Cribbage by candlelight

Our power and water went out yesterday morning.  Now, usually, this is no cause for alarm. Utilities go bust several times a week in Remera, a consequence of poor infrastructure and limited capacity on the electrical grid and water piping system in Kigali.  Sometimes we've simply ran out of Cash Power, the account to which we pre-pay our power bill.  No biggie.  Noting our neighbors seemed to be just fine on the power front, we sent Justin, our live-in house helper, to add a few thousand francs to our account.

Turns out this was a problem that no amount of Cash Power could solve.  The power/water company had finally gotten around to shutting off our services as punishment for failing to pay a bill.  From 2001.

Mmmmm.  Now I'm not one to be petty with previous tenets, but obviously we've only lived in the house for six months or so.  The fact of the matter was, our landlady had neglected to get her bills in order.  EIGHT YEARS ago.

I came home from work as dusk began to settle on our electricity-water-deprived humble abode.  Again, lack of water and electricity are a routine event, but the prospect of an indefinite lack of these luxuries loomed large in our minds.  We whined a bit.  We want to watch a movie.  I wanna read.  I was so excited to blah, blah, blah...

Of course it turned into a rather cozy evening.  We drank ginger tea prepared over the charcoal stove, ate avocado with freshly-made bagels (a cooperative in the neighborhood has discovered the culinary bliss of boiled bread), plotted elaborate schemes to get our landlady back, and played cribbage by candlelight.  

It was almost a shame when our plot paid off.  Power and H2O are back, at least until the next "natural" outage, far sooner than anyone anticipated.  

Perhaps we'll just have to shut off the lights again tonight, for fun.

Clap for Jesus

Part one:

It’s graduation season in Rwanda.  As with every rite of passage here, this is a community event to be celebrated with family, friends, neighbors, elders, distant relatives, classmates, professors, and housemates-of-distant-origin-of-friends-of-cousins.

I generally fall into the latter category.

Saturday I attended the graduation party of a cousin of a friend of my housemate Susan who recently earned her Master’s degree from a distant university in the UK.  No one I asked seemed to know exactly which one, or seemed particularly to care.  Most Rwandans perceive university education as the primary harbinger of success, and a degree from Europe or the States is the epitome of social and intellectual achievement. 

The celebration was only fitting for such an accomplishment: two tents sheltering hundreds of guests from the afternoon sun, DJ, prom-esque attire, Fanta and Amstel flowing like water, all-you-can-eat buffet.  Not to doubt the credentials of Susan’s cousin’s friend—like most Africans who earn scholarships to study abroad, I assume she pursued Business or Economics at a relatively prestigious institution—but I had the distinct impression that she could have attended classes at an unaccredited university on a disputed island territory off the coast of Greenland and it wouldn’t have affected the turnout a bit. 

Just as many Americans, such as the US Secretary of State on the eve of the Genocide in 1994, struggle to pinpoint Rwanda on a map, most Rwandans have only a hazy sense of Western geography.  The difference, of course, is that American images of “Africa” tend to be associated with poverty and illiteracy, whereas Rwandan images of “the West” invoke prosperity and academic rigor.  Bad for Africa; good for Africans with Western degrees on their resume. 

The highlight, though, was a friend of the graduate who doubles as an aspiring pop star in neighboring Uganda.  I’ve rarely seen such a determined performer.  Donning a glittery pink gown with a pink-hued beehive to boot, she wrestled the microphone away from the MC, dragged her stone-faced husband to the floor, and invited us to “clap for Jesus” during an impressive interlude of song, dance, and wild gesticulation as her husband looked haplessly on.  It was a hilarious, albeit heartfelt, tribute to the power and the glory of the books.

Part two:

Kay Hammond, mother of the family who so graciously invited me into their home last summer, has devoted her past months to directing a theatrical production on the Book of Ruth at Christ Church in Kigali.  Forty Sunday School students—about a third of whom speak solid English—made their theatrical debut on Sunday.

I had looked forward to attending for weeks, but unfortunately God had other plans.

My moto driver and I ventured forth at a healthy 9:25, plenty of time to make the 10:00 curtain call according to my directions.  I was to go down the hill past the MTN Center in Nyarutarama, right up the hill past Kobil gas station, right again at the “Y,” and left at the first road.  Fifteen minutes, tops.

Half an hour later, a storm was brewing and we found ourselves at a hilltop hamlet that seemed a pretty far cry from the condos and NGO offices I associate with Nyarutarama.  Mmmmm.  Moto plus serious rain generally equals danger, so we pulled off as the drops began to pellet us from above. 

The only shelter in site was a nondescript building filled to its tin-roof brim with local residents who beckoned us inside.  Three hundred pairs of eyes examined the pitifully drenched pair but the rain muted any possibility of expressing thanks in my modest Kinyarwanda.  The storm punctuated the sermon as if to emphasize the power of God’s fury and I resolved, once again, not to wax poetic.

We departed when the drizzle set in—my moto driver had clearly not envisioned a Sunday of worship—to retrace our steps.  Two hours later he delivered me safely to a crowd of parishioners lauding Kay with praise.  Hopefully God understands why I tipped the driver my offering for the day. “Blessed is this life, and I’m gonna celebrate being alive.”  Clap, clap, clap for Jesus.  

Murambi

I awoke today with a feeling of calm dread, knowing the day’s events would be draining, but strangely drawn to my destination.  A morning journal excerpt:

 

I’ll be on my way to Murambi soon.  What awaits me there?  Do I really want to do this?  Just hope I can attempt a sense of understanding and thoughtfulness.

 

I do not have a morbid fascination with genocide memorial sites.  My work here looks toward the future of Rwanda, seeking peace in the cooperative spirit of pursuit of a common goal: economic opportunity and prosperity.  Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the tangible impacts of the lives lost and spirits haunting this country.  The genocide is a part of Rwandan history that can never be forgotten if we are to ensure it never happens again.

So I decided to go to Murambi.

 

My Rwandan friends shudder at the mention of this, the most graphic of the hundreds of memorial sites that dot the countryside.  At three hours from Kigali, along the road to Gikongoro in the southwest corner of Rwanda, it’s off the beaten path for the gorilla-tracking-safari-seeking brand of tourist, but a relatively easy trip for those curious about this dark period of the country’s history.

 

I had spent Saturday in Butare with my friend Carolin, then continued along the route to Gikongoro alone.  We wove among hillsides until the bus finally deposited me in Nyamagabe, about 3 kilometers from the memorial.  Ignoring the moto drivers jostling for a client, I indulged the urge to walk.  

I met a young man named John K. along the way who offered to show me the route.  “I’m going to visit my mother,” he told me.  Assuming he planned to pay his respects, I was a bit confused when he claimed to be twelve.  “Twelve?  You’re sure?  You look fifteen to me.”  A language barrier issue, I decided.  We walked together along the red dirt road, admiring the verdant hills and flourishing coffee fields, chatting sporadically about America, school, and his village, but generally not saying much.  When we parted ways at the memorial gates and he continued towards the village in the valley, I realized that his mother was in fact among the residents whose huts and banana trees literally crowd up to the perimeter of the site.  Imagine living within meters of a mass grave.  Testament to how precious land is in Rwanda.

 

A gaggle of children too young to understand why Murambi draws mourners from near and far played football in the sandy plot just before the gate.  They stopped to stare and launch a barrage of questions at this wayward muzungu.  They especially love to practice their nascent French and English phrases: “Muzungu!  How are you?  Me I’m fine, thank you.  Ça va merci.  Comment t’appelle-tu?  Give me money.”  They reached out their hands, grubby from football, searching, groping for tangible contact with a pale hand that represents something else significant they don’t quite understand.  I was struck by how small they were.  Children hands.  Innocence cannot be lost here, not forever.  We parted and I walked slowly, deliberately, up the hill, composing myself, catching my breath.

50,000 people were murdered here in 1994.  That’s more than the populations of Troy and Tipp City put together.  50,000 people who huddled here for protection and instead found two weeks of hunger, thirst, and eventually slaughter.  Wiped out.  Gone.

 

Although not really.

 

Their bodies remain: 48,000 people are buried in mass graves here and another 2,000 have been exhumed for display.  Twenty-four rooms bear their corpses, skulls, femurs, clothing; the stench of decomposition is as tangible as the spirits that haunt this place. 

 

A survivor who lost all her family save one child led me room to room.  Matter-of-factly, she opened and closed the doors, gazing into the distance and jangling her keys as I gasped at this horrific testament to the human capacity for inhuman brutality.  I must be one of many Westerners who come to gape and weep and consider and lament and promise that never, ever again will the world stand idly by.  I thought of Darfur.  I wanted to know her story.  But I could not bring myself to ask.  The look in her downcast eyes told me that fifteen years of opening and closing doors has imposed a reserve I should not violate with questions.

 

There were few signs in the memorial aside from an exceptionally aesthetically pleasing entrance panel directing visitors to a library, toilets, and a meditation room (none of which were in operation as far as I could tell) in English, French, and Kinyarwanda.  Unlike Gisozyi, the museum in Kigali, there was no commentary, no historical context.  It’s as though they recruited a philanthropic Western graphic designer who came to install the entrance panels and decided the context was too heavy a burden for commentary to bear.  

The sole exhibition sign notes the spot where French soldiers played volleyball when Opération Turquoise was stationed here too protect fleeing génocidaires.  Few visitors, perhaps, would understand the scale of this audacity without a sign indicating the proximity between the volleyball court and the mass graves.  

Perhaps the significance of the bodies is self-evident.

Happy two-dozen

It struck me Friday that this is the third birthday in four years I’ve celebrated abroad.  Albeit a bit strange de fêter far from family and many dear friends, there are elements of un anniversaire à l’étranger that I admittedly relish: the multilingual birthday song, the exotic cuisine, the amazing phenomenon in which people you know only tangentially gather to make you feel special and loved even far from home.  

Now, on the abroad birthday spectrum, of course it’s difficult to top the big twenty-one in Oxford, thanks to Bob Withycomb, Beth, Annika, and mint chocolate cake.  Twenty-three ran a close second, with wonderful friends, the Filao family, and a next-day departure to Mayotte in La Réunion.  Twenty-four was notable not only for Erik’s extraordinary culinary feat of wheatberry salad and a magical leek-potato-concoction (and an artfully engraved non-concave cake), but also for the realization that I’m truly getting up in years.  I been already feeling like an old lady for going to bed so early these days (early to bed, early to rise in Rwanda).  And I’ve now officially surpassed the greatest benchmark of adulthood:

I bought furniture.  

Thanks for the birthday wishes.  Hoping to celebrate at home next year.

 

 

And then you open your eyes a little bit, and you see a beautiful girl, and then you die a little more

Every Monday last summer, I’d walk into the office, exchange three kisses on the cheek, and inquire into Susan’s* weekend: “What did you do?” “Oh, I went to a wedding,” she’s respond, “some time I’ll have to invite you.”

Last weekend she delivered a personal invitation to a wedding of her own.

The day began with a trip to the salon, a traffic jam, and an uncharacteristically forgiving bureaucrat. As in the US, there are myriad ways for a Rwandan couple to celebrate their love and commitment, but only the State confers the official marriage statute. Susan’s “civil marriage,” the first of two ceremonies of the day, was supposed to begin at 10:00 a.m. at the local District office. Susan, conspicuously tardy in her sequined emerald gown, arrived at 10:23, dodged eye contact, and dutifully took her place next to her fiancé James.

Three other couples had also gathered with family and friends for the civil marriage ceremony: two hours of legal jargon followed by question-and-answer from the proctor. “It feels like class,” grumbled one of Susan’s friends. Finally, the couples placed their hands on the flag, took the oath, and signed something along the lines of: We, as consenting adults (21 years of age), do agree to abide by Rwandan marriage law and faithfully live as husband (man) and wife (woman). Susan stumbled a bit with the oath but, like Obama, emerged unscathed.

Needless to say, given widespread intolerance towards homosexuality in Rwanda, the traditional marriage debate is manifest very differently here than in the States. Upholding “traditional” marriage in Rwanda means negotiating cows rather than questions of equal rights. Thus, for most Rwandan couples, the second ceremony of a marriage is the traditional “introduction.” Since dowry is usually agreed upon in advance these days (two cows is pretty standard), the modern introduction ceremony is a nod to tradition and an opportunity for both families to gather and officially announce the union.

Susan’s uncle hosted the festivities under the tropical umbrage of his garden. Two groups of men—the male elders bestowed with the authority to negotiate on behalf of the family—sat facing each other beneath an awning resplendent with flowers and traditional décor. Guests arranged themselves according to affiliation with the bride or groom. When everyone had been seated, the festivities began.

In essence, the ceremony is simply a ritualized introduction of each family and opportunity for the elders to announce a noble match. Although much of the nuance was lost on me, I was able to decipher a fair amount of the discussion with the kind assistance of Susan’s sister Sharon.

An orange-tie-clad Master of Ceremonies directed much of the afternoon, which generally followed the standard script. After the elders met and exchanged overtures of good faith (champagne and Fanta), it was on to the search for the bride. Feigning ignorance as to her identity, the elders scanned the crowd for candidates. Is it the young girl nestled in her mother’s lap? The old auntie basking in the news of Susan’s good fortune? The muzungu in Rwandan garb huddled up close to her translator, attempting to avoid attracting attention (They made me stand; I cringed but smiled sheepishly and everyone laughed)? Oya, oya, oya (no, no, no).

Then there was the investigation of the groom’s character. To the crowd’s delight, Susan’s uncles spun tales of misfortune and woe, attempting to pin the blame on a young man who may or may not be the husband-to-be. Was it he who robbed my friend’s brother’s cousin last weekend? Oya. Was it he who crashed my uncle’s boss’ car? Oya. Was it he who failed to pay the Electrogaz bill two months in a row? Oya. On to the negotiations.

Since the dowry had actually been decided in advance, this portion of the ceremony entailed a mock investigation of cows, some haggling, and a bit of hilarity. When everyone seemed satisfied, it was finally time to bring out the happy couple.

Susan and James emerged with their respective entourages of close friends and traditional dancers, radiating joy and grace. More speeches, more kisses, more Fanta, more dancing…more speeches and more overtures…and all of a sudden, their families were bound together by a happy union.

Congratulations, Susan.

It will be “officially official” (in the eyes of God) after the church service, to take place when James returns to Rwanda next year. To be continued…

* My wonderful friend/housemate/guardian angel

When it rains

(Pour tout le monde qui connait bien la saison de la pluie.)

Those of you who know me well are onto my penchant for mixed cds.  I made one, once, called when it rains.  Part excuse to share the title track (an earthy song by Meg Hutchinson—thanks, Beth), part tribute to the rainy season in La Réunion, and part peace offering to the drops that trammeled my unsuspecting bike and I on our way to work in Sainte Marie, it tells me the rainy season is arriving in Rwanda.  Early.  My internal cd player just can’t get enough of that track.

And I’m a Portland native, remember?  When those azure-sky-for-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see-why-make-such-a-big-deal-about-rain Coloradoans or fair-weather Ohioans would say, “Portland?  Doesn’t it rain out there?” I would scoff and reply that, to the contrary, I find rain to be quite beautiful.

I can be rather self-righteous about rain.

The soothing droplets born from the convergence of cool Pacific air and shimmering eastern heat were my childhood lullaby.  I’ve set my watch to the afternoon thunderstorms that shake their lightning rattles at the American plains at 4:00 p.m. sharp in the summers, only to dissipate as quickly as they emerged (just enough time to emerge from the pool for a coconut popsicle).  I’ve literally danced in the rain to celebrate the downpours that bring relief from the oppressive humidity of August in the Midwest.  I have (still) fantasize about waterlogged camping.  I’ve driven around tropical islands for days at a time in a futile chase of sunshine (mon Dieu).

But Rwandan rain is not to be scoffed at.  It is not one dealt with by mere human implements like rain-jackets, umbrellas, and galoshes.  Even the mighty Gore-Tex jacket cowers in its glare. 

This is rain that drowns out my voice on a Skype call and then traps me in an internet café and forces me to accept the assistance of an all-too-accommodating hotel desk clerk who loans his umbrella and steadies me as we navigate the rivulets-turned-waterfalls along the footpath to my house and sends shivers down my spine and turns my hair turn to ringlets as I pray that our night watchman hears my feeble pounds on the gate and…finally…lets…me…in.   Shelter.  I stand under the alcove of our porch and watch the water and revel at the awesome power of Captain Planet’s fundamental four: earth, wind, water, fire. 

 

I dare not wax poetic about Rwandan rain.

Safely arrived in the Land of a Thousand Hills

I arrived in Kigali yesterday a little travel weary but none the worse for wear. The flight itself was actually very comfortable—Ethiopian Air earns a gold star for providing an entire row to stretch out on and snacks when our flight was delayed in Addis Ababa—and the jet lag was temporarily offset by the warm greeting I received from my friend and new housemate Susan, who works at another NGO called the Business Council for Peace. She fetched me at the airport and whisked me home for a shower and hot meal prominently featuring avocados and sweet potatoes. She knows me too well. She’s to be married soon, but since her fiancé will be working abroad for six months following their wedding, our living arrangement should work out well for us all. I’m very much looking forward to sharing this time together.

Our humble abode is lovely. A ten-minute walk down red-dirt paths from my office in Remera, it features a porch overlooking a lush garden ringed by a bamboo fence (and again enclosed by concrete walls), outdoor kitchen, cold shower, and whitewashed living/eating area. Susan and her cousin Diana share the master bedroom, while my room has a magnificent view of the rolling hills and verdant valley below (not to mention a queen-size bed). I think I’ll be quite comfortable here.