In Case You Were Wondering, It's Pretty Hard to Fit Two Goats in Your Fridge

I had a late night on Saturday and was hoping to sleep in a bit on Sunday. I found that rather challenging, though, when I awoke around 8:30 to the sound of my roommate Nicholas yelling to another roommate, Thomas:

"Hey, you are ready for both goats, yeah?"

"Yeah, bring them out...and can you bring me a beer?"

Thus began Goat Roast 2008.

By the time I emerged the cooking was well under way, and the guys had even figured out a way to protect the grill from the morning's intermittent rain. Side dishes were prepared in the kitchen, and by 2 we were ready for guests to show. The guests, mostly Rwandan and Belgian, spoke a lot of French but there was enough English being thrown around that I wasn't completely lost. I met a Rwandan rastafarian who was gearing up for his first trip to the US, and another Rwandan who wanted to hear all about ORI. The weather cleared up, too, and left us with a beautiful, lazy afternoon of food, sports (sort of), and music.

There are a few more pictures in the album.

Getting Out of the City...With the Camera

My main project right now at work is to evaluate the language and computer training schools that are available to our students so that ORI can select the best ones to use. While most of our students receive their instruction in Kigali during orientation, others do so in Butare, which is where the National University of Rwanda is located.

Yesterday I took a drive to Butare with a couple members of the staff, and in addition to evaluating a couple schools, we stopped at two of ORI's partner organizations to pick up applications for this year's class of scholarship recipients. I've already commented about how the hills here in Kigali make for amazing views from most anywhere in town. The landscape outside of the city is even more stunning. While many of the hillsides have been sectioned into individual tracts for farming, much of the land is untouched, and, thanks to daily rainshowers, the unfarmed land is a lush, vibrant green.

The drive took about two and a half hours along a windy but well-paved two-lane road. There were people walking along side the road for most of the trip. Some were carrying jugs of clean water from a pump, others had large bunches of branches or fruit on their heads, and there were lots of kids playing and running around.

Our first stop was an orphanage called JAM, where we picked up about 70 applications. One of the social workers there gave us a tour of the grounds and I was impressed to see that the kids there have access to an excellent computer lab. I didn't really feel comfortable pulling out my camera as we walked around, so I only took a photo of the grounds from the road.

When we arrived in Butare, we stopped in at the men's group house and chatted with the guys who live there. Like the guys at the house here in Kigali, the students were very welcoming, and all ten of them came out to sit around the table and talk. Charles suggested that I introduce myself, so I told the students to tell me what they wanted to know:

Question 1: "Where are you from?"
California, New York, and DC all received knowing nods.

Question 2: "What is your marital status?"
Wasn't expecting that one...

I'm not sure, but I think when we left the house I made some sort of promise to come back soon and dance. I didn't tell them that they were letting me off easy. (Here's one more shot of two of the students at the house)

We also stopped by a couple of the women's houses. Most of them were off studying on the university campus, but I did get to meet a few of them, and a couple I knew already from the SGA meeting. Here are a couple shots of the path that leads from the main road down to the houses.

Probably the highlight of the day was driving from Butare to S.O.S. Orphanage in Gikongoro to pick up one more batch of applications. An ORI student named Eric accompanied us and was a generous guide. He pointed out sets of trees along the road that were planted to encourage re-forestation, told me about prisoner work projects in the area, and explained that in the years before the genocide, the government mostly neglected the area of Gikongoro, and because of that the area is still underdeveloped. S.O.S is perched at the top of the hill, and from there Eric pointed out a genocide memorial located at a site called Murambi. He told me the story of the massacre that occurred there, and then told me that, during the genocide, his family tried to protect him by dressing him as a girl. I didn't pry for anything more than that.

Here I am at S.O.S.

Now I'm off to have one of the students show me around one of Kigai's open-air markets...

SGA Meeting

Change of plans for ORI Blog, so I thought I'd just share what I wrote about the student meeting here:

If you read our post on the recent ORI student government elections, you may have been wondering what the newly elected leaders have been up to since assuming their posts.

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to sit in on the SGA’s April meeting—they’ve clearly been up to quite a bit.

First on the agenda was a report from SGA President Julliet Busingye on her experience at a recent youth conference for students from Rwanda, Kenya, Namibia, Burundi, Uganda, and United States. The conference focused on training young people to become leaders and to take ownership in the futures of their countries (does that mission sound familiar?). Juliett said she especially enjoyed the workshops she attended on innovative and entrepreneurial projects for young people and she came home inspired to develop a project with her colleagues on the SGA. Julliet was also touched by the conversations she had with her Kenyan peers because “they almost had the same thing happen there as happened here.”

The students then moved on to a lively discussion about what role the SGA should play in assisting and improving their fellow students’ knowledge about strong self-esteem, healthy relationships and safe sex. University Representative Simon Mvunabandi suggested that students be reminded of and encouraged to take advantage of the counseling services that ORI makes available. Janvier Kwihangana, a big believer in goal-setting, reminded the group of the importance of understanding one’s “target” in life. He also offered to reprise his secondary school role as peer educator by giving a twenty minute presentation on self-reliance and motivation to the entire ORI student body at the next student meeting. After each student shared his or her opinion, the group concluded that they would arrange for informal student-to-student visits at each other’s homes to encourage open dialogue about these issues.

One of the best moments of the meeting came when a student announced that one of ORI’s students based in Butare (a city about a two hour drive south of Kigali) had recently gotten married. This was exciting news in itself, but the group’s enthusiasm and applause grew when it was also reported that the other students in Butare took up a collection to support the student’s wedding, and were able to contribute 75,000 FRW (about $150). In Rwanda, as in many other countries, it is traditionally the duty of the parents or family to pay for a wedding ceremony. ORI students often step in to play the role of family in one another’s lives, so to hear that so many had given up some of their own money to help a fellow student celebrate her marriage was at once quite touching and yet completely unsurprising.

Next month, the students will begin the process of creating an SGA constitution and by-laws…

No One Leaves Without Dancing

Last Saturday, after I attended my first Student Government Association meeting (I wrote something up about that too but it hasn't gone up on the ORI blog yet), Jackson, the SGA Secretary, invited Julie, Lauren, and me to the house that he shares with four other ORI students. About half of ORI's scholarship recipients live in group house settings that are arranged and paid for by ORI. This group had just moved to their new house a couple weeks prior and they wanted us to join them for a small housewarming.

Jackson and his housemates were excellent hosts, serving us Fanta and snacks, and it was really fun for me to get to know the guys a little better. Conversation ranged from US politics, to the career ambitions of the guys in the house (i.e. which one of them would become a senator first), to their opinions and impressions of some of ORI's programming. Charles, the elder statesmen of the house, made a point of letting us know that the students are always willing to give back to ORI staff because they know we're volunteers. He told us to never pay for a guide or tourist information about the country, but to instead rely on the students. I've already seen that magnanimous spirit in action, as two different students have independently offered to accompany me as a narrator on a trip to a genocide memorial. In the same speech, though, Charles also let us know that guests at his house don't get to leave without dancing first. I gave Julie a "did you know this was coming?" look, and she just started laughing. Sure enough, the roommates started moving the furniture, pulled out a couple huge speakers, and started dancing. The results weren't pretty for me, and were far better for graceful guys like Nicholas, but I had a blast.

Same Title...Different Blog...Maybe a Few More Readers

ORI Board Member Josh Ruxin is occasionally given the opportunity to post on Nicholas Kristof's NY Times Blog. His post on his experience during genocide memorial week is very compelling, and it includes a moving story from the Orphans of Rwanda County Director, Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana. His experience was something I'd refrained from sharing here, because I thought it would be inappropriate to blog about something so personal. But, since he seems to have given Mr. Ruxin permission to write about it, I'll share my impressions too.

Jean Baptiste (JB) recently went to a prison in southern Rwanda to meet the man who killed his mother. This trip occurred at the end of my first week at ORI, and JB asked all of us to say a prayer for him as he sought strength to go through with the visit. When I left work last Friday, I shook JB's hand, wished him luck, and told him that I would be thinking of him. He seemed emotionally fragile, but I was impressed by his composure. I didn't see him again until Tuesday, the day after I attended the memorial service. With the experience at Gisozi fresh in my mind, I was even more impressed by JB's willingness to confront his mother's killer, but I was also uncertain how to approach the subject with JB. He relates his experience in his own words in the email that Mr. Ruxin posted on the Times site, but before he sent that email around to us he had already stopped by my desk to thank me and Lauren for our support and to tell us how things went. JB described the feeling of relief that washed over him after he wept for his mother and he seemed to still be surprised that he, not his mother's killer, had been the greatest benefactor of his courageous act of forgiveness.

Here's the NY Times post.

14 Years Later

April 7th is the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. The date marks the beginning of the massacres of Rwanda's Tutsi population--100 days of horror in 1994 that saw the loss of around 800,000 lives.

I'm still learning about the role the genocide plays in the daily lives of the Rwandans I encounter in my newly-established routine. Because its legacy provides the main context for ORI's mission, I've likely engaged with it a little more directly than most would in their first 10 days in the country. Knowing the anniversary was approaching, I was curious to see how, if at all, the general atmosphere of Kigali would change, and was uncertain what the best way would be for me, as an outsider, to recognize the day's significance. I tried to give myself work background understanding by delving into Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell earlier this weekend, but because information on city events is sometimes hard to come by, until this morning I wasn't certain how or if I would get the chance to commemorate it in person.

The city held its official remembrance ceremony at the permanent memorial grounds in Gisozi. When my housemate Gina and I arrived, many people were already lined up to enter the grounds, while others were gathered around a group of pick-up trucks that were parked near the gate. Soon I learned that the trucks were carrying coffins, draped in regal purple, of the remains of victims whose graves were discovered this past year (either by chance or by a tip from imprisoned genocidaires) and who were being transferred to the mass grave located at the memorial site.

My housemate and I were two of a handful of foreigners at the event, and from the outset it was hard to escape the feeling that we were intruding on something that wasn’t ours. The long stares I have come to expect on the street (always persistent but never hostile) seemed to linger even longer as we filed in to take our seats. The ceremony, conducted entirely in Kinyarwanda, began as one might expect: introductory remarks, a prayer, and a choral performance. The language barrier was frustrating, though, because words and images are what facilitate one’s ability to empathize with the story of someone else’s tragedy. With neither at my disposal, I was having a hard time generating the emotional connection that the event deserved. That changed quickly.

After a woman stepped up to the lectern and began to speak, I noticed that a number of people were starting to weep. It was clear that we were listening to a survivor’s story. The weeping gradually began to crescendo, and soon one woman began wailing uncontrollably. As she was helped from her seat by a Red Cross volunteer, others also started to shriek. Soon the most gut-wrenching, painful screams I’ve ever heard arose from every area of the crowd. This continued as speaker after speaker came up to share his or her story. Some people fainted, and some were so overcome with grief that they had to be carried, writhing and kicking, from their seats to a designated area staffed with volunteers. In the face of such visceral anguish, intense empathy was unavoidable. I was overcome with emotion. As I worked to hold back tears of my own, I came to what will likely be the most important realization of my time here: while the experience of this genocide and the subsequent healing process are both uniquely Rwandan, the pain they produce is universally human. For a couple moments, I felt like less of an outsider.

When I came home this afternoon and returned to A Problem From Hell, I was struck by a quote from Raphael Lemkin, the 20^th century’s first human rights lawyer and inventor of the word ‘genocide.’ As he prepared to flee Poland to escape the Nazis, Lemkin found that he could not convince his family to leave with him. Confident his family had condemned themselves to death, Lemkin wrote that “The best of me was dying with the full cruelty of consciousness.” In a way, I think that cruelty is what I witnessed today. The genocidaires of 1994 have forced Rwandans to confront evil, year after year, and to keep it in the forefront of their individual and national conscience. It is an injury entirely different from the one exacted upon those who lost their lives, but it is inextricably linked to the physical suffering of the genocide, and on days like today, it seems equally cruel.

One evening last week, I was sitting on the porch reading when I noticed the sound of dogs barking up and down my street. It reminded me of a story that Phillip Gourevitch tells in his book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families. As he traveled the country in 1995 to report on the genocide, Gourevitch realized that, aside from a couple lap dogs being toted around by foreigners, he had not seen or heard a single dog during his time in Rwanda. They had all been shot; many, in a case of utterly tragic irony, by the very UN peacekeepers whose "mission" kept them from using force to protect Tutsis, but left them free to kill the stray dogs who scavenged among the corpses. At the time, hearing the dogs bark on my street, and seeing our dog Beaubie laying next me, seemed symbolic of some measure of progress in Rwanda’s healing process. My experience today literally screamed the message that there is a tremendous amount of healing still left to be done.

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Here's a picture of the memorial site, with people walking to visit the mass grave below and the rest of the ceremony going on above.

I Appear Therefore I am

Some of you may have wondered if it was actually me doing this blogging and digicaming, given that I was noticably (at least to my mother) absent from all of my previous photos. The proof, my friends, is in the kasava, and here I am eating some kasava, pili pili (local hot sauce), chicken, and fried fish for lunch today at a local buffet called Africa Bite (pronounced bi-tee) with Julie and Lauren (taking the picture). I've already gotten pretty attached to the pili pili, as it's on my table every night at home. Strangely enough, I had the opportunity to become attached to it some months ago when Ted Alcorn brought me some from his trip to Kigali. For some reason, at the time I decided it was too hot (a conclusion I almost never reach) and it sat basically untouched for months. Kristin, Rachel, and Alexis: you've got a red bottle of joy waiting for you in that fridge.

Proving my existence once again, I've now been working at the ORI office for four days, and I'm really enjoying myself. As I mentioned before, one of my main responsibilities will be to prepare some assessment tools for ORI to measure the students' computer skills. It's clear that those skills are critical to obtaining employment here in Kigali, so the more effective ORI's computer training can be, the better. I've also started to meet and interact with some of the students, and they're all dynamic and impressive young people. Obviously I communicate better with those who speak English, but all of them greet the staff with a handshake and a smile any time they come through the office. I had a long conversation with one student about his goal of becoming a strong leader (he was carrying around a book on effective leadership, and had lots of love for Barack, America's next great leader). Tomorrow I have a meeting with the president of the student body to talk about her goals for the Student Government Association and to help her and her officers develop a good plan to reach them. On Saturday, I'll be attending this month's meeting of the SGA, and I plan to do a blog entry for ORI's blog afterwards. I'll be sure to post the link here once it's up.

Today I also got to visit two of our partner orphanages, where we distribute and collect applications for the ORI scholarships. The visits were brief, but the kids were smiling and seeing the orphanages definitely added to my understanding of the ORI operation.

Here are a couple other photos:

This is where The Game went when Fifty kicked him out.

Besides motos, matatus are another main way people get around here. They're vans that serve as city buses and they are always packed with people. I'm still too intimidated to take because I don't know how to tell where they're going or when they'll stop. Most of them have some sort of hand-painted graphic or slogan on the back (Che and Jesus tend to me most popular). This one goes out to Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, and Dwight Howard.

More updates this weekend I hope.