March 21, 2010; 2.37 CST
Nope. I am sitting in Nairobi airport sipping a cappuccino and waiting to board the plane to Kigali. Sigh. At least I am in the premier lounge, which means I get free food, free drinks and free Wifi. Which is lovely. I enjoy the free Wifi especially.
March 21, 2010; 11.50 CST
I’ve been in Kigali for several hours now, after a long and tortuous plane ride through Bujumbura and to Kigali. Hot and stifling and humid except when we were actually flying (which was less time than we were on the ground, pretty sure) … honestly, I was fainting. Not fun. Also, it was just as hard to say goodbye to John and Mom after we got to talk.
Rwanda is beautiful; Kigali is beautiful. There are so many hills – I am going to get a major workout walking all these hills. It is so green … so much greenery, so lush. But right beside the beautiful greenery, you see dead crops of corn and small wilted vegetables … right beside the newly-built homes are shacks made of mud and wood. The contrast is stark and I’m not sure what to think of it yet.
There are so many people here, all over the roads. No one seems afraid, and many people have waved at our bus as we go by, but I have seen some with bitterness in their eyes. Perhaps I am reading too much, but I see something other than happiness.
I am exhausted. I have been awake more than I have slept since 7.00 on March 19th … I’ve had about 7 hours of sleep over the past 53-ish. Ouch. I didn’t realize it was that bad, but it is. I am not a happy camper at the moment – I miss my family, I miss John … I am tired and I don’t want to be happy – I’d like to eat and I’d like to wash and I’d like to sleep (but it is too hot and humid for me to be comfortable; I hope I get used to this and can sleep). I am kind of sad. I think I may eat a square of chocolate and go hunting for water, because I am incredibly thirsty. I might write again before I sleep.
March 21, 2010; 14.39 CST
It has cooled off – possibly due in part to my having had a shower (which is interesting in and of itself, since the water temperature changes rapidly and by a large margin). I think I will be able to sleep.
It is hard to be in the midst of a lot of people who A) talk a lot and B) I should be able to understand … the Rwandese are very friendly and they talk a lot, and since they speak French I should be able to understand them. But since it’s hard for me to hear/distinguish single voices in a din (and French is my second language and I am slightly slower to focus in that), it is sometimes hard to understand people who speak to me. This frustrates me, because I feel humiliated and out-of-place – and I can’t just stay quiet, because then it would seem like I was being unkind or disrespectful. Sigh. Don’t know what to do. I am very tired though, after my shower and the wonderful meal which came before it (roast beef, a little tough but first-class pulled; a mix of beans and peas and carrots, potatoes in herbs and a spinach/onion/potato soup).
We also had these mini-bananas which didn’t taste like bananas at all but more like squash. Undecided on that front still, but as I’m exhausted I will do my devotions and crash. Good afternoon, home.
March 22, 2010; 1.37 CST
The tea is the best here. So good. Black tea but it tastes different – Rwandan tea. Also they have raw sugar, so no headaches! I am so happy!
March 22, 2010, 10.05 CST
We took out all the supplies for the widows and orphans and organized them at the Centre César this morning. There was over 1500 pounds of supplies … the piles! So much. It’s a wonderful gift for them; Maman Nicole and Marcelle were over the moon.
After that, we came back to the inn to have lunch. Goat kabobs, coleslaw, cucumbers, potatoes, avocadoes and pineapple. Oh, the fruits and vegetables here are so good – so fresh! The avocadoes were probably picked yesterday or even today; the pineapple isn’t acidic at all, just fresh and sweet. The goat meat tasted different, but very good – and the potatoes, oh the potatoes. They are chewy and crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, taste of healthy oils and you eat them with mayonnaise that is actual mayonnaise, not processed stuff. It actually tastes like eggs and isn’t white, it’s yellow. The food is so good here, so fresh, unlike almost everything at home which is imported or stored.
After lunch, we went to Green Hills Academy, the IB school in Kigali. Their program goes from first to twelfth grade, and they have a far larger choice of courses than we do. Many, many students, all living in Kigali but some coming from other places – one student I talked to, Kenneth, was from Tanzania, and there was a girl (naturalized Rwandese) who was originally from Russia. They were all very friendly and talkative; most of them spoke French, but there were quite a few who only spoke English along with Kinyarwanda, as well. Their seventh-grade girls’ drumming group did a traditional dance for us which was really neat: a dozen girls all drumming in rhythm. Like, at the same time. Without fail. It was really, really cool. They did some singing and dancing too, which was also cool, but more drumming than anything else.
We then went out to the basketball courts where some of us played basketball with the others, and the rest of us talked. Anatol and Quentin were very much the apples of many of the students’ eyes and lots of the girls wanted pictures with them at the end of the afternoon. We only got a couple hours there, but it was worth it.
On the way to Green Hills and back, Igor played tour guide for us in the bus, pointing out certain buildings and talking about the rebuilding of Rwanda. He said that almost all of the rebuilding is individually-oriented, initiatives taken by members of the Rwandese diaspora working in collaboration with the Rwanda Development Group. The development, he said, has really taken off in the past seven or eight years, and there was quite a lot that we saw that had not even been there the last time CL-R came to Rwanda in 2008.
Something I found interesting was that many of the ministries in the government went by nicknames such as Minafet (ministry of foreign affairs) and Minisanté (ministry of health) … something that seemed extraordinarily Orwellian to me, along with the cameras on towers along the road. Perhaps Orwell took the idea from government of his time, but the reference was there in my head and I wasn’t sure I liked it – I have heard tell of the Rwandan government being very strict. Igor said this emphasis on strictness and security sprang from the instability in the country which existed until 2009, and from 2001 on the emphasis has been on development – and not going up the ladder, but jumping. Igor referred to the strategy as leapfrogging: not starting with telephones but direct to Internet, for instance. Rwanda is waiting for their lines to be plugged into a fiber-optic line; they vote electronically; they can buy electricity by phone; medical dossiers are transferred by phone. You see many cell phones around.
I wondered briefly why it didn’t seem like the widows had any of this, when Igor was talking about equalizing salaries and universalizing healthcare. Igor then explained that the Centre Cesar and Ubuntu Edmonton was trying to make it so that the widows could share in the developing wealth of Rwanda (described by Igor as aiming for South African standards, then somewhere else that I don’t remember, and now he says that “Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa”) by making sure that they have salaries that allow them to partake of these services. This is why it is so important that they be able to work, that their things are sold at a good price: they need the money to share in the wealth of their country.
I’ve heard it said that Rwanda is “Africa Lite”, in the sense that you do not see the problems that occur elsewhere in Africa, such as corruption, bribery and general danger. I am reading a book my grandmother gave me, called The Betrayal of Africa (Gerard Caplan) and it suggests (which I already knew) that it is the Westerners to whom Africa owes their underdevelopment and much of the corruption and the simply bad systems. It is not to be undervalued that there are many Africans who gain power who keep it through unethical means – we cannot blame everything on the Westerners, but nor can we blame everything on the Africans. It seems to me that Rwanda may be leading the way to an Africa that is strong and self-sufficient. As an example, Igor said that the Rwanda Development Board does actually refuse money, if the initiative presented does not fit within the plan that has been put forward for the country by the government – one of the biggest questions they ask is “will it finance itself?” The Rwandese have a plan for their country; they recognize that their future is very much in the women and children of their country as they represent a very large portion of the population (51% of the Rwandan population is 21 years old or less) and they work towards empowering those who do not have enough in order to equalize their population and to make the country richer. The government started the rebuilding efforts in helping to finance housing for the diaspora on a 30-70 basis: the individual finances 30%, the government 70%. You build according to your pocket, and the difference in what Igor called “old Rwanda” and the “new Rwanda” is marked. This is not Africa Lite – it is the Africa of the future. This is Africa where the Africans are doing it themselves and making their country what they want it to be because it is their country and they want it to be so, not for personal gain. The police and the army are the least-paid citizens here; Igor said that the idea is that since they cannot be doing it for the money, they are doing it for their country, and therefore they will do a better job. If a Rwandese wants to study abroad, they must do 6 months of military service where they learn the history of Rwanda and the strength of Rwanda, so that they will know, when they are abroad, just what they are representing as ambassadors of Rwanda.
This is a proud country; a country that wants to do things right and that wants to move forward. I like this country. It has energy. If only Canadians had this energy – or maybe we just need to inject some of it into the governmental system. I see energy at home; not like here, not quite as much, but I see it in the people. Most of us love our country. If that love would translate to reality, that would be lovely.
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