My Final ORI Blog

One of my largest projects for ORI was to organize a week of orientation programming for our newest class of scholarship recipients. Here's what I wrote about it. The blog is also up on the ORI homepage with a picture of some of the students...

Two weeks ago, the ORI staff here in Kigali made our favorite phone calls of the year. The calls went out to 47 students across Rwanda to let them know that, from a pool of over 1,400 applicants, they had been selected to receive an ORI scholarship. Like those that have come before them, the students in this year’s class are exceedingly bright, having performed at the highest levels on Rwanda’s national exam. Some plan to study medicine, others journalism or engineering—they all have big goals and they know that success at university is the first step toward achieving them.

When new student Seraphine Habimana was asked in her application interview why she should receive an ORI scholarship, she responded with an emphatic declaration: “Because I am the one who will change Rwanda!” After seeing Seraphine and the rest of the new class come together for an orientation week, it’s clear that she’ll have plenty of help from her fellow ORI students. Over the course of five days, the students learned about the ORI program, got to know their individual staff advisors, and participated in a variety of skill-building workshops. They were charismatic, energized, and ready with questions all week long.

The week’s highlights included question and answer sessions with older ORI students, presentations on sexual and reproductive health and gender awareness, and a workshop on financial management given by ORI student Janvier Kwihangana (who came prepared with his own PowerPoint presentation!). But the energy level really jumped when, after showing a film about the importance of being assertive and speaking your mind, the staff moderated an impromptu debate session. After taking positions on a series of issues related to human rights, gender norms, and racial equality, each student had the chance to defend his or her position. They argued forcefully and effectively; a few students even switched sides after hearing from the group’s most persuasive members. To say the debate was lively would be a serious understatement!

The week finished with an all-student meeting, where the older classes had their first opportunity to meet the new members of the ORI family. The room was full of hugs and smiling faces as the students caught up with old friends and greeted new ones. The meeting started with a boisterous round of introductions and applause for each student. When SGA President Julliet Busingye took the floor to welcome the new students she encouraged them to take the concept of an ORI family literally. By loving and supporting one another as brothers and sisters, Julliet said, the students will be better able to overcome the challenges they face and find success at university.

After a day off, the students embarked on a ten-week language and computer training schedule to prepare them for the start of the academic year. Be sure to check back in with us when school starts in January to see how they’re doing!

Heading home

I have less than two weeks left in Rwanda before I head to North Carolina to help put an end to this "the election is too close to call" garbage. I've been experiencing a whole range of emotions. As I pass my evenings in my temporary digs, watching European soccer via satellite TV, some of me feels very ready to get home, eat a good hamburger, and talk to friends and family on the phone without having the call drop. But then there's the rest of me, and the rest of me feels very sad to be leaving a place that has given me so much in exchange for so little.

One of my friends and favorite people, Jacob Moore, spent the last couple years working in Guatemala as a Peace Corps volunteer. As far as I know, Jacob didn’t blog while he was there, but instead sent incredibly entertaining emails with lists of things that had caught his eye, made him laugh, or that were far too strange to NOT tell his friends about. Recently, as he’s now almost ready to head home, Jacob sent a list of the things he’s going to miss, and the things he won't, about his life in Guatemala. So, with a tip of my hat to Jacob, I give you my own “Things I’m going to miss” list (undoubtedly incomplete and in no particular order):

Things I’m definitely going to miss:

- Conversations with my students that begin as follows:
Me: “What’s up?”
Student: “Cool”
Me: “Great. So what’s been going on?”
Student: “Fine”
- the sunshine
- the rainstorms
- the coffee
- the dancing
- drinking on the porch in Kimihurura
- Larry London, Ray McDonald and the “World’s Best Variety” on Voice of America radio. (Larry London may be the greatest radio DJ ever: imagine a guy whose voice and personality belong on the local soft rock station, but whose job requires that he sound really excited about the latest song from a band like Plain White Tees. The results include awkward non-sequitors and hilarious transitions. He once introduced a song from Ruben Studdard by saying “And now we hear from another big man, Ruben Studdard, he’s a REALLY big man, over three hundred pounds!...and, wait till you hear this...he just got married!!” Maybe you had to be there...)
- The population’s general appreciation for the musical gifts of Akon, Rihanna, Sean Kingston, and Chris Brown.
- The T-Shirts: It would be impossible to list all of the out-of-place and hilarious shirts that I’ve spotted since being here, but the best-of list includes “Yanni: Live at the Acropolis”, “Yes, despite this look on my face, you’re still talking”, and, my all time favorite, seen on a woman in a village outside Kigali: “Work Sucks – I’m going golfing”
- Rwandan mini-bananas
- Primus, Mutzig, and the concept of ordering a “big” beer
- matooke, chapatti, and the rest of the lunch buffet at Africa Bite
- Coca-Cola out of the bottle
- the culture of shaking everyone’s hand when you enter a room
- getting to know Rwandans and their stories
- and, most importantly, ORI: the students, my wonderful co-workers, and the "easy" button we imported from Staples.

Things I’m not sure I’m going to miss:

- having one of my main modes of transport be this city's fleet of motos, 90% of which have broken speedometers AND gas gauges
- negotiating with moto drivers and indignantly holding my ground when they try to charge me even 100 francs more than what I think is fair (100 francs being the equivalent of about $0.20)
- pili pili
- fries at every meal
- when I order beer, having to specify that I want it cold
- driving the ORI car and wondering how many seconds I have left before the wheels fall off
- staring back at people who stare
- Umuganda – a half-day of state-mandated public works projects that happens on the last Saturday of every month
- relying only on landmarks and hand motions to explain any given location to another person

Things I definitely won’t miss:

- the staring, accompanied by calls of “mzungu,” everywhere I go
- having rocks thrown at the car (only happened once, but I wasn’t a huge fan)
- having people, kids and adults, jog along behind me when I go for a run
- the roads and the way people drive on them


More thoughts, and maybe some additions to the list, before I go...

Gorillas!

This weekend was our gorilla weekend and I think I speak for both of us when I say it was in the top five experiences either of us has ever had.

We left Kigali on a Friday afternoon bus to Ruhengeri, the town at the base of Mount Bisoke and Karisimbi. The bus was packed, and as we swerved around on Rwanda’s windy roads, our fellow passengers were busy singing religious songs in Kinyarwanda. A guy sitting next to us explained that, thanks to the songs, the whole bus would be saved. Given how close we were coming to the edge of the road, I was happy to hear that. I hadn’t yet been to eastern Rwanda and I didn’t realize how beautiful it would be. The volcanic mountains tower over the villages and at dusk a bluish orange glow sits over the foothills where they layer the horizon. From Ruhengeri we took another local bus up to Kinigi, a village at the edge of Volcanoes National Park, which is where the gorilla trekking happens. After getting off the bus we needed to find our way to Kinigi Guest House, a small hotel up the road from the village and just across the street from the government office where we would gather for the trek. Just as we were asking a police officer for directions, a car pulled up behind us and asked if we needed any help. I turned around to find Lisa, a girl I met at Canada Day, and her friend Ian, who also happened to be on their way to the same hotel. At the guest house, we also ran into Betsy, a public health student I know here in Kigali. Two quick reminders that Rwanda, and especially the ex-pat community, really isn’t all that big.

We were up early the next morning and by seven we were at the office, where we learned that we’d be seeing the Umubano group of gorillas. As the guide started to tell us about the group—their names, behavior patterns, etc—it really started to hit me that I was about to be face to face with the animals. I’d been excited all week, but this was the point when I started smiling and couldn’t stop. We met the rest of our human group, three tourists/consultants from Minneapolis, and then we were on our way to the base of the mountain. After a twenty minute African massage (our driver’s euphemism for the bumpy roads), we parked, received our walking sticks and armed escorts, and hit the trail into the park.

The climb is steep and constant as soon as you enter the park. Over the course of a couple hours, we ascended about 1,800 meters. The trail was narrow, slippery, and scattered with low-hanging branches and stinging nettles. As we went higher and higher, the view grew more and more spectacular, and the lingering clouds made it easy to understand why the movie was called Gorillas in the Mist. Professional trackers, some of whom were former poachers, spend the day on the mountain and they radio directions back to the guides. When we reached the trackers, we were asked to put down our bags and walking sticks. We then crossed the final thirty yards of hillside, trying our best not to slip, and all of a sudden we were face to face with the gorillas.

I was in awe.

Within seconds of entering the area, one of the young gorillas scampered over to the group and touched Betsy’s leg. Charles, the silverback gorilla, was sitting about ten meters away. The others in the group played around, groomed one another, wrestled, beat their chests, and stared back at us as we looked on. Whenever they came too close, the guides would grunt at them to signal them to move away but they didn’t always listen. There was an eleven-month-old baby in the group who was, of course, adorable to watch as she played around. She did her best Sisyphus impression, running up the hillside over and over, only to be knocked down by her sibling as soon as she reached the top. The entire group seemed relaxed, happy, and completely at ease in the presence of the guides. Each group of visitors gets a maximum of one hour with the gorillas, and I don’t think sixty minutes has ever gone by so fast.

Probably the most remarkable thing about the experience was how natural it all felt. None of it felt produced, altered, or artificial, and I left feeling that we’d treaded as lightly as possible.

The rest of the photos are up on Picasa.