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 2nd 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?
Good guess!
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