A Weekend Excursion Across the Northern Border

Life has been good. I directly witnessed its goodness this past weekend during my experiences staying in Kampala, Uganda. Not only did I raft the Nile, see a whole bunch of colorful birds I had never seen before and pray in a mosque after responding to the local muezzin's call to prayer (the sheik also tried to convert me, I held my ground), but I hung out with Caitlin T. and navigated Uganda's crazy streets with her help. She even helped me bargain with a shopkeeper around Owino Market in downtown Kampala. That market place literally smelled like shit and as we walked down the never ending pathways, the aggressive businesspeople grabbed at our arms and clothes. Crazy. It is good to be among friends; it is even better to be reunited with one you have not seen in a while.

Right now I am in Kigali, but that will not be for long. Tomorrow, my mate Devon and I head out to the North of Rwanda to Ruhengeri where we will be doing our practicum. Hopefully we will be planting trees, at least that is what we signed up to do. We do not really know much about what we have gotten ourselves into, but at the very minimum, we are guaranteed an adventure. I am looking forward to spending my time in the dirt and doing some restorative physical labour. I will not be taking my computer, although I might be able to find an internet cafe somewhere. Most likely, we will live in a rural area without internet access, so do not expect too much from me during this upcoming month. We return on March 25th or sometime around then.

Kigali now feels like home. I returned from Kampala with a joyous heart and got off the bus at our Remera/Chez Lando stop feeling so comfortable and pleased to return home, if only for a few days. Nothing solidifies the feeling of 'home-ness' like going away and coming back. I love Rwanda and seeing Uganda only made me realize how much I love life here. I love cramming into packed buses and traveling down familiar streets. I love speaking to locals in their language (though it is quite the challenge) and I even love only being able to comprehend three or four words out of every sentence. The trash filled streets of Kampala made me pine for Kigali, oddly enough. Suffice to say, Rwanda n'ziza.

I wish you all the best, whoever and wherever you are. May Imana bless you with grace and peace.

Muramoce,
Joshua

An Abbreviated Recapitulation Of A Busy Past Two Weeks

My blog has become like an Egyptian slave driver, whipping me with guilt every time I remember that I have not blogged in the recent past. So here it is, get ready folks. I am just going to go through the past couple weeks in a summary-esque format.

Two weekends ago I went to Kibuye, a town on Lake Kivu, for vacation where we swam (us guys skinny dipped for a while which was awesome), hiked, climbed Bat Island where many bats crowded the sky, got caught in a torrential lake storm that froze us to the bone on our boat ride back to the hotel, and danced in this haunted house looking night club in our hotel’s basement. That last part was rather creepy. For some reason us three guys ended up there both nights, dancing to funky African beats and a funny remix of Who Let The Dogs Out? I had not heard that song since maybe 5^th grade, so that was a trip. We also attended a local Free Methodist service that involved much singing and even some dancing accompanied by a traditional drum. So that was that and it was awesome. Saturday morning I helped some local Rwandan workers chop up a felled tree. Although I felt sorry for the tree, I wanted to give it a shot since I enjoy splitting wood. It took me twice as long as the wiry Rwandan man to finally slice through that tree trunk and my hands were worse off because of it, but it was totally worth it.

We arrived back in Kigali only to leave the next day for a research project in the Eastern Province. It is dry there, except for the two nights it rained like hell. We spent the week camping on a farm site in the midst of planting and clearing the land. During the days, we went into town and asked random families or individuals questions that concerned our qualitative research subject. Mine was the environment. Camping delighted me, even the night I spent cramped in a steamy van due to rain and a flooded tent. We also had translators to aid our interviewing process, students from Kigali Institute of Science and Technology who were quite personable and funny. We are now friends; tomorrow a group of us are going to visit them at their school and then have them over for dinner. Anyways, the interviewing went well and the people with whom we talked were quite receptive to our questions and thankful for our presence. But therein laid the problem. They thought we had solutions for them. They confided in us; they told us their lives, their lack of daily bread, how their children got chased away from school because they could not afford to buy them the proper school supplies or uniforms. Crops cannot grow without rain and they have been in a ‘drought’ (probably more of an unprecedented rain shortage) for two years. How can we make it rain? Am I even qualified to ask people questions, much less play like I have any sort of answers to their very real questions? I felt like a fraud, a masquerading liar. It got worse when we had to make our presentations to the community and its leaders, outlining our findings and proposed solutions. It is at this point that our fraudulent masks were removed and they saw our revealed inexperience and immaturity in the broad daylight. How shameful; they trusted us in the expectation of something, anything to help. We delivered them half-baked ideas; our ideas were shit, loads of bullshit. And they saw it clearly for what it truly was, for their questions to us penetrated our shallow façade and exposed our naïve ideas to the harsh realities of the Mpanga sector. Needless to say, I felt like I had betrayed the people I talked with, like all the smiles and cheery hand waves I had given people were all just a cover up for my own impotence, ineptitude and inability to help their situation. And they so desperately need help. Oh God help us.

On the way home, I saw a dead man. As we drove through a town in between the East and Kigali, we slowed down to find a figure lying motionless in the middle of the road. To the side of him was a crushed bicycle and up the road a bit was a parked semi. All around him, local people just stood and stared as if they were stunned. The reason became instantly clear. The man, with blood streaming from a gash on the back of his head, had been biking across the road when a semi plowed into him, demolishing his now contorted body and his bicycle. I felt as though I had become instantly sober, stoic and yet simultaneously vulnerable, confused, and desperate for something, maybe inner peace. Please God, help that man. His family too. Oh God help us.

So that has been my life recently, along with writing a paper (that I really do not enjoy) for the past few days. I still do not know how to deal with the reality of death I witnessed. We leave for Uganda on Thursday where we will go white water rafting down the Nile and go shopping at an awesome Ugandan market. I also get to hang out with Caitlin Torrence, a friend from Greenville! She has been in Uganda this semester and is coming down to see Erica and I. It will be so good to see a familiar face, especially one so lively as Caitlin’s. After that, I am off to Ruhengeri until March 25. I will be planting trees with my friend Devon; we also are doing some oral history interviews with locals to find out traditional Rwandan tongue twisters, origin stories, jokes and so on. I am looking forward to doing something productive, getting out into the rural country, and having some time away from our group. It can be too much sometimes living and doing everything in a big group like ours. So here is to life.

Christ’s Peace to y’all,

Joshua

PS I miss you Rachel

C'est bonne la vie

This past weekend was probably the best two days of my time here so far. Some friends and I travelled to Gatagara on Saturday morning, a small town past Gitarama which is the second largest city in Rwanda, I think. We walked through town, drawing attention and receiving random hugs from cute little children, down the dirt road to a pottery store. I bought a sweet plate with a fish image on it and also a mug. I also got to feed a cow; I plucked some grass from the ground and offered it to the bovine and he obligingly gobbled it up by snatching it with his super long tongue. On second thought, it could have been a female cow, I do not know. On the way back to town, I walked and talked with a fellow named Jean-Pierre in a trilingual conversation. We spoke mostly in French and English, but he also helped me a little on some nuances of kinyarwanda.
Sunday we attended an evangelical church on an invitation from a relative of one our Go-ED teammates (Princesse). The church had dirt floors and a swinging choir. According to custom, they asked us visitors to sing them a song, so we sang a swahili/english song for them, with the aid of their choir. It goes "there's no god, there's no god like Jesus; There's no god, there's no god like Him..." I won't even try to spell out the swahili part. Our performance turned into a dance party because the Rwandan churchgoers were not shy about expressing their spiritual delight in their rhythmic movements. Three sermons were delivered, which took a while especially since they had to be translated into English by Justin, Princesse's cousin. But it was a joyous and active service. Afterwards, we headed to Princesse's relative's house for lunch. At the house, we waited for two and a half hours for the food, but punctuality is not really important here and anyways the waiting was spent in good company. The Rwandan males of the host families got up and sang three songs for us in harmonious parts, all the while clapping and dancing and smiling up a storm. When they asked us to perform a ditty for them, we balked at first. Then the two other guys and I worked up a rendition of "I'll Fly Away", which went over pretty well considering our preparation. They also taught us some Rwandan dances, which we practiced gleefully.
The lunch turned into an all afternoon affair. Justin and two his brothers walked us home, being the amazing hosts they were, at around 4:30pm. Justin and I held hands for probably half the walk home. Then I switched to talking to his brother Felix, which necessitated more hand-holding. It is very common here to see men walking around the streets with intertwined hands or fingers. It took a little getting used since that is frowned upon back in the States and my hands became so sweaty that I felt self-conscious and sorry for Justin. However, it became something quite natural and it makes for a funny tale to relay. All in all, it was a fantastic and active weekend.
This morning, like every morning nowadays, I taught English at PHARP, a local organization started by one of our teachers Pastor Anastase that is dedicated to achieving peace, healing and reconciliation through common work programs. The women we tutor are learning how to sew in order to ameliorate their economic situation. Today, I went over the alphabet with the four women (Yvette, Alphonsine, Valerie, and Claire) I teach. I am learning how to teach as I go, and I would probably give myself a failing grade in terms of my pedagogical abilities. However, the women seem to enjoy and actually retain some of the information we study and I certainly benefit in learning more kinyarwanda. It is also heart-warming to interact personally with Rwandans and get out of both the classroom and our Go-ED house. That is it for now. Sorry if some of you are having trouble commenting on my blog, you might have to be an official follower if you want to do that. I am not well versed in blogging so I probably will not be of much help in those matters.
I miss you all very much. It is a joy to reflect on the past and all the memories I have shared with all you friends and family.

Did you know?

Yesterday night was quiz night at Sola Luna, the local Italian pizzeria, where a bunch of expats and UN workers get together, chat, drink from huge bottles of beer, and test each other's knowledge on obscure factoids. My team decided to dress up in our fancy duds in order to present ourselves as an intimidating force to be reckoned with. I looked pretty smart besides the fact that I sported my hiking boots as I do not have any dress shoes. Anyways, one of the questions was about an anagram for a famous woman's name that goes "nigel fetch an iron leg" or something to that effect. Our group was stumped utterly by this question and we were scrambling to fill in the blank before they collected our paper. I had been thinking to myself "what are dead women with really long names?" and suddenly I knew the answer: Florence Nightingale. I do not know how I came to that conclusion, I attribute it to God, maybe a theophany through speech.

I really enjoy those trivia nights and they are but one aspect of the wacky experiences I have an opportunity to take part in here in bustling Kigali. For example, last night was aerobics night at Amahoro Stadium. There was loud music (a dance mix of ABBA and Elton John) and a bunch of old Rwandans usually show up to the gymnasium for the aerobics, but they are dressed in the most ridiculous outfits, reminiscent of the '80s, and it is a comical affair. Not only was it hard work, but it was ridiculously fun. I probably got the same amount of a workout laughing up a storm than doing the dancercises.

Grace and Peace to you all (whoever actually reads this besides my parents) from Kigali,

Yesua