Peace-building in Rwanda

I write now from Lancaster, PA, and just wanted to send a big thank you to everyone who read this blog and those who sent me comments or emails — your support meant a lot.

I had an easy, albeit long, trip home and have spent the last few days sleeping through jet lag and the sad lack of passion fruit. I’m going to put in some photos of my trip, though I’ve been having trouble uploading them so I may split the pictures into 2 posts, enjoy!

On the left, below, is Urugo Rw’Amahoro (Friends Peace House). On the right is myself and my three AVP co-facilitators in Gisenyi (from left: Samuel, Solange, Emily, Theoneste).

Now, below we have the AVP workshop in Gisenyi (for the AGLI workcamp).  On the right is a photo of Francine and I cooking the “American” dinner — peeling potatoes in our kitchen.

Look to the next post for a few more pictures, continued!

Belated pictures continued!

Here is a picture of the women weavers for INACOS.  They are seated outside a small building, and if you look closely, you can see how these beautiful baskets are actually made!  Long pieces of a very grass-like plant are bound together by colored string and wrapped into a basket

The picture below on the left is of a banana stand on the side of the road that we stopped at every time we went out to the IDP camps in the east.  This is the way people buy bananas, and more importantly, this is the way they grow!  On the right is a photo of the road I’d walk up and down to get from my home to the Friends Peace House.  The FPH overlooked Kigali, which is what you see there in the valley.

Addis Ababa is the world’s third highest capital city, and lies in the central highlands of Ethiopia with its population of more than three million.  I arrived here late Thursday night and navigating Bole International Airport felt rather like riding an anxiety-inducing carousel.

I got to my hotel room at the Queen of Sheba and basked in the luxury of running water, a television, a king-sized bed and wireless internet in the room.  The 68 degree weather of Addis feels impossibly freezing after sunny Rwanda, and it has rained off and on since I arrived.  I spent my first day here walking around and felt a little overwhelmed by the size and bustle of Addis compared to Kigali.  There is a startling parade of polio victims, ragged street kids, beggars, and as my guidebook says rather perfectly, “taxi drivers and hawkers clamoring for your attention, and con artists and pickpockets doing their utmost to divert it.”  Yet beneath all that, there is an attitude to Ethiopia that is both alluring and impressive.

Ethiopia is the only African country never colonized, as Emperor Menelik II successfully defeated the Italian army in the battle of Adwa in 1896.  I visited the Addis Ababa Museum yesterday, detailing this triumphant history, and the pride Ethiopians feel comes across quite clearly.  Many Ethiopians do not even consider themselves Africans, and are adamant about this distinction.

One such example of this almost stubborn assertion of independence is Ethiopia’s calendar.   Ethiopia did not drop the Julian calendar in 1582 when the rest of the Christian world did, and it never has.  The calendar consists of 13 months, of which 12 last 30 days and the remaining month lasts only 5.  The Ethiopian New Year falls on September 11th, and whereas we are the year 2008, Ethiopia just celebrated the year 2000.  As one Ethiopian man told me yesterday, “while America was sad, Ethiopia was cheering—but it’s not why you think!”  When I was walking around, and didn’t yet know this fact, I thought that Ethiopia had just taken a few years too long to take down their quite ornate celebratory 2000 signs all over town…

Today I visited the Mercado, which proudly claims the title of largest open-air market in Africa.  I was lucky enough to meet a Jordanian and Australian here on business who know their way around pretty well, and I was grateful to be with them as we wandered the maze of roads lined with stalls, kiosks, and small shops where you could buy almost anything you could imagine.  Our taxi driver on the way over pointed out the window as we entered the Mercado area, and said matter-of-factly, “You need a Saudi passport? You go there.”  He pointed at another aisle of stalls stretching in another direction, “You need some kind of certification with 15-years experience?  You go there.”  I didn’t buy either of those things, but I did come away with several beautiful Ethiopian shawls.  My Jordanian companion was a natural haggler: he bargained with ease, humor and a ferociousness that was a marvel to behold.  We would leave a shop having bought something for less than half of the original price we’d been told, and the shopkeeper would be chuckling and inviting us over for tea at his house later.

The little paths were sludgy and mostly just muck, but the market smelled alternately amazing and nauseating.  When we walked down the spice market section, it was overpowering and wonderful—all the spices, colors, and things I’d never seen.  To combat the less inspiring smells of the market, shopkeepers spread some kind of grassy plant all over their floors, which, when stepped on, release a very soft but aromatic freshness.

In one shop, we were chatting away with the vendor, when he suddenly yanked the cloth door closed, got very serious and said, “shhhhh, there’s a guide out there…”, pointing ominously towards the path we’d just come from.  A “guide” in the Mercado is someone who offers, and more often forces themselves on tourists, luring them into a shop and then robbing them.  Our shopkeeper was so warm and protective of us, that we spent a particularly long time haggling and laughing with him afterwards, purchasing many lengths of cloth and embroidery.  All in all it was a fabulous afternoon, and I fell in love with Addis a little bit more.

Went to dinner with these two newfound traveling friends, at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Bole Road, run by an Armenian woman and known for its excellent atmosphere. A man from Yemen named “Jimmy” provides live music there every night, and he knew the Jordanian man with me.  Apparently Jimmy had a five-star restaurant in Yemen that was blown up a few years ago…now he travels around the Middle East and Eastern Africa, singing and playing at restaurants.  He joined our table on his breaks and chatted, this old man character with few teeth, a few missing fingers, and a firm belief that camel milk cures HIV.  We ate well, drank some infamous Ethiopian coffee, talked endlessly about what it means to be Arab in today’s world, and came home happy.

One last day in Addis, then the final leg of my journey—home tomorrow evening!

I realized that I never really explained how water here works. On the walk up from Kicukiro centre, you pass the little place where everyone fills up their yellow plastic state-issued jerry cans with water—10 francs for each. Then they haul the depressingly heavy water back to their homes, though many people pay someone to do this job for them. There are young men all over the neighborhood lugging wheelbarrows full of water to houses throughout Kicukiro—110 francs for each jerry can of water. In my bathroom I have four different water-holding receptacles: one large plastic drum that holds several gallons of water to be used for flushing the toilet and washing up; one yellow jerry can specifically for bathing; one shallow bin to hold the water for showering, flushing the toilet, and washing clothes; and finally one small bucket to transfer water to or from any of the other three, and to pour water over your head while showering. It is remarkable how little water you actually need to go through all the daily rituals, in comparison with how much we use in the US!

So I write now from Ethiopia, but before I update on my travels here, allow me a few minutes of feeling sentimental over leaving Rwanda and to give one last post about what I’ll miss and what I’ve learned (in short..).

Before leaving Kigali, I practiced some new phrases for the occasion: nzagahenda ijo, uminsi mike ntabwo nzaba ndi murwanda, nzagaruka murwanda, imana nibishaka (I’m leaving tomorrow, I’m going to miss Rwanda, I’ll be back here one day, inshallah), and my very slow butchery of their language was heartily appreciated by everyone at FPH. The goodbyes were both happy and sad – it seems that it is only in leaving that you realize the depth of relationships or your attachment to a place.

I am going to miss the endless sunny days of Rwanda, warm and welcoming people, the fruit, the music, the hills, feeling bowled over by such a powerful place, and, surprisingly, all the countless moments of not understanding. I am going to miss walking through the center of Kicukiro, with its five-minute, single paved road stretch of bustle and chaos. There were the men on motos rolling up beside you to see if you need a ride, and the mini-buses crammed to bursting with people everywhere you look. The women wearing pagnes of the most beautiful patterns and colors it seems like a kaleidescope set against the red dirt and the green banana trees. The out-door market full of fruits, vegetables, meats, bags of dried fish, beans of every color, clothing, cloth and the smells of freshness and rotting at the same time. Dust everywhere, honking, laughing, hollering and cars that stop for no pedestrian.

I’ll miss the troupe of little kids I pass on my way to work every day, one of whom always yelled “Comment t’appelles tu?” another who yelled “umuzungu give me money!” a third who would run into me full force and bear hug me around my legs, and a fourth who would promptly burst into tears at the mere sight of me. Although it was hard to enjoy being the center of attention everywhere and anywhere, I think two months of being an umuzungu has made it feel almost normal. Now, when I see other foreigners, my first thought is “umuzungu!” and not something slightly more appropriate…so when I feel even myself gawking at other white people like they just arrived from the moon, I feel a little more understanding.

I knew that I wanted to come to Rwanda so that it would no longer just mean genocide to me, so that the images that came to mind would not be limited to machetes and suffering. Now Rwanda is the place with red earth that has permanently settled in my skin, the place where women smile shyly back at me as I struggle to greet them in their language, and where the pineapple makes your mouth water. Yet it is also the place where a conversation more than 10 minutes long inevitably reveals some traumatic part of someone’s life, and in one breath someone on a bus might tell you that they’re home from school on vacation and their whole family was massacred in the genocide. While for the visitor it is startlingly easy to forget that genocide happened here, it is never far below the surface and lives on vividly in the minds of the majority of the population. I have learned about humility and forgiveness here, just as I have learned about anger and shame.

I have also struggled to learn what peace-building actually means in a place where there is a hunger for peace, for a return to “the way we were,” but an almost paralyzing number of obstacles stand in the way. Standing in the IDP camps, listening to a mother tell me violence was to be expected when they could not feed their children, I felt the weight of how interconnected grassroots work and policy are. Yet I still came away feeling hopeful, and a great deal of my hope has come from witnessing the unbelievable strength, courage, dignity and faith of the Rwandan people I met. I learned more than I know yet from them.

So sadly that’s all from Rwanda, but hopefully some photos to follow, and my next post will be about my few days in this bustling city of Addis Ababa!

Friday afternoon I went with Fidel (Francine’s older brother) to visit the Bugesera site of his organization, Initiative des Amis Combattant le SIDA (INACOS). Fidel and his wife, both of whom were HIV+, started INACOS in 2002. Fidel’s wife passed away, but he is still working hard to educate Rwandans about AIDS and combat the stigma and discrimination that surrounds the disease in this part of the world. INACOS provides HIV tests, training about how AIDS is transmitted, how to care for those who are suffering from the disease, and counseling. It also promotes income-generating projects for HIV+ individuals, and partners with other organizations to address other connected needs such as water and food availability, environmental protection, health care, children’s education, and others. [Interesting fact: Laura Bush came to Kigali in 2005 and visited various projects of the Friends here in Kagarama, including INACOS!  Fidel has a photo of himself and Mrs. Bush, which he is very proud of and after showing it to me, proclaimed equally proudly that he now considers himself a republican (but one that doesn't like war, he added as an afterthought). ]

We visited a community in Rweru, which is the area in which I visited the Nemba IDP camp my first week here. It was interesting to see what kinds of things struck me or felt different this time around as we hung a left at the rope border separating Rwanda from Burundi. Fidel took me to visit a group of thirteen HIV+ women who make baskets as an income-generating project at the Cooperative de Vannerie. The women sat outside a small building and chatted as they each wove a brightly colored basket—it takes about one week to make one basket, as the work is very time consuming though not overly complicated. The women, who greeted me with humbling warmth and graciousness, told me how grateful they are for this project because it gives them the opportunity to come together with other women whose lives are affected by this disease in the same way. They said that the empowerment and sense of community that they gain by weaving baskets and not sitting at home every day has been invaluable. I also visited a water reservoir INACOS helped construct to supply water for gardens during the dry season, as well as the construction site for a new community center in which the women can meet to avoid the elements during the rainy season or the hottest weeks of the dry season. INACOS is doing impressive work, and if anyone would like some more specific information about them, I’ll be gathering contact information and an electronic copy of their objectives/plans, which I’d be happy to share.

Sunday was my last day in church, and because the pastor knew this, I was called to front of the church about halfway through the service. Because of translation, it took me a few minutes longer than everyone else to realize what was going on—I couldn’t figure out why the entire congregation was looking at me while my translator was still talking about the baptisms that would happen in two weeks. When I finally did realize I was being addressed, I went to the front, conveyed my gratitude to the church, and said my goodbyes. Then the entire congregation prayed for me, which involved a few minutes of hollering while the church elders stood in a circle around me and put their hands on my head. I was extraordinarily touched, albeit a little overwhelmed, and will never forget the experience of a hundred people praying out loud for me at the same time.

Now to relate the American dinner saga, which ended up being delightful and quite a success. We made guacamole, chili and mashed potatoes, with a dessert of bananas, peanut butter and chocolate. I bought chips for the guacamole at an Indian-canadian grocery store in downtown Kigali, and all other ingredients were easy to come by. The experience of shopping for food here is quite different and was really fun. Francine and I, because the “muzungu price” in the market can be triple if you’re not careful, bought all the produce at the local market in Kicukiro: tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, onions, garlic, avocados, beans and bananas. Then I walked to an alimentation (grocery store) about 45 minutes away from our house and bought a bag of heavily pasteurized milk, which will last months without refridgeration, and a kilo of raw meat. When I was walking back up the hill towards home, bag of milk in one hand and kilo of unwrapped raw meat in a brown paper bag in the other, I was already feeling giddy with the fun of learning to cook in such a different place.

I would have been lost without Francine’s help and skill, but together we pulled it off. We peeled potatoes with large dull knives and no cutting boards, the blade of my knife held onto the wooden handle with a piece of wire. Francine peeled six for every one that I managed to awkwardly attack…so although I may not have contributed equally in product, we had fun laughing at my complete inability to do such a simple task (“you’re doing it just like a Rwandan child!” she told me happily). Jean-Dieudonne, a young guy who has lived with us for the last two weeks and helps Francine, helped us by starting the charcoal for the stove, which he does by standing outside the house where there is a wood fire, and handing pieces of charcoal through the kitchen window to Francine when they’re hot and ready.

We boiled potatoes over such intense heat that when we drained the water from them, they were essentially pre-mashed for us (quite a relief when the mashing was to be done with a big wooden spoon/pole, kind of like a churn). The chili was easy and a fairly familiar idea to them, as they use all the ingredients often, just not all mixed together like that. The guacamole was fun to make with such delicious avocados. The most amusing part was when I realized we’d forgotten to buy a lemon at the market, and one of our guests who lives next door ran outside with a flashlight and found a tiny little lemon growing at the top of a lemon tree in our yard. They found a ladder and Jean climbed up (all of this in the dark) and retrieved the tiny, green, un-ripe but absolutely lovely lemon. How perfect that the one missing ingredient would be growing outside.

There were seven of us: myself and Andrew, my Canadian friend Josh who works at FPH, Theoneste who lives next door at works at FPH, Zawadi from Congo who used to work at FPH, and Francine and Jean-Dieudonne. The meal was quite a success, though the names of the foods confounded Francine a bit (“I like this chilimole stuff” was my favorite comment). Though apparently, despite the difficult names, she plans to cook this meal for her family in Gikondo. The banana/peanut butter/chocolate combination went over well too, though I especially liked the Rwandan peanut butter I bought that was in a little plastic cup with the ingredients listed on a piece of printer paper taped onto the outside with scotch tape.

Andrew bought a guitar in town on Saturday, and so with the food, music, lizards, and friends, the guesthouse was quite the international place Sunday night. It was an evening filled with laughter and was a wonderful farewell dinner for my last weekend. Now, as Theoneste told me, “when we think of Emily, we’ll think of guacamole and chili.” That’s fine by me.

My time in Rwanda is drawing to a close—hard to believe it! This past week I participated in a Transformative Mediation training here at Urugo Rw’Amahoro (FPH). George Brose from Ohio, whose blog you can check out at oonka.com/george-blog/, was the trainer for the workshop.

Not too much else to report. I’m currently working on compiling the FPH annual report—though it seems that “compiling” may actually mean translating documents from French into English, as I think I’ll have to leave by the time I finish translating.

Tomorrow I’m going to visit some projects nearby that support women with HIV/AIDS. I hope to gather enough information so if any other students want to come to Rwanda through the CPGC they can find some information about other options in addition to FPH. Francine’s older brother, who lost his wife to AIDS, runs the programs, so it’s been a convenient connection!

Sunday I’ll be cooking an “American” dinner for Francine and a few other friends I’ve made here, so I’d love any suggestions you may have. It needs to be things I can cook over a fire/coals–there is no oven (and remember no running water!) so the more simple, the better. So far I’m planning chili, mashed potatoes and guacamole—a cohesive meal is clearly not the goal….

A fact about Rwandan political/geographical organization: the country is divided into four provinces, in which there are many districts, in which there are many sectors, in which there are many cells, and finally in which there are many zones. The hierarchy of these divisions confused me for a while, but I finally had it explained to me by the leader of the cell we live in, who works here at FPH. Also, local elections involve no paper ballots, but rather each individual stands in front of the person they wish to vote for. This type of voting clearly saves time and money, but is quite susceptible to pressuring and inaccurate counting.

My Kinyarwanda update is amusing, as a friend here at FPH taught me a number of “conversations” I could have, such as what I ate for breakfast that morning, when I’m leaving the country, what I’ll miss most, and even an invitation to come visit someone’s house.  But if anyone’s questions or responses differ from those very specific ones given, I am utterly lost.  For example, if I don’t want to come visit on Saturday the 14th…no visit for me.

I’m starting to feel sentimental about leaving: no more rogue rooster under my window, fruit so delicious it feels sinful, warm sunny days without fail, music to make your heart melt, and the five lizards who have kept me company for these many weeks. That said, I am ready for a shower and some ice cream too.

Friday I visited the genocide memorial sites of Nyamata and Ntarama, two of the more horrifying massacres in Rwanda.

The district of Nyamata is located about 30km south of Kigali. It’s an easy bus ride to Nyamata centre, which feels a little like the “wild west” of Rwanda with its dusty roads and single main-street, lacking only a single tumbleweed rolling across the road.

Before the genocide, Tutsis were relocated to Nyamata by the Hutu government in an effort to concentrate the population. In 1994, before the massacre began, it is estimated that more than 70,000 of Nyamata’s 120,000 residents were Tutsi. In April of 1994, 15,000 Tutsis were murdered in and around the Nyamata church, and between April and July, all but 2,000 Tutsi community members were killed.

The church has become one of Rwanda’s most moving memorial sites. The interior of the church holds the clothes of the victims, spread out over benches and the ground, from corner to corner of the building. Many of the bones are kept in an underground chamber in the sanctuary. The altar cloth is still bloodstained, brown now with age, and the walls and offering table are riddled with bullet holes. When I walked into the church I was most struck by the roof, which is full of little holes made by bullets and the explosions from grenades thrown into the church by the interahamwe. The effect, however, is disarmingly beautiful—the little holes look like stars, as if the thousands of bodies represented by their clothing are lying peacefully beneath a starry sky.

Outside of the church are mass graves holding an estimated 25,000 individuals. Two underground chambers have been built there, into which visitors can descend and stand 10 feet underground between dozens of coffins and bones. Standing underground next to hundreds of victims, one is not only surrounded by the enormity of the crime committed there, but the heaviness and stillness of death.

We then took motos about 10km down the road to the Ntarama church, in which 5,000 Tutsis took cover for three days before the interahamwe arrived. Only 10 people survived the slaughter at Ntarama. The Tutsis who took refuge in the church did not know how long they would need to hide there, and thus some brought mattresses, food, books, cooking supplies, and other personal items. On the third day, the interahamwe knocked a hole in the corner of the church and began throwing grenades into the sanctuary. Those that fled were killed outside, those that remained were slowly murdered inside—the genocidaires came back every day until the “work” was done. The church today has been cleared, but the clothes of the victims hang on the walls and from the rafters, and their personal items are kept at the altar. There are piles of shoes, a bag of beans, plates and cups, childrens’ school books, jewelry, identity cards, bloodstained mattresses and other little things making the victims of Ntarama entirely real, still, fourteen years later. Ntarama is surrounded by trees and is an impressively silent place.

I was struck by my own feelings about the day’s visits. Both sites, but especially Nyamata, felt disturbingly ‘normal.’ When you walk to the Nyamata church, you pass through and neighborhood and into a still functioning church compound. The only building in which daily life is not taking place is the memorial church. When I stood outside next to the mass graves, there were people walking down the road to work, children coming home from school, people laughing, and life going on as usual. To stand at the place where 15,000 people died and watch women carry their bananas to market felt surreal—a startling combination of irreverent and appropriate at the same moment.

I wondered if studying Rwanda’s history academically for so long made me feel less overwhelmed or shocked. As we talk so often of its scale and unimaginable horror, does it become a little more imaginable however superficial that imagining may be?

In spite of all that, by the end of the day, the weight of the visits was quite heavy. Meeting Rwanda where the genocide and life today come together is an eye-opening but difficult experience.

The American Embassy here in Kigali had a 4th of July celebration on Friday, which nicely coincided with the Rwandan Day of Liberation holiday as well (viewed by some as a day solely for RPF propaganda) —a truly festive day. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the embassy event, but it ended up being extraordinarily wonderful.

I’d estimate that I understand at most a quarter of what goes on around me here—when you take language, culture and field experience into account. The four hours I spent at the embassy party was the first time since arriving that I effortlessly understood 100% of my surroundings. It was wonderful to be relieved of the weight of cultural adaptation for a few hours, and I left feeling positive about being here in Rwanda (you could see how easy it’d be to leave feeling homesick). I most loved the way everyone was 1) so eager for easy social interaction without the language and cultural barriers that we absolutely pounced on anyone that directed so much as a smile our way; and 2) so curious about everyone else—anything that brings someone half way around the world must be fascinating, so the pouncing mentioned above necessarily involved sharing what you’re doing here in Rwanda. It was absolutely incredible to listen to strangers’ stories, I felt almost hungry for others’ experiences. It made me feel much less isolated knowing that there are people making the same mistakes as I am, missing the same jokes, and also not being able to figure out the correct way to hug.

There were a range of folks, some short-term volunteers like myself, and some big guys around town like the director of the main hospital here in Kigali, or the head of USAID for Rwanda. There was music (the play-list requirement for the afternoon clearly having been “popular and appropriate music that makes people go ‘oh! I love this song’ each time”), there was volleyball and tug-of-war, there was face painting, free COLD beverages, and the most spectacular American buffet you can imagine if you’re eating far too many plantains and peas. There seemed to be this wonderful phenomenon where everyone is craving the same foods, so the absurd excess of brownies and cookies seemed less like “this is the easy thing to make,” and more like “everyone misses dessert and most of all chocolate, so let’s O.D. on it for the day.”

I met a ton of interesting people, and have never had such an easy time making new friends (except maybe that desperate first day of college….). The rather awkward singing of the Star Spangled Banner made me feel like a good American, and when I climbed back into a matatu mini-bus to make my way home to Kicukiro, I felt full and warm and completely happy with an afternoon spent so patriotically.

Yesterday I went with Francine to visit her family in Gikondo (she passed her English exam with flying colors by the way), and fell in love with them a little bit. Her nuclear family lives out in the east, so while she’s studying at the University here and not staying overnight in the guesthouse with me, she has been living with her uncle and aunt and their children in Gikondo. It took me awhile to figure this out because she doesn’t distinguish between familial terms the way we do in the States. Her ‘older brother’ may actually be a cousin, her ‘older sister’ may actually be her aunt’s sister, her ‘younger brother’ may have no relation whatsoever but live in the house, and her ‘younger sister’ is, in fact, her niece. I like this lack of distinction, however, because it amplifies everyone’s importance and seems much more accurate in some ways. She’s told me before about how her uncle and aunt treat her like their own child, and I even felt like they took me in as one of their own today. It was great to visit them again, as the first time I visited was my very first day in Rwanda, and needless to say, I was reeling a bit and didn’t really take in my surroundings very well…

It also POURED all day yesterday and today, which is a completely unexpected event when it is the big dry season here (they have a big dry season, a little dry season, a big rainy season and a little rainy season). It was pouring the last time I went to Gikondo, so now Francine’s family believes I bring the rain.

Today is also an important day because I finally graduated from being a visitor at the Friends Church here.  Being a visitor involves standing up in front of the congregation with a microphone and introducing oneself.  Though it was a boost to my linguistic ego to introduce myself entirely in Kinyarwanda for a few weeks, I can only imagine how awful my accent must be.  I must admit I’m utterly relieved to not do it anymore!  I guess that’s the reward for passing the one month milestone.

An addition to my last post on Gisenyi: I’ve since learned from a doctor who used to work in that part of the country that the most common cause of injury he encountered was people literally falling out of their gardens. With fields precariously planted on the sides of mountains, someone would be hoeing a row for carrots, misstep, and topple out of the garden and down the slopes…terrible!

Gisenyi is the fifth largest town in Rwanda, located right on the western border of Rwanda and spilling over into the Congo. It is a popular vacation spot for Rwandans and tourists alike, as it sits right on the edge of Lake Kivu. Myself and two other AVP facilitators from Kigali traveled by bus to Gisenyi to facilitate the AVP workshop that kicks off the AGLI workcamp for the four visiting Americans and their Rwandan team members.

The bus ride to Gisenyi was breathtaking. I stared, open-mouthed, out the window for the entirety of the three-hour ride. The western part of the country is far more lush and mountainous than the east, and the scenery was almost surreal in its grandeur. The most awe-inspiring part of it all is how the Rwandans perch their homes along almost vertical slopes and manage to farm successfully with all their crops seeming to grow sideways. I was the only umuzungu on the bus, and though I’ve gotten used to the stares that seem to defy all rules of social etiquette that I grew up with, a kind older woman leaned over to me in the beginning of the ride, patted my arm softly and said in slow English, “Don’t worry about them, my daughter.” I could have hugged her; there was just such understanding and empathy in such a simple comment!

The most amusing part of the bus trip was when, just past Ruhengeri, the American pop song (I don’t know the title) that goes “Boom, boom, I want you in my room” came onto the radio that until then had been playing only African/Rwandan music. The bus was suddenly full of veiled Muslim women bopping along cheerily to the lyrics “boom, boom, boom, boom, we’ll spend the night together, together in my room,” while several men in the back where whistling along like it was their favorite tune. I couldn’t help but laugh, the song and their reaction were just so startling to me against the backdrop of rural Rwanda with banana trees, mud homes and dirt paths. We arrived in Gisenyi with ABBA’s “Chiquitita” blasting from the bus…it was perfect.

The three of us from Kigali, plus our translator (a Pastor from Congo and also an AVP facilitator), stayed in a Presbyterian welcome center/hostel that was nestled into gardens right around the corner from the centre of town—with running water and extremely nice rooms, such luxury! We could see two active volcanoes from where we were, one in Congo and one in Rwanda, the tops of which glow red at night from the lava inside reflecting against the clouds. I was also able to stick my toes into the beautiful Lake Kivu, which is free of crocodiles and the scary insects that cause nasty diseases (this is opposed to Lake Tanganyika which boasts its own crocodile, affectionately named Gustav, who has apparently eaten a whopping 3,000 people and counting).

The workshop took place in the Friends Church, located in sight of the Congolese border and the city of Goma. The workshop was made up of the four Americans, plus 18 Rwandans of many ages, varying language abilities, and even literacy. Language proved to be a frustrating barrier, as some participants weren’t able to speak with one another one-on-one throughout the entire three-day workshop—definitely not the AVP environment we try and foster. However, the workshop was a success and it was really inspiring to have many of the Rwandan participants come up to us and thank us for their newfound understanding of how to be nonviolent.

I was most struck by the difference in atmosphere that I sensed in Gisenyi, while understanding that my impression of atmosphere in Kigali is fairly limited. There were a startling number of people who were injured in some way, missing limbs, suffering from visible diseases and other physical problems, or visibly disturbed emotionally or mentally. I think the noticeable increase must be due to Gisenyi’s proximity to Congo and the brutal war that has been going on there for years and years. We walked to the border on our last day and I felt an almost tangible harshness to the way people were going about their lives—a pace that was both fast and slow at the same time, aimless and urgent, suspicious and yet also easy-going. Zadie Smith wrote in one of her books, White Teeth, of a mother who says she never wants her son to learn what it’s like “to hold one’s life lightly,” in reference to people who have very little and whose wellbeing is never guaranteed, always potentially one minute away from natural disaster, sickness, war, or poverty. The Gisenyi/Goma border was the first place I’ve ever been where that expression came to mind, and I felt I was watching people hold their lives lightly.

I also witnessed two instances of violence that were jarringly public and seemingly normal to everyone else around. Walking home from dinner one night, we saw a young teenage boy being hauled down the street by four older men. He was kicking and screaming for help, but no one did anything. I couldn’t understand the Kinyarwanda, so perhaps the boy was a thief, but perhaps he wasn’t—still, we just watched. The second was much more personal: my female co-facilitator, Solange, and I were walking back to our hostel in the dark after our first day in Gisenyi. As we came around a corner, we accidentally stumbled right into the middle of four heavily armed Rwandan soldiers, walking in a single-file line. It is absolutely forbidden here to interrupt a line of soldiers walking—it is interpreted as an enemy aggression. We almost literally bumped into two of them, having not seen them in the dark. One grabbed my arm and roughly shoved me backwards, ripping the sleeve of my shirt. The other grabbed Solange equally as roughly, but didn’t let go. She said something to him that I didn’t hear, and he slapped her hard across the face. I just stood there, shocked. The soldiers moved on, and Solange and I talked about it. She was fine, and when I told her that was the first time I’d seen a man hit a woman like that, she laughed at me and said, “welcome to Rwanda.” I am having hard time reconciling the fact that I was in Gisenyi to lead a workshop on nonviolence and the skills we need to confront the everyday violence in our lives, and yet I did nothing in both instances of violence that I witnessed there. At the same time, intervening would have been idiotic in both cases—so how do we respond to such inappropriate actions when we are outsiders or just bystanders? I have no answers.

It is nice to be home now, and I’m ready to celebrate the 4^th of July with all of you, though I’m far away. The American embassy will have a lunch party for all the Americans a long way from home. Less than three weeks left, time’s flying!