Relishing Rubavu

This past week I was with 30 other PCVs from my class at an "in-service training" (IST) conference. These events can feel a little tedious, but -- perhaps as consolation -- they're typically held at very desirable locations. Our IST was in Rubavu, also known as Gisenyi. In Rwanda's burgeoning tourism industry, this spot is one of the highlights. It's on the shores of Lake Kivu, touching Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Our hotel was gorgeous, tucked up on a hillside overlooking the lake:

It came with many amenities. As wonderful as it all was, though, there are constant little reminders that it's still the developing world. Let me illustrate this for you:

- The hotel was quite sizable...
but the layout was incredibly confusing. We commented that it resembled an M.C. Escher print -- stairs, stairs, everywhere.
- There was a large, professional billboard down by the road, thanking you for visiting Rubavu...
or, as the case may be, "Rubava." Close.
- All around the hotel, the walls and railings shone with bright, crisp paint...
which rubbed off on your clothing if you happened to lean against anything.
- There was high-speed wireless internet...
which stopped working after the first day, supposedly because after a bit of lightning the staff didn't know how to reset the router.
- We had a color TV in our room...
which only got four channels. (Some rooms got fewer or none, though.) And the batteries in the remote were all corroded, so I had to replace them with my own.
- We also had a phone...
but not all the rooms did, so you could only call certain people.
- The beds were large, with many pillows...
but they were more foam than a "real" mattress, so that your body digs a nice a little valley each night.
- There was a net hanging up for protection against the ubiquitous mosquitoes...
but only a single net, in between the two beds. And no screens on the windows, so skipping the net was hardly an option.
- There were private showers with great water pressure...
but the drain would always stop up, so usually you were standing in water up to your ankles while you bathed.
- The hotel provided flip-flop shower shoes...
but the left and right didn't match -- in pattern, color, or even size.
- Over the sink was a fancy-looking glass ledge...
but you didn't dare place anything on it because it quite easily slipped out of the wall.
- The bathroom boasted deliciously hot water...
but no shower curtains, or drains in the floor, so you had to constantly navigate through a huge pool on the tile floor every time you wanted to use the toilet or wash your hands.
- There was maid service each day, and they mopped up those floors...
but there was only one key to each room, so you had to track down the head maid every morning and give her your key, or else your room wouldn't get cleaned. And the pool would grow.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy my stay, though! In particular, the food was amazing. I'm used to cooking for myself on a single burner, so it's usually a one-pot affair. But here we had a fabulous all-you-can-eat buffet for each meal! And on the first day, we arrived early so we ordered food from the hotel restaurant. I had a Nile perch (capitaine) filet, fresh from the lake, in a pepper cream sauce. I'm pretty sure it was the best food I've ever had in Rwanda.

We also got one afternoon free to have a little picnic down on the beach. The beach is very clean with nice sand, but it's pretty narrow. Abruptly, lush grass and thick trees disrupt the landscape. I tried to capture a pic of this as I lounged in the driver's seat of a PC car (don't worry, Washington, I wasn't driving!). Also, a shot of fellow Mauritania PCVs Ashley and Michele with PC staff Kassim, Assinath, Claudine, and Alphonsine:




A few of us went out on a little "speedboat" (I use the term loosely), and although we got splashed a fair amount, it was a good time. We scooted right up to the Congo border, and I was amazed at how posh it looked on the other side! Goma is said to have really cheap markets with lots available, since nothing is regulated there -- the upshot of having a government in shambles, I guess.

Here's me in the back seat of the boat with PC staff Alphonsine again and PCV Chris, and in the second pic the hills behind me are Congo:



All in all, a fun week spent with friends, and now I'm equipped with concrete new ideas to tackle the second term of school.

The future of Rwanda

Trimester 2 is underway, and it's found me rather busy again! But so happy to be back with these kids again. In teaching some weather vocab recently, I shared some photos of snow. My sister had sent me one shot of my nephew flopped down in a blanket of white after the big blizzards this winter. I walked around my classroom with this pic and asked: what is he doing? The kids were, suffice it to say, SO confused. "He is washing? He is swimming?" Nope. Tried another tack: where is he? "In the water?" No... "In the -- sky??" So awesome.

Taking a cue from a Voice of America daily feature, I introduced a new long-term project this term that I'm calling "On This Day in History." For each class period, two students sign up to speak. I write up some short texts (~75 words) about an event that happened on that particular date, and the kids present the text by memory. When I first announced the idea, I was met with rather blank stares and just a couple brave souls venturing to go first. Now each week when I ask for volunteers, a sea of hopeful hands shoots up before me. It's been really great! Some kids choose to recite the text verbatim, but I'm encouraging them to paraphrase as long as they hit all the relevant information. I love to see them really own it, with cute introductions like "Good morning, class. Firstly I want to thank our English teacher..." Their pronunciation is frequently creative (I enjoyed hearing about "Deekay Erringtone" and his contributions to American jazz), but above all the goal is just for them to make themselves comprehensible in oral English.

Inspired by Earth Day, I did a discussion-based lesson that I titled "Rwanda of Yesterday and Tomorrow." First I had the kids brainstorm in pairs what Rwanda was like 100 years ago, in 1910. We shared the results together, and I listed their contributions on the board.

Then, above a second column I wrote the heading: "Rwanda in 2060." In EVERY one of my six classes, before I even said a word, there were audible responses of amazement. It's like they've never been granted the freedom to think creatively, openly, with no limitations. I think they really enjoyed it.

Most of them had grand ambitions for their country. I got a couple "It will be like heaven/paradise" responses, and Zainabu's which I just loved: "It will be like WOW." But then there were also some pessimists. One kid was convinced there won't be any people because they'll all have died from AIDS. Yikes! Another girl said it "will be like Sodom and Gomorrah"! Some predicted the traditional culture will be "destroyed." A few very bright kids hit on the fact that I wanted to drive home: there will likely be a ton of people, and the same small land area. There are 10 million people in Rwanda today; I had the kids guess predicted population numbers for the years 2025 and 2050. When I shared the actual figures (15 and 25 million, respectively), an exasperated Jean-Baptiste cried out in disbelief, "Teacher! HOW THEY WILL LIVE?!" My question exactly, buddy.

There were some creative solutions to the population issue. More than one class said we'll all be able to go live on Mars by then (one kid was even pulling for Jupiter and Saturn). Some said they'll just move to other countries, so I tried to illustrate the concept of a brain drain. One kid said we can just invade Congo or even Uganda and take some of their land by force (I replied that personally I would not want to mess with Congolese soldiers). One of my real smarties raised maybe the most plausible answer, that everyone can live in high-rises, thus artificially creating more land.

For homework after this lesson, I gave the kids some critical thinking questions (another foreign concept) related to the environment in Rwanda. I was a bit dubious about the kinds of responses I would get. I really wanted them to express some cogent opinions, regardless of minor errors with wording. The somewhat odd thing about many students in this all-anglophone school system here is that they end up knowing words like infrastructure (or "inflacitricture" as I've seen it rendered), but can hardly form a grammatical sentence. My feeling is, at the end of the day, teaching grammar ain't no thang. But can these kids think for themselves? That, I'm not sure I can teach.

The good news is: these kids are on their way.

Enjoy a few sample responses:

Why are plastic bags not allowed in Rwanda?

"plastic bags not allowed in Rwanda because the plastic bags are not distroyed when it is in the soil and these plastic bags against water to travel or to enter in the soil or land"

"the plastic bags are not allowed in Rwanda Because they wasn't to use for fertilizing the soil, so when the people finished to use them, they put the plastic bags every where for example on the farm. because the plastic bags are increases the developement are reduces because the crops are scarce."

What can YOU do to help Rwanda to be beautiful in the future?

"There is many events which I can do. I must continue to study when I finish university in USA I will became a pilot. and when I get for money I will put in different activities like agriculture or mineral exploitation is will create the industry of crops which I will cultivate and I used many people in these industry; so our country it can develop."

"To help Rwanda to be beautful in future, I can do the following:
- I must study.
- I can go in the others countries to coperate the modern activities.
- I make a good election for the leaders.
- I can remove those children who live in the roads without job, to the school.
- I can fight against Genocide Ideology.
- I can advice the Rwandese to do their own business and avoid to beg.
- I will tell the people to have a self confidence of being well."

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.