Rwanda Diary

First International Interfaith Symposium of Rwanda -- Schedule

I had some changes to make based on my discussions with my Rwandan partners.  Nothing big -- just a little shifting around here and there and adding the days and dates of the Symposium.  So, here's the schedule!  We don't expect major changes, but we'll be adding more specific information soon!

Download Interfaith Symposium Schedule

This is going to be an extraordinary event!  It will change your life.  Expect to hear more from us about this in the coming weeks and months.  And please forward this to anyone whom you think might be interested. 

You can get information directly from me, or contact:

Cindy at Interfaith Paths to Peace

paths2peace.org

502-214-7322

 

 

Last Day in Rwanda – More Meetings, Shopping for Gifts, and Departure

Samuel Kamanzi from the Congo

Both Kamanzi and I wanted to meet briefly before he went back to the DRC and I departed for the United States, but the only time left was early on the day of my departure.  Really early.  He came to the hotel (the sitting/meeting room in my Junior Suite has been a godsend, allowing a comfortable, private and quiet place to meet people all during the week) and we discussed a possible timetable for my coming back to the Congo to conduct the second of three series of workshops for the interfaith group we formed together a couple of years ago.  Everyone in the group has been asking him how soon I can give them more training.  It would have to be the summer or later of 2013, I explained, since the Symposium is now scheduled for January 2013, but that did not seem to faze him.  I’ve noticed that Africans don’t mind slow movement on projects, as long as the movement is forward. 

Obtaining a visa is still a challenge in the Congo, especially at the border in Goma where I work. The best way to obtain a visa is to go to the Congolese Embassy or to a Congolese Consulate and apply for one there.  These visas cost $35 and are good for 80 days.  The other option is to get one at the border – a much trickier, and more expensive option.  There the same $35 fee is charged, along with a $250 “flying visa” charge.  Who knows where that extra money goes?  When I do go back, I’ll make sure I have a visa obtained directly from the Congolese Embassy or Consulate. 

 

On to Bucura’s Compound and Then to the Quaker Peace House

Before going on to the Quaker Peace House meeting, we stopped at Bucura’s office where Therese had prepared the receipts for everything related to the meetings we held with CIRR.  We didn’t say goodbye there, as I would see them both later.

Our next stop was the Quaker Peace House, the compound founded by Sizeli about which I previously wrote.  Antoine Samvura,
previously the Headmaster at the George Fox School, has taken the position of Director at the QPH.  He was in another meeting when we arrived that was running overtime so we went into the library of the QPH to meet with Cecile first.  The last time I was here, this library had maybe two shelves of books.  Now there are hundreds catalogued and thousands in boxes ready to be unpacked and shelved, all from a donation shipment from the United States.  It had become a really inviting building – cross breezes, a wide variety of reading material from children’s books to fiction to current newspapers, and a big table for meetings or reading.

Cecile put on her QPH hat and presented me with their 5-year strategic  plan and 2012 Work Plan, both of which were in the process of being written last time I visited.  The constituencies they serve are many: students (focusing on raising school fees and fighting against drug abuse); couples (family planning and resolution of conflicts within families); released prisoners and their wives as well as survivors (reconciliation and fighting poverty); leaders – community, church, school leaders (gender-based violence and good governance); marginalized groups like the Twa (integration and the development of food security for themselves).  And all of this is just under their Department of Peacemaking!  They also have a community-based counseling and mediation section, a Documentation section that incorporates their newsletter, website and library, and more.

When Antoine was free to meet with us, he introduced us to a young man named Sosthese who helps the QPH as a project consultant and also serves as an interpreter when Antoine needs one. 

Antoine explained to me that Sizeli, as their founder and outgoing Director, has been named their very first Advisor.  And this day, they would like to add me as their second Advisor because of my long-standing assistance to and interest in their work.  I’m not sure if they were blowing smoke up my butt, but it was an honor nonetheless.  I now have a title, of sorts: Advisor, Friends Peace House, Kicukiro District, Kigali, Rwanda.  I’m not sure what the acronym for that would be, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t change anything I’m doing with them.  Title or no title, I’m in it for the long haul.

The program Antoine wanted to discuss was their MwanaNshuti Education Center.  Their website says this program is:

An education program for street youth, orphans and other vulnerable children.  This program seeks to transform the lives of individual children.  It works not only on giving children knowledge and skills, but also seeks to develop a sense of self-worth and community involvement that will be necessary for them to integrate as full members of Rwandese society. We do this through mentoring and through walking alongside the students in their lives.

Mwana Nshuti means ‘Child, my Friend.’  It was started in 1998 as a response to the problem of street youth who congregate around the city dump in our neighborhood.  While it still targets these youth, it has expanded to include other local vulnerable youth and orphans.  The first step is working with youth is to find them families to live with, if they are on their own.  This can either mean overcoming the problems which drove them away from their families in the first place, or discovering if they have any extended family to live with, or finding a local family that will take someone in.  During the time of the program we meet with families to overcome problems of integration/reintegration to ensure that our students will continue to have a place to live and that their family situation will not make impossible the students fulfilling their responsibilities as students.

There are two primary streams for children: academic and technical.  The academic stream looks for scholarship opportunities to help place students into regular primary and secondary schools.  While the Rwandan educational system is supposed to be free, there remain hidden extra costs, which become barriers for students to attend regular school.  For example, most schools require uniforms, which is a cost.  All schools require that the students have notebooks, pencils and other scholastic materials, which is a cost.  Some schools require that students pay school fees, which is a cost.  And if a student does exceptionally well they could win a place in a publically supported boarding school, which incurs a number of costs.  What these costs add up to can make the difference between being able or unable to attend school.  This is especially true for young people living on the street or students who come from poor families, families that do not have enough resources even to get by.  Additionally, these decisions can be made along gender lines, where if a family can manage or sacrifice enough to enable some of its children to attend school it will choose the boys over the girls.  The scholarship program seeks to eliminate these barriers so that vulnerable youth can get an education and join their peers at school.  We continue to mentor the students who go on to university even after they are outside the scope of our program.

The technical training program is held at the schoolhouse on the Friends Peace House compound, which includes a classroom for academic instruction, a sewing room where students learn to sew, and a studio for welding and other instruction.  This program targets older youth and provides them with technical training so that they can be quickly employable.  We are currently running a sewing program, which trains students to be tailors and lasts for one year.  While we have the students at the centre we include in their regular curriculum social and life-skills training as well as English training.  We have vegetable gardens that cover most of our grounds and the students are expected to work in them.  This way they gain skills in being able produce their own food and become able to feed themselves.  Also when the centre has needs we use these as opportunity for instruction.  When we do construction, the students learn how to make bricks so that they can build their own houses in the future.  When we get the materials students learn how to do fabric dying and hairstyling so that they could start up small businesses.  For the students who face literacy challenges we find a suitable past student to train that group in literacy.  The students are also trained in conflict resolution and mediation as a way to overcome and problem solve for themselves the continuing daily challenges that they will face with others.  This allows them to develop socially appropriate strategies to deal with the people in their community.  Social education also includes developing a sense of self-worth and strategies for success, so that students will understand how to develop themselves and their businesses further once they gain a little success.

 

Another ambitious program, but one that is working and working well.  We talked about what their next steps would be in expanding this program and how I could help them.  We agreed what’s needed the most is a follow-up to my grant writing workshop I conducted there several years ago with a focus on creating good program proposals.  

 

Back to Hotel to Check Out, Then On to Gift Shopping

The hotel had allowed me to delay my checkout until 1:00 and despite the many meetings today, I was only 15 minutes late.  I left my bags at the front desk and took off with Celestin to meeta young man named Alexi whom I'd met on my first visit to Rwanda many years ago and who was interested in applying to Berea College.  I had so little time to meet with him, and he had to rush to work, that we pulled into a gas station to talk quicly about his next steps in the application process, the first of which is to take an English language course in Kigali to pass the TOEFL test for foreign student who want to study in the USA.

We next met Therese in town so she could bargain for me on souvenirs.  (As you might imagine, as soon as the vendors see an Umuzungu, or Abazungu, meaning a whole pack of white people, the prices jump.)  We went to my favorite gift mall – not really a mall but a series of about 30 different stalls in a large building in downtown Kigali.  Many of the women remembered me, and gave me gifts along with my purchases.  The goods are pretty much the same from one vendor to another, but there are some unique areas of focus – clothing, house wares, toys, etc.  We finished up there, went to the largest supermarket in Kigali – the Nakumat – a bookstore for some maps of Rwanda and Kigali that I’ve been desperately needing, and then back to the hotel.  Added to my packages was a bag of passion fruits Celestin brought for me, and a beautiful handcrafted picture made from dried banana leaf pieces that depicted life in Rwanda given to me on behalf of the Executive Committee of CIRR.

 

Picking up Luggage and then Departure

I had about an hour before I had to leave for the airport so I invited Celestin and Therese for a cup of tea.  But before we could order, Mustapha came to join us and treated all of us to more cappuccinos!  I’m not sure that was the best thing to have had just prior to a nighttime flight, but it was special to relax beside the pool and drink coffee with these Rwandan friends.

Before getting into the car to take off, I photographed the ubiquitous glass-topped walls of Kigali, some of which were right next to the hotel.  When I saw these shimmering glass shards from afar on the wall of a private home during my first trip here I thought they were beautiful additions to the home's surrounding walls.  But when I looked closer, I realized that they were substitutes for more expensive barbed wire.  These walls, some of which are covered with beautiful, climbing flowered vines, have become, for me, the symbol of the past and future of this small country.

I like to get to the Rwanda airport 2 hours before my flight.  As this was rush hour, that added 30 minutes to the time.  But I’m always glad when I miss the often-raucous lines – it’s confusing enough as is to go through that system.  And they don’t admit anyone any later than 1 hour prior to departure!  This is a very unfortunate rule and Baraka, who was traveling this day on a different airline but leaving around the same time as I was, missed the cut-off by about 5 minutes!  With her entire family there to see her off to her meeting in Philadelphia, she was prevented from boarding and nothing she could say or do would change their minds.  I believe she did get another flight out the next day, but that’s another challenge: each airline only flies in and out of Kigali a few days per week.  No great numbers of non-stop flights originating from here. 

With time to spare, I had a snack in the café and soon the flight was called.  A 1-hour flight to Entebbe, a 1-hour layover there, then on to Brussels.  I stayed overnight at the Thon Airport Hotel to rest and write, and then back to O’Hare, bringing the love and good wishes of my extended Rwandan family with me.

 

Coming next: the Symposium schedule

 

 

 

 

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings, Then Home Visits

 Note to self:

Factor in breathing room on the next trip or drink even more coffee.

 

Symposium Business

Cecile came to the hotel early Monday to work with me all morning on the Symposium plans.  We looked at the schedule, went over many, many details and ascribed responsibilities, and then were joined by Mustapha.  He’s the accountant at the Lemigo Hotel, which will be the conference hotel, but is also Zainabo’s nephew and is really looking out for us on prices and accommodations.  We went over the proposal he sent to me last year, updated some figures, and drank more coffee.  (This hotel has good cappuccino!)  We began talking about the safari portion of the Symposium and he mentioned that there is a very good company with offices right in the hotel and he would intervene on our behalf to get some discounts.  That fits perfectly since Zainabo is the person in charge of getting package proposals from several companies and then forwarding them to me. So it looks like they’ll all work together on this part.

After a quick lunch, we headed out for our day of home visits.  Whenever I come to Rwanda, the word that I’m in town seems to carry by wind (“Umuzungu!”  [White person], and “Nyirarukundo!” [My Rwandan name] and everyone wants a home visit.  It’s actually an honor to be invited into a home and I love to go, just to see how much the children have grown, to see if their roads have been paved   and whether they have electricity yet.  Sometimes the person to whose house I’ve been invited will have also invited their neighbors (in some cases many neighbors) so I get to meet a lot of people. 

  

Celestin’s House

My first stop after a short lunch was Celestin’s house.  He picked me up at the hotel with Treasure, his 4-year-old, having just picked him up at nursery school on the way.  Treasure was in fine form, singing the “Rain, Rain, Go Away” song in sort-of English while bouncing around in the car.  (Considering the traffic patterns in Kigali, I’m a little surprised seatbelts are suggested and not required.) 

Celestin’s wife and niece greeted us at their house and we all went inside – a several room, packed dirt floor dwelling with traditional (both outside) toilet and kitchen.  Celestin said that he’d like to add on to this house as he has the room on his plot of land, but can’t yet afford it.  (His house cost him approximately $1500 to build 6 years ago, but he’s saving money now to go to Uganda to take an intensive English course and to put Treasure into a good boarding school there, a not uncommon thing to do for parents who are themselves bright and want a good education for their children.)

We sat down for some fruit salad and bottled water and talked about what has happened since my visit last year.  One of the big things is that Celestin's wife has become quite a good seamstress and now works in the market making clothing on a foot treadled (no electricity required) old Singer sewing machine for other Rwandans.  She presented me with a lovely traditional Rwandan dress that she’d made as a gift from Celestin and his family.  In the meantime, Treasure had run off, changed into some of his new clothes, grabbed up one of the small balls I’d given to him, and was a whirlwind of energy when he wasn’t stopping briefly to make o’s, lines and hash marks in my notebook.

 

Next Stop: Bonheur’s House

Everyone knows that I’ve been pressed for time, so they weren’t minding shorter than normal visits.  We left Celestin’s house and drove on very bad roads to Bonheur’s house where we were greeted by his wife, Immacule (who had been a dancer in Rwanda’s national traditional dance troupe), and his 3-year-old daughter, Ahidja (my adopted granddaughter as Bonheur is one of my “sons.”)  More fruit and Agashya (extremely concentrated passion fruit juice that we mixed with boiled water – everyone in Rwanda boils their water), and some wonderful conversation as Ahidja made some drawings for my grandchildren. 

Bonheur’s story is an interesting one.  His grandparents fled from Rwanda to the Congo (along with his father who was then a small child) in 1959 during the killings of the Tutsis in Rwanda.  (These first killing rampages have been called “rehearsals” for the Genocide in 1994.)  His father grew up in the DRC, became a pastor, married a Congolese woman, had two children by her and then divorced her because she was a witch who poisoned him, a process that prevented him for speaking for 3 months (Bonheur's exact words).  He remarried, they gave birth to Bonheur in the DRC 36 years ago, where he grew up.  Bonheur repatriated to Rwanda in 1995.  At the time his grandfather left in 1959, there were 120 family members in Rwanda.  When Bonheur returned, there were 3.  The others had been chained and eaten alive by dogs, thrown alive down wells and pits after which stones and boulders were thrown on top of them, and murdered in other ways.

Despite this gruesome history and poverty (neither parent has a fulltime job and they both have health problems), Bonheur and Immacule have adopted several other children, and are taking care of still others in their neighborhood.  His English is impeccable, and he is a very gifted composer and singer.  He’s recently been accepted to a 3-month film course in South Africa, which starts in May.  Sizeli is now in the process of raising funds for his transportation there and back and for food during those 3 months.

 

 

 

 

Sizeli’s Compound Next

We took our leave of Bonheur’s family and went on to Sizeli’s house and land outside the city.  Despite my having known Sizeli for 5 years or so, this is the first time I’ve been able to make it to his house. 

At one time, his family owned the entire “hill,” or section of a neighborhood, but after the Genocide, the government confiscated land throughout Rwanda and left Sizeli with only about an acre.  In the Rwandan tradition, like the Amish, families have many children and then build houses on the family land, building each new family a house and giving them some property to garden and raise animals.  The government’s confiscation of Sizeli’s family’s left him with no land to subdivide for his biological and adopted children.  Some of his grown children live near him, but this is yet another example of how traditional Rwandan values are being eroded and are giving way to more and more development. 

Sizeli began his working life as a baker.  He’s a Quaker, one of the only faith traditions that worked “across the aisle,” so to speak, to save people during the Genocide.  Afterwards, he saw a great need for trauma healing and founded the Quaker Peace House in 1998 becoming its first Director, a compound that has steadily grown in size and number of programs throughout Rwanda.  (http://friendspeacehouse.rw)  He also took time out to be a leading Gacaca (pronounced Gachacha) judge during the reconciliation years following the Genocide. 

(The Gacaca system is part of a system of community justice.  The "mission" of this system is to achieve "truth, justice, [and] reconciliation." It aims to promote community healing by making the punishment of perpetrators faster and less expensive to the state.  According to the official Rwandan government website of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, the "Gacaca Courts" system has the following objectives:

• The reconstruction of what happened during the genocide
• The speeding up of the legal proceedings by using as many courts as possible
• The reconciliation of all Rwandans and building their unity

Originally, the Gacaca settled village or familial disputes. The courts were informal means of solving disputes around issues like theft, marital issues, land rights, and property damage. They were constituted as village assemblies, presided by the ancients, where each member of the community could request to speak. The trials were meant to promote reconciliation and justice of the perpetrator in front of family and neighbors.   Well-respected elders such as Sizeli, known as Inyangamugayo, were elected based on their honesty by the people of the community. The name Gacaca originates from Rwanda's national language, Kinyarwandan, which, translated roughly into English means short, clean cut grass or "umucaca." It is symbolic for a gathering place for elders to sit on and judge the trial.  Inyangamugayo would assemble all parties to a crime and mediate a resolution involving reparations or some act of contrition. The Gacaca court is thus a system of grassroots legal bodies inspired by traditional power structures.

In relation to genocide, the Gacaca process provides a basis for settlement; the system emphasizes the importance of accord, condemns the guilty, and promotes collaboration between those deciding as well as among the spectators.  In keeping with tradition, villagers elect nine representatives for each Gacaca court to be the judges known as "people of integrity.")

Retirement age in Rwanda is 65, but this year, at age 60, he retired early.  Ah, you might think, he’s going to take some time to rest and relax.  Nope.  He started a new project: The House of Compassion and Care, exactly the program his group focused on during our Activation Points workshop earlier in my visit.  (When I asked him whether the workshop had helped him on this project, he became very animated and said that it was as though he had ordered it tailor-made for him at just the exactly right time in the project's timeframe.)  He’s still an advisor to the Friends Peace House, but wanted to start something new.  So he’s going back to his roots as a baker.  He’s taken part of his land, is starting by building a bakery school with his own funds to train vulnerable youth, and the profits will be earmarked to pay his employees and school fees for other kids.  Later, but not in the too far distant future, he’ll add a recording studio so Bonheur can work with young drug abusers and will also add space for vulnerable women (widows, wives of the imprisoned) to make crafts for sale in the surrounding villages.  Currently these women are making their crafts products at home and bringing them to a central location.  Sizeli’s House of Compassion and Care compound will allow them space to collaborate while bringing together women on both sides of the Genocide conflict.

His house was full of children, nieces and nephews, sisters and in-laws.  I don’t even remember how many kids Sizeli has, himself, taken on as orphans to care for.  He is a very wise, still physically and mentally energetic man who will, apparently, stop at nothing to bring peace and reconciliation to his people.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bucura’s for Dinner

After a too brief rest, we drove to Bucura’s house for a delicious traditional African meal.  At the table were Bucura and his wife, Rachel, and also his son, Yves who was on holiday break from secondary school at a Cambridge-curriculum boarding school in Uganda and also from acting in national films, a nephew whom I’d met on one of my earlier visits, and Celestin, with other children wandering in and out who were studying for upcoming exams. We all had a great time during and after dinner catching up and talking about the future – both in the United States and in Rwanda.

 

Tomorrow: Final Day of Meetings, Shopping for Gifts, and Departing

 

A Trip East

I haven’t written for a couple of days because I was, literally, sick and tired.  Caught a small bug and I needed to rest at night when I could, not write.  

 

Long Trip Last Sunday

Last Sunday, I was up at six and on the road early.  Our first stop was at a local pharmacy because a  member of our team was not feeling well.  It was an  interesting visit to a pharmaceria – no electricity,  almost nothing on the primitive shelving, some  bottles of stuff on the desk, and a can of water on a  stool. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the man in charge seemed to know what  he was doing because the pills he proffered cleared  the problem right up.  (When I asked about health  insurance for Rwandans it was explained that there  is such a thing, but only for very basic care; for  example, only medicine that costs less than about  $2.50 may be prescribed.)

 

Seeing the Eastern Countryside

We had a long, 3-hour drive east, on bad roads for the last 2 hours.  We traveled through more banana trees than I’ve ever seen before (this is the area of Rwanda that ships them all over the country),

 

 

past many community wells where people were filling their Jerry cans for the day,

 

 

 

 

 

 

and past tiers of corn drying to be ground up into corn flour.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also stopped to photograph cows drinking from and crossing a stream where we came upon a young boy who’d just speared a small fish. 

Good for Sunday’s lunch.  I learned to shout, “Hagarara!,” meaning “Stop!” when I wanted to take some pictures, and did that to photograph a man building an addition onto his rural home.   He was using the traditional way of building there: thick sticks anchored somehow and tied together, then the spaces filled in with mud and left to dry. 

 

 

As I watched him work on the wall, I realized why most of these traditional houses only last for 10 years or so, and why they are always in a dilapidated state and constantly under repair. 

 

Reconciliation Village and a Visit with Another Twa Group

We drove past Akagera National Park in the eastern part of Rwanda to a gathering of dwellings called Reconciliation Village.   This is a large plot of land the Rwandan government gave to build lodgings for four distinctly different groups of people to live in close proximity with one another: Twa, survivors of Genocide, released prisoners who had perpetrated crimes during Genocide, and repatriated Rwandans from Tanzania where they had fled during Genocide. When each family is given a house, they are also given a hectare of land for farming or raising animals.

This compound is considered one sector with 4 villages, all interacting with one another.  (The hierarchy here is: nation, province, district, sector, village, hill.)

It is this very proximity of differences that prompted the Friends Peace House to begin working with the Twa here 3 years ago.  Their first program was HROC (a Trauma Healing project they’ve used very successfully in other provinces of Rwanda), and then helped the Twa comingle with other members of the sector.  The FPH trainings expanded to other topics, but all with a goal of training the Twa to become integrated and self-sufficient.

 As I’ve written before, there has been an historic conflict between the Twa and the government.  They say, “We used to live in the forests where we hunted and made pots.  Now we have been moved away from both the animals and the clay.”  One of the problems is that no one uses clay pots for cooking in Rwanda anymore.  Rwandans use tin pots over charcoal braziers for cooking, and plastic tubs for washing, cleaning, storing things, and everything else.  Secondly, hunting without a license in Rwanda is now illegal.  So when this group of 60 Twa families was brought together to live with the others, they didn’t know how to work the land the way their neighbors did. 

 For most people, if things aren’t working out one way, they’ll find another way.  But the Twa are insistent on making pots.  “Making pots is in our hearts and in our bones,” one member of this community told me.  In fact, there is a saying here that a Twa person cannot look up to the sky because they’re always carrying clay on their heads back from the clay pits. 

 It’s very difficult for Twa people to change their minds, but over this 3-year period they’ve begun to learn to do other things (like sewing – I bought a little outfit for my 3-year-old granddaughter from a man named Jean-Baptiste who made it -- note that it's on a hanger made from a twig),  and are continuing to look for, and dig from clay pits nearby, which is allowing them to keep their fingers in it, so to speak.

 

Another challenge is that if they want to make money from their pottery, they need to learn to make smaller, more portable things that would appeal to people other than Twa, and to find a market for them.  The group of men and women with whom I met had a very interesting discussion with me about their needs and wants – as always, not to be given things, but to be taught things.  I told them there are traditional potters in North Carolina in the United States who have done just that: found a market for their wares.  We talked about the possibility of Sizeli, who was with me today along with Bonheur for interpreting, bringing some representatives to North Carolina to learn from these traditional potters (I wrote about many of them in my book, By Southern Hands), and then having others come to Rwanda to work with this and other groups of Twa to teach them more “modern” methods of traditional pottery-making.  Another possibility is to bring American ceramics students here for a summer project with their professors to do soil/clay analyses, see if additives need to be added to their clay, and then teach them to work with kick wheels and raku firing, neither of which needs electricity.  (We’d have to get the kick wheels donated and, possibly, get UPS to ship them as a donation.) 

 

We were joined in our discussion by a man named Samson, who is the recently elected leader of the Twas for this entire province.  It’s their dream to have Twa representation in every part of the hierarchy in Rwanda (see above description of hierarchy).  A younger man, Hamassi, was leading the group’s discussion and, despite the heat, was dressed in a coat and tie. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of our meeting, I was presented with an authentic Twa pot by the woman who had made it!  It’s going to be trick to bring this home in one piece, but I’ll give it my best shot. 

On the way back we stopped for a late lunch where my comrades (Sizeli, Celestin and Bonheur) took a look at the days photographs, and we made it back to Kigali after dark with a back full of hands of bananas Celestin purchased along the way.

Tomorrow: A Day Full of Home Visits

 

 

A Day of Visits and Revisits

Early Start           

For those of you who have been reading this blog from the first day 3 or 4 years ago, you might recall that one of the members of CIRR is a Congolese man named Samuel Kamanzi from the DRC.  He was a teacher before the Genocide and its aftermath, and has been working in human rights in the Congo since then.  One of his children, Innocent, has worked with me as an interpreter here when he wasn’t studying in Uganda.  Innocent came in from Uganda last night just to see me this morning and to let me know that he’s graduating from college on June 2^nd!  We discussed many things, including his being one of the interpreters during the Symposium in January.

He paid me a great compliment today...I think.  He told me that I was his mentor and role model because if I could be doing all this work at my age, he should be able to do much more at his young age!

Toward the end of his visit, Celestin came in with his son, Treasure, now almost 5-years-old.  I’d brought with me lots of gently used children’s clothing, mostly for the Twa but also for the children of a few of my co-workers here.  Among the pile we found 3 shirts  and two pairs of shorts that fit Treasure!  While I continued to talk with Innocent, Treasure occupied himself by drawing on some Post-it notes as artwork for my hotel room walls.  

Soon it was time to say good-bye to Innocent and head out for lunch with a new friend, Anna Roosevelt,
a brilliant anthropologist and archeologist who is a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago.  She’s working on research about the European complicity in the Rwandan Genocide, and needless to say, lunch was a lively affair.  Her knowledge of the history of many regions of Africa is vast, including that of Rwanda, and I learned a lot today. 

After lunch we traveled to the Genocide Memorial Centre. 
I’d visited the Centre on my first trip to Rwanda years ago, but Anna had never seen it.  And even though I was familiar with the exhibits, it was again a chilling experience.  Also, seeing the exhibits with Anna

made the trip there much richer for me. 
Most disturbing was the children’s section, where there were portraits of children shown with a list of what they’d been good at, what their favorite foods were, and how they were murdered during the Genocide. And on the patio of the Centre were chilling quotes from children who had survived, carved in marble.

 

There are over 250,000 Rwandans buried on the site of the Centre and people had come from all over Rwanda and left flowers ranging from elaborate memorial bouquets wrapped in netting to single roses on the gravesite.   It was an eerie juxtaposition of the beauty of the flowers and the gardens surrounding the burial site with the knowledge of why the Centre was built in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

After a very brief rest, dinner was with my friend, Paulette Baraka, the hard-working young woman who started Gate of Hope here in Rwanda.  She’s now working full-time with sexually abused children and hoping to build a safe-house shelter in Kigali for women and children victims of sexual violence.  She described how, in the beginning of her work, court cases against perpetrators of sexual violence were often dismissed because they didn’t have evidence to convict.  These days, the tide has turned because she and the organization for which she works has done a good job of educating people not to destroy evidence following sexual violence.  

 

Tomorrow: Visiting the Twa

A Full Day of Workshops and Planning

The Full Coalition for Interfaith Relations in Rwanda (CIRR)

This was a very full and tiring day, but exceptionally satisfying.  We were scheduled to begin my workshop at 9:00 a.m., but TIA – the participants were urged to show up on time, which meant different things to different people.  We decided to begin at 9:30 when about half the members were present.

 

Yesterday, at the end of the workday, David Bucura and I were talking about the many hats he’s been wearing in Rwanda and throughout Africa these days.  One of the things he mentioned was training people to work with what they have around them – in other words, where their feet are planted – to look for resources there first before going to outside sources.  For example, in a particular village or neighborhood there might live a teacher, a child care worker, a healthcare worker, and so on.  By pooling their expertise, the entire neighborhood could be supported in ways they hadn’t thought about before.

 

Building on Bucura’s thoughts and yesterday’s opening activity, we started off the day by asking each person to talk briefly about one good thing that had happened to them during the past year.  The room filled with tales of wonderful occasions and experiences.  The symbolism of this disparate collection of good things growing from this disparate group of individuals was not lost on the group. 

 

Activation Points Workshop

Nearly all the participants had arrived by the time I began the actual workshop, with my trusted young friend, Bonheur Hari, translating for me.  We started the work by reviewing my previous years with them: coalition building followed by strategic planning and grant writing and other funding capacity building, many workshops helping them build their coalition and programs. The missing piece, I explained, was to understand that education of their target audiences/supporters/clients was not enough, and to learn how to create in them the will to act.  Non-profits frequently set out to raise awareness, I explained, but it takes more than awareness to act.  Activation requires motivation.  Their audiences must have the will to act.

     

Rather than speaking hypothetically and using pretend projects as examples on which to practice, the large group divided into 3 smaller clusters and were then given 10 minutes to each come up with a project they were either currently working on or thinking about starting as a sample for the day.  As expected, the projects were targeted, serious and designed to meet the needs of specific demographics in Rwanda. 

 

One project was dubbed Empowering Vulnerable Women in Kigali, a proposed program to help prostitutes and sexually abused women to gain life and work skills. 

 

Another project, Caring for Others with Compassion, has already started but is in its early days.  This one is designed to help youth become more creative about finding work, and has set up a bakery to train young people, giving them skills and funds for further education.

 

The third project, called Project to Fight Hunger through Interfaith Action, was described as a program built around sharing in a neighborhood the milk and manure of cows for fertilizer, and creating vegetable gardens for sharing food.

 

We discussed for two hours the principles of creating the will to act.  They were then asked to work together in their small groups to answer five questions (shown in blue on the flip chart paper) within the context of their projects, and then report to the larger group.  It was clear at the end of this workshop that they had internalized the information presented and were confident they’d have a much better chance now for success in mounting these programs.

 

Review of the Symposium Plans

After sharing an African lunch, (which included my favorite thing: passion fruit)  I, along with the Executive Committee, presented the Symposium plans to the entire CIRR group (all of whom, by the way, had finally arrived!).  The excitement in the room was palpable, wonderful suggestions were made and people started to volunteer to head up various pieces and parts of the project.  More on this in a future e-mail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow: A visit with Anna Roosevelt and a trip to the Genocide Memorial Centre.

A Day with CIRR's Executive Committee

Changes in Rwanda

Many things are changing in Kigali. Buildings are going up everywhere, attesting to a booming economy of sorts (which doesn’t take into account the fact that about 80% of the population does not have fulltime work). On the other hand, metal detector x-ray machines are everywhere – like at the airport, a moving belt you put your stuff on so the guard can see if you’re carrying any contraband – at the hotel, the larger stores, many public places. But there hasn’t been a lot of time to check things like that out here this time.

 

 

Meeting with the Executive Committee

My workday began as Celestin picked me up early this morning and we headed out together to the Quaker Peace Garden compound where I met with the Executive Committee of CIRR. We launched the day with a round robin of events that have happened to us in this past year. Many celebratory occasions for which to congratulate people, some deaths to mourn collectively. It was clear from the beginning, though, that they were happy to be back together and sharing their lives with one another.

I then told them my story of the past year of cancer, treatments, pain and the healing process, and apologized for not having kept in better touch. Alexi told me it is a custom of their people that when a brother or sister is sick, they must visit them. So he apologized for their not having come to Louisville to take care of me. When I let them know that attending to the Symposium and planning this trip were the first things I did work-wise after my treatments were completed, that stayed with them and it was mentioned with gratitude throughout the day.

I handed out gifts to each of them – a puzzle pin that said, “until the pieces fit” in a heart, and a necklace with three silver rings that said, “peace,” “love,” and “harmony.” Huge hits. Then I handed out the peace pins that are made by Lee Thomas’s company, Unisub, showing symbols for the Muslim faith, Judaism, and Christianity, alongside a peace symbol. Another huge hit. (At the end of the day, Alexi held up his peace pin and said that everyone at the Symposium should be wearing one of these pins. I assured him that I could bring enough for everyone.) Terry Taylor and Cindy Humbert at Interfaith Paths to Peace gave me enough peace pins for everyone, along with the “Coexist” stickers. I’m not sure which gift was more well-received!

 

Working on the Symposium

After catching up, we began in earnest to work on the Symposium.

We chose the dates of January 14th to the 24th, 2013. I’d created a working document of the tentative schedule based on what we had discussed last time I was here and they were thrilled with it. Very few changes were suggested. (I’ll post the full schedule on this blog in a few days. It’s going to be an amazing conference!) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After stopping for lunch, we picked it right up again and finished around 3:00, just as the day was becoming too hot to continue comfortably. Tomorrow’s agenda will be a workshop in the morning, then a discussion of the Symposium with the entire CIRR group, and David has instructed that if questions come up, the Executive Committee should know the schedule well enough that they can answer them. As I kept stressing throughout the day, this is not my Symposium, but our Symposium.

 

 

End of the Day Surprise

Therese had made arrangements to have a manicurist come to the compound to do a French polish on my toes like she has, but TIA! (This is Africa!) The manicurist didn’t make it today, so we’re looking at that possibility for tomorrow after the meeting.

Dinner at the hotel, final prep for tomorrow’s workshop, and blogging.

Tomorrow: Activation Points Workshop with CIRR

I'm Baaaaack!

After a 10 month battle with breast cancer that included chemo and radiation, losing my hair, losing my sense of humor for a short while, undergoing a complete hysterectomy, and feeling as though I might never regain my energy…

 

I’M BACK!

 

Not only have I recovered, but I’m cancer free!  So, the bottom line is:

 

And I can now get back to work on my Rwandan initiative, specifically the first International Interfaith Symposium in Rwanda!

 

As I’d lost so many months, I needed to return to Rwanda to re-energize this project – check to make sure the quotations on the hotel and safari components were still valid, work with the group we formed four years ago, the Coalition for Interfaith Relations (CIRR), who will be putting together this symposium, complete the task assignments, and all of the hundreds of other details that need to be identified and completed before a conference of this type and scale can be mounted. 

 

One of the side effects from the cancer, though, is that I’ve been asked not to fly for more than 8 hours at a time because of the very real potential for blood clots.  That necessitated a stopover in Brussels.  And since I don’t vacation well, I wanted to find something in Brussels that could contribute to the symposium. 

 

The Auschwitz Foundation in Brussels

As I was planning this trip several weeks ago, I came across the Auschwitz Foundation, located in Brussels. The Belgian Association of former political prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Silesian Camps and Prisons founded the Auschwitz Foundation in 1980.  Its main goal is to study the history and remembrance of Nazi crimes and Genocide, the awareness of them, the transmission of their memory and the preservation of archives concerning them. To achieve these objectives, the Foundation set up a not-for-profit Study and Documentation Center, Remembrance of Auschwitz. The two institutions work together to promote scientific research and multidisciplinary publications with a view to broadening understanding of the historical processes which led to the coming to power of the Third Reich and to Nazi crimes and Genocide, while also developing teaching projects intended for the various education sectors in particular, and for society in general.

 

Perfect!  My first goal for the upcoming trip became, then, to convince the Foundation to work with CIRR to do a co-presentation at the symposium titled “Barriers to Remembrance,” and also to connect the Foundation to the Genocide memorial staff in Rwanda to share ways in which to prevent the memories of these two atrocities – the Holocaust and the Genocide – from fading from the hearts and minds of their communities and the larger world. 

 

HISTORICAL NOTE (Warning: some of this is gruesome):

The Genocide in this tiny Central African country of Rwanda was one of the most intensive killing campaigns -- possibly the most intensive -- in human history. The roots of Rwanda's Genocide lie in its colonial experience.  First occupied and colonized by the Germans (1894-1916), during World War I the country was taken over by the Belgians, who ruled until independence in 1962.  Utilizing the classic strategy of "divide and rule," the Belgians granted preferential status to the Tutsi minority (constituting somewhere between 8 and 14 percent of the population at the time of the 1994 Genocide). 

 

In pre-colonial Rwanda, the Tutsis had dominated the small Rwandan aristocracy, -but ethnic divisions between them and the majority Hutus (at least 85 percent of the population in 1999) were always fluid.  Nor was inter-communal conflict the norm.  There had always been a strong sense among Rwandans of belonging to a Rwandan nation, and before around 1960, violence along ethnic lines was uncommon and mass murder of the sort seen in 1994 was unheard of. 

 

Whatever communal cleavages existed were sharply heightened by Belgian colonial policy. Using physical characteristics as a guide – the Tutsi were generally tall, thin, and more 'European' in their appearance than the shorter, stockier Hutu – the colonizers decided that the Tutsi and the Hutu were two different races.  According to the racial theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tutsi, with their more 'European' appearance, were deemed the “master race.”  By 1930 Belgium's Rwandan auxiliary government was almost entirely Tutsi, a status that earned them the durable hatred of the Hutu.

 

It was also the Belgians who (in 1933) instituted the identity-card system that designated every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa (the aboriginal group that in 1990 comprised about 1 percent of the Rwandan population). The identity cards were retained into the post-independence era, and provided crucial assistance to the architects of Genocide as they sought to isolate their Tutsi victims.

 

As Africa moved towards decolonization after World War II, it was the better-educated and more prosperous Tutsis who led the struggle for independence. Accordingly, the Belgians switched their allegiance to the Hutus.  Vengeful Hutu elements murdered about 15,000 Tutsis between 1959 and 1962, and more than 100,000 Tutsis fled to neighboring countries, notably Uganda and Burundi.  Tutsis remaining in Rwanda were stripped of much of their wealth and status under the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, installed in 1973.  An estimated one million Tutsis fled the country (it is in part this massive outflow that makes the proportion of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 so difficult to determine).  After 1986, Tutsis in Uganda formed a guerrilla organization, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which aimed to invade Rwanda and overthrow the Habyarimana regime.

 

In 1990, the RPF launched its invasion, occupying zones in the northeast of Rwanda. In August 1993, at the Tanzanian town of Arusha, Habyarimana finally accepted an internationally mediated peace treaty, which granted the RPF a share of political power and a military presence in the capital, Kigali.  Some 5,000 U.N. peacekeepers (UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda) were dispatched to bolster the accord.  But Hutu extremists in Habyarimana's government did not accept the peace agreement.  Some of these extremists, who were high-level government officials and military personnel, had begun devising their own solution to the “Tutsi problem” as early as 1992.  Habyarimana's controversial decision to make peace with the RPF won others over to their side, including opposition leaders.  Many of those involved in planning the 1994 Genocide saw themselves as patriots, defending their country against outside aggression.  Moderate Hutus who supported peace with the RPF also became their targets.  This was the so-called "Hutu Power" movement that organized and supervised the holocaust of April-July 1994.

 

On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it approached Kigali airport.  Responsibility for the assassination has never been confirmed, but the speed with which the Genocide was subsequently launched strongly suggests that the Hutu extremists had decided to rid themselves of their accommodationist president, and implement a "final solution" to the “Tutsi problem" in Rwanda.

 

Within 24 hours of Habyarimana's jet being downed, roadblocks sprang up around Kigali, manned by the so-called interahamwe militia (the name means "those who attack together").  Tutsis were separated from Hutus and hacked to death with machetes along the roadsides (although many taller Hutus were presumed to be Tutsis and were also killed).  Doing murder with a machete is exhausting, so the militias were organized to work in shifts.  “At the day's end, the Achilles tendons of unprocessed victims were sometimes cut before the murderers retired to rest, to feast on the victims' cattle and to drink.  Victims who could afford to pay often chose to die from a bullet.” (Wrage, "Genocide in Rwanda.") Meanwhile, death-squads working from carefully prepared lists went from neighborhood to neighborhood in Kigali.  They murdered not only Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, including the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana.  He had been guarded by a detachment of Belgian soldiers; these were arrested, disarmed, tortured, and murdered, prompting Belgium – as intended – to withdraw the remainder of its U.N. troops from Rwanda.

 

With breathtaking rapidity, the Genocide expanded from Kigali to the countryside. Government radio encouraged Tutsis to congregate at churches, schools, and stadiums, pledging that these would serve as places of refuge.  Thus concentrated, the helpless civilians could be more easily targeted – although many miraculously managed to resist with only sticks and stones for days or even weeks, until the forces of the Rwandan army and presidential guard were brought in to exterminate them with machine-guns and grenades.  By April 21 – that is, in just two weeks  -- perhaps a quarter of a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered. Together with the mass murder of Soviet prisoners-of-war during World War II, it was the most concentrated act of Genocide in human history.  "The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust." (Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998], p. 3.) (Gérard Prunier provides an even higher estimate: "the daily killing rate was at least five times that of the Nazi death camps." Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide [Columbia University Press, 1995], p. 261.)

 

By the end of April, according to Human Rights Watch, "the worst massacres had finished ... perhaps half of the Tutsi population of Rwanda" had been murdered.

 

A Proposal to the Auschwitz Foundation

Clearly, Belgium has some historical culpability for the Genocide, yet somewhat understandably no reparations have ever been made.  President Clinton and UN head Kofi Annan have been very apologetic. The Catholic Church was apologetic for bishops who went astray and who aided the Interahamwe militias in the Genocide.  But many Rwandans readily admit that more than 40 years of independence from Belgian rule complicates things.

 

However, a collaboration between two organizations that focus on various issues of mass killings – the Holocaust and the Genocide – with one organization located in the country that, some say, at least in part created the Genocide – could be a small, but important “reparation” to Rwanda – not through money given but through expertise and compassionate sharing, just exactly the type of capacity building the Rwandans ask for and need.

 

I started writing e-mails asking for an appointment with the Executive Director and other staff members of the Auschwitz Foundation to propose this partnership during my brief stay in Brussels.

 

Unfortunately, none of the e-mails I wrote ever got to them.  The portal on their website, through which one can contact staff members, was not operational.

 

Fortunately, Daniel Weyssow, the person in charge of the Auschwitz Prize and their activities in Brussels, graciously agreed to see me. 

Over coffee in their offices, Mr. Weyssow agreed with me that the idea was a very good one, and that a collaboration of this sort made a great deal of sense.  He told me he would speak with their Executive Director about the proposal and get back with me by the end of next week.

 

 

 

 

 

I felt so great after this meeting that I did as my daughter, Chloe, suggested and had a wonderful Belgian hot cocoa    while sitting outside at a table on the Grand Place, and wandered around Brussels for a while before calling it a night. 

 

Back to Rwanda

After another 8-hour flight the next day, I arrived back “home” in Kigali, Rwanda where my Rwandan family met me – many of the people I’ve written about in this blog in previous years.  But the most exuberant of all was Celestin,    my “son,” driver, and good friend.  Calling me “Mommy” as both a term of respect for older women and as recognition of me as his adoptive mother, he bundled all of the luggage into the rented car and sped off to the Lemigo Hotel, the site of the upcoming symposium.  Quite a bit of an upscale from where I usually stay, I’d been promised a junior suite that contained a meeting room but, apparently, the man who’d had the suite had missed his flight and was staying another night.  So I was given a "regular" room where neither the air conditioning nor the shower worked.  But since I'm used to not having either one while in Rwanda, this was no big deal for me.  (Today I was moved – not once but twice – into my final (I hope) set of rooms for this visit, just what I’d been promised!) 

 

The first official work day was today, meeting with David Bucura and Therese Mukamanzi from the CIRR Executive Committee over lunch to plan out the week in as much detail as possible.  (As my friend, Baraka, always tells me though, “TIA – This is Africa!”  In other words, be ready for changes.)  Then out with Celestin to change money, buy several cases of water, and other errands before dinner and blog writing. 

 

Tomorrow: Meeting with the Executive Committee and Symposium Planning

 

 

 

 

Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas and Our Chance to See Them

Rwanda's famed mountain gorillas, trapped for many years in a war zone, have managed to survive, taking a small step back from the brink of extinction.

Over the past few decades, Rwanda's gorilla population has increased by a remarkable 10 percent despite a horrific human genocide, incursions into the park by armed rebels, human-spread disease, occasional poaching, government upheaval and constant pressure from land-starved peasants, who hoe their potatoes less than an hour's easy walk from the gorillas' sanctuaries.

 Today, more than 350 of the world's most endangered gorillas slip through the misty rainforest below Rwanda's towering Virunga volcanoes. Altogether more than 650 of the woolly black gorillas, first described by a German explorer a century ago and made famous by their murdered protector, American primatologist Dian Fossey, survive in two small areas of cool mountain forest in Uganda and on the Rwanda-Congo border.

The gorillas, one of Rwanda's few major tourist attractions, were the country's third-largest source of foreign income in the late 1980s, behind coffee and tea. Tourism has now been rebuilt post-Genocide, and with foreign visitors handing over hundreds of dollars each to see the gorillas, the government has a powerful incentive to protect them. Guards now keep an eye on the gorillas at all times, not just when tourists come to visit. Tourists, once allowed to touch the gorillas, now are kept a minimum of 20 feet away to prevent the spread of colds and diseases. Visitors, brought into the park in very small groups, are also limited to no more than an hour a day with the gorillas to keep stress levels low.

Our Chance to Visit the Gorillas Coming Right Up in November!

In all the times I’ve been to Rwanda and the Congo, I’ve never seen the gorillas.  My schedule has always been spent teaching and training, and I haven’t been able to afford the time or the funds to venture outside of Kigali to see them.  But every time I’ve come here, I’m asked by the Rwandese, “Have you seen the gorillas?”  (These photos were taken by people who have been to see them.)

It was with this in mind that I stopped in to see the manager of the Primate Safari (http://www.primatesafaris-rwanda.com/inrwanda_info.php) outfit in Kigali on February 17^th to arrange a package for the second half of the trip in November for our group.  There are many such companies, but Primate Safari is one of the best and not only focuses on trips to see the gorillas but also to other sites and parks in Rwanda. 

Here’s the exciting itinerary I put together with Primate Safari for the second half of the upcoming trip to Rwanda for those who attend the Symposium:

Day 1: KIGALI  and AKAGERA GAME LODGE

After lunch in Kigali, we’ll check out of the Lemigo Hotel and drive to Akagera National Park. The park is set at a relatively low altitude on the border with Tanzania. Akagera National Park is scenically dominated by a labyrinth of swamps and lakes that follow the meandering course of the Akagera River.  We’ll enter the park for an evening game drive and then have dinner and stay overnight at the Akagera Game Lodge. Akagera is home to a variety of game, and it's an exciting reserve in which to spend some time, and will be an interesting contrast to the more mountainous latter days of the tour. There are plenty of animals around and the birdlife is quite exceptional. Mammals include a healthy population of elephant and buffalo, plus 11 species of antelope including impala, common duiker, defassa waterbuck,  bushbuck, oribi, tsessebe, Cape Eland and the rare sable antelope.  Hippos are present in impressive numbers in the lakes and rivers and Zebra and Giraffe still roam the more open acacia dotted plains.

Day 2: AKAGERA NATIONAL PARK GAME DRIVE and VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK

After an early breakfast, we’ll enter the park for a morning game drive. After game viewing, we’ll drive to Musanze, have dinner and stay overnight at the Gorilla Mountain View Lodge.

Day 3: VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK and the GORILLAS TREK, Then RUBAVU

After the morning wake-up call and breakfast, we’ll report to the park headquarters for gorilla trekking formalities and a briefing by the Volcanoes National Park’s guides on the gorillas’ etiquette.  The gorilla group that you will visit will depend on the assignment of visitors to the seven habituated gorilla groups. Park rangers will have already left to locate the Gorilla groups that are accessible to visitors on that day.  You will be assigned to a specific group of gorillas.  Groups of trekkers will have a maximum of 8 visitors per gorilla family. Your trek will vary in length depending on which gorilla group to which you have been assigned and will commence at about 7,000 feet of altitude in the upper terraced slopes of the volcano. Soon you will enter the forest of bamboo and thick undergrowth. You’ll follow paths and the walking is steep but not overly strenuous.  Nothing can prepare you for the impact of encountering a fully-grown silverback gorilla: up to three times as bulky as the average man, yet remarkably peaceful and tolerant of human visitors. There are no words to describe the thrill of recognition attached to staring deeply into the liquid brown eyes of these gentle giants, which share some 97% of their genes with human beings.  After locating your assigned Gorilla group you will spend one hour in their company before retracing your steps back down the volcano slopes. Lunch will be taken at the lodge. Then we’ll drive to Rubavu (Gisenyi), located on the shores of Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu is a 2650 Square kilometer freshwater expanse and the largest of all the lakes that fill the valleys of Rwanda. We’ll spend the night at Gorillas Lake Kivu Hotel.

Day 4: RUBAVU, THE TWA and KIGALI

We’ll relax by the shore of Lake Kivu and visit the surrounding environs in the morning.  On the way back to Kigali, we’ll stop at the compound where I’ve established relationships with the Twa, if we get permission from the local government officials in advance.  It’s one thing for me to visit them alone, but to have a large group visit and bring clothing and other gifts would be looked upon with great suspicion.  (In fact, we left fairly abruptly when we visited because Pauline noticed two of the officials coming up the hill to see what was going on, and fully expected the Twa to be questioned after we left.) But we’re going to do our best to get whatever permissions we need prior to November.  After our visit, we’ll drive to Kigali and spend the night, once again, at the Lemigo Hotel. 

Day 5: CITY TOUR, CRAFT SHOPPING and DEPARTURE

Our flight is likely to leave at night, so we’ll have a Kigali city tour and then shopping for crafts during the day.  Primate Safari will then provide our transportation to the airport after we check out of the hotel.

We’ll be taking this tour in 5- or 7-seat 4-wheel-drive vehicles in which everyone will have a window seat.  The drivers/guides will all speak English (as well as French and a number of African languages) and know an enormous amount about Rwanda and about the places they’ll be taking us.

What I’ll Do Next

My job, once I get back to Louisville, will be to put together the entire package, inclusive of everything for the Symposium and tour, the flight, the hotels, etc., and begin to let people know that there are only 25 places available for this extraordinary opportunity.  It looks like the dates will be November 8^th to 18^th, 2011, so mark your calendars and remember to let me know if you’re interested in receiving more information about this extraordinary opportunity!

 Next:

An update on the Quaker Peace House and what’s going on with the people whom I’ve trained in the Congo.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally Revisiting the Twa

Wednesday, February 16^th finally rolled around – the day I was promised we would do nothing else until we visit the Twa once again and bring them the school supplies, sorghum flour and sugar I’d purchased in Gesenyi on the previous Monday.  We left Kigali at 8:00 a.m. and an hour and half later arrived at the compound where they were waiting for us to arrive, the children having run down the hill once more to greet us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking with the Elders

Mukashingiro Speciose, the 46-year-old leader of  this group of Twa, greeted us (Celestin, Pauline and myself) at the bottom of the hill and accepted my gifts on behalf of her people.  When we made the hike up to the compound I found that they had arranged two chairs and a low wooden bench on which we could have our conversation. Mukashingiro and the compound’s other elders graciously told me the stories of their people, reaching back into their past as far as they could remember.

Following is some of what I learned from Mukashingiro and others during our time together:

• There are 120 Batwa living in this compound of 21 dwellings.  (She consulted her handwritten tabulation of residents to make sure her numbers were correct.)  The dwellings are generally single room, dirt floor huts, some with relatively intact roofing and many without.  There is no electricity or running water.  The government gave them these dwellings when they were told – upon returning to Rwanda from fleeing to the Congo from what they call “the war”– that they couldn’t return to their previous homes in the forests.  They’ve been living here for 11 years.  No one has a job.

• Prior to living here they were forest dwellers.  They grew much of their own food and lived near the clay pits where they dug the clay to make their pots, a craft they have been practicing for centuries.  This compound is 2 or more hours walk to the clay pit, to which they walk only once a week or so because it’s a long way and clay is heavy.

• Every adult makes pots.  After the sun dries them out, they’re fired in grass and wood fires, not unlike raku firing.  Sometimes they’re painted before use.  Sometimes they sell them, when they can, along the roads.  A pot like the ones pictured might go for 200 Rwandan francs (34 cents), “if we meet a good person."
  

• This compound that was given to them has no place on which to grow anything.  And they couldn’t plant anything even if they did have the land because they don’t have any money to buy fertilizer, a necessity for growing anything in this soil.  Sometimes they beg their neighbors for food.  Countless times they simply don’t eat.

• Many years ago they (the Rwandans) had a Tutsi king and he gave them no trouble.  There were no problems with the rest of the population until after “the war” (their term for the Genocide since they didn’t experience the same kind of mass killings where they resided as did the residents of Kigali, for example). 

• Before the war, they lived their own lives and no one bothered them.  But in 1994 and again in 1999 (they believe these were the years but have no calendars or timepieces to keep track) they were forced to flee for their lives to the Congo.  So many Twa were massacred in Goma when they reached the Congo the first time that the bodies were tossed into mass graves. Mukashingiro’s mother, for example, had 12 children, and all but five were slaughtered in Goma.  The majority of adults in their compound today are women because so many men were killed during those flight years.

• Those who survived the slaughter stayed in the Congo for several years.  To determine the number of years they lived there, Mukashingiro remembered that she got pregnant in Goma and when they came back the baby was running around.  So she figures it was 2 or 3 years during which they temporarily settled there.  UN cars brought them back to their land, and it was during the second return (during what they call the second war in the Congo with guerillas) they were told they couldn’t live in the forests any longer, and were told they had to move.
  
  
  

• The government says where they have to live now.  Others are now using the place where they used to live; while they were away, their land was given to other, non-Twa people.  They’ve tried to reclaim their land, even as late as yesterday when they appealed to the local government office.  They are always told no.

• There are many children in the compound now, too many for Mukashingiro to remember the exact number, but only 19 have been to school.  And even they don’t necessarily go on a regular basis because the Twa don’t have money for school fees, uniforms, supplies and to feed them when they’re at school.  Also, if the children have no shoes, the school sends them home.  (I counted only 3 or 4 pair of plastic sandals among the group.)  And if they don’t have anything to eat, they don’t go to school.  If someone buys a pot, they’ll eat.  Eating comes first, they told me.  School is second.

I asked all of them gathered around to try to imagine what a better life would be and to tell me what that would look like to them.  It took them a very long time to think about it, and this is the sum total of what they were able to imagine:

 

• To have a house and a farm that are closed up so it doesn’t rain on us.

• To have fertilizer.

• To have a little money so we can go farther from here to do business on the road and sell our pots.

• To sleep in a bed.

That’s it.  No one could think of anything else.

When I asked how they sleep now, one of the elders got down on the ground and showed me.  They sleep on the hard ground, using old mats as pillows, covering themselves with used plastic flour sacks.) 
So at the end of the day, they don’t put on their pajamas and crawl into bed.  They don’t have pajamas – they sleep in the same clothes they’ve had on for weeks.  They don’t have beds.  They don’t have blankets.  They don’t brush their teeth because they don’t have toothbrushes.  Or running water.  The kids don’t do their homework because they’re trying instead to find something to eat and a pair of shoes so they can go back to school sometime. 

On the way back to Kigali, I saw the land near the forest on which they used to live.  There were pens with animals in them, and avocado trees, sweet potatoes, beans and arrowroot growing in the verdant plain. 

It was unspeakably sad.

Next:

Arranging for the touring part of the upcoming Symposium.