Long Time No Speak

Two interesting, and very different, comments posted after this Economist article discussing the underuse of morphine in Africa:

cvitnu wrote:

again after I've met several africans who really think that all the troubles are because of the "white people" hence "white people" owe us now, I'm completely sure that the best way to deal with Africa is to ignore it. Let them live, die, whatever. It's not of my concern anymore. Because whatever you will give them, corruption and tribal conflicts will eat that, they would say "it's not enough" and would still blame you of everything. That's enough. I quit.

and (after several other worthwhile comments) Jeffrey Maganya replied:

Did you mean ignore Africa or ignore Africans (I probably would suggest you get better more informed friends… so ignore your friends. Some people in the world blame the west for contemporary African problems, many don’t. I am also sure that some of your friends may have told you there is a language called africanese. Take that with a pinch of salt too). But let’s assume you actually meant ignore Africa. You may want to ignore the following:
• The Bushveld rock complex in southern Africa Complex, which contains major deposits of strategic metals such as platinum, chromium, and vanadium which are key to high tech industrial processes;
• That almost all of the world's chromium reserves are found in Africa;
• Africa contains about 40% of the world's diamond reserves, these occur in Southern Africa; including the conflict prone DRC;
• South Africa alone contains half the world's gold reserves.
• Half of the world's cobalt is in DRC
• About one quarter of the world's aluminum ore is found in a West Africa
• And there are many undiscovered natural riches. New ones each day; Oil in western Uganda, Gold in western Kenya etc.

I will ask again. Do we ignore Africa? Do we ignore Africans? or maybe just a middle ground. We ignore you and your “African Friends”

I would add to his comment. Africa doesn't only have natural resources, though the West would have loved that — no need for colonialism; they could have just waltzed in and taken everything without worrying about the "savages" getting in the way. But thank God the continent IS full of them, keeping wealthy countries coming back for more — more investment, more business, more trade, and unfortunately, more exploitation. It's not only the West, or wealthy countries, involved in the exploiting of much of Africa's conflict minerals, mostly in the DRC. African countries, namely my beloved Rwanda and Uganda, are culpable too. Rwanda's biggest export in one recent study, cited in an article I found somewhere on Twitter, was a mineral used in electronics — a mineral plentiful in Congo.

But I digress. Africa's minerals aren't its only asset; its emerging markets are grabbing attention, as well as some of its countries' strengthening democracies. Ignoring it, Mr. cvitnu, is not only detrimental to those Africans we so often "help" and "give to" (topic for another time) but to you, too. Isolationism has never done us any good.

T.I.A.

(This Is Africa)

And I really don't want to leave. I miss everyone so, so much, and I feel like I've missed out on a ton these past few months. But being here is such a wonderful opportunity to do what I love... write stories, go look into that grassroots effort to save chimpanzees and improve a village's economy, help get this online newspaper off the ground and become more professional, go places like the DRC or Sudan and find out what's REALLY happening there... I don't know. I feel like I'm leaving too soon, before I can get everything out of this experience.

Memphis and the Third World

Someone reminded me of an issue I’ve been trying to reconcile for a long time, especially since I’ve been here: the poverty in my own society — my own neighborhood, no less.

Memphis is stinted by poverty; that is no secret. That, coupled with the poor public education system, the high dropout rates, teenage pregnancy rates, infant mortality rates, and violent crime rates (not to mention countless other depressing statistics), paints a picture not so pretty. And in some ways, not so different from Uganda or Rwanda.

The poverty on this continent is obviously more shocking, more heart-wrenching to witness. People with literally no food and no way to get it. People whose limbs are thin enough to break with one hand, and weak enough that they can only sit on the side of the road holding a hand out for money. People who have to crawl to get anywhere, either because they lost their legs in war or genocide or to harrowing diseases like elephantisis, or their feeble limbs simply have no strength to bear their weight. People whose entire families were murdered, and they grew up with no options, no aspirations other than survival.

But those are the poorest of the poor. One rung up, countless families consist of an older sibling caring for his fellow orphaned siblings, each member struggling to string a life together while still trying to go to school. Primary education is free, but beyond that, it costs a pretty penny. So most people stop going to school after primary. Most houses are mud huts; most beds are mats on the floor; to most, electricity and water are luxuries of the rich. Hunger reaches beyond the homeless. Malaria, and various other diseases, infects far more than just the lowest rung. If a child makes it to her fifth birthday, it is cause for real celebration. Malnutrition is simply a fact of life, as is danger… Fear is a daily occurrence, unless they’ve just become numb to the feeling. Elections bring violence; power goes to whoever has the most ammunition. Men have absolute power over women, and adults over children. Few exceptions to the rule.

The poverty in the developing world is crushing; it’s a death sentence, much worse than a hard way of life. But in some ways, sometimes, I think I’d rather be poor in Uganda than in Tennessee.

An orphan in Rwanda goes to his cousin, his aunt — hell, his third cousin twice-removed — when he needs school fees. He either works as a houseboy in his benefactor’s home, or the fees are paid (begrudgingly, usually) without strings attached. The generous aunt or cousin hopes that the kid will use his education to get a good job, and never have to come asking for money again. Since I’ve been here, I’ve met countless families housing their distant relatives, paying their way through school. It is a norm here.

But back home, I feel like that would almost never happen. Our highly individualistic culture seems to isolate the poor, the homeless, strangling them, leaving them with no way to escape their plight. They are usually addicted to drugs, slave to their cravings. Many are mentally ill. Not that those aren’t stereotypes about the homeless here, but it seems a much harder burden to bear utterly alone. And we blame them for their condition; it’s America, the land of opportunity. The rich are rich because they made themselves that way; the poor are poor because they did something wrong… right?

We don’t recognize that opportunities are lavished upon the already rich, not so often upon those without immediate privileges. All too often, I feel the poor don’t really have a chance — they can’t pull themselves up by the bootstraps if they don’t have boots, after all. Here in Africa, at least, poverty is recognized as a problem of society as a whole.

Bottom line: Memphis, with its embarrassing rates of children dying needlessly, of women having babies before they can legally consent to sex, of kids dropping out of school and falling into gangs and violence as an alternative, of men abusing women, of people judging others by the color of their skin, seems to me a Third World microcosm within our First World.

Someone told me today that he pays for his cousin’s school fees because “it’s morally right to save them.” I recognize now how lucky I have been in my life… I’ve had the world at my feet. Most people don’t, for no other reason than bad luck. I don’t know how to rectify that injustice, but I do feel the need to do SOMETHING. Both in Memphis and in a wider scope.

Rwanda Part 2: Gorillas!... Then Back to Uganda

Long, long story short, I got to go gorilla trekking, only because a woman at the tourism office took pity on me and let me stay in her house, eat her food, and get a ride to the park for free. It was incredible. The hike there wasn’t bad either, only an hour, but it was fraught with stinging nettles – nasty and painful plants everywhere on the volcanoes. We spent exactly one hour with the Umubano, meaning friendship, group of gorillas: one silverback, a couple adolescent males, a couple females, and two five month old babies!! What was amazing was not how human they looked, that I already knew, but how human they acted. Small gestures and interactions between the gorillas were just like those in a human family… just with a few more wives and a LOT more hair.

I went back to Kampala afterwards, planning on going hiking or to one of the various game parks in Uganda (the fact that my wallet had been stolen kept slipping my mind).

But I ended up just staying in a hostel there for four nights. I was, I admit, a bit reluctant to go back to less-developed Gulu, especially as I was so enjoying the company I met in Kampala.

I talked to a soldier in the Indian battalion of the UN mission in the DRC, who told me that the conflict there will never end until the nation’s mineral stores are depleted, and that the UN soldiers are essentially useless with such a weak mandate. An international photojournalist who had just been to the Congo and is now headed to Southern Sudan. He also told me journalism school was useless, which was a bit disheartening. I met a Dutch woman working as a counselor for HIV patients, a European musician who volunteered in a grassroots campaign to save chimpanzees in an unprotected area of Uganda (the #1 place in the world he wanted to visit was Nashville, TN!), a preacher who had the humility to say that missionaries and humanitarian workers in general often go about helping developing countries in unhelpful ways, and two guys my age who were traveling and making a video about the on-the-ground effects of NGO’s and missionary work.

Africa turns out to be a great place to meet very cool non-Africans. Interesting…

Back to Rwanda Part 1: Camera and Aftermath

So everyone left me for the States or Kilimanjaro or somewhere... but Lily Kruglak, her dad and I got a ride with Stefanie and Apollon back to Rwanda. God, I love them. Best academic directors ever, to use my overused phrase of this semester: "Ahh, this is the best/my favorite/any other superlative (insert object/person/place) ever!!!"

The morning after we got to Kigali, I went to town to get ready for gorilla tracking. I needed a gorilla permit in the first place, then a bus ticket and a camera. I headed for the camera first, thinking that would be the easiest thing to find.

If you want something Western, and it exists anywhere in Kigali, Nakumatt Supermarket is the place to find it. That was my first stop. But the only decent camera I found there was 250,000Rwf, about $500... and it was not worth that much. Used to Uganda's constant bargaining, I asked for a reduced price, but the saleswoman was pretty stubborn. So I walked around the store moping until some random guy found me and asked if I had been to this other store to look for cameras. I couldn't pronounce the store's name, much less find it in the huge city, so he offered to take me there himself.

Well, that store had moved or disappeared, and we ended up hitting about 6 stores looking for a camera and matching USB cord. Finally found a nicer camera than the one in Nakumatt, for less than half the price! But it was unbelievably complicated; you have to test the camera, the battery, the memory card, and the USB cord before you can buy a camera... it took around four hours. And the random guy hung around to help me the entire time.

Next morning the so-called nice guy (his name was Venuste) stole my wallet. We were having coffee, having a grand old time, about to leave, then I turned for a second to pack my backpack. He nabbed my wallet and disappeared. My wallet with my gorilla permit, all my money, my debit card, and my phone.

Murchison Falls

We were finished with our research and presentations, so we headed to Murchison Falls National Park – our last hoorah with SIT before everyone left from Kampala. But, of course, Africa couldn’t let us go without one more adventure together!

We arrived to the park (according to Lonely Planet, the “best all-rounder” in the country) in a school bus that magically fit all 23 of us and our luggage. We hopped out of the bus and into a boat for a safari cruise.

Our little boat cruise was great - tons of hippos, the occasional crocodile, and distant elephants. We had our very own crate of Nile Special on board, too, drinking Nile on the Nile! It rained… maybe downpoured is a better word… for a while, but soon cleared up, and stayed clear for the rest of the ride. Thank God; it would have been a pity to miss the beautiful waterfall that gave the park its name!

We got back in the bus to go to the hotel afterwards. We were staying in some place outside the park, and we were in a hurry to get there before dark. Apparently there was an accident on one road, so we took an alternate route, which I guess was… shitty.

We got stuck in the mud in the park with our 2-wheel drive bus. The weight of all 23 of us and our luggage pretty much ensured that we wouldn’t be getting out any time soon, as did the wheels spinning deeper into a rut in the once dirt, now mud, road. So, William, our academic director, (what a fantastic guy!) said, “Girl power!” and suggested all the girls get out and push the bus. Which we did, barefoot in the mud. As he sat chuckling inside the bus.

Our efforts only succeeded in nearly tipping the bus over in a deeper rut on the side of the road. It was dusk by this point, and William insisted that we get back in the bus. We were a little skeptical – if we got inside, we were sure the bus would completely flip – but obeyed when he told us why he was so insistent. Lions, of course.

Recap: we’re stuck in the mud in the middle of a national park in Uganda; our bus is at a 30-degree angle with the ground, and lions are coming (they never actually came, by the way). And to make the situation better, we keep the engine on and running to “scare off the animals.” Even if someone did come to tow us out, we’d run out of gas before we could go anywhere.

Fortunately, William made some calls and found us a place to stay inside the park. A van came to rescue us at about, oh, 9:00? Not sure. But the only food we had gotten since breakfast – unless you count the Niles – was some cabbage and a piece of bread or two. Maybe a banana or hard-boiled egg. So, needless to say, we were all pretty hungry… and William said there was no food at this mysterious "student housing" where we were staying.

We got to the student housing, which wasn’t half bad if you avoided the latrine, and waited. William said he was going to get us food (and me a first aid kit because, of course, I had sliced my toe open trying to push the bus). But he didn’t, so we just went to bed.

Next morning, around nine: About an hour after we woke up, this monstrous tow truck thing showed up to take us to get food and our stranded bus. By the way, it had rained buckets all night, and we were terrified about finding the bus, and all our luggage, drowned and ruined. And according to the original plan, we were supposed to start a game drive at seven am.

We each got a juice box and one piece of chapatti for breakfast… chapatti has never tasted so good!... and headed down the muddy road. Our things weren’t destroyed, but the bus did smell like stale beer and rotten eggs, which was lovely. And it was covered in mud from the adventures the day before. But we were excited – we were going on a safari! Better late than never!

30 minutes after we began driving through the park, we left the park. We had seen one giraffe and maybe 3 buffalo. A warthog or two, perhaps. That was the end of our “game drive” because, according to William, the roads were going to get worse.

People were pretty upset. To say less than the least. But Rachel Gillete came to the rescue and got William to organize an evening game drive for a max of 12 people, for only $10 each.

We got a real safari truck and guide and everything, which made it better than our first game drive before we even began. But the drive itself didn't disappoint. Especially with the giraffes – they were everywhere! And little warthog families, and beautiful species of deer with twisty horns or straight horns or long, moose-like faces; all of it was incredible. We even got stopped by an angry elephant (though we couldn’t see him) who wouldn’t get out of the road when we were trying to leave the park!

Oh yeah, getting out of the park is another story. Apparently the park permits last exactly 24 hours, and ours had expired. We owed $300 more than we thought we had to pay. When we told them that we didn’t have the money and our director thought the permits were still valid, the park ranger got very defensive, accusing William of purposefully not coming with us because he knew this would happen.

So, after a lot of convincing on Rachel Gillette’s part, our knight in not-so-shining armor, William, came to get us out of our scrape. Actually, the whole rest of the group showed up in the van, like they were coming to bust us out… We were ready to run, too (maybe not me; I had fallen asleep in the safari truck). Lewie was suggesting that we all run into the park, find some lions and get eaten, so they’d be liable for the loss and feel really guilty. Later he revised that brilliant plan, saying that we just threaten to do that, to scare them into not making us pay. But eventually throwing ourselves to the lions was unnecessary. We got to leave the park, no fees required.


Success! And then to Kampala.

Changing Perspectives

It's so bizarre to think what is normal to me now!!
looking out my window to a see a woman carrying an insane amount of fruit on her head,
walking to the bathroom and finding hundreds of white ants on the ground and thinking nothing of it,
thinking nothing of the fact that there's no water... or electricity,
lugging a heavy jerry can of water to the bathroom to take a shower,
and having to go back down again because there's no bucket in the bathroom for the shower,
getting giddy over finding real ketchup or cheese,
smiling and saying, "yes" in a thank-you kind of way when your mom says you're "increasing" every day,
waiting for hours for a bowl of yogurt and granola,
walking past hunks of raw meat, raw fish, and live chickens on the street by the market,
waving at child after child after child who yells, "BYEEEEEEEEEEEE MUNO!" when you walk by,
refusing man after man who asks if you need a motorcycle ride somewhere or if you'll give him your number,
thinking something is outrageously expensive if it's more than 5,000 shillings ($2.50),
seeing children with distended bellies and flaky scalps,
seeing men with missing limbs and no one taking a second glance,
watching a tower of smoke rise from a massive pile of burning trash,
and pulling a mosquito net over your head before you go to sleep.

...I think the only thing more bizarre is what will be strange when I go home:
SHORT SHORTS. or skirts, or dresses,
stop signs and traffic lights,
people who don't acknowledge your presence when you walk by on the street,
people who think you have to be under 120 lbs to be beautiful,
air conditioning,
microwaves, stoves, toasters, refridgerators, freezers,
movie theaters,
department stores... and everything in them,
makeup and going-out clothes. and heels!,
just about anything quick and efficient,
meat that doesn't look like the animal it comes from,
wallpaper,
everyone I miss and love having experienced so many things without me these past few months,
and everyone asking me questions about this semester... I don't know how to explain it all!

FOOD!

The other night we had our first disaster-free night of my cooking... The other times we tried, I nearly set the hotel on fire and got boiling water spilled on my leg. BUT two nights ago, I made pasta with homeade tomato sauce, garlic green beans and carrots, and icing for the cake my mom had made us that day! It was delicious, even though we attracted thousands of ants. Here is my list of Western foods I am perpetually craving:

BRIE, preferably with caramel and walnuts on top, and toasted bread and pear slices to eat it with
Grilled vegetables.... shish kabobs - yum!
Teriyaki salmon, broccoli on the side, or really any not-overcooked veggie on the side
Salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette
Strawberries, pears, peaches, blueberries - blueberry pancakes!
Amish friendship bread... any of Mom's baked goodies
Moist, warm, melt-in-your-mouth brownie with thick ice cream on top... Ben and Jerry's Half Baked Frozen Yogurt
Parmesan cheese. On anything.
Fajitas!
Houston's spinach dip
Apples... available here, but too expensive. And applesauce...
Oreos, homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and a LARGE glass of ice cold milk.
Kona (Khona?) strawberry and crunchy shrimp and volcano rolls and edamame
Wiles Smith's or Sutton's chocolate milkshake!!

Yummmmm.

Christianity in Gulu

It’s so strange that our group is separated now! Rachel and Charity – come back!!

But back when all of us were in Gulu, we had a few interesting conversations with some fellow Americans in Uganda who were there for verrrryyy different reasons.

We came across a group of people around our age, all dressed in matching “MegaFest” t-shirts, at the one place in Gulu with good ice cream. When we asked what MegaFest was and why they were here, a girl with glittery eyelids said, “It’s just some singing and dancing and praying and praising’ God, you know. You should come!”

She told us they were a youth group from an American church that had started a church here in Gulu, though she didn’t know where it was. She was from California, and she had given up a chance to spend the semester in France to come here for a month – “God wins this one!” Apparently the trips, somehow, would have cost the same? I commend her for her choice; not many people would chose Uganda over Paris. She and her group left us, reminding us that the party would be really fun and we should definitely come… oops, none of us did.

The next night a few of us went to a little café for dinner, and we had an interesting encounter with a family of missionaries. A man, his wife, and their three kids sat at the table next to us, speaking in obvious American accents, so one of us asked why they were in Uganda. The father, a wiry sort of man with a gentle smile, answered that God had called them there to tell the people about Him and how they can all be saved. I asked if they were with the group that put on MegaFest, and they said no, actually, they were ready to beat those people for being so loud the night before.

They had gone on mission trips before, short-term stints in America and Latin America, and they had come to Gulu once to pour concrete for huts. Within two weeks, they saw “the great need” of the people in Gulu: Christianity. Oh wait, but not Christianity – that’s just another religion. Ugandans already have that (the country is around three-fourths Christian). But they just say they’re Christians; they don’t really know what it means. They don’t have Jesus in their hearts, he said.

So after their concrete-pouring adventure, they returned to Waco, Texas and started praying that God would send someone who really knows God to Uganda. They didn’t expect it, and they didn’t really want it, but God called them to move here for five years and bring the people to Christ. So they’re here, living in a house with a stove, oven, hot showers, a washing machine, and one-acre front yard with a garden. (Not that I blame them; I’d probably do the same, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to ignore some other great needs in the community.) They try to cook American food, and they occasionally go back to the States, but not too often. “It makes it a lot harder to come back to the living conditions here,” he said. Their living conditions sure sounded rough…

The man, the only one who has spoken to us thus far, asked us why we were here and what our faith backgrounds were. We said we were students interested in the conflict and post-conflict situation in the region, and we came to learn before we went into some career trying to address situations like it. He responded, “you know, I see a million NGO’s around here” but not a lot of impact. I wonder, why does he think his mission is any different than those trying to help Ugandans in another way; why will he have better results? Freesia said she was Jewish; I was raised Christian; Ashley wasn’t really religious. Before Rachel spoke, the preacher asked Freesia about Judaism.

“I’m curious: what do Jews do with Jesus? My generation of Jewish people had a lot of resentment toward Jesus, but I haven’t really spoken to Jews in my generation. I’ve met some Messianic Jews, and they have so much understading – understanding I don’t have!” Freesia said they pretty much didn’t address the issue, but there was no resentment at all.

The man then told us his faith background, the perfect conversion testimonial. He was raised in a Christian home, but “no one ever told me about grace, about forgiveness!” He went to church, obeyed all the rules, and by the time he was 17-ish, he was sick of it. He abandoned the rules, drinking “because everyone else was doing it” and eventually getting into drugs. He was a cocaine addict at 20, and then, in a desperate attempt to avoid “total destruction,” he turned to Christ. He started reading the Bible (we should really look into the Bible, see who Jesus really is, in the month that we’re here. Jesus “isn’t good at playing hide-and-seek") and changed his life. He married his wife, who had come out of the womb a true disciple of Christ, and they had their three adorably blonde curly-headed children. Then the mission trips started, culminating in this one.

They eventually want to build a church, they said, but right now they are just building small groups, “discipling them like crazy.” They chose to start a new church instead of working through an already existing one because it saves so much time, effort and money (sounds just like the NGOs and aid he said were doing so little). It’s too hard, if something is going in one direction, to completely turn it around, he said. Preachers are “crawling all over the place,” but they don’t really know God, so they have to start from scratch. Hell, at home in Texas, if you ask what someone is reading, he’ll have a ready response with what Scripture is “working at his heart.” Here, they don’t even know they’re supposed to read the Bible!... Nevermind that the vast majority of the population can’t read, and they have more immediate concerns – most people don’t have electricity or running water, much less ovens and washing machines. But anyway, they are building up these small groups to eventually have a congregation for their church.

“Jesus said some crazy things,” he was telling us, now abandoning any pretense of NOT trying to evangelize. He used the lying-crazy-or-telling-the-truth argument, saying we should find out for ourselves: “Ask, ‘Who are you, Jesus?’” He was one of the literal interpreters of the Bible, and he reminded us that “the wages of sin is death” and the only way to be with God when we die, “in a place we call Heaven,” is by believing in Jesus. Because none of us know what Heaven is, of course!

Rachel and I had to walk home, so we left around that time. After we left, they gathered around Ashley, placing their hands on her shoulders, praying for God to heal her stomach problems so she could know God’s work. There are no coincidences, they said, so if she got better it was surely the Hand of God. If she didn’t get better, well, even Jesus had to pray twice sometimes, so it wouldn’t mean God doesn’t exist. They just had to try again!

Then Ashley left. They turned to Freesia and told her what they had discussed during our whole dinner – she was the one, out of all of us, whom God had “chosen” to reach… they knew a lot about what God was thinking, apparently.

I wonder, with all the divine wisdom they imparting to the people of Gulu, what they’ve learned from those who “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

I know I sound resentful of that family; I am. It frustrates me to see these people come in, thinking they have the right and the duty to help these people by bringing them to their family's way of thinking, the only right way of thinking. But it's not only religion that does this - so much of our "help" to Africa is just imposing Western values and ideas on different cultures. That arrogance, whether on the part of religion or anything else, is what bothers me most.

Sidenote: On Good Friday, we were visiting a former slave-trading center in Uganda… and when we drove up, someone stopped us and said, “You can’t park here, we’re trying to crucify Jesus.” They were all dressed up in costumes, beating a man with a wig carrying a cross, filming a Passion-esque movie. I’m pretty sure we were in the background of their shots the whole day… we’re movie stars!

Hospitals and Sicknesses... Rambling Train of Thought

We had a drop-off one of the first days in Gulu, and my group’s assignment was to investigate the health care in Gulu. Our last stop, after a hole-in-the-wall laboratory services clinic, small but clean Universal Medical Center, and pharmacy, was the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital.

We walked down the dirt road, past women selling cassava and bananas, through a gate, and into the hospital compound. Past children’s cries to the right, emanating from the Children’s Center and Women’s Center, and a sign to the left: Gulu and Italian Partners in Health, or something to that effect. We turned left, into what we correctly assumed was the main wing. Stepping through the front door and two steps further, we were in the center of the hospital – no waiting room or reception desk, no one to welcome us or tell us where to go. A small bench signified that where we stood was the entryway, a door straight in front of it, maybe 5 yards away, leading outside.

The building was one long hallway with beds on either side. Men and women filled every bed and the spaces between them, lying on mats on the floor. The windows were open, ventilating the sticky heat of the room, and flies buzzed around patients’ heads. A group of black and brown and white people, clad in white lab coats, stood in a circle discussing something. They looked worried, except for a cheery nurse who left the clump to attend to a patient. She told us to wait a moment, she would get someone to talk to us.

I couldn’t help but look at the person’s dry, cracked feet right in front of me – the blanket wasn’t long enough to cover them. The person waved a fly away and caught my eye. I looked away, but someone was calling us anyway.

We were shuffled to the central office, where we spoke to the Medical Superintendent. This is what he told us:
Gulu R.R. is high on the hospital food chain. It is one of 15 regional referral hospitals funded by the government, and the only higher level is national referral, of which there are two in Uganda. One is in Kampala, the other in Mbarara (I think).

The government provides 80% of the hospital’s supplies, which are sent from a national pool system. Services are free.

The hospital serves the North, from Gulu to Kitgum to Pader – a total of around 2.5 million people, and the hospital is designed to hold 250 beds. 400 beds line the hallways now, but the number of patients is near twice that. They operate on 78% of the staff they need, with only 17 doctors. He sad that attracting doctors here was difficult because the Ugandan salaries for medical doctors are low, especially in the North; many med school students go to other regions, if not other countries, to practice.

70-80% of patients come in with malaria, and the second most common disease they see is AIDS.

I’ve heard of the stories; I’ve seen the statistics of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, the child mortality rates. A few people on the program have gotten malaria, but it seemed like nothing – a simple doctor’s visit, decidedly NOT to Gulu Regional Referral, some medicines, bad flu-like symptoms, then it’s over. But when my homestay sister Belita got sick with malaria, I learned what those statistics actually meant.

Belita is almost two years old, and she has had malaria three times, twice since I moved in with her family. When I first came, this little girl was a bundle of energy, and surprisingly consistently happy for a girl close to the Terrible Twos. But she got a cold at first, or that’s what we thought, and became a perpetually fussy toddler. Mama gave her cold medicine, wiped her little button nose, and put her to bed.

But giving her cold medicine is no easy feat – Belita is a fighter. She starts crying as soon as Mama sits on the floor and calls her over, before she even sees the brown bottle. She kicks and screams so much, Mama has to pin her little legs between her own and her arms to her sides. Belita throws her head back, sobbing and trying her best to escape, and Mama holds her nose and pours the stuff into the little mouth, forcing her to swallow. Little Belita gets so mad, she walks to the nearest person, usually me, and climbs onto his/her lap with tears running down her cheeks and an injured look on her face. If she doesn’t throw up the majority of the drugs, which is the usual case, she falls asleep instantly.

But after the medicine episode and going to bed, she seemed better the next morning, and the next. But by nightfall she would fall asleep in my arms, sweat pouring down her chubby little cheeks. Mom took her to the doctor, who diagnosed her with level 1 malaria (still no idea what the levels mean).

We got some more medicine from the clinic near our house, and continued the twice-daily torture of administering it to her. But she never really got better; in the morning she’d be fine, but still, every night, she’d sweat and refuse to eat. Her little limbs started losing their chubbiness and her sleeping habits completely changed, and she was constantly on the edge of tears, all within a week.

So Mama took her to the doctor again, more worried this time, and came back with the news: level 3+ malaria. They gave her a shot at the hospital to start fighting the disease. Apparently, if Belita didn’t improve in two days, she’d have to go back to the hospital and be put on a drip.

Listless and quiet before, Belita would scream and holler her loudest as soon as she knew medicine was coming. But this time, the doctor told us to keep giving her more if she threw it up – she HAD to get enough in her system. Belita would vomit, still crying, grape purple spit hanging from her pouting lip, and Mama would hold her nose again until she opened her mouth for more medicine.

It was awful, and I felt almost worse for my mom, who never got a break from this duty. Even when Dad was home and had Belita on his lap, he’d just hand her over when the bad-guy part came and wait for his good-guy moment when Belita would come to him for comfort. And I would hold her legs or pinch her nose, but Mama still had to deal with it the most.

Mama was sick too, and pregnant – I don’t understand how she does everything she does, and with a baby on the way and the flu, too! I tried to help around the house, but she really only let me go to the market for her.

Belita fell in and out of sleep on the couch for almost two days. She wouldn’t eat unless Mama threatened to give her medicine before every single bite.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mom had told me when I refused to take my billionth serving of posho, “People will think you want to die if you don’t eat!” And I couldn’t stop thinking about that insurance policy that people here have – they have as many children as possible because they expect to lose two or three. It sounds so dramatic, but I was terrified, and it made me homesick for the first time since I’ve been here.

Finally she had enough energy to go outside and play for a few minutes; then she started eating more. When Dad came home from his weekend at school, she instantly brightened. The next day I left for Kampala.

I’m living in a hotel for the month of our independent research, so I went home yesterday to visit my family. Belita greeted me, playing outside in her underwear, and giggled incessantly when I picked her up and tickled her. She was chubby again! I can’t even express how happy I was to see her back to her lively, happy self.

I finally understand this culture’s approval of “fat” people. If you’re too thin here, you’re sick. Most likely with malaria or AIDS… my mom was so happy to tell me I was getting fatter and no longer looked like an AIDS victim. Oh, Uganda! SO different from the States.

Women in Uganda

My homestay mother is 22, I found out a few nights ago. She got married at 16. She has two children under 6, and a third is on the way. My neighbor got married at 15, and yesterday a woman came over to visit with her one-month old baby — she was 14.

Oh, and my dad is 40.

But don't get me wrong, my dad is great. And maybe, because they HAVE to mature so early here, out of necessity, it's not as outlandish for a young woman to feel ready to be married. I don't know though...

It is illegal in Uganda to marry a minor, but that is not enforced (like most laws in this country), especially in the villages, where parents marry off their daughters so they can get the bride price.

My mom said she is lucky; she is so happy with her husband, and many women who marry so young are not happy in their marriages. If the man decides to end the marriage (divorce isn’t really necessary, the man just gets to make that call), the woman gets nothing. Women can legally own property, but this is just another useless law with few real-life ramifications. And many of these women are uneducated, so good luck trying to provide for yourself if your marriage goes kaput!

If she’s lucky, she can go back to her parents until some other man comes along and wants to marry her. But if she has children, or if she gets to keep the children, her parents usually won’t accept her back; she has to “find her own way,” as one man told me.

Many parents won’t accept their daughter back regardless, because they’d have to “refund” part of the bride price. Don’t worry guys, you can return your purchase if you aren’t fully satisfied, but because it’s “used,” you can’t get all of your money back.

But my mom said she would be fine if her marriage ended — her husband paid for her to attend school for sewing and design, and she’d just open up a shop, selling dresses and making wedding cakes, another lucrative skill she has acquired, she told me as I learned how to pound sim-sim (sesame seeds, I think?) into a flour like powder, then grind it with a rock into paste.

A while back, we went to the Acholi Cultural Center to learn about “nonformal education” and watch some traditional dances. The directors of the center told us about their mission and the pillars on which they based their programs, one of which was women empowerment, while another was “eradicating bad culture,” an interesting choice of words, I thought. They told us about Acholi traditions: the chief, who is the firstborn son of the chief before him (but don’t worry, the women can be in charge of the cows), the inheritance of property (again, women traditionally can’t own property), and the way they prevent incest. If a man sleeps with a woman of the same clan, he must jump off the roof of a hut, naked, in front of the whole village, then pee on the woman with whom he committed the crime. Then they bring out a female dog — apparently bestiality cures incest.

I’m guessing this is the “bad culture” the center tries to end. But they never said that; they just said it’s shameful for the man and he would never do it again. And when we asked them about what they were doing to promote gender equality, they didn’t exactly give us the answer we had hoped.

They told us they promoted nonformal, traditional education in the family settings, which consists of pairing the boys with their fathers to learn hunting and planting, and the girls with their mothers to learn the duties expected of a good Acholi wife.

The girls learn to carry jerry cans of water for miles, for cooking, drinking, and bathing for everyone in the family; carry firewood the same; they learn to pound and grind millet for millet bread, groundnuts for groundnut paste, sim-sim for whatever dish I had yesterday, stir the impossibly difficult pot of posho (made from maize flour, I think?); plant and cultivate and harvest alongside their future husbands; cook after they, the women and the men, come home from the day’s work on the farm; sweep the house with a tied bundle of hay, and mop it, bent over, with just a wet cloth; wash the whole family’s clothes if there isn’t enough money to hire a housegirl – never a houseboy – to do it for them; care for the children; and produce more children.

These cultural practices “teach a moral way of life,” the director said; they teach women to be “well-behaved.” If a woman doesn’t know to sit by the door chasing chickens away while a man eats, or if she doesn’t kneel when she offers water to a man visiting her home, well, no one will want to marry her. Women have to be respectful.

In the camps, during the war, the husbands’ duties decreased; they had no land to farm, so men just sat and drank, for the most part. They felt they had no power, no authority, so alcoholism and domestic abuse skyrocketed.

On the other hand, women’s responsibilities doubled. While the men did nothing, most women took up petty trading, taking whatever they could find or whatever they could make, and trading it with other women doing the same thing. Along with their old roles of mother, cook, cleaner, pack mule, etc., the women were the breadwinners, and they had to pay for children’s school fees as well as taxes, and, because the World Food Program provided the food, the alcohol for their husbands.

Many men in Uganda have multiple wives. If a man is monogamous, one lecturer told us, people would say "he has been defeated by his woman." The more wives, the more power. Same goes for children — one man my age said his father had 15 wives (unusual even for Ugandans), and 48 children. He didn’t even know the names of some of his siblings. And his mother was a rare one; she left his father and set out, much like my mother says she would, setting up a shop and finding her own way.

The men at the center said that rape was never a problem before. Women didn’t complain; men would just pick them up off the street and take them home, “whether they liked it or not.” Slapping was an expression of love.

But during the war, rape became an issue because rebels (and government soldiers) were kidnapping and/or raping young girls and women. The international community brought attention to it, so some changes started slowly happening. Now rape is illegal, and now female genital mutilation in Eastern Uganda is "discouraged" by culture and by law.

Since the war ended, the director of the cultural center told us, things have been improving. It takes time, and we are just "culture romanticizing," because A) America has complete gender equality and B) gender equality is something only Westerners push for/want, right? Wrong.

And then he said that women are "cheap" now because they complain. Or at least the educated ones do.

To Grandmother's House We Go!

The other night, my mom, Belita and I went to my grandmother's house for a short visit.

Of course, walking down the uneven dirt road, I fell. Typical. And I didn't catch myself because I was holding Belita, so I scraped up my knees and one ankle, and I had to walk the rest of the way with blood running down my leg. Mom kept saying, "Ooh, I am unhappy. You hurt yourself; I am unhappy," as we walked, and my grandmother looked completely shocked when she saw me. She went to get a bucket of water and some soap for me to clean my scrapes, and by the time she came back, her whole grass hut village had gathered to watch the hurt mzungu.

So, I finished cleaning myself off and wrapping a little cloth around my knee to keep the flies away, and we went into my grandma's hut. The thin old woman offered me and my mom the couch, while she sat on a mat on the floor. She had prepared a FEAST for us (we had already eaten a "snack," the size of a normal dinner, before we left the house.. at about 3, after I had already had lunch). As usual, we were expected to finish everything.

My grandma decided on an Acholi name for me at some point during the meal, one different from the Acholi name my mother had already given me. I don't remember what it was, but it meant "what can I do?"... If only she knew how fitting that was. But my mom eventually convinced her the earlier name, Aber, was better. Grandma told me about the meaning of her young daughter's name, which was something about coming close to death. I asked why, and she replied that when she was pregnant with the child, she had been shot by LRA rebels. She and the baby almost died.

My mom later told me that woman wasn't actually her mother, just someone who took her in when her real mother died. I didn't ask how her birthmom died. But this adoptive mom, she said, lost her father and two brothers in the war. I'm slowly realizing, just like in Rwanda, death has touched everyone here.

Family

I absolutely ADORE my family.

My mom is young and energetic; she has a high singsong voice that she uses as often as possible. She’s very fashionable, even with the five-month-old bump just now showing on her belly. She is a tailor, and she’s given me a little fashion show of her clothes – the first dress she ever made is an amazing 80’s prom dress with a black velvet top complete with poofy sleeves, and a long white ballerina-material skirt. She made me try it on (it fit!) and wanted to give it to me, but I legitimately don’t have room in my suitcase.

I have a one-and-a-half year old sister named Belita, and she is the cutest thing in the world! She loves to see herself… she could sit for hours looking at pictures of herself on her dad’s laptop, saying “Ooh! Lita!” every time her face appears on the screen.

Recently she’s been sick, and I was terrified she had malaria. People here say that families plan on losing about three children before they reach their fifth birthday, to malaria or diarrhea or something. My baby sister has already had malaria once, and she’s not yet two. Thank God it’s only the flu.

My dad is a program director at the biggest radio station in town: Mega FM. He’s a doting father, and much more quiet than his wife. I don’t know him very well because every weekend he goes to school in Kampala; he’s working on a degree in Conflict Management.

I live in a little house in a compound surrounded by grass huts and pigs and goats and chickens and ducks running everywhere. Two (or three?) other families live in my compound, and all of them have kids under 6 – I love it! It’s just one big group of women and children all the time… I have no idea where all the other husbands are.

The electricity is never working, and my toilet in a hole in the tiled floor in the bathroom, right next to where I take a bucket shower in the morning. But to be honest, I’d much rather use that latrine than a public toilet in a gas station in the US! And I am seriously considering taking bucket showers in the States. We waste SO MUCH WATER with our fancy “massage” showerheads and all.

My mom always tries to convince me to be the one to kill the chicken whenever we have one for dinner (I told her the only meat I eat is chicken… I can’t bear to eat a goat or duck or cow… or one of the fly-swarmed fish I see in the market), but I refuse point-blank. From all I’ve learned about the American meat industry from all the vegetarians in our group, I’m also going to seriously reconsider how I eat meat when I get back.

Nakivale Refugee Camp: Part 2

Half of the group went to see Rwandese refugees like Oliver, but after my lovely conversation with him, I decided I had heard enough of their side. So I went with the other half of the group to the Congolese refugees (this sounds too much like a zoo visit) because I wanted to learn about the conflict in the DRC.

I don’t know much about the conflict in the Congo, other than that Rwandese militias are there; some LRA militias are there, and there seems to be utter chaos that the government cannot control. In the past 20 years, millions have been killed, and nobody really knows by whom because there are so many rebel forces, and there doesn’t really seem to be an end in sight from what I can tell. The largest UN peacekeeping force in the world is stationed in the DRC, but their mandate is set to expire early this summer. I have no doubt that mandate will be extended, even though the Congolese government apparently wants them to leave in order to prove they have control over the country.

We walked into a concrete shed/room and filed into wooden benches. Congolese men and women filed into benches on either side of us until the room was packed; probably 25 people were standing in the back. Our director introduced us as students, “ambassadors” for their stories, and future leaders of America. Then the refugees started asking us questions.

First, why so many Somali refugees get to come to the States, and Congolese don’t. We had come once before, and nothing had changed; what were we doing here again?

Our director William answered the second question for us: we didn’t come to help; we came to learn. We came to hear their stories and spread them in America, and maybe in the future, we could change their situation. But there would be no short-term satisfaction.

William was very clear and calm in his explanation, but he seemed angry. I didn’t really understand that – their question seemed perfectly justified to me. This group of white kids, with our nice clothes and notebooks and pens, comes in and listens to their problems, writes down some details about their personal lives, and leaves. No help, no recognition, really, of what they told this group of strangers ever comes… the strangers go back and live their lives, as usual, and so do the refugees. So why did we come, if we weren’t going to do anything?

Then they told us their story.

"This is a people war, not a guns war. If it was a guns war, we would go home," a refugee who translated for us said. Many of them said they have been in these camps most of their lives.

They told us about the water – “The health people told us safe, pure water is clear, but ours has color.” They get food from World Food Program, but they have trouble cooking the maize and beans they get because they don’t have firewood. Cutting the trees is forbidden; it’s a conservation area, so the women (always the women!) have to walk miles to go get logs for the fire. Many get raped on the way. And the amount of food isn’t even enough – the school requires a certain amount of maize for school fees. So their children aren’t in school.

One man stood up; he had a degree in Public Health, but he couldn’t get a job. He couldn’t even get books; he felt like he was losing all his knowledge and would never get it back. A Burundian nurse stood up – same problem. She was born in this camp, had lived here her whole life. She didn’t even know where “home” was. And she had gone to the nearby clinic to ask for an interview for a nursing job recently, but they told her to come back in two weeks. She came back so excited! When she returned after two weeks, though, they told her they had changed their minds… they needed nurses, but not refugee nurses.

Another woman stood up. She said life was hard for women, especially those who weren’t married. When there is some sort of manual labor a woman cannot do, she has to ask a man. But they usually won’t help without compensation. So the women have to have sex with these men, even if they might get pregnant, even if they know the man has HIV, even if that ruins most chances of their getting married in the future.

After she spoke, almost everyone in room started whistling and yelling louder than before. We couldn’t decide: were they whistling in support of this woman, or were they making fun of her suffering?

After we thanked them for their time and honesty and filed out of the benches and the stuffy room, we walked back towards the van. I stopped to say hello to a cute little boy in a Tigger shirt and a doe-eyed girl with braids. I was looking at them, smiling, when a man walked up: “When you go back, you will forget these.”

…I never even knew their names. How can I remember them, distinguish theirs from the faces of so many children I've seen?

We rode back to town in the van and spent the night celebrating Charity’s birthday at a bar.

Nakivale Refugee Camp: Part 1

Cows got thinner and thinner the closer we got to Nakivale. More kids have runny noses; fewer houses are made of concrete. They are made of mud and sticks and have tarps for roofs, weighed down with more sticks to prevent them from blowing away or collapsing during the rainy season.

I sat next to a man named Oliver on the way to the camp. He is a lawyer, a Rwandese refugee, a Hutu living in the camp with thousands of other Hutus, who claim they are innocent of the genocide crimes many are accused of committing.

Oliver told me his side of the story, which began with the “real” facts: 50,000 Tutsis, at most, were killed in the 100 days of genocide (80,000 by most counts, 1 million according to Rwandans). No more could have been killed; there were so few! So many had fled Rwanda long before 1994… although there were no massacres before the 1994 genocide; apparently the Tutsis had other reasons to flee their country.

See, genocide wasn’t planned; even the radio programs just “incited hatred,” but never promoted killings. Hutus are simply naturally “brutal,” and they loved their president (who, he claimed, was killed by the RPF), so they, actually only a few, according to Oliver, picked up their machetes and started killing when their president was assassinated.

Hutus are also naturally merciful, so many tried to hide or save the Tutsis, as Oliver did (of course!) during those three months. But Tutsis are ruthless. When the revenge killings began, no Tutsi tried to save a Hutu. So the real tragedy is the 1.5 million Hutus that were killed after the genocide (the figure from most sources is 25-40 thousand, most killed when the RPF was still trying to stop the killing).

The people sitting in the camps – most are innocent. And they want the guilty ones to be punished, of course. But the gacaca courts in Rwanda punish the innocent and free the guilty (makes total sense for Rwandans to free those who killed their families and friends..)! If there is no evidence other than one witness’ testimony, a man must be acquitted; if there are no survivors from a killing, a man must be acquitted. SO the innocent people in the camps cannot go back to Rwanda.

Reconciliation is not actually happening in Rwanda. People simply say it is because the government, under the new divisionism/genocide ideology law, will put them in prison if they say anything different. Tutsis are teaching their children to hate Hutus, pointing them out on the playground, and taking them to memorials (memorials! God forbid!), while Hutus in the camp are doing the “right” thing: not teaching their children anything about ethnicity or the genocide.

Oh, and the bones in Murambi are not Tutsi bones. They’re Hutu bones that Tutsis dug up from graves to make the genocide seem worse than it really was. (I suppose the scars on survivors’ faces, the missing limbs are made up too?)

They appreciate what Kagame has done for Kigali’s economic development. But still, the only barrier to reconciliation, the only problem for Rwanda, is Kagame. Because they have proven that the democratic process is impossible in Rwanda (Evidence: Kagame, a Tutsi, won), they must “prove him wrong militarily.” The armies in the DRC and Burundi etc. have more weapons than you can imagine, and they will act very soon, Oliver said with a chuckle. The grenades in Kigali were too militarily weak to be the rebels’ work. They were the government’s ploy to scare people into letting the government squash anything resembling opposition in these months before the elections.

The scariest part about this conversation was not the BLATENT rejection of everything I’ve learned in the past month; it was that some of his story might actually be true. What if the grenades were the government’s doing? Everything about the genocide itself was false, but I don’t have a clue as to what is true about the current regime… for all I know, Oliver’s story that Kagame had police beat his parents when they were searching for him could be true! For all I know, Ingabire’s associate (Ingabire is the opposition candidate, her associate was accused of genocide recently) was in Sweden in 1994, like Oliver said, and the government is using anything it can to reduce her influence.

NO IDEA what to believe about that, but I do know that those bones in Murambi, those survivors I saw, were real. It was beyond disrespectful to say that they weren’t… beyond disrespectful to say that there were no killings in 1959, the year my Tutsi family fled to Uganda and stayed for 35 years.

It’s interesting that Tutsis were in the same spot in 1990. Refugees with nothing to do, no country to call home until they mobilized the RPF and invaded Rwanda that year. Now these refugees say they will do the very same thing…

Kibuye

SO behind! And now procrastinating writing a ten page paper on media and the Rwandan government... interesting topic actually. Kagame's government recently made "divisionism" and "genocide ideology" illegal, and the definitions of those terms are so broad that the government can manipulate it to mean just about anything. But theoretically, the laws make some sense in context. I can't figure out what to believe... the government is definitely VERY restrictive of the media, but I don't know, it seems like the international community sometimes forgets that genocide happened here only 15 years ago. Maybe restrictions on free speech are still a little bit necessary, if even just to assuage the fears of survivors who think it might happen again at any moment... but definitely not to the extent of suspending the BBC Kinyarwanda radio program for "denying genocide" and an independent newspaper for an article exposing a government official in a sex scandal. And disappearing journalists... that scares me.

Here goes. A semi-update on my recent life.

We spent a few days this past week in a little paradise in western Rwanda: the town of Kibuye on Lake Kivu.

The drive there was less than idyllic, curving this way and that, falling all over everyone in the crowded taxi, but beautiful nonetheless. Especially when we neared Kibuye — the water is an impossible teal, and the greenery just overflows around it. Even the hotels, white or cream with terra cotta color roofs, couldn't ruin the scenery; they almost looked fitting.

We joked that our program directors were going to spoil us and get a five-star hotel for our mini-vacation, but we expected our usual hostel situation. However, we continued driving, up to this little place atop a penninsula... a pleasant surprise compared to our usual accommodations! We were right on the water, two people per room, and we had HOT SHOWERS! It was amazing.

The water was perfect for swimming, and the color was no less incredible up close. We took off after lunch, swimming to an island in the distance... I didn't quite make it, but a couple people did. We read and journaled on the "beach," really just steps down to the chalky white volcanic rock that forms the lake. The whole scene looked pulled from a coloring book! We took a little motor boat to a "Bat Island" nearby the next day, supposedly the habitat for around 5 million bats.

A lovely boat ride and short walk later, at least a million of them were swarming over our heads. They were everywhere, flying in circles, mirroring this weird ring around the sun. It was completely surreal! And kind of scared some people, or grossed out those who were pooped on, so we backtracked and took a swim before heading back to the hotel.

That was basically how our days went, sitting and reading in the sun or swimming in the clear blue water, surrounded by volcanic islands and mountains in the distance. Amazing!! The phrase of the week was, "Guys, we get college credit for this," until Apollon told us his story.

Apollon is our Assistant Program Director, and a survivor of the genocide. He had just graduated high school at the time. He and his family hid in a university in Kigali that was protected by the UN; they thought they were safe. But the UN had to evacuate the campus for their own safety, and they left the people hiding there to fend for themselves. Apollo lost his entire family that early April, but he somehow escaped; he hid in the bush for weeks, and he witnessed the rape and carnage of the genocide firsthand.

We came back from Kibuye Thursday, and we visited a TIG camp the next day. Apollon translated a convicted genocidaire's words for us; the man, who had killed five people, said he was "at peace," and happy at the prospect of returning home in a few years. Apollon translated this. Apollon, who saw men like these kill people with his own eyes, Apollon, who survived while hiding from people like this, whose whole family was killed by someone like this! I don't know how he did it. I asked him how he felt about the whole situation, and he said he was happy this man was at peace with himself, though he didn't necessarily think it was true. He said healing is impossible after genocide... it's just not fair that Apollon can't heal, but this person can say he's at peace. And these TIG workers can carry machetes and hoes, doing work for the community, which is great and all, but still.

Apollo said, if he were president, he'd outlaw machetes. I think I would too. And I'd hate dogs. Every time I see one here, or hear one howl at night, I think of the bones I saw at one of the church memorials... the bodies were left unburied for weeks; when Apollon came to help design the memorial, they were still untouched, but for those that had been eaten by dogs.

Friday night was the homestay party, on a lighter note! We collaborated with our brothers and sisters to make a "cultural presentation" for our parents and our partner school's students. The Americans did a traditional Rwandan dance; the Rwandans danced to Cotton-Eye Joe (sp?), and then we sang, together, a Kinyarwanda song composed by our very own Lewie... who my sister described as a "Rwandan with white skin." God, I love our group.

Tomorrow we leave for a refugee camp is Uganda... I am not ready. I love my family; I love this country! Maybe it's just how beautiful the country is, but everyone is just so happy. We're kind of cleansed, in a way, from all the American hustle and bustle. It'll be awful when I get back to the States... I'm going to be at least an hour late to everything.

Gisenyi

Chiara and Kara cut their hair Friday – beginning of a very interesting weekend.

That night, a bunch of us planned to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and out to a club afterwards, so we went home early to tell our families where we were headed for the night. Well, my dad wasn’t home, so all of us kids were locked out of the house until he got back with the key. It was so much fun though! We sang a bunch of American songs; they attempted to teach me the Kinyarwanda/Swahili songs that came on the radio, and I taught them some ballet… my brothers got rhythm! They were showing off their hiphop skills, which was especially adorable with my youngest brother, who is too shy to speak to me much. But we finally got in the house, and I finally got to the restaurant at 8:30 – half an hour after we all were supposed to meet in town.

No one else got to the restaurant until 10. They got lost in the taxi or something, going the wrong way, who knows. But the food was great! We didn’t end up going to the club afterwards, though, because we finished dinner at midnight and wouldn’t get home until 1 am anyway. And walking down a dark dirt road at 1 am is scary enough; we didn’t want to make it any worse for ourselves.

The last Saturday of every month is umuganda all over Rwanda. Basically, at least one person from each family shows up at a certain spot in the neighborhood to do community service all morning, and then they gather for a meeting to discuss the community’s problems and possible solutions. My neighborhood was bushwhacking, making another dirt road.

I didn’t really know how to use the tool my brother Robert handed me (something between a hoe and a machete), so a random man lent me his hoe for 20 minutes, and I dug out some weedy bushes/grass. That was about the extent of my umuganda. I didn’t feel too bad about my worthlessness because several women were too well-dressed to do any of this work and were simply socializing. Umuganda, in general, seemed like a useful time for a bunch of locals to get together and talk – and be productive at the same time. It’s remarkable how quickly the road materialized down the hill… seemingly going nowhere, just further into a field.

So I started up a conversation with some man about my age, and he told me that the whole neighborhood used to be a forest. “In ten years, there used to be rabbits. You can find no rabbits now,” he said (in ten years = ten years ago). He said he and his friends used to hunt birds with slingshots in the area. It’s strange to look at this devastatingly beautiful country and know, if I have any hope for a prosperous future of the people here, much of that natural beauty will be gone, replaced by shopping malls or gas stations.

After my exciting stint at umuganda, I met some people in town and hopped on a bus to Gisenyi, a resort town on Lake Kivu. Some girls in our group had left the night before, so we hung out with them Saturday night, slept 4 to one queen bed, and went to the beach in the morning.

The beach is beautiful. God, everything here is so gorgeous! The lake is perfectly blue and backed by silhouetted blue mountains on one side, green hills to the other. To our right, stately houses stuck out into the lake – Goma!! The DRC! Weird, how close we were; we probably could have swum over the border.

The other girls had warned us – they had about 35 men and boys surrounding them at the beach, when they were doing nothing but sitting in their bathing suits. Granted, bikinis aren’t all that common, nor are white girls on the public beach, but STILL. It was RIDICULOUS. In less than half an hour, we had 20 people, mostly kids, circling the four of us. We weren’t even doing anything! We weren’t even speaking, hardly! Normally, I would attribute it to a simple cultural difference and be totally fine, but there was one guy shooing people away for a while, so I know this was inappropriate anywhere. And then, when I was asleep right beside my backpack (I don’t know how I slept with all those people staring at us and talking), someone reached in, grabbed my camera AND my glasses and ran off. My friends were reading, and they didn’t even notice what had happened; some kid had to gesture to us that someone had run off with my stuff. So, camera and glasses gone, people literally encircling us who absolutely refused to leave, plus the fact that I had gotten up like five times during the night, not feeling well... I was not happy.

So we left the beach all in a huff and went to lunch at the Serena Hotel down the road. I felt like I was walking into another world. There were UN cars sprinkling the parking lot, a huge fountain in front of the entrance, white everywhere… white people everywhere, too. And the brunch looked absolutely divine. I think I forgot how amazing hotels can be – it was so nice to use their bathroom and sit on their porch, looking out on their private beach! We couldn’t afford the amazing-looking brunch, so we got the cheapest pasta on the menu and just enjoyed pretending to be hotel guests. Even weirder than the switch from our beach experience to this hotel was that this place was more along the lines of my normal vacation – am I always so removed from the real lives of people around me? I can’t believe that 500 yards made such a difference… naked kids who couldn’t be more curious about these strange foreigners to the occasional (very rich) African not even giving us a second glance.

As guilty as a felt, falling into this fake world of sky blue pools and “traditionally dressed” Rwandan busboys, I felt so comfortable there. And the pasta tasted like home. But then we had to walk back through town, brush off the kids following us and asking for money, and catch the public bus home, and strangely enough, for the first time, I saw another white person using the public transportation.

There is SO MUCH I wish I could put on here – our trip to Nyungwe National Park, our trip to the Millenium Village, stuff that is far more important than Gisenyi – and maybe soon I’ll have enough time to update.

After Murambi, the 13 of us went to a bar. By the way, onions and fries are a delicious combination. We gave up our cultural appropriateness entirely and loudly sang all the American pop songs that are CONSTANTLY streaming from the tv’s constant music videos. Sometimes I like being an obnoxious American :)

We decided we didn’t want to sleep alone, so we took ALL the furniture out of two of the rooms and replaced it with lots and lots of mattresses. Ahh, yes, middle school sleepovers! Except in a hostel with very large bugs.

The next day we went to a Women’s Association in rural Butare, and it. was. amazing. I was freezing because I had gotten stuck in the rain, and didn’t know where I was going… and didn’t have a raincoat. But that’s irrelevant.

These women are either widows of genocide victims or wives of genocide perpetrators – and they live and work and pray together as friends. They told us that “the Word of God” brought them together, and that their faith had brought them through their hardships, which I thought was pretty interesting. Especially since the church had been so complicit in committing the genocide.

It was such a great example of Christianity being used for GOOD, not just for converting “heathens.” Also a great example of foreigners doing good by empowering the people, not imposing their culture or ideas – a foreign priest had been these women’s first therapist, and he helped facilitate the organization of the association.

Those women were some of the strongest and most incredible people I’ve ever had the honor of meeting. They were beginning to include some of the former genocidaires, too, but in baby steps. They said they would not accept them until they were sure they truly ascribed to the reconciliation of the two groups. When I asked about any male survivors being included, the answer was this: there are none. Or if there are, they are so mentally or physically handicapped from the genocide that they can’t be part of normal life.

As we left that dark little concrete room, the women got up to dance and sing… and they pulled me in after Charity had joined. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but it was great! They were so joyful, celebrating these little white people coming to visit their village!

That night we went back to the bar for the fries and onions… and slowly realized that we were the ONLY girls in the entire place. And the men were numbering around 80, sitting in rows watching a soccer game projected on the wall.

We eventually found a bedroom next to the bathroom… apparently, we were in a brothel. Or maybe the owners slept in there? I hope? Anyway, we got the check and ran outta there. And realized that the day before, the whole restaurant had probably thought our only guy, Lewie, was our pimp. Lovely!

Another sleepover… Never Have I Ever… and the next day, we visited students at the National University. THEY SLEEP TWELVE TO A DORM ROOM!! IN WHICH THERE ARE SIX BEDS! God, I thought living in a dorm instead of an apartment was bad enough. They also had 140,000 books in their library… can anyone tell me how many are available to UNC students?

We talked to the Unity and Reconciliation club, and it was unbelievably nice to have people speak English comfortably. I spoke to a man Eddy for a while and learned that he survived 1994 by running into the jungle and eventually escaping to the DRC. When I asked about the rest of his family, he said, “The story of my parents? All dead. But life goes on.” One of his sisters is the only other family member who survived, but he doesn’t even know how she escaped. And he wants reconciliation, not revenge. Pretty amazing.

Then the bus ride, then Kigali, then homestay, who welcomed me home with the two Rwandan food groups: carbs (i.e. rice) and beans!

P.S. I have fellow dancers (except I don’t really count as a current dancer…) on this program! YES!

WARNING: GENOCIDE MEMORIAL. DEPRESSING.

Rwanda is called “the land of a thousand hills,” but the landscape here is more majestic than that phrase conveys. It is more dramatic than rolling hillsides, but gentler and greener than mountain peaks. The drive to Murambi Memorial in Butare was no less beautiful… I think I annoyed quite a few people by gushing over the view from the window!

We were very close to the memorial when we drove past a parade of men in blue clothing, carrying hoes and farming tools. These men, our program director explained, are genocidaires performing TIG – general interest work. The government provides a place for them to live, and they essentially do community service to “repay” the community. Since they can totally make up for what they did 15 years ago. Rwandans continually amaze me. I meet person after person who lost every person he loved in the genocide, but he still wants to reconcile with the people who caused his loss. And it seems to be working! If only every divided community worked so hard to unify and heal EVERYONE, not just the group most recently victimized. Cough Israel.

Back to Murambi.

It was supposed to be a school, but never opened because of the genocide. The radio encouraged Tutsis to take refuge there, saying they would be safe, but it was a trap – the 40,000 Tutsis hiding there were weakened without food and water for days. Then the Hutu militia surrounded the hilltop and killed everyone. 40,000 people… 3 survivors.

We met two of those survivors, who were at the memorial (I think they always are?) while we were there. One man, who smiled and waved, and one woman who walked with us through the would-be-classrooms. I don’t know how they can bear to be near that place with so many memories, but maybe that’s exactly why they stay. Maybe it’s the only place they feel at home because all they have left is memories.

I warned that this would be a depressing post, so here goes: after the massacre at Murambi, the interhamwe (young Hutu militiamen) buried everyone in an unmarked mass grave. Before they had even finished cleaning the blood from the walls, floors…everywhere, Operation Turquoise had begun. French soldiers stayed at Murambi during their operation, which essentially provided an escape for Hutu genocidaires into the DRC. They hoisted their flag right outside the classrooms; they played volleyball on top of the mass grave. And they knew what had happened there.

After the RPF took control of the government, they bodies were exhumed, and most were reburied in a properly headstoned grave… because the dead care whether there is a headstone or not on top of their thousands of bodies. I always find it odd, how mourning is so much for the mourners, not the ones being mourned.

The others were preserved in a plaster-type fashion and laid in the classrooms. Their families, whoever survived, wanted it that way - for people to confront the reality of what happened.

The first thing that struck me when we walked through the rooms was the smell. I will spare you those details, at least. But we wandered into room after room; we saw body after body, skull after broken skull. Some of the bodies still had a bit of hair; some still had a shirt on. They all looked tense – fingers and toes curled. Even the tiniest hands and feet seemed clenched. One classroom simply had a stack of bones and rows of skulls; the last room was huge and empty, but for the shelves and shelves of the clothes of the victims.

We then walked outside to recover ourselves, but I hadn’t cried. I kept thinking I couldn’t cry if that man, one of the three, had smiled. So I went back into the classrooms and took pictures.

I know it sounds vulgar and disrespectful, but I felt almost like I had to. Everyone always talks about “never again” and how horrible these things are, but we never have to see it!

Americans, or at least most people I know, never see anything like that. We keep our distance from poverty and violence; we give some money to a charity and call it a day. We call it an “Africa problem” or a “third world problem,” like a disease that can be cured, and the cure is free elections and our mountains of aid.

But when people can’t read an election ballot, how can democracy be present? When a country depends on foreign aid to keep its economy afloat (partially because the aid has defeated enterprise and promoted corruption in government), how is self-determination possible?

So I took pictures to force people to confront it. But not even pictures, worth a thousand words, can reproduce that smell. Or express the feeling when an old woman – who survived this atrocity – ran over and wrapped her arms around me, comforting ME.


Happy post coming soon.

Well. Quite a lot has happened since my last post. And I'm sorry I can't reply to everyone's emails... I feel guilty spending a lot of time in the internet cafe, and this is really the first free hour I've had all week! They keep up pretty busy here. But to everyone (Granny, Dad, Mom, Melissa) who has sent me emails and updates, I enjoy reading them, so keep 'em coming! As for everyone else, PLEASE send me an email - I want to hear about your lives!

Also, my phone is being ridiculous. I can't send international texts (but it charges me for them anyway..) and sometimes the sound doesn't work. It's questionable, but I think it will work if you, meaning anyone, call me on my Rwandan number (this is EXACTLY what you would dial from a US phone): 011-250-782-16-0930. I am working on getting the phone fixed... but it may be a while before I get to that.

I am living with a Rwandese family now, and that has been a trying adjustment. The first night with them, my parents, sister and I went to dinner at a nice restaurant in Kigali. My parents insisted I get a beer, so I ordered the same one my mom was having - Primus, which is pretty good, as it turns out. A waiter then placed one very large fish one our table, and I was told to eat. But I didn't see any silverware, or any plates for that matter, so I asked my mom to take the first bite, hoping to come off as polite, not completely confused. My mom reached forward, grabbed a huge hunk of white meat, bones, and skin, and put it in front of me. The fish was pretty good, but it took me a second to get over my initial shock and recover a smile... I'm sure my mouth dropped when half a fish plopped down on the table before me. But oh no, the new eating experiences did not end there. Apparently, I am deathly thin in the minds of my African family, and they are bound and determined to force-feed me until I am not so "weak," as my mom is fond of calling me. My brother prefers to say that I am "just learning to eat, like a baby." My mom also told me, "You shall eat until you are as big as her!" (referring to my sister, who is a bit shorter, and probably 15-20 pounds heavier, than I). My solution (without making my stomach explode)? Sneaking potatoes to my brother when my mom isn't looking, and taking my second, maybe even third cup of tea - probably 50% sugar - to the bathroom and pouring most of it into the sink.

But that brings up another point - the water! I have it! Some SIT students' families don't have running water, so they take bucket showers. And pee into a hole in the bathroom. While I have a nice sink, toilet, and even a SHOWERHEAD! No hot water, but it's great. It did take me about a day to figure out the toilet, though; they keep an old gasoline can filled with water in the bathroom, and you pour that down the toilet to flush it. You probably don't want such a graphic description of my bathroom adventures, but oh well...

My family, despite the whole eating thing, is incredibly nice. I have 10 siblings (6 brothers, 4 sisters), and they all actually speak to me a little now! That is quite the accomplishment. The first night, only my incredibly socially awkward 22 year-old brother Robert said more than 2 words to me. Now they all love me! Probably because I gave them free reign with my camera - taking pictures of everything in sight, including filming the TV for 20 minutes - but still. I'll take it. My parents speak English very well, enough to discuss the importance of teaching history in schools to prevent something like the genocide from happening again, and I've even gotten to help my youngest brother with his English homework! Which made absolutely no sense, by the way. His teachers are American, and they assigned him this sentence, with the instructions to change the noun (calves) to singular: Amanda the biggest calves is the whole school. I didn't really know what to do with that. They all LOVE the TV and watch it all the time - during dinner, after dinner, while doing homework, right when they wake up, etc. But it does play the Rwandan news in English (after it plays the EXACT SAME news in Kinyarwanda and French), so that's nice. And they wake up at 6 am or earlier. Every morning. And turn on the radio and the TV and talk, so I get up then, too! I have absolutely no idea when they shower, but I guess it's even earlier than that, because it's always free when I want it. But we all have to shower every morning and wash our feet at night (which I never do) - they think you are literally insane if you don't. So Dad, no worries about me never showering in Africa... I actually shower here more than at home!

Other than homestay family life, our days pretrty much revolve around the school lectures. We ride the taxi in the morning, or walk if it breaks down like mine did today, and usually head to Bourbon Coffee or the internet cafe to avoid too much culture shock.

But the other day we visited Gisozi Memorial, the largest genocide memorial in Rwanda. It's a very we4sternized, museum-type memorial, so I think we all kept ourselves together better than we would have in a more unfamiliar setting. The exhibits went through the history of the Rwandan genocide - before, during, and after - and other genocides around the world: the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, Herero genocide, Cambodian genocide, and others... though it didn't mention our treatment of Native Americans, which I would consider genocidal. The most harrowing part, though, was in honor of the Rwandan children who died. Families gave the most recent picture they had of their children killed in the genocide, and below the pictures, there were little plaques with personal tidbits: their favorite foods, their favorite toys, their best friend. One child had his last words on his plaque. While waiting to die, he said only to pray. Another boy's last words were even worse; he was comforting his mom that UNAMIR would come and save them; the UN surely wouldn't let them die.

I could write for hours about that experience - the guilt, the sadness, the awe at the efficiency of this horrible "work" and at the resilience of such a traumatized country - and I think it's important to recognize how awful it was, and to recognize our part in allowing it to happen. But more important, I think, its recognizing that life does go on. We walked away from that memorial, where 258,000 people were buried - that is only 1/4 of the people killed in those 100 days in 1994. We walked away, went home; we ate pizza that night for Pete's sake. But so did Rwandans. They experienced that tragedy, and they have to go on living, every day, with those memories. Some with the memories of a loved one dying, right in front of their eyes, some with the memories of taking a machete to the head of their neighbor, even wife. Every survivor wonders why he is left, why he survived, when so many others didn't. But they do have to go on - even with those who killed their friends...that takes an incredible kind of strength. I think I would feel more guilty if I allowed my far more petty sadness and guilt to keep me from living.

Sorry for the sad ending...
your mzungu friend