April 1, 2010; 6.54 CST
I am still not feeling well today. I have a suspicion it was the yogurt I had in Butare, but there are others not feeling well and we didn’t all have yogurt ...
To continue from yesterday: the second part of the first museum we visited was the traditional royal court of King Mutara, the second-last king of Rwanda. The traditional Rwandan house (only distinguished from the king’s by the fact that the king’s house has two extra wooden points on the roof) is made of ficus wood, straw and other wood. It looks a little bit like an igloo, except made of layers of straw. The thresholds are made of different kinds of clay, the threshold of the principal royal house being a large circular red platform with a white barrier that almost touches the house at both ends. This created an entrance and an exit for those who came to kneel before the king on the days of court, where the king would grant an audience to those who would come to him with problems. Right at the entrance to the main house was the pillar of pardon, a wooden pillar which, if a guilty person could get to it (there were guards all over the place) and touch it, meant that the king would pardon them.
Inside the house, there were partitions made of woven straw which were see-through from the inside, functioning both as doors and windows since they could be moved. Decorated partitions marked the bedchamber, which was basically just a huge (very hard) bed surrounded by said partitions and with several different-sized pointed baskets, which served as suitcases when the king went places. There were two entrances to the bedchamber: one for the king and male visitors, and one for the women. The king and his friends would enter directly from the main foyer of the house, which was itself separated from the entrance with more partitioning (a sort of entrance hall, which was also separated between men and women), and the women would go around behind another partition into a separate room that linked to the king’s bedchamber. The main foyer had a hearth in it, a sort of raised-clay affair that was decorated as a star. The smoke from the fire would impregnate the walls and render them hostile to insects. People would dance and sing in the main foyer, and drink beer and such, and chat, and so on and so forth.
The other two traditional houses they had built/rebuilt were the milk house and the beer house, each successively smaller than the one previous, and each built along the same basic layout. Milk was considered very, very important in traditional Rwandan culture, and a female servant (single for life) lived in the milk house to make sure that the king’s milk and milk products were not poisoned. This was also the hangout for the queen and her friends, so the secrets of the kingdom were safe with the servant because she never left.
The beer house was much the same, except a male servant would stay and brew the different kinds of beer (banana, sorghum and honey – the honey beer had more alcohol in it than today’s whisky). There were different sorts of jugs and containers for the milk and the beer: small milk jugs with thin necks for babies and progressively larger for older people (each child drank 1L of milk a day – and you wonder why Rwandans were so tall; the last king was over 7 feet); great big gourds for churning butter; different shapes of gourds for the different beers; calabashes and half-calabashes with various uses, etc.
After the old-Rwanda museum, we went up to another hill to visit the National Art Museum. The trip there was interesting since we got lost a couple times, but we made it there. The tree was very large width-wise, spreading out over a large amount of land and providing lots of shade. We ate pre-packed sandwiches (tomato, cheese and sausage) and fruit (I ate three marakujas) and took lots of pictures.
The art museum was a lovely building, having been built with the intention of it being the last king’s palace, but as he died two months before he could start living in it, it was converted (eventually) into a museum. The building has only been a museum for 4 years or so; I’m not sure what it was before that. They have an overarching theme of peace, and have had sub-themes each year tying into that: youth, ubuntu, etc.
The art comes from all over the world, not just from Rwanda or even from Africa: there were pieces from Serbia and elsewhere, but most of them were from Rwanda or from the DRC. Lots of fairly abstract art: I made the observation to myself that it seems as if abstract and absurd arts really boom after tragedies or large incidents. I think this is perhaps because we feel as if we cannot properly express what we feel with the language and the art we currently understand: we need a new way of saying things that is unlike what has come before. We are showing what we feel instead of what we see.
There were quite a few carved-wood statues, almost all graceful and smooth or in bas-relief – I particularly liked these, along with a few mixed-technique pieces, as I felt they really showed the emotions behind the pieces. There was one that was a metal sheet with a lock on it and a frame with chains ... I forget what it was called, but I won’t forget the piece. There were several pieces with mirrors, and many pieces showing women and children or traditional life.
We next drove to the national museum of Rwanda, which was more of the prehistory and culture of Rwanda than anything else. There exhibits including the geography of Rwanda, the climate, the topography and the geology, the evolution of the language and its construction, ancient and near-modern tools, Rwanda’s prehistory, methods of sustenance (agriculture and raising cattle in general) and the various arts of the culture: basket-weaving, pottery, weaponry, music, hunting and clothing. The detail here was amazing: they had pictures of people making baskets and pots and pictures of pretty much everything else, and the museum has an intense collection of artifacts, all meticulously preserved and labelled and explained in all three official languages (although sometimes English was missing). At the end of the tour, we took pictures outside and then went to the town of Butare.
In the town, we could go to two restaurants and/or go to a small market for snacks since we would not be home until late. I bought a package of chocolate biscuits, a drinking yogurt (ikivuguto) and a roll with ground beef in the middle. I sat in the second restaurant where most of us were, but did not order anything as I was running out of money (I believe I only have 4550 Rwf left, unless I don’t have to pay for my dress now, in which case I have 9550 Rwf. I might keep the 5000 Rwf and bring it home so I can pay for my dress when it comes, meaning I really only have 4550.
Oh, we poked a hole in the bus. Claude came around the back of the first restaurant to pick us all up, then had to back out all the way to the street. As good a driver as he is, he managed to get the bus out – but hit a pole and poked a hole in the ventilator at the back. Oh well. He didn’t seem too miffed.
The ride home was long and not very interesting, since it was dark soon into the trip. I listened to my Zune on shuffle for a while, then listened to Noriyuki Iwadare, then U2 on shuffle. I practiced conducting for a while. When we finally got back to the inn, we had some spinach soup and then went pretty much straight to bed.
I am still feeling off so I am going to rest now. I will write about today this evening.
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