A Rwandan Wedding and Ensuing Shenanigans

Providence was invited to a wedding this weekend for a friend of hers from church, and Laura and I were welcomed to tag along.  It was nearly 1p.m. by the time we got to the wedding because there was an umuganda, or national day of service, scheduled.  This traditionally means that roads and public transport are shut down while volunteers clean the roads.  (I learned that only certain people participate in this, upon invitation.  Otherwise, I would have been in the midst of it.  You might know how I love neighborhood cleanups!) 

The first part of a traditional Rwandan wedding takes place at the home of the bride’s family.  The walkway was designated by something like pine brush, and the yard was set up with three tents: two long ones on either side of the aisle and facing it, and one smaller one in the middle for the wedding party.  Of course everything was in Kinyarwanda.  Providence explained that in the beginning, the bride’s family accuses the groom’s family of being dishonest, and the groom’s family must defend itself and convince the bride’s family to allow their daughter to be wed.  This dialogue took place between the fathers, slightly moderated by a sort of emcee character who was very funny (judging by the laughter he received).  We were on the groom’s side, and applauded several times when dear old dad seemed to be making headway.  This went on for maybe half an hour; I wondered if they had practiced these speeches or if it was off the cuff.  Finally, the bride’s family agreed that their daughter could marry the guy.  (Whew!)

The next stage was a ceremonial and theatrical transaction to seal the deal.  You guessed it….the giving of cows!!  Unlike the day before, where the cows were very, very real, these cows were only symbolic, but Providence says that the groom’s family probably did actually give about 200,000 francs to the bride’s family, which is roughly $1000.  For this part, the emcee guy and another friend were draped as shepherds and wandered around the center aisle, singing the praises of cows, and even adding some “mooooooos” for effect.  This got a laugh every time they did it.  The mood was jovia; it felt like this was an essential but not-to-be-taken-too-seriously part of the ritual, like incessantly clinking forks for the new couple to kiss or tossing the garter and bouquet. 

Only then could the bride and groom actually enter, with major pomp and circumstance.  The groom and entourage entered first, with gold and red capes and ornate staffs.  For the bride, there was an armed guard (yes, with spears) along with a maid of honor, an army of bridesmaids carrying all manner of baskets and boxes, and sweeper girls (like flower girls, but with brooms).  The bride’s dress was a deep red wrap with gold running through it, and she wore a beaded band across her forehead.  The bridesmaids’ dresses echoed the bride’s red in a big floral print over cream-colored silk.  Just wow.

Then a second army of bridesmaids served us plates of delicious plantains and beef and beans and rice and vegetables at our seats.  Then there was a little more talking and a tradition of trying to make the bride cry over leaving her family.  She managed to eke out a tear or two, but it felt a little like watching Hillary Clinton trying to cry.

Part two of the wedding was at a protestant church in Kigali.  At this point, there was a bit of a hullabaloo because Laura and I were anxiously attempting to procure from Providence the etiquette of Rwandan weddings.  We didn’t have a gift: did we need one?  Could we give cash?  What would be an appropriate gift or an appropriate amount to spend?  Should we go to the church or would it be better not to since we are strangers to them?  Would it be worse to show up at the church late but with a gift or on time but empty-handed?  As far as I could tell, it turned out that none of these things mattered or needed to be fussed over.  The church was crowded and restless, with about three times as many people at the church as there were at the house.  People kept wandering in for about twenty minutes after we got there, (and we definitely took some time to fuss around in the store before Provi got frustrated and we left without a gift.)  Nobody especially cared who was or wasn’t there or when. 

The bride was in a white gown this time, and all the bridesmaids had changed as well into cream-colored dresses with blue and gold trim.  It was pretty incredible.  This must have been an expensiive affair!  We did get a chance to greet the bride and groom and give them some cash in a collection basket at the end of the ceremony.  By this time it was 7p.m., and Providence decided that she had better head home to her brother’s instead of going to the reception.  This sounded crazy at the time, but now I think she may have been right on: the wedding party was going to take pictures before arriving at the reception, and since Providence goes to bed at 10 o’clock sharp every night, she might have had to leave before they arrived.  At any rate, I was disappointed, because of course I wanted to go to the reception, but couldn’t very well attend without Providence, (right?).

So Laura and I walked in search of the One Love Guest House which wasn’t too far away.  It’s run by a pretty cool Japanese NGO that raises money for prostheses for disabled children.  Kigali is a weird city.  Its many hills are steep enough that there are large swaths of highway you can walk along but not build along.  It isn’t unsafe, but it doesn’t feel very friendly or interesting in those stretches because there’s not really anything to look at.  In Manhattan, by contrast, you are always walking through something interesting even as you go from something interesting to something else interesting. 

We found the place, though there was no entrance from the street where you could see it, and then we had to pass through a labyrinthine (and poorly lit) bridge-parking lot-restaurant complex to actually find the guest house from its entrance.  The patios and walkways were and lovely gardens, though nearly deserted, but the room itself was slightly creepy, big and red and empty except for a ramp up to a dwarf entrance to the bathroom.  I had an actual hot shower, after some hilarious challenges with the overzealous shower nozzle.  We fell asleep to the lullaby of a pack of wild dogs.  I slept well, then woke up this morning to a trifecta of roosters crowing, cars passing, and someone sweeping outside.  The wonderment never ceases!  Also, we discovered a menagerie of several caged tropical birds and about a dozen cats within our guest house/labyrinth.  We decided that the place would be really great if there were more people around. 

Don't worry: I didn't go to bed at 8p.m.  The guest house host, Daniel, recommended a restaurant called Car Wash.  We needed additional directions on the way but were a little creeped out by the groups of men we kept passing, so we asked the nearest woman and immediately afterward realized she was most likely a prostitute.  She was impressed with Laura’s Kinyarwanda, and we paid her twice what she asked, enough for two Fantas.  So there’s another big one to list on my Adventures CV: patronizing a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession.  I think I’ll put it between the all-night fence-a-thon in college and jumping off a bridge high enough to bruise my tailbone in Durango. 

But I digress.  Back to Car Wash.  Laura and I were welcomed in by a musungo (white) guy who I thought was a manager, then a creeper, but then luckily I was right the first time.  The place was big and open, with colorful neon lights, two bars, a big courtyard, and three different semi-sheltered areas.  There was also a stage, and before we knew what was happening, we were watching some insane lip sync/dance performances.  We giggled because one of the dancers looked exactly like Providence, if she ever wore spandex and honed her chest thrusting skills.  We were in time to catch the last 20 minutes of the Rwanda/Canada soccer game, an exhilarating but scoreless match.  Needless to say, we both rooted for Rwanda.  Fortuitously, we had some company because we ran into John, the teacher at Geshora High School, and two young women on holiday from Belgium.  They were all staying in a hostel at a church.

And I just have to assume that everything that happened this weekend was completely normal, even though my head is still spinning. 

A Day of Fame and Fortune

Several unbelievable events stacked on top of one another on Friday.  At about noon, a group of visitors arrived.  I had been told a family of potential donors was coming.  I shook the hands of three extremely cute and impressively articulate kids and their parents, as well as a British woman with them who introduced herself as Opheila Dahl.  This name registered as I shook hands with the other men—whose names I barely heard.  The Ophelia Dahl!  The Executive Director of Partners in Health!  I read about her and Paul Farmer, PIH’s founder, in Mountains beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, a great book about the organization and its struggle to bring medical access to developing nations.  I was so starstruck, I didn't know what to do.  I ran into the teachers' lounge and kind of freaked out and tried to explain to everyone that she was kind of a big deal.  Then I kind of followed them around with a camera, because I was asked to document the visit, but also because I was suddenly transformed into the paparazzi.  I followed them on their campus tour, and the girls sang to them (I was so proud!) 

PIH has two hospitals in Rwanda, Ophelia apparently knows Sr. Ann (my boss at the Paraclete), and the Cambridge friends she was travelling with apparently gave some money to get this school started, so it might not have been surprising that she was there...except to me.  The sisters even asked me and the other American teacher to sit down to lunch with them.  I should have asked a lot of insightful questions, but it was all I could do to speak in complete sentences about the school.  Ophelia was unassuming, down-to-earth, and friendly.  She is in Rwanda for a short visit of the hospital sites nearby, then she will head off to another site someplace else in the world, maybe Peru or Haiti.  

The mind-blowingness of the day continued after lunch.  Sr. Juvenal was eager to get on the road because the Maranyundo School for Girls was being given five cows at a special ceremony.  It turns out this is a BIG DEAL in Rwanda.  Cows have long been associated with wealth.  They mean food security and are a major part of the culture.  In love poems, a beautiful woman’s eyes are compared to cows’ eyes.  The word describing the slow and graceful procession of a bride and groom down the aisle is the same word as a cow’s walking.  Many dances and songs are dedicated to the important event of a gift of cows.

The gift was made possible through Heiffer International and maybe also somehow through the Rwandan government, which gave cows to a number of genocide orphans and widows some time ago.  The program specifies that the first calf of a gift cow must be passed on to another deserving person.  So now it was our turn to receive cows!  The girls’ dance troupe and chorus had packed into the vans two hours before us to get ready at the site of the ceremony, along with several prefects (student leaders) whose job it was to select at random the name of the person whose cow they would be taking home. 

The crowd was seated under a tent on a grassy yard, looking out on the speakers at a single microphone and about 20 cattle just beyond, grazzing and mooing and occcasionally excreting.  Women turned out draped in colorful formal silk dresses.  The girls, festively attired in leopard prints and headbands, sat in their own tent, which was decked out in woven wall hangings and a low table with gira, traditional vessels for amata (milk). 

There was a lot of rejoicing and hugging as the recipients were paired with their benefactors and introduced to their cows.  Sr. Juvenal gave one of the speeches.  I took an amazing video of a man, costumed as a shepherd, brandishing a staff and singing the praises of the cows.  At one point, the girls ceremoniously passed around the gira to share the milk.  Laura and I were proud again to see how they shared with the dust-covered children from the neighborhood who gathered around.  The girls’ concluding performance was brilliant, with slow, flowing movements, practiced hip twists (they’d be great at lindy hop!) , and frequent arms-extended gestures en homage to the cows’ graceful horns.

After the ceremony itself we piled with the girls into a van.  I expected us to head back to school, but no such luck.  Instead, we bumped along a dirt road for 40 minutes or so behind our inka (cows) to the place where they will be kept.  Then we threw a sort of housewarming party for the inka; there was a big fuss about getting them off the truck and into their stalls; we watched them eat, brushed them with hay, patted their noses, fed them corn husks, and sang to them.  I kept looking around me thinking this is completely normal, trying to convince myself it was absolutely true in this context!

It was well after dark when we returned.  The cows are young and not yet giving milk, but one is already pregnant, we are told.  I asked Sande how the milk will get to school each day, and he said that we could hire bicyclists to do it without great expense, though I suspect that bumpy road and all that milk will still be quite a handful for our milk courier!

Finally back at the house, we ended the night with what was probably the most intense thunderstorm I have ever lived through.  The rain was heavy enough that it poured in through the wall vents, and I had to move my wooden desk away from the wall.  At one point, our door was blown open by the wind; our floor immediately became a lake, and the curtain in front of the door waved dramatically in the wind, the lightning pulsing behind it menacingly.  After hesitating, Laura bravely went out to close it, facing substantial headwinds down the corridor.  She and I proceeded to do such fearful things as: preemptively turn off the lights and get out our flashlights, take inventory of our fire extinguishers in case of a lightning strike, sing “My Favorite Things” on repeat for 20 minutes, and huddle together in the hallway in the middle of the house.  The girls told us later they were likewise terrified.

icyumweru (the weekend)

On Saturday, Laura, Providence, and I went to Kigali again.  We wandered around trying to find the Dancing Pots, a tourist attraction that involves dancing, pots, and the Twa, people of the third and smallest Rwandan tribe.  We didn’t find it, but we did walk past some embassies and NGOs.  By the cathedral, we met two small children who pleaded with us for money.  “Ndashonje,” they said.  “I am hungry.”  On the streets of Kigali, the people begging are clearly doing so for a reason.  We saw a man with no hands and no feet sitting out.  I have never felt so dirty about charity as I do here.  Laura agrees with me that you can’t feel good about yourself after giving away money like that.  Those kids will still be hungry again later and that man still needs someone’s help for the most basic of tasks.  It’s funny how giving charity can be dehumanizing, but it really can, both for me and for the recipient.  Instead of uniting us a human beings, it just creates a stark contrast between my having and not their having, which is softened only a little if I ask their names. 

 On Sunday,
I did basically nothing all day.  Actually, I cleaned up the kitchen and the back yard, did a “dance off the inches” salsa workout video with Laura, and read the first half of Genesis.  I also have a copy of the girls’ Christian Religious Education text, which is actually from the Kenyan curriculum, and I am looking at it to see what they are learning.  I also talked to Dad and Rachel.  Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Midterms

Light workload this week as the students were taking their CATs, or midterms.  I mostly relaxed, proctoring some exams here and there. 

Tuesday morning I did an English lesson with Sr. Constance.  We did some reading of an article about the latest in the battle against AIDS, which was in a copy of The Economist I bought in Kigali for 3,000 francs.  The article was advanced for her skill level, but was a good starting place to seek understanding and jump off into a few concepts, like spoken numbers (first, second) reporting on charts, and verb tenses used to describe the situation.

I also worked with Nathan on making papersifted fibers from a bucket of water on to a screen, then added a layer of apyrus and wings and wings and wings of the rainbugs, then finished with a second layer of fiber. 

The students invited me to join “sports” and I played soccer for awhile, leaving the game to go get the ball from the other side of the fence.  The girls stopped the game for me until I told them to start again, even though it was a hike to get back around.  I then joined some girls who were stretching and showed then, on a whim, Simon Says.  They are so very obedient.  It was hard to tell if I had just burst in unwelcome and held them hostage or interrupted their otherwise mundane moment with a novelty.

Tuesday night Sande invited the whole gang out to Savanah.  We were seated out on the lawn around two tables moved there especially for our big group, missing out on the sort of tiki pagodas this time, but with an incredible view of the full moon.  In conversation, we asked Sande about how nice the girls are to each other.  Insightfully, he explained that they are extremely cautious, particularly in how they treat one another, and in particular, they refrain from teasing each other because of any physical characteristics—all because of the genocide.

Laura and I went running on Wednesday morning.  We went up the hill near where Sande lives and turned out to the main road.  We passed the school I visited with Andrew and Nathan last week and a bunch of kids followed us!  It was a little hilarious, because clearly they found us completely absurd. 

Later, I washed a load of laundry by hand for the first time.  Ouela, one of the two “house girls” with whom I often laugh and smile and try to exchange words in our respective languages, seemed displeased with my progress.  I wasn’t sure at first whether it was because I suck at scrubbing or what.  Washing machine? She asked.  Yego. (Yes).  In the end, I think her concern was that I didn’t have enough soap.  Oh well.  The clothes are clean enough for me, though I don’t love hand-washing.  It is really quite labor-intensive, and I’m a little insecure about my wringing skills.  Won’t it rip, or at least stretch, the fabrics? 

The sisters came by for a wonderful farewell dinner for Andrew and Nathan.  We said grace before and after the meal (I got to sing the Lord is Good to Me) for the end one, and had pasta/salad and plantains and potatoes and meat and even cake!  Dessert is a rarity; this was my first here, unless not counting pineapple, which is a pretty standard last course. 

On Thursday I videotaped an incredible black beetle that was in the sink outside when I went to fill a wash bucket.  I swear the thing was two inches long and as round as a lady bug.  It was like a tank!  

I have been practicing my Kinyarwanda, especially while I proctor exams.  For one, I wrote up on the board the start time and the stop time, along with the current time.  As I studied, I erased “Time now” and wrote, “ni gihe ki?” which means “What time is it?”  The girls giggled, appreciative of my attempt to learn their language, and then went back to their work. 

On Thursday, I went along for the ride to Kigali to bid Andrew and Nathan bon voyage.  We will miss their fun, relaxed presence.  They left behind some great art materials to do with the girls, plus a skype date with a professor and her young students in Korea!

Also in Kigali, Sr. Juvenal visited a primary school taught by the Benebikiras and Laura and I took a tour of the school with Celeste, the school secretary for headmistress Sr. Ana Beata, who was apparently the first Benebikira sister to some to study in Boston.  I recognized her from a picture hanging in the third floor dining room at the Paraclete. 

On Friday, after classes ended, during “sports,” I pulled out the paints and half-finished globes for the students to work on.  We have some really nice-looking ones by now with bright colors. 

Kigali Weekend

On Saturday, we finally got out of the house around 3 and taxied down the hill on bikes for 100RWF, or about 15₵.  I couldn’t believe how cheap that was, though it’s not far and it’s downhill.  Laura and I climbed into a 14-passenger van labeled “Excel Tours” to Kigali.  I was smushed on a seat with three other adults, one of them holding a cute baby, with my butt falling into the crack between the real seat and the fold-down seat.  It cost us about $1 for the 40-minute ride.  I was surprised at how, as we got in toward the city, passengers would knock hard on the ceiling and yell something to the driver, then we’d pull over, and the person would climb out.  I had no idea where we were getting off.  Luckily, I had Laura, and it turned out to be easily identifiable--the place where there were lots of these van things. 

We hadn’t walked far before we met Emmanuel, a friend of Laura’s who was involved with a project connecting Maranyundo students to tutoring students at another school in Nyamata.  Emmanuel, it turns out, is studying to be a dentist, which requires a four-year bachelor’s degree.  After he completes it, he will go where the government sends him.  In this developing nation, the president has a lot of control over what’s happening in the country.  This might be a good thing; after all, Rwanda’s rate of development is apparently quite remarkable. 

Emmanuel helped me bargain for a phone charger (about $2!), then led us to the fabric market to find the perfect print for Laura.  I bought two more, but saw just so many beautiful ones, it left my head spinning.  As it began to rain, Laura and I checked ourselves into the Sky Hotel, listed as “budget” in our guidebook .  Our room had crazy shiny green bedspreads, “bonus flip flops” on the floor, and like most Rwandan spaces, uncarpeted floor (this was tiled), and a crazy beautiful view of settlement in the valley around Kigali.  When we came back after dinner, buffet-style with hot tea to warm our wet bodies, we found that the rainwater had flooded in from the balcony onto the floor.  There was just nothing to block it, with the open balcony designed like a tub and the door an inch from the floor.  We transferred rooms, not because of the water, but because the balcony door wouldn’t stay closed in the wind.  We retired to a much bigger room with blue sheets, a busted television cord, and a bathroom featuring a creepy window out to the rest of the room.  The shower stayed hot for about two thirds of my shower before the water cut off completely for a few disappointing soapy minutes, then went cold. 

When they say developing nation, they aren’t messing around.  What struck me was how sad it seemed.  I gave the people the benefit of the doubt that they wanted to provide a quality experience.   There is just not adequate infrastructure or money to sustain reliable plumbing or replace broken appliances. 

This morning, we had a very weird breakfast in the basement of our hotel room.  They keep lights mostly off during the day, but this room was dim enough, even with the windows out to the below-ground courtyard,  that there were several chandeliers with one lit fluorescent bulb.  I ordered “African tea” which turns out to be mostly gingery whole milk in thick thick curdles.  There was also some flat egg (omeletlike but plain) and bread shaped like hotdog rolls.  From next door, we could hear singing and shouting, which we figured was a church service.  Weirdly, "Iron Will" was on the tv. 

We walked south along the road (Ave de Justicia) into the colorful shopsy district, Nyamarambo.  I took some pictures of the mosque.  We also walked by the Kigali Health and Tech Institites, the Russian embassy, and the pres res.  We went into the memorial site for the Belgian soldiers who were defending the prime minister when all of them were assassinated in 1994 at the beginning of the genocide, in the hopes that the UN would pull out.  It worked.  The memorial was the stark buildings full of bullet holes and a bulletin board where the soldiers’ families had written their lamentations.  

We found our way eventually to the crafts market.  CRAFTS!!!  There were tons of merchants in the coop, representing tons more.  I bought a ton of cards, a bowl, salad tongs, some jewelry.  After purchasing a couple of things from a man named Jean Baptiste, I asked him which items were his, and he showed me the wood carvings, which I had not noticed.  They are stylized, expressive, and made of a sturdy olive wood.  I told him about Joseph’s, Mom’s store, which had sold statues from Italy and Spain.  The blessed mother statues struck me as especially beautiful, and I chose one to take with me.  As we talked, Jean Baptiste showed me an email he had received from a man in the US who had purchased a few nativity sets a few weeks back.  The man was missing a couple of pieces, but international post is ridiculously expensive.  Jean Baptiste asked me to take the pieces home with me and mail them to Virginia.  I accepted, feeling incredibly lucky to be a part of this international mission.

We grabbed lunch, some Indian aloo something burgers, where we were surrounded somehow by Musungus (white/rich people).  It’s funny how I sometimes feel like it’s cheating to be around people of my own culture, like that’s not the real Rwanda experience.  Other times I watch three episodes of Friends in an evening.

We ran into Bienvenue, Nathan, and Andrew on our way back home, stopped for a drink (that’s what you do!)

We got back just about in time for the storm.  It rained and rained and rained.  What Laura calls “the stupid bugs” were out IN FORCE.  They come up from termite mounds, flutter about frenetically, often into the mouths of geckos or into human beings, then eventually land, shed their wings, walk a little more, and promptly die.  I didn’t believe it, but two came in as we were watching tv on the couch, then two more, then two more, moving down the hall.  Ick.  I lowered the princess canopies and tried to shoo them out of the bedrooms.  I think there were about 20 of them dead when all was said and done. 

the Art of Peace

On Thursday, I tutored Sr. Constance in the morning in English, then assisted in computer class.  After classes, I supervised the 8 or so girls in the “media club” as they read headlines on the internet. They report out to their classmates on current events at assembly Monday and Friday mornings.

Andrew and Nathan worked with a group of students to paper mache some balloons to make bowls.  After classes, I helped them peel papyrus for paper-making.  They harvested the papyrus from the river nearby.  This was the very river where thousands of bodies were thrown during the genocide to be swept out of the country.  I think that for Nathan, creating beautiful art from the papyrus of this river is an act of reclaiming the local environs for peace. 

Today, Nathan and Andrew led the girls in some more paper mache globe-making and paper making.  I missed it because I had teaching to do!  I did a lesson for the Senior 1b’s about see, hear, taste, and smell, which, it turns out, are special verbs because they take the present simple conjugation even when the meaning is continuous.  For example, you say “I smell oregano,” not “I am smelling oregano.”  They practiced these by writing stories in groups about some interesting pictures I found in my travel magazine.  I also did a tutoring session on direct and reported speech with my senior 2s.  This turns out to be complicated as well!  The girls are studying hard this weekend for their CAT exams (like midterms). 

Andrew, Laura and I stayed up until nearly 2 talking and drinking and playing cards.  It was a great time in our sheltered little environment of the faculty house. 

Basketball and other minor victories

Today, I tutored Sr. Yvonne in computers for an hour in the morning.  She is a warm, smiling woman with a big sense of humor, and it is fun to sit with her and play around with the silly features of Word, like clip art and fancy fonts.  “I am a big happy dog,” she typed, just to create some text on the page.  Ever since then, Andrew has started referring to her as “the big happy dog.” 

Andrew and Nathan went to Kigali for most of the day with Sr. J. and Sr. Constance, where they visited all kinds of paper stores to get materials for their projects.

In the afternoon, I watched and played along a little with Bienvenue and Valens on the keyboard.  They are both extremely musical and really got into some praise music they were doing.  Laura giggled at the faces Bienvenue made as he sang and played. 

Then was the faculty-student basketball game.  The girls had challenged the faculty to a showdown.  With me, Laura, Bienvenue, and Valens, we were short a player, so we borrowed Amelie from the students.  Laura was great and Bienbien and Val were wonderful.  The girls swooned as Bienvenu ran up and down the court like Michael Jordan, tall and lean and fast.  I tired out fast and scored only once thw whole game, but thanks to MJ, we won!

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I went for a run in the morning along the dirt road.  I made a baby cry, just by being white, and by doing this weird thing, running, in these weird clothes.

I spent the morning with Sr. Martha, Nathan, and Andrew visiting three other schools in the area.  Andrew took some crazy videos of the primary school children gathering around us, just swarming to get a closer look.  “Witwande?”  “What’s your name?” we kept asking them.  We went into five different secondary level classrooms, greeting the students and introducing ourselves, thanking them for letting us interrupt class.  I felt a little uncomfortable pushing ourselves on them as though we were celebrities, though we were a hit, especially when Andrew said he liked to sing and the students asked him to do so.  We did a few bars from “Let It Be,” which was actually a lot of fun, and needless to say the kids erupted in applause.

The Geshora School, the third school we saw, is a high school, levels Senior 4 through Senior 6.  It is a new facility, an American built school, like ours, but it is built 40 minutes further out of town on an incredible lake.  We were told that they can’t use the lake because there are hippos and crocodiles!  We met several Maranyundo graduates there and also talked with the headmaster (a Bostonian named Peter) and one of the American teachers (they have three).

After school, I tutored my senior 2s for the first time.  I have 8 students, which is a lot in that small tutoring room!  I asked them to draw their home and talk about it, as a way of introducing themselves, to assess their skills and just get them talking.  They were reluctant to begin drawing with pens, without rulers.  A few of them made their drawings with tentative dotted lines.  Afterward, they asked if they could meet on Friday as well. 

The Nyamata Genocide Memorial

Immediately after my nap today, I got word that Nathan and Andrew were being escorted to the Genocide memorial.  I have known that this is something I need to see, but have been dreading it, and had hoped that I could go with one of the nuns.  I felt very much un-braced for the experience, having just woken up, not preparing for it, and going with Teacher Ernest instead of one of the sisters. 

The Memorial is a Catholic church, and it stands as a testament to some of the most brutal events that have ever and could ever occur in human history.  In 1994, Tutsis throughout the area flocked there for asylum when their neighbors took up machetes and violence began to escalate.  10,000 Tutsis crowded there, but counfd no asylum.  The interahamwe (militia) came for them, first with machetes and hand weapons, then later with support from the army, guns and grenades.  There was no real door on the church, only a barred metal gate.  Our guide showed us how the original gate had been blown with a grenade, but I could imagine that long before the militia could reach the gate, thousands would have been slain outside.  For more on the Rwandan Genocide, this article isn't bad.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1288230.stm

We walked through one of the mass graves.  First we walked down a narrow ladder into the crypt.  There were shelves on either side, stacked to twice my height.  The shelves contained coffins, which we learned had about twenty people in each.  Beside the coffins were human bones—shelves and shelves of skulls and longbones. 

Afterward, Nathan and Andrew asked the guide some questions, and I listened—or didn’t listen—silently, feeling strongly that only silence could pay any tribute to what I had just seen.  I felt that I could only bear witness; there was nothing more to be said in that moment.  I felt the rawness of Rwanda and the vulnerability of having such an event in their past.  How exposed they were, letting us strangers see this atrocity.  Of course they want to keep it from happening again, of course they wanted to honor their dead.  But how could they be sure we’d understand?  How could they know that we wouldn’t judge their country as violent and inhuman?  Because after all, how could we really understand what happened, or why, or truly believe that there but for the grace of God go we?

Later, at home, Andrew and I debriefed with Providence about the experience of seeing the memorial.  My sweet Providence told her own story.  She explained that during the genocide, when she was only 8 years old, her family fled to a church near their home, where their neighbors, the interahamwe, pursued them.  Her father, uncle and cousin were pulled out from the church.  They begged for their lives but were killed anyway, with machetes.  This may have happened in front of her eyes: I’m not sure.  She says that only by a miracle were the rest of them saved, but she wouldn’t go into detail. 

This history, I think, is integral to the identity of this place, because when a people have hit rock bottom in atrocity and in grief, there is nowhere to go but up.  It is this very tragedy which I think inspires the people of Rwanda to the remarkable and widely noted development of the past decade and a half.  I think, too, that bearing such loss allows people to hold humanity close to them.  I see this in Sister Juvenal, in Providence, and in others.

The New Week

Sunday was visit day for the girls’ families.  I spent some time with the girls up around the basketball court as their parents and siblings drifted in and out.  I didn’t really speak to many of the parents, choosing instead to talk to the girls.  A few of them talked to me about their ambitions to study at university.  I even participated in a basketball game against Johanna and two others on a team with Roisin and Belize and got a sunburn.

We Americans went to town with Sande because Nathan and Andrew needed some clothes for until their luggage arrives (tomorrow).  The market was far less intimidating on a quiet Sunday.  After market, we met Sehaya and Jeremy and two German women for drinks, making for a crowded booth!

Monday morning we were up early for the girls’ assembly in front of the school.  In neat rows, they sing and hear announcements from their prefects.  Quite a sight.  Then they introduced me, Andrew, and Nathan, and each of us said a brief introduction and hello.  The girls giggled a lot seeing Andrew.  We assisted in Sande’s computer class.  This proved to be a challenge because the program is slightly different from the powerpoint we are familiar with.  Additionally, a few of the computers have issues with the size of the screen relative to the monitor.  I don’t know how to fix computer issues!  Nathan has been working tirelessly to elucidate and simplify the network, which seems to be built layer upon layer in an unnecessarily complicated arrangement. 

A day at the market

This morning was chore day, and the girls were busy with tasks including washing the stairs outside and raking rocks in the driveway.  I told the girls this was new for me.  One asked if I would like to try (sneaky of her, right?)  I obliged, briefly.  Then I talked with another girl, Nithia, for a long while.  She said her family was in Uganda for a long time and she grew up speaking English, but she had to learn Kinyarwanda when she got here.

Laura and I went to market today in Nyamata.  I was completely overwhelmed.  Just when Maranyundo seems like home, this place was so full of smells and different dress and people close to one another.  And I couldn’t think about what I might want, or how I might ask the price, or how I could possibly try to haggle for a better deal.  I almost physically hid behind Laura.  It was crazy how small I felt.  And guilty for not buying anything even though everyone was looking at me expectantly, as a "mazungu," which means some combination of roch person and white person.  (I guess that's me.) 

On the way back, we stopped at a bar with outdoor seating.  (I am told that's the culture here---you do something, anything at all, then you get drinks on the way back.)  It was like being in someone’s back yard, with plastic lawn chairs, the white ones with arms (only these were red) and a wall surrounding the courtyard.  We had a quick drink, then saw Amos, a teacher at Geshora, a nearby school, whom Laura knew, with his pregnant wife Rachel.  Then we were invited to have another drink; we joined them and Joseph, our academic dean, and later Agnes.  All of them are Ugandan.  We watched Joseph enjoy some gin and become rather silly.  I could hardly understand what he was saying, but it was fun! 

On our return we found out the we had missed the girls going to mass as well as the arrival of our two American guests, who, as it turned out, are staying with us.  Luckily, I am so communitized (quiet, MS Word, I’ll tell you what’s a word!) at this point that having guests is completely great and not even a little inconvenient.  To be fair, this is helped by the fact that I do not have to cook, clean, or buy food. 

While Nathan, the middle-aged design professor I met at the Paraclete on Monday, slept, we had dinner with Andrew, a sociable early-to-mid-20s psych researcher.  Then we all invited ourselves along to the girls’ weekly movie night in the dining hall.  The film was in Kinyarwanda, a sort of Romeo and Juliet.  The lovers’ families forbid them to be together because the young man’s father has killed the young woman’s father in the genocide and his family holds her family responsible for their father being in prison.  Undeterred, the lovers run away together and marry, but are very poor without the support of their families.  We haven’t made it to the end, but all is not well because the heroine’s brother is still planning to kill the hero. 

School School School

Last night I had some vivid dreams, definitely more vivid than usual.  One was about flying over Camden yards, where the Orioles were playing the Red Sox; I had found it quite by accident.  Then I felt silly and belittled when Ryan scolded me for climbing up a tower for power lines to get up high again.  I woke up a few times in the night tossing and turning.  I hope this has to do with adjusting to the time difference, but I am also very aware of the side effects of my antimalarial mefloquine.  Sehaya says she experienced auditory hallucinations.

Today, Laura and I had a lesson in Kinyarwanda with Bienvenu in the library.  We worked on greetings and some numbers.  I helped in Sande’s computer class, where the students were working on designing spreadsheets.  Sr. Juvenal asked me to work with one student in the computer lab.  Judith, the head girl and a senior 2, wanted to learn about features like text boxes, changing fonts, and clip art, which I happily showed her.  Then I let her take advantage of my inexperience when I let her use email through some of her study hall period, called prep. 

Sr. also asked me to tutor a group of S2 students in English.  I will be meeting with them Tuesday afternoons.  I am happy to do so and looking forward to planning lessons again!  Sande is their regular teacher, so I will speak to him about their particular strengths and areas of need. 

Tonight, Provi, Laura and I did another language lesson.  Someone left magnets with proverbs on our fridge, and we showed a few to Provi and tried to explain them.  This was great for vocabulary, comprehension, and culture all at once, (also true when we read Kinyarwanda proverbs!).  I learned that their words for “hear” and “understand” are the same: wow.  We sometimes use “listen” to mean both “hear” and “obey” and sometimes “I hear you” is used to mean “I understand you,” but not to have different words for the concepts was surprising to me.  We ended by listening to “Only the Good Die Young,” by Billy Joel, to hammer home the proverb and because it’s just a great song.

Newness

I woke up at about 7:20 this morning.  I had a very nice cold shower.  There is a showerhead on the wall with a patch of tile underneath and a drain, and a squeegee to direct the water to the drain at the end of the shower.  The water has an odd flatness, a little like hard water, but without the sliminess; anyway, the soap and even toothpaste barely seem to lather. 

I walked to the dining room where I had a little coffee and some tea with my breakfast: fresh mango and pineapple, Laura’s wheat bread from Kigali, and edam cheese, which we had commonly in New Zealand but I have never seen in the U.S.  Sister finally came to collect me at 8:30 or 9, and I went to her office shortly thereafter.  She gave me a tour of the school buildings, the classrooms, dorms, dining hall (for students), bath facility.  I spent much of the day in the staff room, where all the teachers sat at different times, nearly all of them for tea at 10:30 and for lunch at 12:30, both served to us buffet style.  They sat at long wooden desks like the one in my room, sifting through papers or notebooks or looking at things on the computer.

I spoke at length with Bienvenu, the young man who works the library.  He has been on the faculty at Maranyundo since it opened in 2008.  First he showed me all the books.  It’s a small library, and many of the books are texts for chemistry, physics, biology, languages, but there is also a fiction section, mostly written in English.  I learned that since last year, the national curriculum in Rwanda requires the majority of instruction to be in English, something Laura and I talked about at length.  She would like to see the students learn in Kinyarwanda more because their level of comprehension is much higher, but Teacher Valens thinks that the more Kinyarwanda is spoken, the less the students listen to the English.  Laura has struggled with her students’ level of interest in English; she sees that some of the older students have already chosen their academic track, which occurs in Senior 4 (10th grade), and if they chose math/science, they have lost interest in languages. 

Bienvenu and I also shared newspaper headlines online.  The Rwandan ambassador to France will now represent in Portugal as well; a major genocide perpetrator has had her sentence extended; Human Rights Watch has apologized to Rwanda for claiming that the Gacaca is an unfair system.  I was struck seeing that even 17 years after the genocide, so many headlines surround it.

I joined Laura for her two classes today, one with Senior 1s (equivalent to 7^th grade) and one a small tutoring group technically after school, but when the students board, you have a captive audience and it’s always school!  The first group, a class of about 30, opened class by asking me a few questions.  The girls, as I pass them outside, have mostly eyed me curiously but shyly gone on their way.  When I say “muraho,” they respond somewhat quietly.  I enjoyed spending the class with them, learning a few names.  I also floated as they worked on a comprehension group activity writing topic sentences and sorting sentences into relevant and irrelevant given the topic.  As promised, the girls are well behaved and well-mannered.  We had only 4 girls in the afternoon session.  Their work on reported speech and direct speech was tedious, but they were industrious.  I enjoyed sharing with them maps of places we are from.

Tonight Laura, Provi and I made plans to meet two Peace Corps Volunteers Laura knows in Nyamata.  Sehaya and Jeremy teach an English class at the coed Nyamata High School, but they also do health work.  They have both been in Kigali for over a year.  We met in a sort of gazebo made of natural materials at a restaurant.  I had my first Primus, a local lager which is mild-tasting and cost me less than a dollar for about a liter.  Unlike American lagers, it tastes as good halfway through as it does in the first sip.  I ordered the especial, which was a sort of omelet with onions, sausage-like goat meat, and potatoes.  We talked about things like Washington D.C. and the Peace Corps setup and Rwandan food.  Providence speaks conversational English, but this conversation was mostly too fast for her.  I slowed down a few times to explain what we were talking about.  In a funny moment, Sehaya claimed that Jeremy’s Kinyarwanda was amazing, but when he subsequently tested it on Providence, she corrected him right away on something. 

We walked back from town in the dark, and I had a joyful reunion with the Southern Cross, the constellation I have not seen since New Zealand.  Intercepting Sande Robert (Rwandans have a Rwandan name, then a Christian name, usually both given names, not family names) we all walked back together.  I will observe some of his computer classes tomorrow.

Arrival

I finally arrived in Kigali at about 1:30 p.m. local time.  The airport at Kigali was much nicer than the one in Addis Ababa, which surprised me because Addis is a major hub.  We waited in line to gain entry, and I noticed that everyone stood far back from the booth to maintain privacy as each person was helped.  The attendant verified that I would be staying about 70 days and that I came to teach, and otherwise there was no holdup—I went right through.  I followed the stairs down to the baggage claim waited for my bags to arrive, fearing the worst, but there they were.  Sister Juvenal waved to me from the other side of the gate.  She met me along with Sr. Constance (the school bursar), Laura (the American teacher), and Raphael and Alfonse, fathers of two Maranyundo students who work at the airport.

They each shook my hand, and then the women hugged me, pressing my cheek to theirs on the right, left, and right again.  We stopped in a store to change money.  I received a poorer exchange rate because I had 20 dollar bills, not fifties or hundreds, but I was told the rate was good, 585 francs to the dollar.  The ride back to Nyamata seemed to fly by, as I watched the trees, huts and houses, scenic vistas of green valleys and rivers.  Some squarish little buildings with roofs slanting down in back were right up against the road, some made of earth, some with cloth or plastic hanging doors, many of them decorated with brightly colored signs reading "Tigo" and "Primus" which I later learned are a cellphone and a beer company, respectively.   We passed what looked like banana trees, corn, and other crops in small plots around the homes, and were some shops with those bright colors?  We passed a bustling and colorful outdoor market, many motorbikes, and an ongoing stream of foot traffic.  We saw two men bicycling up a hill balancing enormous packs on the back, (presumably filled with their wares?) that were easily large enough to hold ten men.  In my memory the trip took about 25 minutes, but I am told the drive is about 40.  I had a million questions about plants and poverty and people that hadn’t quite formed words, but mostly was quiet, talking a little with Laura. 

We passed the sign for the town of Nyamata, and then some of the town itself, including the market.  We turned left into a compound with an orange-colored wrought fence, passed the guard at the gate, and continued down the pebbled drive to new brick buildings.  Someone carried my luggage into the long one-story faculty house, down a long cement corridor and into my simple room, furnished with ample closet space, a desk, a bed including mosquito net(/princess canopy), and a simple nightstand.  Windows cover most of the wall, all screened and barred with orange lattices, and above them are decorative vents cut through the outside wall and screened.  Then the four of us proceeded into the sisters’ residence, where we sat at a small table and several sisters brought out fried fish (I chose the headless, boneless ones for this time), potatoes cooked soft and slightly friend with a little orangey seasoning, macaroni, simple beans, and a tomato cucumber salad not very different from what my friends at the Paraclete served me just last night.  (Wait, what night??) 

I was greeted by a couple of sisters, including Sr. Yvonne, who, I learned, lives in the dorms along with another nun.  Teresa does our cooking.  Providence is the school secretary, a smiling young woman of 25 who shares the house with Laura and me and doted on me all evening, giving me tea, juice, cheese, sitting near me, and asking many questions.  Most of the ten or so teachers live in town or elsewhere and do not share the residence. 

Sister Juvenal encouraged me to rest, which I did after unpacking, testing out the clean pjs I brought and the princess canopy.  As I began to drift off, I heard a funny squeaking noise like a water spigot being turned back and forth on the outside of my wall.  I thought maybe someone was filling a bucket.  Then there was the flapping.  With my glasses off, I could just see a large bird land on the window sill.  It turned out there was a flock of maybe twenty pied crows outside, black with white breasts and shoulders, as though they were wearing wife-beater tee-shirts.  Several of them were very intent on getting into my room.  The squeaking noise was bird feet scratching against the glass, and they tapped with their beaks as well.  They didn’t seem to see me behind the sheer, and my face was about a foot from one of them!  A very weird welcome.

Laura says there will be cute lizards living in the house, that the mosquitos are not bad here, but that she uses the net just in case, and because sometimes there are awkwardly-flying cockroaches.  Waking up to a cockroach in the face would be traumatizing.

And now, after many hours of uncertain sleep and geographic upheaval, I go to bed at 11:30 p.m. hoping to feel somewhat rested for meeting teachers and students tomorrow morning.  Muraho, Rwanda!   Murekoze, God!