Never Again

What do I tell you about the Rwandan genocide? It seems that the more I learn about it myself, the further muddled it becomes. It wasn't just 100 days in 1994; the groundwork had been laid for decades, and the repercussions continued to claim lives for years after. The story is far more complicated than just Hutu vs. Tutsi. There were extremists and moderates on both sides, and killing bloodied the hands of government forces and a rebel army and organized militias and ordinary citizens (not to mention the various foreign abettors allegedly involved).

The single event that sparked the inferno of death was the fatal shooting-down of a plane carrying the Rwandan president on the night of April 6, 1994 -- the exact circumstances of which have remained a mystery even to this day. What is certain, though, is that widespread slaughter began immediately, methodically and earnestly: one author reports, "The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. It was the most efficient mass killings since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Husbands killed their wives; priests, their parishioners. Children killed children, and mothers with babies on their backs killed mothers with babies on their backs.

Rwandan survivors are committed to remembering these atrocities. They've dedicated memorial sites all over the country, in almost every little town. And from April 7-13 each year, they observe a week of mourning for the dead (between 500,000 and 1,000,000, depending who's counting). There is no school during this time, and businesses are required to be closed all day on the 7th and in the subsequent afternoons.

I'd had simultaneous dread and curiosity about what it would be like to be here during these days. Truthfully, I felt a little awkward about being here at all, like I would be intruding on a private time that I couldn't possibly understand. How would people act? We have a Memorial Day, too, I mused. What do we do? Oh, yeah -- Have a picnic. Go to the beach. Somehow I doubted that's what would be going on in Rwanda.

I opted to lay pretty low. I listened to President Kagame's speech on the radio. He grew up in anglophone Uganda, and he tends to slip in and out of English without a second thought (helpful for me, though I'm guessing it might be frustrating to many Rwandans who listen to him). Throughout the week the radio played various pop tunes decrying the genocide. Some were catchy, upbeat; for the songs in Kinyarwanda, you'd never even guess the ghastly things they were referencing... until your ears happen upon those unmistakable syllables, jen-o-seed. But it's great to know the radio is being used now as a constructive medium for solidarity, as opposed to the horrific role it played 16 years ago in enjoining Hutus to kill the "cockroaches."

I spent a good part of the week reading Shake Hands with the Devil, the two-inch opus written by Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander of UNAMIR, the UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda. (Aside: He declares his most beloved spot in the country to be Kinihira, which I could literally see out my front window as I read. A little surreal.) Dallaire was on the ground from August '93 to August '94, and he saw the worst of the worst. A million dead is a whole lot of bodies -- he tells of rotting bodies piled into dump trucks, dismembered bodies stacked on the side of the road, bloated bodies clogging up the rivers. Rats actually grew to the size of small dogs as they feasted on the endless supply of decomposing flesh.

The book is subtitled "The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda," and that is the message Dallaire drives home: yes, by all means, the machete-wielders and gun-toters are the ones ultimately responsible -- but we the international community could have done something to stop them and chose not to. It's heartbreaking as he details the support he repeatedly begged for from UN member states, with little response. Mid-bloodbath, one U.S. government rep asked for an accurate count of the death toll so far, because "estimates indicated it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier." But how many U.S. soldiers were risked in Yugoslavia? How many so far in Iraq? Is it worth it now? When it comes to human rights, Dallaire raises the question: are some humans "more human" than others?

The crazy thing is, looking around this place, you'd never IMAGINE the horrors that happened only 16 years ago. Kigali is modern, clean, organized, and above all safe. As I learn disturbing stories about now-familiar landmarks there and elsewhere in the country, I have so much trouble reconciling the past with the present. I try, really try, to picture these terrifying scenes that I read about. How is it possible?

I was thinking: I wonder what Germany felt like in 1961, 16 years on. Well, guess what? That's the year the Berlin Wall was built. But here, killers and victims now live side by side. In peace. Sound idealistic? It's somehow the astounding, unprecedented reality here.

Over 42% of Rwanda's population today were born after 1994. They will build the better tomorrow. Turns out maybe, eventually, unbelievably, there is a happy ending after all.

* * * * *
We bear witness today not just to Rwanda's suffering but also to its renewal -- to survivors who have rebuilt shattered homes and restored battered lives -- to parents who have taken orphans into their arms and their hearts -- to refugees who have found the courage to go home and start anew -- to soldiers who have laid down weapons and taken up tools that build -- to men and women who have won fresh prosperity and brought new comfort to their neighbors and their region -- to leaders and public servants who have strengthened the institutions that enshrine the rule of law and ward off the temptation of turmoil -- to ordinary citizens who have searched their wounded souls and chosen healing over strife, forgiveness over grievance, and reconciliation over revenge. Just as genocide cannot happen without thousands of individual decisions to destroy, recovery happens only with thousands of individual decisions to create.
- Ambassador Susan E. Rice
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
April 7, 2010

Home sick

This is the Blender Bottle® :

It's awesome. That little whisk ball goes inside. Then you unscrew the lid, pour in your ingredients, shake shake shake, and dispense out the handy flip-spout. I use it all the time to whip up salad dressing, stir-fry sauce, milkshakes, or just powdered drink mix with water. I love it. (I admit, I guess it wouldn't find it as cool living in the Western world, where you probably just use, you know, an actual blender.)

The other night I was thirsty and thought I'd fix some lemonade. I went to my little pantry cabinet to get the drink mix, and there I spotted these apple cider packets that my mom just sent. Mmm, sounds yummy. I changed my plan and set some water on to boil. I emptied the cider mix into my faithful Blender Bottle and waited.

Now, honestly: are there red flags screaming out to any of you at this point? Through a loophole at my high school, I was the only member of my graduating class never to take a physics course. Maybe this is where it's doomed me. *Apparently* (as corroborated on Blender Bottle's website), you are at no point to put hot liquid in this container. Nor baking powder, nor carbonated drinks. Because it's possible that if you do...

The thing will explode in your face.

And it turns out boiling water to the face really kills! Who knew?

For a brief moment, I was frozen in shock, my eyes still squeezed tightly shut. Slowly I blinked them open and was immediately very relieved that my vision was normal -- but instant pain started stinging at my face. Confused, I managed to grab a bandana and run to my water filter. I got the bandana wet and started dabbing frantically at my face, but pain was increasing by the minute and I realized I was shaking. Not knowing what to do, I dashed for my phone and weakly dialed the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO) in Kigali. She authorized me to go to the little village clinic, which happens to be right by my house. My very sweet neighbor escorted me and translated for me, since I sure wasn't up to fending for myself in Kinyarwanda. This was about 7 p.m.

A receptionist or nurse seemed quite unhurried and unconcerned as she wrote my name in a book and then disappeared. I kept blotting at my face and tried to concentrate on breathing normally, because I kept gasping and I felt like a child. The woman came back accompanied by a man, who wanted to give me an injection of some kind but I refused because the PCMO had advised against it -- can you imagine what could go wrong with that? So they put some zinc oxide ointment on me (it's worth noting, actually, that they did not personally apply it but just gave the tub to my neighbor, who then smeared it on for me) and gave me two little ziplock baggies of pills and sent me on my way. No paperwork and no payment.

Fortunately, I thought to ask what the pills were. The first were just ibuprofen, but the others were amoxicillin -- good to know, because I'm allergic to penicillin. Later, I thought about how often average Rwandan citizens must be administered drugs they might be allergic to, maybe even dangerously so. I'm sure meds are abused all the time, since the clinic staff didn't exactly give me clear instructions about how long to continue medicating, and the supply I received was excessive to say the least.

So, I didn't take the amoxicillin, but the PCMO said ibuprofen and Tylenol should be enough. The pain was really bad that first night, although the zinc oxide helped some, and it subsided considerably the next day. The water hit me the worst around my mouth and under/inside my nose, so they were very sore and numb. My eyelids also were quite tender.

The pain seemed to decrease in inverse proportion to the ridiculousness of my appearance. At first I was just kind of pink and swollen, although suffering greatly. Two days after the fact, I thought I'd return to school because I was feeling basically fine. I got dressed and ready, but upon stepping back from the mirror I realized I actually just looked like a clown. So I resorted to staying home a while longer, following a strict thrice-daily routine: cleaning my face with a baby wipe and carefully removing all the dead skin, lathering up almost my whole face with antibiotic ointment, then covering it all up with gauze.

For roughly 84 hours straight I was locked up inside my house. But the human body is an amazingly resilient thing, and I'm pretty much all better now. Because I guess I'm a masochist, I leave you with some brief photo documentation of my fun-filled week. I don't know how well you can see all the gory details, but enjoy.

Oh, and for the record: I still love you, Blender Bottle.

Lovin' my kids, my house, and Larry

I've been BUSY! What is that all about?

School is great. I only wish I got to see my kids more -- two 50-minute periods a week per class is not much. As hard as I try in my planning, I almost always run out of time in class for all that I want to do! But we're having fun. I love that I can have legit conversations with these kids in English. Their contributions may not always be entirely grammatical, but they can make themselves understood.

We just did a really fun activity for International Women's Day where I divided the students into small groups to read and summarize a short text about a particular distinguished female. I tried to pick mostly strong black women as good role models for these kids, so we had Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice (though some found it hilarious that she is named "rice"), Rosa Parks, Wangari Maathai (ashamed to say I'd never heard of her before researching this project, but what a cool Nobel laureate from Kenya). Summarizing in a foreign language is not an easy task, so I was, yet again in this country, really impressed by some of the results. I also asked them to write what they had learned from the text. Actual responses: "to love each other and never care about the color of the skin," and "try and fail, but do not fail to try." Where that came from, no idea. Awesome.

Plus, my kids here are SO well-behaved! I've not had a single discipline issue so far in six weeks of teaching. When I gave my first quiz, I prefaced it with my customary ixnay-on-cheating spiel. In Mauritania, cheating was the standard, and the kids were masterful. One rolled up a tiny strip of paper inside the clear barrel of a pen; another had a friend outside the classroom toss a balled-up sheet in through an open window. But here -- I didn't see a single instance. And I'm darn good at busting cheaters. I was stunned, happily.

In grading, there are the mistakes that break your heart because they're just so far off the mark, but I prefer the mistakes that just crack me up. For instance, one kid gave me a late assignment with a handwritten note: "I didn't the homework because I was illing." (Yeah you were, son, yeah you were.) Anyway, the most enjoyable part of marking midterms for me was the fill-in-the-blank vocab section, with a word bank. Here are a few priceless errors that felt the wrath of my red pen:

- The doctor will give you INJURIES to make you feel better.
[Only if I'm looking to win a malpractice suit!]
- In a democracy, everyone has the same OPPRESSION.
[Technically I guess so?]
- Mutoni brought the SKUNK to start the fire for cooking.
[Count me out for that meal]
- The USA has more than 300 million RIGHTS.
[Interesting from an outside perspective]
In other news, I'm thrilled to announce to you that I'M IN MY NEW HOUSE!! I had to fight for it ("But the fence isn't done, and we still need to paint" -- I don't care, let me move my stuff!!), but I forced my way in about two weeks ago now. It's pretty spectacular. I'm getting all settled, still waiting for a few pieces of furniture, but I promise to give you a proper tour when it's all set up. I'm loving it, though. Here's a teaser pic of the view out my front door. The tallest mountain in the distance is Muhabura, 30 miles away on the border with Uganda. It's a volcano about 13,500 feet high.


So I got the big birthday present of getting to be in my new house! Other highlights of that day included teaching my adult English class to sing the "Happy Birthday" song to me, opening two stellar care packages (props to Teresa and my sister Brenda!), and most importantly, a shout-out on Voice of America radio. Now, please understand: VOA broadcasts worldwide. And the best DJ is Larry London, who I listen to every day. So I was giggling like a little girl for a solid hour after he wished me a happy birthday in Rwanda *and* said I put a smile on his face! OH, LARRY LONDON!

I leave you with this: for the past several birthdays, I've taken photos of myself displaying my new age. Turns out 26 doesn't work quite as well.

Odd & cheesy

I owe you a blog. I also owe you photos, in a big way. Trouble is, I was waaaaaiting and hoping to show you pictures of my new house.

BUT I STILL. DON'T. HAVE. A HOUSE.

This is my biggest point of frustration lately. When I moved to Buyoga on December 30th, they told me the house needed a few repairs and would be ready in two weeks. So, why should I be surprised that now it's March, and I've yet to move into it? Sigh. It's progressing... slowly... I repeatedly am given be-all-end-all deadlines that pass without fanfare, but it looks like I actually may get into it soon. "Soon," like, perhaps by the end of this week. Maybe. My birthday is the 10th, and lately I just have my fingers crossed that the house will be my big gift.

In other news, it's the rainy season here. Majorly. For the past week it's been coming down HARD. I understand that America's been hit with a slew of snowstorms recently, and actually the rainstorms here are quite similar. People just lock themselves inside, postponing appointments or work or school (my students can't believe when I actually show up to class, with my umbrella and rain jacket and boots). And the rural areas don't have the infrastructure to deal with such relentless deluge. Roofs notoriously leak, fields get flooded out, and rocky hillsides crumble dangerously onto roads below.

This past Friday I'd had plans to go to Kigali, but the rain would not let up. It'd been pouring all the day before, and by that morning it was still sprinkling steadily. I knew the "roads" (read: rugged dirt paths) would be a muddy mess. Remember, my primary -- and only available, normally -- mode of transportation out of my site is by motorcycle taxi.

Well, it was a wild ride alright. I was wearing my jacket over top of my huge hiking backpack, plus my awesome ginormous astronaut-looking helmet on my head. The whole time, with white knuckles, gritted teeth, and knitted brows, I was praying an inner monologue something like this: "Don't fall, don't fall, goslowgoslowGOSLOW!, oh please, oh God, oh God please..." ad infinitum. My driver navigated the way commendably, and very wisely had me get off and walk at about five different points. But even so, I experienced my first moto wipeout. It wasn't so much catapulting through the air as it was a very ungraceful slow capsize. And the consequence of falling wasn't so much danger of bodily injury as danger of getting absolutely covered in mud. Which is what happened. Plus, okay, a fabulously gnarly purple bruise on my hip and a skinned knee. What are you gonna do? We made it, which is what counts!

Part of the reason I wanted to get to Kigali so badly was to meet our newest class of Peace Corps trainees, who arrived Thursday night. There are about 35 of them, all working in the health sector. It was fun to get to chat a bit and answer some of their questions. After being in the Peace Corps for over 20 months now (is it already so long?!), it's nice to share this hard-won knowledge with people who can benefit from it. I'll be headed down to their training site in a couple weeks to facilitate some sessions.

I'm trying to continue studying Kinyarwanda when I can, although I'm busier nowadays. And truthfully I don't get a ton of opportunities to speak it on an everyday basis, since everyone at school speaks English to me (in some degree of comprehensibility). But I like to greet the villagers I pass as I'm walking to work, and of course I use it in the market to negotiate prices. Inevitably, a surprised bystander overhears me and comments to no one in particular, "Arakizi!" It's pronounced like "odd-a-cheesy," which is how I always render it in my head, and it means she knows it. It never fails to bring a satisfied smile to my face.

So that's my life these days. Odd & cheesy. And more than a little muddy.

Seriously, where am I?

On my final weekend before school started, I went to visit Mark and Matt, fellow transfers from Mauritania. They get the prize for sweetest set-up in Peace Corps Rwanda. They are working at a university and living on the campus, overlooking gorgeous Lake Kivu (16th largest lake in the world, you know!). The boys live together in a cushy 3-bedroom house with a furnished living room, indoor bathroom, running water, kitchen with 4-burner electric stove/oven and fridge, and free high-speed wireless internet. Not exactly roughing it! But fortunately, Mark and Matt are quite amenable to receiving visitors. We had fun making some delicious food (facilitated by a care package -- thanks, Yates!) and night-swimming in the lake. The water is a ridiculously perfect temperature, at all times of day and all seasons of the year. The full moon was rising over us just as we waded in, and if I swam out far enough I could see it barely peeking through the trees. It was one of those ridiculous moments where you look around like: seriously, where am I?!

The boys' site is about two and a half hours from Kigali. On my bus ride there, I grabbed a window seat and settled in with my iPod. After a bit, I happened to see the girl two over from me with some viscous liquid on her hand, dripping onto my backpack on the floor below her. My initial thought was: aw, poor girl, did she break an egg or something? I noticed she was holding a brown paper bag -- which she promptly puked into. AND then the girl between us joined in vomiting too, in the same bag!! Unbelievable, so gross. Leaking all over the floor, onto my stuff, which they didn't even attempt to wipe off. And wryly I remembered PCVs' horror travel stories about people spewing out of control on these buses. In this "Land of a Thousand Hills," the roads have many twists and turns, and yes, the drivers tend to whip around them, but get it together. Honestly.

Sure enough, there was more throwing up on my ride back.

School has been a little slow getting started here, unsurprisingly. For the first week I just played secretary and helped to register new kids (continuing in my valiant struggle to interpret Kinyarwanda names). It's a boarding school, so before classes could really get underway, we had to wait for at least the majority of students to arrive. They came from all over the country, rolling up to the school on motorcycle taxis or in private cars, each kid invariably toting the same things: a backpack, a small suitcase, a bucket with a lid, and a rolled-up foam pad mattress. Guess that's all you need for boarding school in Rwanda.

Now, two full weeks since our start date, a few slackers are still trickling in, but stuff has gotten started at least. I am teaching all 5 or 6 sections of the highest level at our school, S4 (4th year of secondary school, about equivalent to 10th grade American). For English, each section has two one-hour classes per week. I am thrilled about only teaching one level, because that means only one level to plan for. Planning is what takes forever here, when you're working with such limited resources. In Mauritania I only taught 8 hours per week, but that was for 4 different levels. I much prefer this.

I'm really impressed with the kids. I feel like we run a pretty tight ship at our school, so there aren't discipline issues. The biggest struggle for me, I think, will be working with such a multi-level classroom. I have some students who grew up in anglophone Uganda and are absolutely fluent in English. One doesn't even speak Kinyarwanda! So of course these kids are bored out of their minds when I am speaking painstakingly deliberately in my "Special English."

But overall, teaching has put a pep back in my step. The general skill level here is enabling me to do so much more than I could in Mauritania. This past Thursday I'd wanted to do a lesson on Nelson Mandela, since February 11 was the 20th anniversary of his release from prison (a fact I knew only from the relentless coverage on BBC and Voice of America). Completely coincidentally, when visiting Mark I had just gotten a copy of the movie Invictus, which so happens to be all about Mandela. I haven't even watched it yet, but I thought I'd flip through it just to see if there might be anything to jump out at me. And what do you know, the very opening scene reads: "South Africa: February 11, 1990" -- followed by real footage of Mandela (due respect to Morgan Freeman). How perfect, I thought! Am I brave enough to show this clip in class? I wouldn't have dared in Mauritania, with 75 wild kids in a single classroom. But here, the classes are a relatively much more manageable size, 30-40, and they're so good.

Well, I dared. And it was GREAT! After watching the clip, kids that hadn't spoken all class were suddenly raising their hands. I loved it. They picked up on the white and black boys playing football separately, visual evidence of apartheid. And when I asked what it means for a country to be democratic, one girl told me, haltingly with crisp enunciation, "It means a government of the people." "Yes!" I replied, impressed with the answer. But she wasn't done: "...by the people, for the people." Are you kidding me?! Seriously, where am I?