy pointed and said, “We would kill him. He is worthless.” A six-year-old boys automatic reaction to an old man is thoughts of killing merely because he has been trained to eliminate the weak and those who can’t work for his cause. Simply terrifying.

Alright, my last serious and troubling point, and here it is: Although Uganda is making strides (hopefully) towards a real democracy and a somewhat united nation, there are still some incredibly troubling things going on in the country when it comes to social issues. The country is about 85% Christian and with this comes a large number of evangelical Christians. They are heavily influenced by evangelicals from abroad. Many major evangelicals from the United States have come to Uganda to preach some incredibly hateful sermons about homosexuals and homosexuality. When these sermons are combined with a preexisting cultural mistrust and dislike of homosexual activities it creates an intense, almost rabid, crusade against certain individuals. Legislation was proposed last year to give the death penalty to anyone caught participating in homosexual acts and it was only shelved when the outcry from the international community threatened to affect Uganda on the world stage.

I mention all this because yesterday our group discovered a news story that I am sure has made the rounds in the U.S. but really shocked us. A publication, I hesitate to call it a newspaper, in Uganda, Rolling Stone, published a list of 100 suspected homosexuals in Uganda, complete with pictures and contact information, with large white words on a black background shouting “Hang Them!” Literally calling for their murders. As of yesterday, four of those pictured had been physically harmed in someway. This hate speech is encroaching on the lives and wellbeing of actual people. It is the continuation of an incredibly troublesome trend here when it comes to acceptance of other ways of life.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/19/AR2010101903438.html?tid=nn_twitter

-Muzungu currently in Gulu, Uganda feeling troubled by the past and present of Uganda.

My friend Whitney Loraine Skippings Dupree is currently posting a series of descriptions about the individuals in our group. She is uncannily accurate in all of her descriptions thus far. She is posting them at a rate of two a day. Check em out! (As well as the rest of her blog, it’s awesome.)

http://foundwandering.tumblr.com/

Gulu Town

Apwoyo,

I am starting to settle into this town they call Gulu. We had our first lectures today and started to learn about the incredibly violent and troubled history of Uganda in general and Northern Uganda more specifically. From Milton Obote to Idi Amin and now to Museveni and the problems with the LRA there has scarce been a time when Uganda hasn’t been embroiled in some internal or external conflict since the end of the colonial era. I can’t wait to learn more about this troubled nation.

Gulu is the economic center of the North of Uganda. It is also a HUGE hub for NGO activity. There are between two hundred and three hundred NGOs based here. It’s a great staging area to access many troubled areas. That means a huge influx of outside influence though and who can tell whether that is a beneficial thing for the people of Gulu. I think it certainly affects their local culture and could possibly create a culture of dependency here. I will be interested to see in the coming weeks how the locals interact with the NGOs and how they feel towards each other.

In Rwanda there was an obvious gap in gender roles but it seemed an ever-narrowing one. My mother worked in town in her own store and my sisters received equal schooling to my brother. On the national stage, women were allotted a certain number of seats in congress and gender equality was pushed strongly through the government controlled media. In Uganda the situation is noticeably different. The gender roles are much more defined. Throughout the day you can see the streets full of men playing cards and hanging out with their friends. There are certainly some men working in their stores or as security guards but there are an interesting amount of men just relaxing. Women however are always hard at work in their stores, lugging sugarcane through the street or preparing meals in the house. Before meals the ladies of the household are expected to wash the hands of the elders, guests and everyone else from kneeling position. When I offered to wash my aunts hands she was visibly surprised, but I insisted and, in a possibly culturally insensitive way, tried to return a favor that normally does not get returned. The same goes for washing the dishes or making meals, every time I have offered to help I have been politely turned down while at the same time receiving an inquisitive look. Some of the girls in the last group had a very hard time adjusting to the roles considered appropriate for them, understandably so. It is a hard line to walk between what your culture tells you is right, and what another culture sees as the absolute correct way to do things.

My Homestay mother, Jackie, returned from Nairobi, Kenya yesterday. I really got lucky with my Homestay families on this trip. The Twagira family in Kigali is one of the friendliest families I have yet encountered and Jackie is no different. She used to work for War Child Holland but now works for another Dutch company focused on development. She is a brilliant woman and actually one of the lecturers for our classes here in Gulu. On her first night back we went out to Ethiopian food (amazing). She has done a lot with her life including studying for two years in the Hague and getting a degree in Post-Conflict Transformation from Gulu University. I cannot wait to hear more about her exploits.

At the end of this month in Gulu and Kampala I start my independent study project (ISP). The ISP is part of my academic program here and I have to complete a 30- 40 page paper on a topic of my choice by the end of the allotted months time. I came in with the idea that I might do my project in Northern Uganda but that soon went out the window when I saw that probably 50% of my group wanted to do that as well, not that I don’t like them, but there is something to be said for originality. So, I decided that Rwanda was where I would be. I loved Rwanda but I soon found that with only a month and the language barrier as it was combined with the reserved nature of Rwandans it would be to hard of a task to do what I envisioned. We then traveled to Southern Uganda and met with the head of all Refugee activities in Southwest Uganda. Jackpot.

I have more or less decided (but looking at my past record, what does that matter) that I want to look at the situation in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Southwest Uganda. I want to examine the set up of the camp, the Ugandan locals feelings about the camp, and also, the bulk of my research, on the Rwandan Refugees. The Rwandans are mostly Hutu refugees who fear going back to Rwanda due to their fear of facing biased criminal courts that might try them for crimes they did not commit. I want to find out why they fear as much as they do, where does the fear come from, and what their alternatives are. As of now they have had their refugee status revoked because the international community considers their home country to be safe.

This also means that I will be spending my 21^st birthday in a Refugee Settlement, that’s an interesting story for the grandkids. As of now it looks like I will be joined by Dani, a daring and once-dreaded Dartmouth Dame (She got dreadlocks at the beginning of the trip and now they are no more), so I won’t be alone in this endeavor. Dani is the President-Elect of her Sorority at Dartmouth, a ski patrol gal, and quite the outdoorswoman. Sounds like a perfect ISP companion to me, hopefully we can do a stellar job on out papers and get some hiking in somewhere before the program ends… a man can dream can’t he?

Thanks again for taking the time to read this ever-growing account of my time in East Africa. I hope all is well wherever you may be.

-Muzungu currently living the life in Gulu, Uganda

Acholi Land and Chile

Kop ango!

“I am back in Uganda. After a month long stay in Kigali, Rwanda my group and I have made it to Gulu. The differences between Rwanda and Uganda on a visual level are incredibly interesting. Over the course of three days we were able to observe Rwanda and almost the entire length of Uganda out of the windows of a bus. Geographically, Rwanda is, as its nickname mille collines suggest, a land of many hills. Uganda is much more diverse and as our drive progressed we moved from hills to plains and jungle.

In Rwanda, almost every inch of land and every hill is covered in terracing and set aside for agriculture. As a smaller nation, they have a much higher population density than Uganda and therefore have to use all the land that is available to them. In Uganda, there is much more open land that has yet to be touched by agriculture.

The roads too changed from country to country. Rwanda for the past sixteen years has been in the process of rebuilding. A large portion of their domestic policy relates to strengthening the nations infrastructure and its road system reflects it. Every road between towns was paved and in surprisingly good condition. In Kigali, almost everyday my matatu route was changed due to road upkeep and construction. The government is on top of its internal infrastructure and it maintains a very transparent economic system. Uganda on the other hand is rife with corruption. Money meant for one project is very easily funneled into the pockets of politicians and infrastructure is easily overlooked. The road to Gulu from Mbarara was not in nearly as good a shape as the roads in Rwanda. The numerous potholes and road problems slowed our trip considerably.

           

Cleanliness is another visual clue that can tell a lot about a nation. Rwanda is all about superficial appearances. If the outside community thinks everything looks good on the surface then they will question reports that suggest otherwise. In Rwanda the streets are impeccably clean. Every household is well kept and there is a certain pride in keeping it that way. Everywhere you see people sweeping dust off of their porches and steps and government employees sweeping the streets. Trashcans dot the streets and trash is not an issue. Uganda on the other hand is really dirty in certain places. The drainage ditches alongside the road in Gulu are choked with garbage. There are piles of trash on the side of the streets. Public cleanliness and appearances are obviously not considered as highly as they are in Rwanda.

Finally, as this program is about Post-Conflict Transformation, I think it is important to note the importance of each conflict in the respective cultures although not necessarily visual I think it is important nonetheless. In Rwanda the genocide occurred sixteen years ago but every day in the paper it is mentioned a number of times. The country is still in the process of rebuilding and it is an event that affects literally the entire country. The conflict here in Gulu ended a mere three years ago. Wounds are still incredibly fresh but they are much less publicized. I have been told that people are very open about their experiences with the LRA War where in Rwanda to took people lots of time to be comfortable enough to talk about what they went through to me.”

That past section was a small excerpt from my reflection journal I have to keep for my program. I though it was semi-pertinent to the blog and helps to highlight some of the changes I have experienced from Rwanda to Uganda.

But back to the normal bloggy stuff.

ACHOLI LAND

I love Gulu. There, I said it. I have only been here a few days but life is extremely good here. Kigali was magnificent but the pace of life is much slower in Gulu. Who knows how long I will enjoy that part of Gulu but as of now I am perfectly content. Our stay at the Elephant Graceland Hotel has been great as well. It helped me learn that hot water and electricity are things I once considered necessities but now see as things that can be lived without. Sporadic power is enough to charge laptops and phones. And a cold-water bucket shower, as miserable as that sounds, is actually not that bad, refreshing even. Gulu itself is quite a small town. It is the economic center of Northern Uganda and it has a population of around 300,000 but it still feels quaint and uncrowded. Everyone here is incredibly friendly too. In Kigali people were friendly if you said hi to them and were very helpful if you had a question or needed directions but kept to themselves more. In Uganda though everyone is all smiles and is always ready with a smile even before you address them.

ACHOLI LANGUAGE

While we have been here we have switched the Kinyarwanda we struggled so hard to learn for Acholi (Lwo), the language of the North. Our teacher is an incredibly eccentric man who couldn’t be more excited to tell us all about the vowels in Acholi (a,e,i,o,u Sound familiar?) or to encourage us to ask people in the street the word for breasts and other assorted private parts (yeah, didn’t do that one). Regardless he makes class engaging for the hour and a half we have it each day. The word for “Fish” has to be my favorite in both Kinyarwanda and Acholi. From an English language point of view, they have either hit the nail on the head or simply have a very negative view of the food. In Kinyarwanda the word is “Ifi”, pronounced “Iffy”, like I wouldn’t eat that, and in Acholi it is “Rec,” pronounced, “Retch.”

Acholi is a tonal language so similar to Chinese (I think) if you put the wrong emphasis on different parts of the same word it means something entirely different. For example “too” can either mean “death” or “fox.” And “unu” can either mean “rope” or “abuse,” better be careful what you are asking for when you just want some rope for your clothesline.

Acholi Cultural Institution

Our first fieldtrip of sorts was to the Acholi Cultural Institution right in Gulu. The Acholi people have a fascinating culture that they can trace back to the Lwo tribe in southern Sudan. They migrated down to Northern Uganda in the 14^th century. Cool Fact: Barack Hussein Obama, our president, traces his heritage back to this same Lwo tribe.

Have you ever seen the documentary War Dance? If not you should pick it up or watch it on Netflix (it’s on the instant view section). It is about a Ugandan wide tribal dance competition and it focuses on the northern tribe, Acholi key amongst them, as using dance to overcome the trauma and pain from the LRA war. The competition ends in Kampala at the national theatre where I was about a month ago, but some of it is filmed in Gulu at the cultural institute. Who knew that a year ago when I watched War Dance in my government class that I would be visiting the sites where it was filmed?!

We had a long conversation with two Acholi chiefs from two of the fifty-something clans. They told us about the dances, songs, food, and history of the Acholi people. We learned that in the Northern Culture, men with multiple wives were not uncommon. One chief told us he only had one wife, but the other one piped up quickly to proudly claim he had three wives, and then the man working the projector added that he too had two wives. The room we were in was filled with bicycles which turns out were meant for the first wives of the chief of each Acholi tribe that had been donated by the Ugandan government. Interesting how these different cultures work.

After the conversation we went outside and were treated to a dance performance by a bunch of the local youth. After a few minutes we were invited to join, needless to say, Muzungus don’t quite have the rhythm and tribal dance skills that most Ugandan school children have. Embarrassing to say the least but still a good time. We then heard a musical performance by another crew of students who put on an epic and sweeping song about the coming of peace in Northern Uganda. And then, our visit was over.

Chilean Miners

Not-so-random-side-note. I don’t know if you have been following the recent rescue of the Chilean Miners but it is nothing short of miraculous. A few short years ago I was in Copiapo, the town where all of this is happening, so I have been following the saga as it unfolded as much as possible while I have been here. I was able to catch a lot of the rescuer footage in the hotel bar and it was really interesting to see how excited the Ugandans here were for the miners. They all knew exactly how many had been rescued and followed the events with extreme attention. It was nice to see a little solidarity in the world. And since everyone got out all right I think it is ok to make light of the situation some of the miners are now in. Can you imagine being trapped underground for more than two months surrounded by 32 men to discover that while you were below both your wife and your mistress came to wait for you and discovered one another? This is the situation a few of these Chileans found themselves in. Ouch, how many do you think asked to head right back down into the mine? Only kidding.

Homestay

The best thing about Gulu is that I get to go into another homestay! After a truly amazing experience in Kigali, I eagerly awaited this homestay and it is finally here. My host mother, Jackie, is currently in Nairobi, Kenya for a conference but gets in on Sunday. My aunt picked me up and we headed to my home for the next few weeks. Upon entering through a metal gate into a dirt yard I was met by a number of old women, who laughed and embraced me, some small children and lots of puppies. All of these beings are to be my neighbors. I can’t wait! Most of them lived in round one-room concrete huts with thatched roofs. My house is more modern looking with a living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. I talked to my mother on the phone once I got there and she welcomed me from afar. She seems incredibly interesting and I can’t wait to meet her. She works for War Child Holland, and NGO that helps children deal with psychological problems associated with the LRA war.

Dinner was fried chicken. Southern food has been one thing I have been missing here in Africa and this fried chicken was heaven sent. Deep-fried, home made and delectable. The power went out due to heavy rain so dinner was emergency lamp lit, romantic. My aunt and I were joined by Jeffery, an uncle, and Carolyn (I think) who is also and aunt. Both were extremely friendly and I can’t wait to get to know them further.

CLOSING NOTE: DOGS

            I love dogs. My mother Jackie has a boisterous dog that is right now barking outside my window. Dogs abound here in Gulu, a huge change from Kigali. I think I saw one dog in Kigali, and my academic director, Stephanie, owned this dog. Dogs are generally despised in Rwanda in the post-genocide era. Apparently before the genocide dogs were considered great pets, this changed during the genocide. With so many bodies in the streets and no people to feed them the dogs turned to eating human corpses to survive. Survivors saw them defiling their relative’s remains and grew to hate the creatures. So today dogs are hardly seen, understandable, but I couldn’t be happier that Uganda is different.

Sorry for ending again on a semi-morbid, sad note. Gulu is great. I hope all is well with you and I thank you for taking to the time to read this blog!

Cheers,

Muzungu currently in Gulu, Uganda

p.s. In addition to Muzungu, we are also called Mono (pronounced Moh-noh) here. It’s nice to get a little variety.

Goodbye Rwanda, Hello Northern Uganda!

Hello!

I am currently in Gulu, Uganda at the Elephant Graceland hotel. I can't tell whether it is an homage to Elvis' home in Memphis or just a really spectacular name, either way it a pretty great hotel minus the lack of anything but cold water.

 My time in Rwanda has unfortunately come to an end. It is a truly fascinating country and I really hope that I will be back at some point in my life. If you get the chance you really should visit.

I apologize if this post seems not as substantial as other ones, I had a lot to talk about and not much time to do so!

TIG

On Thursday my group and I visited a TIG camp. A TIG camp is basically a work camp for those who were tried and found guilty of genocidal crimes in the Rwandan Gacaca court system. Only those who have confessed and apologized for their crimes are eligible for this program. If they are accepted into the program, half of their jail time is spent working for the community. In some cases this means living in their home and going to work each day, obviously for no pay. Our first stop was at a village that the genocidaires were constructing. It was uninhabited as of yet but there were a total of forty-seven houses being built for the families, both victims and perpetrators, deemed most at risk by the local community. In umudugudus (village in Kinyarwanda, also the smallest political division in Rwanda) across the country, similar projects are being undertaken.

After stopping by the village we visited the quarry where some of the TIGists were working. The work done by these people brings in billions of Rwandan Francs each year The stones they mine sell for about 120 Rwf each, so if you do the math these people are doing a heck of a lot of stonecutting. At the quarry we saw the mountains of neatly cut stone that were the final product of the camp. I had seen roads in Kigali paved with similar stones and found out later that the TIGists lay the stones as well as mine them. Free labor and materials for Rwanda to rebuild itself, sounds like a good deal to me.

To actually get the stones the workers lit fires against the stone hillside that caused it to crack. Then they chiseled and wedged sections of the rock of and put it aside to be broken down into the paving stones and into gravel. Both men and women worked at the camp, the women seemed to be more heavily involved in the creation of the gravel.

The camp itself was a sea of orange. I am not sure if this was a conscious choice or if it was just the materials they had at their disposal but literally the entire camp, housing, meeting hall/ dining hall, greenhouses, was made of sticks, rope, and orange tarp. They had gardens all over the place that seemed to provide a good portion of their food. The sleeping quarters seemed horribly cramped but what can you expect from a prison camp.

We were able to talk to some of the workers, which for us was the first time to actually be able to talk to accused and convicted genocidaires. One man was very vocal about how great he though the camps were in that they made him see what he had done wrong and allowed him to right his mistakes. They all seemed convinced that they deserved to be forgiven for what they had done, something that I found interesting as I would personally find it almost impossible to forgive someone for killing my entire family. But as I have said before, the process of forgiveness in Rwanda is nearly unbelievable. What the country has been able to achieve in merely sixteen years is truly remarkable and they are well on the road to being rebuilt and already have plans to become an Information Technology powerhouse in the African community.

GOODBYE RWANDA!

The Friday following our TIG camp visit we said goodbye to our Rwanda university buddies. I don’t know if I have mentioned Djuma before but I was paired with him as part of our program. He is part of a group of students supported by SURF, a British fund that helps pay for the schooling of genocide survivors. We met with our buddies each Friday at the SIT building and I met Djuma a number of other times on the weekends to just hang out. We came to be really good friends and it was really unfortunate that we left Rwanda when we did. It’s hard to form strong relationships when you have such a short time to do so. But Djuma is someone whom I am sure I will keep in frequent contact with.

On Friday we had our final home stay dinner at a hotel in Kigali. It was a pretty low-key affair with all the families and a small buffet. Music was played but the party broke up pretty early on, fortunately because I was had quite the fever and what I will simply call an “upset stomach,” my first of my stint in Africa but which was all good and well by Saturday.

Saturday was my last full day with my home stay family and what a day it was. I slept in, awesome, good start. Then my home stay mother, Jeanine, taught me how to make amandazi. Amandazi are basically sweetened balls of dough that are extremely common in Rwanda. As simple as they sound they are amazing and my group and I eat them almost everyday, so needless to say, I was really excited to learn how to make them. A little flour, milk, sugar, baking soda, 10 small eggs, vanilla sugar and some water later we had a huge ball of dough that we took small chunks of and rolled out on a table. After cutting it into small squared we dropped them in cooking oil over a charcoal stove for a few minutes and voilá, amandazi. I have to say, could have used a little more sugar, but for a first attempt, I was pretty ok with myself.

After finishing off the batch my host brother, Ashiraf, and my host cousin, Ally, took me to a soccer game, Rwanda vs. Benin. I love to watch soccer so I was thrilled to get to see Rwanda play and the stadium, Amahoro stadium, is where President Kagame recently was sworn in, so to see this little piece of Rwanda society was pretty cool as well. The tickets were a whopping $1.75 and we had open seating available to us for 80% of the stadium. President Kagame was actually at the game, political/cultural bonus points. Rwanda ended up losing 3-0, which was pretty disappointing as they played relatively well. At American sporting events, if your team is getting thwacked, you can just leave the stadium. But at this game, because the president was in attendance, no one was allowed to leave the stadium until the President had left the building. Interesting system there.

After the game we retuned to Nyamirambo and got brochette. Brochette is one of the greatest things on this magnificent earth. All over Kigali there are eating establishments that serve meat on a stick, a shish kabob called brochette. The meat of choice here is goat. After a long day at a soccer match, the meal is perfect. Because it was my last night, my family basically force-fed me brochette and chapatti, something I was hugely ok with. The problem though it that upon returning home they also expected me to eat dinner, not gonna happen. Something I may not have mentioned, Rwandans eat a lot.

To wrap up my day, I finished off a research paper and then my family came into my room and gave me some parting gifts. They were unbelievably generous and I’ll just say my real family has a great Christmas ahead of them.

I am really going to miss my Rwandan family, they were beyond hospitable and I never once felt like an outsider in their home. I just hope one day that I can repay their kindness! On Sunday they dropped me off at SIT with all of my stuff and we said goodbye. Time to go to Uganda.

MBARARA

After a six-hour trek, plus an hour at the border, we reached the Ugandan town of Mbarara. Here we met the other group who was coming from Gulu. The original plan was to visit the Naki Valley Refugee Settlement about three hours away but we were denied permission to visit. Apparently we did not apply the required three weeks ahead of time. Instead, the governmental head of the settlement came and spoke to us followed by three people who live in the camp. Interestingly enough, there is a large Rwandan population in the camp, largely Hutu Diaspora, who won’t return to Rwanda for fear of retaliation and misguided justice. Many of these people have had their refugee status revoked because their country is no longer in an unsafe condition to them but their fears lead them to be people basically without a nation to call their own.

It was incredibly interesting to hear the official tell about how he perceive the camp and how well it was set up and run, and then hear how life is actually like for those who live there. I am strongly considering doing my research project at the Settlement and see it as a great way to combine the refugee camps of Uganda and the geopolitics associated with Rwanda into one incredibly interesting topic. Who knows where this will take me!

After our brief stay in Mbarara, my group made the ten-hour trek up to Gulu! Phew. Some highlights: leaving at 5:30 a.m., seeing our first African Baboons, crossing the Nile River, and finally reaching Gulu.

GULU

I have only been in Gulu a few hours but I can already tell it is a whole other world compared to Kigali. Gulu is the economic hub of Northern Uganda but it is much less developed than Kigali. It is the base for a lot of NGOs and Aid organizations in the area as well and we saw lots of signs for the UN, World Food Program, GTZ, Invisible Children, etc. I’m interested to see how they affect the culture here in Northern Uganda. Our home stays here are apparently a lot more rugged, power outages being highly common for days at a time and warm showers and our own rooms being a thing of the past.

But Gulu itself will be interesting because only about three years ago the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was active in and around the town with assaults and kidnappings as part of its resistance against the Ugandan government. They have since been driven in to the DRC and Sudan but the wounds are still fresh. Apparently many of the other groups home stay families consisted of ex-child soldiers, ex-LRA wives, and the families of those who resisted them. The conflict is much more fresh here compared to Rwanda and the comparisons between the two post-conflict societies will certainly be fascinating.

Well, that does it for me this evening. I hope all is well in whatever fine country you are reading this from, and again… feedback, please!!

Muzungu currently in Gulu, Uganda

Millennium Villages, Pizza, and Memorials

After my last post I received an email from my mother that looked something (exactly) like this:

“Every woman reading your blog is going to want to know what the bride was wearing! Try to put yourself inside the head of the NY Times bridal editor and describe what she was wearing.  How was she presented, what did the groom wear, were there any flowers at the ceremony? You get the idea.  I'm not there... you have to be my eyes.  Take in the details.  Was it a marriage of love or simply arranged by the families?  Did they kiss? I once read that Africa is the only continent that does not include flowers in their important rituals like weddings and funerals.  What have you seen?”

So to humor her and to prove that I do enjoy and listen to feedback (I really do, please tell me what you want to hear about!) here I go.

More Wedding info (for my mother)

The bride was wearing a cream colored shawl and a metallic-coffee colored dress underneath that. The groom wore a traditional Rwandan get up which Rwandans might be disappointed to know is simply a toga. His was a similar brown color to the brides dress and he wore a white button down below that. The bride and groom were both presented (?) after a troupe of traditional dancers led them out and danced for them. The bride was taken to her groom’s family and her whole bridal party greeted the men in the family, then she did the same with her family.

Surprisingly, I did not see them kiss. Apparently in Rwandan weddings, they have the traditional ceremony that everyone is expected to be at. Then two weeks later they have  (if they are Christian) a wedding in a church followed by a signing of the marriage paperwork in town (romantic). As for flowers, every guest was presented with a flower upon entering the ceremony. And there were arrangements all o’er the place.

And since I am having a hard time uploading photos I refer you to my friend’s blog. For photos and a pretty good description check out my friend David’s blog at: http://findingsimba.blogspot.com/

And I have recently realized that I haven’t really introduced you all to my group, so if you scroll down on his blog you get a nice summary of our group members too!

I hope that satisfies my mother dearest, now on to some more recent events…

Millennium Village Project

On Monday, my group and I went to the Millennium Development Project Rwanda headquarters in Kigali and met with our first American in a while, Dr. Josh Ruxin. Among a number of other things, he is a professor at Colombia and is a major influence in the Millennium Village in Mayange. He briefed us on the Village and told us about the problems associated with development in Rwanda. But overall he seemed very content with the atmosphere surrounding development in the country. It helps when you have a relatively controlling and powerful government, the Kagame regime, which is pushing development and infrastructure changes anyway. He mentioned frustration at other countries with Millennium Village projects that simply have too much corruption to function. His little story about this was when he was in Kenya and a high ranking minister said to him, “ So it appears that the $8 million you gave us for this project somehow made its way into the presidential account. Sorry. Can you help us out?”

Rwanda is all about transparency so lost funds aren’t an issue. Through out the briefing Dr. Ruxin dropped a few interesting names: “My friend Jeff Sachs,” or “when I was talking to Bill Easterly.” For those that haven’t studied much international development, Jeffery Sachs and William Easterly are two very respected and studies names in the field and Jeffery Sachs is the man behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). Needless to say, many in our number were impressed by his connection to these two men.

Pizza, Pizza, Pizza

And here I digress, intentionally, and excessively. After the briefing we all went our separate ways but about eight of us met up later in the evening at a pizza joint (in Rwanda! I know, sweet). Up to this point, we had successfully steered clear of doing ragingly muzungu things: on the weekends we hang out with our families, we only occasionally buy milkshakes to escape the starch for a while, and we take the public transport like every Rwandan out there. But tonight, we needed a little western food but we did not even come close to realizing how many muzungus flocked to this place. It’s called Sol e Luna and it’s nestled on a hillside in a very westernized part of town. Monday’s just happen to be quiz night at Sol e Luna and for the winners of the competition all food and drink are free. Game on.

We grabbed a table in the quiz area and ordered. Over the course of the next thirty minutes, a pale river of people flowed in. After almost a month in an entirely black country, the sea of white was overwhelming. The only Rwandans in there were the staff! Who knew so many muzungus were in Kigali and how did they all know to flock here? I compare the restaurant to a wildebeest carcass and that we muzungus were like flies descending on it. A fitting comparison I think. We were cheating on our culturally exploring selves and retreating back into our comfortable American shell, but honestly, for one night it was absolutely worth it.

I ordered a cheese, pork sausage and French fry pizza. Life was good.

As I mentioned, there was a quiz aspect to this night. There were about fourteen tables and all of them consisted of grad students, NGO employees, or tourists. We were far and away the youngest table; you could tell they did not respect our intellectual prowess. Therefore, we dubbed ourselves “Team Undergrad.” Time to put up or shut up.

The manager handed out a packet of five pictures. The first part of our trivia quest was to name the five African cities shown. We struggled. Luckily, there were 23 other questions of totally random knowledge from “How many countries participated in the 2^nd Congolese War?” (Eight) to “How many times can you subtract 6 from 30?” (Once). We submitted our quiz with relative confidence.

A table other than your own graded each quiz. We graded Team “Sweet Lemons” paper and with a score of 19 they looked pretty solid. Judgment time. After the scores were tallied the results were read in lowest to highest score order. Team name after team name was called. Could this really be happening? As the other teams dropped like proverbial flies, we kept on strong. Down to the last three. And then, “Team Undergrad with 23 points.” Ok, so we didn’t win but by god were we proud. The grad students and NGO workers fell to our mighty wit. And the winning team only got 25 points. If we had guessed right on one more of the cities, we would have won! We lost, hilariously, to Team “We actually have jobs,” an apparent jab at us. Oh well, a good night anyway.

Millennium Village Project, Mayange

Our next day was spend entirely at the Millennium Village Project in Mayange, about 45 mins outside of Kigali. If you don’t know much about the MDG’s or MVP then you should seriously consider checking them out on Google and/or Wikipedia. They are an interesting approach to poverty and development. I won’t go into much of that here as it’s quite a lot of information, but do check it out.

Mayange used to be a land plagued by constant drought. It was a wasteland. In the 1970’s, Tutsis were forced out there in order to get them away from the Hutu population and hopefully, in the eyes of the ruling party, have them die off. They didn’t but during the genocide a large number of Tutsi were slaughtered in the region. In the early 2000’s, the MVP came in and started trying to rebuild and develop the community.

Our first stop was at the house of a farmer in the village. He toured us around his two hectares of banana, cassava, orange, and mango trees as well as his livestock consisting of goats and a very friendly cow. He told us how many of the trees had been grafted from trees in Uganda that apparently made them grow faster and produce more fruits in a shorter amount of time. He also dug up a cassava root and let us enjoy the wonderful starchiness that it contained inside. It’s amazing that the wasteland that was Mayange could be transformed into the green farmland that lay before us. With modern irrigation and terracing techniques, the farmers here have been able to increase yields and made a solid living.

We then went to the school. Our guide told us that the classes were taught in English but when the headmaster came to talk to us he said he wanted to be translated from Kinyarwanda, as he didn’t think his English was good enough… hmmm. The school itself was about thirteen classrooms for seven hundred kids. Half of them came in the morning and left after lunch, while the other half came at lunch and left in the afternoon. The school seemed crowded but the infrastructure seemed to be there and the tools for a proper education seemed to be in place. I don’t know what more I can say about the school so off to the clinic.

The clinic was built in 1998 but received a boost in the 2000’s from the MVP. To be honest, touring the clinic seemed like a gross violation of the patient’s personal space, but it was interesting to see the space regardless. They had just finished a maternity section in January and things looked to be running smoothly.

After the clinic we went to a women’s co-op where they wove baskets. They had arranged themselves so there was room next to each woman for us to sit next to them. For the next twenty minutes the women taught us how to make the baskets. It was an interesting experience to see how intricate and complex these creations were. Afterwards we went to their shop and purchased some great gifts and such for home. Family, expect some woven goods, that’s all I have to say.

Then, we stopped for lunch. I know I have mentioned before how people tend to stop and stare at the herd of white folks. Here it was no different. We ate on the side of the road for about twenty minutes and a crowd of kids and teenagers gathered. David finally got fed up. He decided that if they can stare at us, we could stare right back. He and I grabbed our lunch and headed towards the crowd. We stopped about fifteen feet away and did our staring best. They were so confused, what were these muzungus doing. Robbie joined us and pulled out his camera, the crowd threw up their hands and covered their faces like the camera was some heat ray. The standoff continued until a herd of cattle crossed between the two parties and we disbanded, our social experiment complete.

We then went to the “reconciliation village.” Here, Victims and Killers of the genocide live side by side. It’s amazing how these two groups could overcome their differences in the name of unity and reconciliation. We hear the testimony of a man who was jailed for his participation in the genocide and we also heard from a woman who survived the genocide. They were friends and his wife frequently worked with her. Just incredible. We were then treated to some traditional dances by the youth of the village. And then, they brought us Banana beer and Sorghum beer. Interesting stuff. The banana beer, as Allie so eloquently said, “tastes like apple cider mixed with vinegar” while the sorghum beer, according to Hannah, “tastes like cheese.” So, as you can tell from the rave reviews, we were treated to some fine beverages.

The whole experience was an extraordinarily touristy one, in reality our first of the whole trip. But what was different about this tour is that the community got together with the MVP and asked them to help them train tour guides for the program. The community is so proud about their community that they wanted to show off what they have accomplished. It was still a little uncomfortable looking so closely at the people’s lives there.

Ntarama

After our generally positive visit to the Village we went to another genocide memorial site, the Ntarama site. This memorial is a catholic church where 5,000 Tutsi sought refuge from the killing. A little more than a week after the genocide started however they were found and slaughtered. The memorial is made up of a number of buildings: the sanctuary, kitchen and Sunday school room. Right when you walk into the sanctuary there is a large metal rack with four shelves and on the shelves are the skulls and bones on those people killed in the church. The sanctuary itself is covered floor to ceiling in the clothing of the victims. It is a macabre arrangement that creates a sense of utter hopelessness with the overwhelming and omnipresent dirt stained clothes when combined with the rows and rows of hollow skulls. There are holes in the walls from the grenades used to open the church up.

The kitchen is just a crumbling dirt hovel where there are charred wooden pieces and piles of clothes. Apparently the perpetrators locked a large number of Tutsi in there and simply lit the shed on fire. Those inside burned or suffocated to death.

The Sunday school room might have been the most shocking. In there, children were put to death and their heads smashed against the back wall. There is a large black stain on the wall where the blood of the children soaked in and dried.

I apologize for closing on such a negative note, but that’s how our day ended. It goes to show that no matter how much this country will develop and move on there will always be the dark shadow of the genocide looming over its history. Until reconciliation is complete, many generations from now, the genocide will be remembered constantly in the minds of the Rwandese.

Well that was another disturbingly long post. Here comes the part where I ask for feedback. I write page upon page here I want to know what you think. What do you like hearing about, what don’t you like hearing about, what haven’t I mentioned that you want to see, how’s the writing, what can I change to make this a better blog reading experience for you? Tell me please. I would love to hear anything good or bad, just send me an email at cbtaylor@bowdoin.edu. It would be much appreciated! Thanks for reading.

Muzungu currently in Kigali, Rwanda

Guess what program is included in Huffington Post’s top nine most extreme study abroad programs?

p.s. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/extreme-study-abroad_n_737001.html#

Good guess!

Part 1: Telenovelas and Lake Kivu Part 2: Traditional Wedding

PART ONE

Telanovelas and Lake Kivu

I just returned from a magnificent getaway to Lake Kivu and the town of Kibuye. I will go into details in a bit but first I wanted to touch on some aspects of my home life that I particularly noticed today when I got back and can’t believe I haven’t shared yet!

I normally get back to the house at around seven-thirty p.m. on the weekdays after class, time at Internet cafes and exploring Kigali. When I get back, dinner is kind of almost ready. I can always count on my host sisters, Camilla and Lamia, as well as my Aunt to be in the first room on the right of my complex. I drop on in and sit down with them to watch one of the most interesting phenomena in Rwandan life, the Mexican telanovela. As some of you may know, the telenovela is basically a Mexican soap opera complete with high drama, shoddy acting and outrageous storylines. The two most popular in Rwanda are “Hidden Passion” and “Cuidado con el Angel.” Some interesting soul has taken the time to dub over these shows in English and broadcast them on what I think is a Tanzanian channel. My family LOVES these shows. The most watched in our household is Cuidado con el Angel, a show where one woman has a child, numerous lovers, and mommy issues. She is an actress that stars in a Mexican adaptation of “The Glass Menagerie,” which without fail appears in the show in some aspect. The show is total emotional chaos and it is hysterical to see my sisters yell and laugh at the TV. Good times.

I know I have mentioned the food here (starch, starch, starch) but I forgot to mention how fun it is to eat it. Remember when you were a kid, or if you are a kid, how awesome it is/was to eat food with out utensils using only your own two hands. Well it is not only accepted, but also encouraged to eat with your hands in my household. I think it adds considerably to the eating experience when you can soak up some broth in your rice, mix it with some veggies, and stuff it in your mouth with your hands. Each meal I end up with hands covered in my dinner, and each meal I end up totally satisfied.

Ok, enough about home things, time for vacationish things.

As I mentioned before my group and I went on a three-day excursion to Kibuye, a town on the shores of Lake Kivu. The drive to get there was took us almost directly west and over increasingly larger hills. I don’t think I have experienced a more winding road. On the way there we stopped at a waterfall by the side of the road for lunch. Over the course of our meal a crowed gathered to observe us. As I mentioned before, we muzungus are such a rarity that people will literally stop what they are doing and spend a good twenty to thirty minutes just observing us.

After lunch we continued our drive and eventually spotted the lake. Wow. Lake Kivu is the eight largest lake in the world and I think in the top three (?) deepest lakes. The color of the lake is comparable to the water in the Caribbean: turquoises, greens and blues. It stretches as far as the eye can see and beyond. It forms part of the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the genocide a large number of Genocide perpetrators actually fled this direction to seek refuge in the Congo and many still operate there today. If you have been keeping abreast of the international news recently you might have heard of the UN report on the Rwandan forces performing potential genocide themselves on these refugees in the Congo. It’s easy to see how interlaced these countries politics are.

Our hotel was perched right on the lake in a little peninsula. The guys were all put in one room, it’s been a while since I have been able to sleep in a top bunk so I appreciated the set-up. The ladies were spaced out in three different rooms. The hotel was great. Amazing views, good food, and great water access. We spent the first day just decompressing, swimming, and enjoying each other’s company. A well deserved break if I do say so myself. Day two involved us taking a chartered boat out for the late morning and early afternoon. It was incredibly cheap (1,500 Rwandan Francs a person, about 3 USD) and we were taken to a large island out on the lake. After an interesting hike in flip-flops we made it about 3/4ths of the way up the islands slopes. Our captain slipped into the trees and started making a lot of noise and shaking some branches. The trees exploded in activity and thousands of bats, yes bats, exploded out of them. For a good five minutes these nocturnal critters swarmed above us dropping unexpected gifts of feces down upon us and created a very interesting photo op. An unexpected explosion of creatures that was appreciated by everyone. Very cool!

After the bat island we made our way Amahoro Island. Amahoro means peace in Kinyarwanda. On this island there is a volleyball court and bar. We hung out there for about an hour, playing around swimming and relaxing in hammocks. Eventually it was time for us to return. We reluctantly climbed back into the boat and made our way home, quickly stopping to see some sea birds first, and then booking it back. Upon our arrival our Academic Advisor, Stephanie, who had been in Uganda for the past 10 days at a workshop, greeted us.

We had a class session that evening with her on Peace, Justice, Reconciliation, Truth, Healing and Forgiveness. We were split into group and told to define one of the words and explain how it was related to all of the others and how it ranked in importance compared to the rest of the words. We basically came to the conclusion that each word and definition lends clarity and importance to the other words and with out all (or most of them) then something in the reconciliation process is missing. It was a fascinating session and it was interesting to think how I defined and linked Peace, Justice, Reconciliation, Truth, Healing and Forgiveness. Thoughts?

Dinner that evening was Mac and cheese… miss that American food. Lots of folks are already making lists of what food they miss most, I have yet to sink to that level, but I think my grandmothers Mac and cheese may top the list. That night we watched “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a movie that I was introduced to this past summer and really enjoy. Some people love it, some hate it (like my father), and the group seemed pretty evenly split. For the second time in about a month… I loved it.

The next morning we had a class and then left at ten-thirty on a bus back to Kigali. As I mentioned before, the roads were incredibly windy. Allie, a Bates student in our crew, was sitting in the back seat next to three Rwandans. One man apparently did not take the turns very well. One of the men looked at Allie, smiled and told her to move. She just laughed nervously and stared ahead. What she didn’t realize until about thirty seconds later was that the man next to her was about to get sick. He reached into his bag, pulled out a pair of pants, and proceeded to vomit into them for the remainder of the trip. Allie made her way forward and wedged herself in to a row of four in order to escape any stray sickness. Gotta love the public transport!

Tomorrow I get to go to a wedding! My friend David who accompanied me to the funeral of my host grandmother has asked me if I wanted to be his muzungu support for a wedding his family is attending. I feel like I have been lucky thus far to experience some key events and ceremonies in Rwandan life. I can’t wait to see how this wedding works!

Muzungu currently wishing he were by the shores of Lake Kivu, now in Kigali, Rwanda

PART DEUX

The Wedding

A few weeks ago when there was a death in my family, I invited David to the funeral. This weekend he returned the favor and had me join him at a traditional Rwandan wedding in Remera. We were told the wedding was going to start at 1 o’clock and end at four. We neglected Africa time and the ceremony began at around three and concluded at around five-thirty followed shortly after by a reception that we were only able to escape at nine-thirty.

            The wedding itself was a complex and symbolic affair. It all started off with dancers and singers performing while the guests trickled in. The guests sat on either side of the lawn of the house, on the left were the grooms guests and on the right the brides guests. Once the guests were seated then the highest-ranking men in each family were seated on their respective sides of the lawn at tables and handed microphones. All the guests were given drinks and the proceedings began.

            The mother of the bride was required to stay in the house at all times which bothered me a little bit as I found it to be a part of the ceremony that seemed to reinforce the role of a woman as being bound to the home. Although I understand traditionally how that might have come about with the mother symbolically giving her daughter away and having the mother remain as a presence in the ancestral home.

            As for the males, the father of the groom was required to stay at his home that was a good fifteen minutes away by car. All the wedding ceremonies occurred at the bride’s house. After the event the groom’s side of the wedding party returned to the groom’s house and a high-ranking male explained the goings on to the father of the groom in a ceremonial fashion.

            But as for the actual wedding, the appointed men from each family basically bantered for and hour and a half. Although it was all in Kinyarwanda, David and I had a helpful translator in a man named Emmanuel; every ten minutes or so he would give us a brief recap of the conversation. It seems that the family of the bride makes excuses as to why the bride isn’t going to marry, ex. She is going to be a nun, she is traveling abroad, she is already married, etc. The family of the groom had to shoot down all of these excuses and claims to have talked to the bride and convinced her to go through with the wedding. This back and forth continues for about an hour. David and I were also involved as the brides’ family asked if the Muzungus were part of the male’s clan. They claimed that indeed we were and that more Muzungus were coming. Through out this whole process, gifts are exchanged between the two parties. These are used to sweeten the deal apparently and alcohol seemed to be a key exchange.

            In this culture, cattle used to be a hugely important economic sign of wealth. The final part of the exchange is when the grooms’ family gives cattle to the other family. The men from the brides’ side leave the complex and go out side to inspect the, in this case, twenty-four cows that were being given. Then, two men dressed as shepherds came out and sang about the cows and how good they were, then they were rewarded with beer. Finally, dancers emerged and after them came the bride and the groom and their wedding party. They were seated in the middle of everyone, pictures were taken, some kinds of vows were said and the marriage was over!

            As we were leaving we talked to one Rwandese who told us that the wedding was not a marriage between two individuals, but between two families. He explained that a major part of the ceremony was that the two families accepted each other and could exist together. The showering of gifts and cattle was important as well to show each family that they were wealthy enough to support each other. This seemed strange compared to the American wedding traditions when it is all decided before hand and all that is left is the planned out, official ceremony at, in my experience, a church. The focus is very much on the individuals but here family is key. As I mentioned in my commentary on the funeral, families here are very large and economically important as they all rely on each other. They are also bonded socially as many events draw their guests from the family. It is a fascinating culture.

            There was one dark blemish on our evening though. At the reception we met a man named Jeff, a Rwandan who was raised in Kenya. When discussing the wedding with him, he mentioned how the match between the couple was accepted. The parents decide according to heritage and standing if the match will be a suitable one. Jeff let slip that the two getting married were both Tutsi. He then said that a match between a Hutu and Tutsi would never be accepted. He claimed that no parent would permit their child to marry someone “from the other side.” What! After all the talk about reconciliation and peace building we have been hearing about this came as an absolute shock. It just goes to show that no matter how happy and reconciled the government and other parties try to make it seem on the surface there is still simmering tensions present in the populace.

            It also might be an indicator of tension among the wealthier classes. As I mentioned in the post on the Women’s cooperative, it seems that when a society is impoverished and absolutely must work together to survive that opposing parties must work together and therefore address their difference and resolve their quarrels more quickly. In these wealthier echelons of society, these families are fine on their own and do not need the help of their neighbors to get by. Therefore, they have never addressed those who wronged them and have simply let their anger remain as a dividing force.

Muzungu currently in Kigali, Rwanda with one week left in this incredibly interesting city.