Final Thoughts On Practicum

So practicum is over and I am now back in Kigali, gearing up to start new classes for this last six week stretch. Sometimes six weeks seems like a long time, sometimes it does not seem long enough. My perspective probably depends on my current mood. As it is, the past few days I have really done nothing but hang out. I played football with my neighbour friends for four hours straight one afternoon and even got in trouble with a neighbour who was crotchety every time the ball went over his fence. Some people just cannot abide fun and childish innocence, I guess. More and more lately I have been feeling like a kid, reclaiming my childhood both in my memory flashbacks and in the activities I do. It is freeing to live like a child, to "stuff your eyes with wonder [...] see the world. It is more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories" (Fahrenheit 451, 157).

Let me try to reflect on my practicum experience. The first two weeks our boss babied us and made us tag along with him as he went around to various sites on bureaucratic/administrative visits. We got to work, but the experiences were irregular and disappointingly few and far between. I especially despised how we had to ride in our boss's car for at least three hours of commute every day. We lived in Gisenyi town, but all the sites were far away, tucked back up into the hills. This made the sites quite scenic, but hard to get to, especially by car. Plus, the car seemed to channel its diesel and exhaust into the car interior right into my nose, so I came to rather hate that car. It brought on fits of childish anger and resentment. While there were definite moments of good and beauty in these first two weeks, I generally felt frustrated with the trajectory of my internship. My expectations had not been fulfilled even partially. While I found complete solace and peace in the work they allowed us to try, those occasions did not obtain nearly enough for my liking.

The last two weeks took a turn for the better. It may have just been an attitude change, but I noticed a definite change in the freedom and trust our boss gave us. Instead of riding in the car and arriving to work three hours late, we used public transportation and motorcycle taxis to reach our sites, which got us to work only an hour late. The tree planting workers start their days at 7am and work until 1:30 in the afternoon, which gave us free afternoons but limited our work time. We usually arrived to work around eight or 8:30 when we took public transportation since we did not have to wait around for Jean-Baptiste (we called him JB for short behind his back) or tag along with him on his errands. I began to develop blisters. While they hurt and made wielding a hoe decidedly uncomfortable, I was proud to bear the marks of my assumed trade. With this increased freedom, we laboured for longer hours and began to develop friendships with the local workers.

At first, they regarded us as naive but eager fools. They thought it funny that Americans wanted to try using a hoe since we have a reputation for only using machinery at work. I do not want to ever fit that stereotype and I enjoyed breaking it. I tried to work hard and avoid stopping because they would persistently pester me with questions like "are you tired?" or "are you hungry" because they thought I could not handle their work. A couple of people even told me I was tired; that just made me work all the harder. There was a weird double standard at play because while I would be labouring and getting peppered with accusations concerning my fatigue and endurance, all the other workers, the women especially, would just be watching me, neglecting their work to stare with curious eyes at the white skinned fellow. I later learned that it was okay to admit my fatigue when I actually felt tired, because that work is dead tiring on the arms and the back. It requires great stamina. Rwandans weather the storm by taking short but frequent breaks in between the holes or trenches they are digging. Sometimes they break in the middle of excavating a terrace. I watched and learned that habit, which helped in the last days of my practicum when my arms threatened to quit on me and just fall off.

In the afternoons, we had free time. JB gave us our lunch money so I often frequented the Gisenyi market. I got to know the fruit area, especially the mango lady, and I became good friends with the guy who sold green beans (for a ridiculously cheap price). Actually I already knew the green bean guy, nicknamed Master P, from the local pickup football games I played in regularly. I went on a daily basis in my trainers and competed with some local fellows of all ages. Once, I almost started a fight because a guy kicked at my heels and calves. I turned around and gave him a shove as well as my best threatening eyes. I later felt sorry for overreacting, even though he totally was hacking at people's legs the whole game. However, my almost-fight was nothing compared to another fight I witnessed. Two guys went into a tackle with high cleats and then started to talk heatedly at each other. This turned into a shoving match, which drew the attention of the other players who crowded around the guys to separate them. Stephen, the aggressor, managed to kick the guy in the stomach with his cleats. It looked like it hurt, but the guy retreated. I thought it was cooling down, but he returned shortly with a big ass rock in his hand. He rushed at Stephen and hurled the rock at him. Fortunately, his aim sucked and Stephen dodged it. The rocked sailed close past my ankle. I do not think I have ever been in a soccer match that escalated to rock throwing before, so that was interesting to say the least.

Some days I ran to the lake shores and found a spot to jump in. The lake water was cool and refreshing. The last night, Devon and I decided to skinny dip in the lake because our guest house did not have running water at the time. I brought my soap down to the lake shores and bathed in the cover of darkness like a true Rwandan. That was a laughable thrill. French really came in handy since we lived five minutes away from the francophone DRC. I used it multiple times daily and it often helped because our boss frequently stranded us with supervisors or workers who spoke little English. My french got us out of a couple of jams and I often acted as a translator for conveying instructions or just anything to Devon, my practicum mate. It made me glad that I defied my parents' wishes in the seventh grade and took French instead of Spanish. Really I only took French because they wanted the opposite, but now I am thankful for that fit of teenage rebellion.

Saying goodbye was difficult because the farewells had an air of permanence about them. Devon and I want to return and are planning to go on some weekend to get in some more holes and get our blisters back. One day I planted 151 trees, my most productive day. My hands were really black and soil covered after that. Total, we may have planted only around 200 trees, but we accomplished most of our work digging trenches, terraces and tree holes. We also helped JB by entering workers' payment information into an excel spreadsheet, tedious work that had to get done and JB certainly did not know how. I hated it at first but towards the end I did not mind helping him out. He was totally clueless when it came to computers. He also speaks mostly French, which meant that I did a lot of the communicating, particularly when he needed to convey something important. We learned some kinyarwanda from him and we also helped him out with his English. All in all, he grew on me. He annoyed me at first, but then I grew to recognize his quirkiness and idiosyncrasies. Devon and I shared many a good laughs over JB's oddities. I might even miss that fellow.

Alright, I have done my best to give a fair synopsis of the past four weeks of my life. I do not want to edit this epic, so please forgive any grammatical errors. I am glad for the experience of tree planting and am better off because of it. I learned some patience in the process, considering the sheer amount of time we spent waiting around. Indeed, one day JB did not even show up so we just hung around and then walked around town out of boredom. I am proud to have planted trees and I would love to do it again in the future. It is good to work with one's hands, especially amoung friends in the abundant greenery of Nature.

Practicuum

In these past few weeks, I have learned that my dreams and expectations for tree planting were wholly unrealistic. The truth of the matter is that I have planted fifteen trees total (a ridiculously small amount) and I have dug over 50 holes, four trenches, and done my fair share of weeding with a machete. My hands show the marks of a digger and a digger I have become. Usually my days consist of travel, which lately has been on the exciting bota botas, motorcycle taxis, and then hours spent digging and labouring alongside the tough Rwandans of the hills. I like my practicum best when I am working, although it has been good to get to know the local football pickup games every day after work. My internet time here at the cafe is running out, I will post more next week when I am done with my internship.

Acacias And Eucalyptus

For some reason, I am back in Kigali. I was not expecting to return for a month. But events transpired (namely, Paul Kagame visiting Gisenyi, my practicum home-base, which threw everything into security chaos) so that it became evident that I needed my passport or some form of identification. I did not bring anything. Usually, you do not need that kind of thing for in-country travel here. But anyways, I am back for a day or two from my brief adventures with the Rwandan soil. Tomorrow I head back to Gisenyi on another four-hour bus ride. On the way here, my entire left leg fell asleep, completely numb, and the woman two seats to my left started burping like she was about to vomit. It was not entirely pleasant. 

My favorite part about working as a tree planter so far has been just getting to know my coworkers, my crew mates who have been teaching me the ropes although most do not speak English. I am improving daily in my Kinyarwanda communicative skills (I learned the future tense!) but talking to a rural Rwandan is still difficult, especially understanding them. We have not done that much work so far, just studying and learning, but I have fifteen trees under my belt and ten various trenches/terraces I have dug to help the hills catch the falling rain and prevent erosion. Hopefully, we will be much more involved in the physical labor next week, when we receive our own tools. 

Two things I do not like: planting foreign, non-native trees that replace the native forests, and planting trees only for them to be chopped down in four short years. However, those things are out of my control at the moment.

We plant on hills, slopes of varying inclines/declines/whatever. Some of the steeper ones are impossible to scale without using the hoe as leverage. Skipping and jumping down the hills, from terrace to terrace, is one of the more thrilling activities I have experienced yet. The Rwandans like it too; they hoop and holler as they throw themselves down the hills, sure-footed and confident. I know they like having us around (my friend Devon and I), to laugh at us when we work, to distract them, and to teach us the skills they know almost intuitively. They applauded us after we flung ourselves down a particularly steep hillside and made the final fifteen-foot drop. 

We live in paradise, on the shores of Lake Kivu. On my sole run so far, I stopped at a point on the lake, called it a midpoint, went for a swim and then ran home to our guesthouse. There are two volcanoes in the distance and we live three minutes from the DRC border. I am prohibited from crossing over. 

We work in a couple of different locations, all of which require a substantial commute. One of them is near a town in the hills called Gishwati, populated mostly by the Batwa, or the pygmies. It is surrounded by green, so much green. Green pastured hills and green hillsides covered in newly planted trees. We are so high up in the hills that we are almost in the clouds. Another site, around Mukondo near the town centre Mahoko, is located near a valley completely covered in tea bushes. I mean green tea bushes as far as the eye can see and beyond. The hills around the valley are populated with trees my fellow planters have labored to set in the earth. 

I love trees.