Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Salsa All the Time
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Sunday, March 29, 2009
A Disgusting Show of Overpriveledged Entitlement
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Greece/Grease Night
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Kigali's Diva
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Sunday, March 22, 2009
St. Patrick's Day Ball
So this weekend was a real ex-pat experience. Until now, I've had many occasions to feel how ridiculously small the ex-pat community is... everyone knows everyone. Or so it feels. This weekend, however, I had quite the opposite experience. I was absolutely stunned by how many people there really are.
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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Trivia Night
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Saturday, March 14, 2009
Mount Kibuye
Yup. I decided to climb another mountain this weekend. Or rather, I decided to go on another hike this weekend - the climbing a mountain part was something I THOUGHT I had done before, but I was completely mistaken.
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sheer Strength and Will Power
I remember writing a blog entry about the strength of the people in Nicaragua. At one point, I marveled at Ronald’s ability to do a pull-up into the ceiling and hang there forever, on one hand, as he motioned and gave directions with the other. I took pictures of the workers in the taller hauling ridiculously heavy boat engines around the yard like they were nothing. All the white boys that tried to do the same buckled under the weight.
Here, again, I find myself impressed by the strength of the people. But this time, it’s the women and children. I spotted a kid that was racing down the mountainside with an even littler sibling in tow. Frustrated by the limitations of his siblings short legs, he hoisted the kid onto his back in one fell swoop, without missing a beat, and continued his run down the hill to join the posse of children following us about.
Not quite as exuberant, but equally as visible, are the women who toil in the fields. I was so stunned by the image of this woman here. Barefoot and pregnant, with a child tied to her back and a huge pile of branches on her head, I watched her as she labored up a hillside that sits at a 75° angle to the horizon while the sun beat down on her. She endured so quietly, and when I got close enough to hear her breathe, I was stunned to find her breath even, regular, and hardly strained. How?! I was carrying a water bottle and a camera, and looking for ways strip off clothing in order to lower the amount of weight I had to carry. I tried pawning my bottle off on everyone at least once. I was huffing and puffing and wheezing and sweating. And here was this woman, calm and quiet.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Child Mob
I’ve become quite accustomed to being an object of curiosity for the kids. Especially in Butaro, where the 3 abazungu in the entire region all work at the health center where kids go only when deathly ill, they just don’t see white skin that much. The adults are polite enough to keep their distance or stave their curiosity due to social norms, but the kids stare wide-eyed and not-so-surreptitiously try to touch your skin or hair.
You’ve already heard me talk about the kids a zillion times, but our experience on the way back from our hike on umuganda was the one that I’ve internalized forever.
Our hike lasted longer than Emily would have liked, and since she’d promised to cook for the PIH compound that night, she hailed an ambulance as it drove by. Luke, Hannah, and I didn’t want to forgo the last stretch of our hike – especially since it was passing through town and by a waterfall. Because of umuganda, there were community events going on, one of which happened to be a soccer game. It appeared to be highly organized; the players had uniforms, they were actually using a real ball, and they all appeared to be around high-school age. Surrounding the field were parents and little kids, all actively engaged in watching the match take place. The three of us were intrigued. We thought, “Hey, this is cool! A soccer game. Let’s watch.” And so we approached the side of the street and stood on tip-toe to see over the crowd and get a better look.
Suddenly we hear “Abazungu! Abazungu! Abazungu!” and the entire crowd around the soccer field (let me remind you this soccer field appears to be regulation size, and the crowd really does encircle the field) starts to stir. Screams and shouts erupted as everyone between the ages of 2 and 14 started moving toward us. Since there were significant people right beside us, not much happened at first, but as we looked out over the field to the kids on the opposite end, we saw them heading at a full-on run toward us. The weight of the crowd shifted second by second, and with one look at each other, we decided that for the sake of our safety, we had to start moving. Apparently watching a soccer game was not going to happen.
We moved back onto the street. Because kids were jumping around in front of us, we could only walk slowly. I felt both my hands get picked up and examined. Some kids were intrigued by my fingernails, probably since most people here work with their hands, and can’t maintain the fingernails endemic to an easy lifestyle. I was wearing a tank top, and I felt small hands run down by back above my shirt. The fact that I was super gross and sweaty from a day of umuganda work and a 4-hour hike didn’t seem to bother them. I felt some of the taller kids try to get my hair clip out of my hair. Kids were screaming and jumping around and grabbing at each one of us. I practically clung to Hannah, but Luke got stuck and ended up quite far behind us in the sea of screaming children.
We walked through town as the chaos ensued around us. The experience was literally overwhelming, and there was a part of me that was quite scared. Even though I was entirely aware of the kids’ motivations and objectives, the crowd was out of control.
Suddenly, in an instant, the kids scattered and the shouting stopped. It was like the light had just come on in a kitchen full of cockroaches. I looked up to see a police officer chasing one of the slower kids with a whip. Although none of us agreed with his methods, we all three couldn’t help but thank him. We walked out of town collecting the last threads of ourselves, heaving huge sighs and trying to calm the thumping in our chests.
Later Luke mentioned how he’d seen footage of Bill Clinton walking through town with a similar crowd, and had attributed it to the fact that Bill Clinton is who he is. He figured that even here in the back-country of Rwanda, people would know who he was. Now, he’s not so sure. Perhaps being umuzungu is enough to qualify you as a celebrity.
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Monday, March 2, 2009
Hiking the Countryside
The second half of umuganda consists of community meetings and events. Since they were all going to be in kinyarwanda, and our participation would be limited, we instead decided to head off into the hillside to enjoy some of the views. Since Emily lives up in Butaro, she knows the hills really well, and lead us on an adventure to see some of her favorite sights.
My first thought was on the sheer steepness of the hills. Gosh. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest after only 3 minutes of walking as I was basically walking up stairs the whole time. Thankfully we only had to climb for about half an hour or so before we were high enough up that the hillside smoothed out a little. This shot was taken at the top of the first hill. Luke leads the way, with Hannah, myself, Emily, and Eric (and of course, the gaggle of kids) following behind.
My second thought was on the sheer beauty of Rwanda. Mountains give amazing views. You can get up high, and look down on life going on all around you. What was particularly interesting to me was this was a mountain view that was actually defined by HUMAN life as opposed to the “natural, untouched landscapes” of most mountain views I see. Houses and carefully cultivated farmland dominate the hillsides, and what you see is human subsistence-living going on everywhere. Here, Hannah, Luke, Emily, Eric, and I pose in front of the valley we were about to walk through. You can barely see the path we walked in the mountain behind Hannah. It sits about halfway up the mountain side, and is wide enough for a single-file line.
We wandered through the pathways that act as the main routes of most transportation here. No one has cars – people walk. We wound around the perimeter of that valley (Emily has a particular affection for it), and entertained the revolving group of children that followed us in our apparently aimless wanderings. Here Hannah and Emily were far enough ahead that the group of abazungu were split up, and the kids followed behind whichever umuzungu was most interesting to them. I love this shot.
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Sunday, March 1, 2009
Umuganda
Umuganda is a great concept that would NEVER fly in the United States. On the last Saturday of every month, every able-bodied person in the entire country is expected to work for three hours in the morning on some kind of community project. The community leaders have the authority to choose the project and everyone in town is expected to show up. Those that don’t are fined a rather hefty fee. Of course, being an umuzungu, no one really expects you to participate since the hefty fee is totally affordable for foreigners. But since Partners In Health is so integral to the community here, and we wanted to do something worth talking about, we participated with gusto.
The day started out EXTREMELY rainy, which rather affected the general level of enthusiasm in the area, but we persevered. The task for the day was cleaning off and fixing up the road that leads into town. Now, as a non-kinya-speaking umuzungu, I had a little trouble trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. I thought that since erosion is a giant problem with the roads, we’d want to KEEP the plant-life growning on the sides of the road. Simultaneously, I though that perhaps creating a drainage system might help – perhaps cleaning out the ditch along the side of the road would allow it to collect water in lieu of having a natural ditch create itself erratically across the middle of the road. I also figured creating controlled trenches across the road to guide rainfall into the roadside man-made river (and cover those trenches with wooden slats, much like what I did while in France) would help to create a more permanent solution to the eroding roads. But well, I was obviously mistaken as to our objectives. Instead we cut back all the plant life, killing whatever could possibly help to keep the road in place. We did clean out the ditch, but then spent a significant amount of time moving the recently-deceased plant life across the width of the road, (probably with the objective of dumping it over the side of the mountain) which effectively left piles and piles of dead grass and leaves and whatnot all over the road. I can just see the rainfall tomorrow moving it all right back into the ditch. Yeah, I didn’t get it at all. But hey, I was participating nonetheless. Of course, my skills with the hoe left a bit to be desired. I couldn't tell if all the attention I was getting was because I was white and participating, or if it was because I was absolutely useless with the tools I was given. Notice how graceful I look here [above left], and my devoted audience. I eventually got a lesson on how to hoe properly from a dude who wanted to marry me until he found out I was WELL beyond child-bearing age. [right.]
Anyway, what made the whole event even more exciting was having Oliver there. Oliver has been in Rwanda off and on for over 5 years now, and actually speaks a decent amount of Kinyarwanda (although he didn't help us understand exactly what our umuganda objectives were). He was socializing with the soldiers/community leaders in charge of the event and getting the crowds to sing and dance to random American tunes they had never heard before. Peter took some footage on a video camera that was such a hit, the kids were going crazy. Since the little ones aren’t expected to participate in umuganda, they mostly just hung around being jealous or watching the abazungu (that’s plural for umuzungu) super-intensely. [right]
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