Disparity

“Abazungu (white people)! Agacupa (water bottle)! Abazungu (white people)! Agacupa (water bottle)!” were the cries that filled the air on the road leading to Bisoke, a 12,000 foot volcano in Volcano National Park. Bisoke is home to Crater Lake, a pool of water floating in the clouds, half a day's climb from where we were walking. It is also home to several gorilla groups, one of which we were fortunate enough to see despite not having paid the price for an actual gorilla trek, a far pricier experience that makes for an excellent source of revenue for the government of Rwanda. It is hard to understand that, somehow, on the road between the park's beautiful tourist lodge from which all of the guided tours are based, and the border to the actual park, there can be such abject poverty.

Of course, this is not due to a lack of effort on the behalf of the park to make conservation benefit the local community. Over complimentary coffee and tea in the morning, we were entertained by traditional dancers. Gorilla trekkers, armed with thousand dollar cameras, foot-long lenses, and tripods, snapped pictures the same way they would later capture the gorillas. Rwandans love to share their culture (not to mention, they were being paid to do so), but those snapshots will hardly begin to be able to cover it. In the weeks that they are here, dance may be the only thing those tourists really intentionally learn about Rwandan culture, but it's only a small part of the whole thing, and, after eight months here, I know that even I am just beginning to scratch the surface. I wonder if the photographers will go home with these images and think that they have somehow managed to gain an understanding of Rwanda.

However, some will get more of a taste than others. Disgruntled, the German tourist who climbed Bisoke with our group, parked his fancy rental car a few miles from the park parking lot for fear that the bumpy road would damage the suspension. He cursed at having to pay someone to watch his car so the tires wouldn't be stolen and grumbled about being ripped off and behind schedule for the rest of the day, not even attempting to keep it under his breath. He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand what it feels like to have something dangled in front of you, knowing that it is something you will never have. His car is an object of wealth that the people surrounding the park must be forced to look at every day knowing that they will never possess anything like it. I wonder if he saw it: the difference between himself, a well-groomed, well-fed tourist, in good enough health to climb a 12,000 ft volcano just for leisure, and a tiny Rwandan child, covered in dirt, pant-less, with a distended belly and fluffy, red clown hair from malnutrition. It is disparity like this that is the reason it is considered rude to eat in front of others in this country. It isn't like in the states where you can safely assume that anyone that observes you snacking at the bus stop has the opportunity to go and buy themselves something at the closest convenience store if they so choose.

Maybe we weren't eating in front of them, but we might as well have been. The children ran alongside us, asking for money and water bottles with the justifiable expectation that we should be able to give them these things. My friends and I tried to mitigate this by greeting them and explaining ourselves in Kinyarwanda, but there is only so much you can do to diminish the expectations that have been upheld for generations. In my own community, I am the sole person responsible for building or not building the expectation of free handouts. However, I find this particularly challenging on the days when missionaries visit my church only to hand out candy and biscuits before they disappear again. On these days, I find myself faced with new demands and I am forced to explain, yet again, that I am a person and not a bank and that candy is bad for your teeth anyways. These are not fun days for me.

I must constantly remind myself of the reason for days like these. Rwandans didn't wake up one day and decide to start making ridiculous monetary demands of foreigners for no reason. Those expectations were put in place long before I arrived here...and they will likely be in place for long after I leave. In some parts of the country, like in Kibuye, where I recently attended a training, tourists are so common that they are virtually ignored, making for a blissful past week. Now, back at site, I am faced, yet again, with the challenges of being the one muzungu in my community. While it is comforting to be home where everybody knows my name, the reality is that they wouldn't know my name if they didn't associate it with my status as a foreigner. There is no reason that every child in town comes running to the road screaming when I come home on a moto, no reason except for the fact that I am white. In the next couple of years, I have the opportunity to try to undo some of the stereotypes associated with my nationality. I only wish those stereotypes hadn't been so firmly put in place by so many generations before me.

The Rainy Season

The rainy season. We have so much to do in the rainy season. The kickoff to Memorial Week is our reminder: a funereal procession following a man with a distorted microphone, driven in the back of a blue pickup truck with a broken windshield, who stutters so rapidly in Kinyarwanda over the sound of a generator that I am sure that I am not the only person who cannot understand him and that, perhaps, he doesn't mind this. His speech is punctuated by statements of Never Forget, Never Forget, our reminder that, this week and this week alone, we will be given no choice.

However, the Resurrection of Christ will have to take precedence. We are in Church. We are in Church all evening until well after the rain and well past the time that most people are normally in their homes after dark. We are in Church in the morning too, being constantly reminded by our priest to liken Christ to our loved ones. To look to rebirth and renewal, rather than to the horrors of our past. This is a time of year we need the prayer and Easter is more enjoyable than Memorial anyways.

We have a whole week of state-mandated mourning to perform, most of which, thankfully, is cut short by the rain. If not, it is cut short some other way. This is no time to talk about the past. This is the time to talk about gratitude. A district official makes this clear as she stares, bewildered, at an elderly man, drunk off too much urwarwa who comes to the microphone and begins to tell us the details of his past. Not today, she says, gingerly snatching the microphone from his quivering fingers. Not this moment. This moment we will discuss why we are thankful. That will be all for now and all that we will hear for all of the days.

Each meeting is so much like the next. On one day, guest speakers touch briefly on the crimes against the bodies of women, another on the crimes against the minds of our children. Crimes of ideology are the worst kind of crimes we really care to discuss. On most days, we end early, on account of the rain. Rain that we are grateful for after long hours spent on wooden benches, trying to drown out the sound of the speakers without any success until the sound of the rain, the same rain that unfortunately failed to end the crimes against this country we are now forced to discuss in the rain every year.

18 years of discussion. 18 years of well-contained mourning, if you can call it that, meant to make sure we never forget, but also that we never have to remember. Nothing is more frightening than having to remember. For 18 years, the 3,000 bodies in the Red Zone have lain, unburied, where they died and 18 years the mourners have been there, asking for their burial. And, after 18 years, we are still forgetting them. The world is forgetting. Like it forgets and forgets and always forgets even though the word in front of forgets, we are told, was always supposed to be never.

A day after remembering, my community is resurrected from the dead. We are in Church again and it is time for Baptism. Crying babies are subjected to cold water, dripping down their faces in a rush to cleanse them of the sins of their ancestors before it is too late and beaming parents smile into camera lenses in an attempt to make this a moment never forgotten. The ceremony is tight, contained, which each ritual step memorized collectively by the whole. At the last final clanking of the bells we proclaim Dushimiye Imana (Thanks to be God) and it's raining again with nothing to do, but let loose and dance in it.

A Sliver of Rwandan Insight on Kony 2012

When I first heard about Kony 2012, it had already been viral in the states for a couple of days. I didn't get a chance to watch it until about a week after a friend posted a link to it on my wall, or until controversial screenings of it were quickly called off after a riot in Lira, Northern Uganda.

My personal opinion on the video was that it was well-intentioned, but paternalistic by focusing so much on the efforts of American do-gooders and so little on the opinions and desires of actual Ugandans. The video also dumb the issue down pretty significantly, thus failing to emphasize the fact that Joseph Kony is currently in the DRC (although, if you watch closely, he does mention it) and that ending violence in the DRC is a much more complicated and monumental task than the mere capture of one man....but that's an entirely different topic and different 100 blogs in and of itself.

However strong my own opinion on this video was (and is), I decided that a more valuable voice to add to the conversation was the voice of my students. While they are not Ugandan, my students are mostly of an age in which they have witnessed violent conflict within their own lifetimes. They also live in such close proximity to the Congo where Kony is said to be hiding that many of them are Congolese or have family that live in the Congo so I figured their opinion was more relevant than my own.

I was also happy to see that the organization I first volunteered for in Africa, The Real Uganda, had posted Ugandan reactions to the video, giving a voice to the people that the film claims to be helping. They were outraged. Following my expectations, Ugandan bloggers said that the video was lacking vital information, demeaned the power of Ugandans to act for themselves, and failed to address real Ugandan needs for post-conflict development. I expected my students to have similar views.

They did not give me the answer I anticipated. Despite the fact that I had prefaced the video by saying that it had sparked massive controversy in Uganda and that it was OK for them to criticize the film, they had a fairly positive opinion of it. They were happy to see Americans paying attention to an African issue and agreed with the sentiment that Kony should be made famous. Angie, who at first needed help with some of the facts, was of the opinion that "People are people. Where they are should not stop others from giving help to them." In what seemed to mostly be an attempt to satisfy my urge to criticize the movie, Patrick mentioned that perhaps the people in Uganda who do not like the video are politicians who don't like the fact that the movie makes them look like they are powerless to catch Kony on their own. I mentioned that the movie glossed over a lot of important details about the conflict in the DRC, but their response was that maybe now that people were paying attention to Kony, they would do their own research and come up with better solutions. I didn't have the heart to tell them how little people actually use their access to information technology.

I was initially convinced that I had failed to explain the situation of Uganda and that that was the reason my students weren't more critical of the film. However, after a little reflection, I think their response can be attributed to Rwanda's own, very different, history. In 1994, the United States did precisely the opposite of what it is doing now in Uganda. Instead of intervening in what was clearly a genocide, American policy makers refused to acknowledge the tragedy occurring in Rwanda for what it was. Now, in the aftermath, my students frequently point to the US to say that it should be doing more to intervene on crises taking place in Africa. While discussing how the lack of US aid to the Somalian famine was due to America's own weakened economy last week, Faustin said, “I think that, if I have a house with three chambers, and one of those chambers is destroyed, I might want to rebuild that third chamber. But, if you have a house and all of your chambers are destroyed, it is better that I use that money to build a chamber for you because you have nothing and I still have a house." Politics aside, he said, it was always the responsibility of those who have even the smallest ability to help those who are suffering.

Granted, Kony 2012 isn't about Rwanda, but it is about stopping a man guilty of significant crimes against humanity and that's something I trust my students to have a fairly good understanding of. Take their opinions with a grain of salt, knowing they come from a different place than the Ugandan rioters who were so vehemently against the film, but also that their opinion comes as a result of Americans doing nothing. My own opinions on America's responsibilities as a wannabe global superpower are constantly on shaky ground and my conversation with my students has done nothing to solidify them.

It Takes a Village

You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child? Well, here in Rwanda, it also takes a village to raise a...well, I guess I'll go ahead and say it...a muzungu. Actually, it takes several, which is due to the fact that a village is approximately 10 households around here so my community as a whole is easily made up of four villages outside of my own. And man, do my villages have some collective parenting skills! They know when I'm sick; they know when I'm tired; they know when I'm cold and when I'm hungry....of course, they always think I'm hungry and frequently remark and the sad fact that I have not, in fact, gained any weight since arriving in Rwanda, which is really something I ought to remedy as soon as possible. From my basic physical needs to my education as a proper umunyarwanda (Rwandan citizen) my villages have all the bases covered.

I realized this for the first time two days ago as I was about to enter the school grounds to teach. I was stopped by Sister Patricia, who wanted to fix my hair and to try to wipe something that turned out to be a bit of dead skin off on my face. This is fairly common practice for the nuns, but here, in front of my place of work, I realized for the first time how much I was being mothered. However, it's not just the nuns that seem to think I need looking after. It is the personal responsibility of every mama in town to make sure I am doing well. If I don't wear a sweater, I'm told to go home and get one; if I wear a sweater, I'm told to put my hood up; and, if my hands are cold, I must be sick and there is a good chance someone will come by my house later with tea and bread...not that I mind. Even my all-male staff refuses to allow me to walk in the rain, a doting tendency that borders on the absurd when it's sprinkling and I need to make my way from the teachers' lounge to the classroom. Last week my headmaster spent so long running around the grounds to find me an umbrella that it had virtually stopped raining by the time he handed it to me so I could go home.

In addition for monitoring my physical well-being, my villages are heavily invested in my education and each person I talk to during the course of the day is a teacher. On some days, my glowing parents are thrilled that I seem to have learned a new word (although it's often an old one that I simply haven't had the occasion to use yet) and even happier to try to teach me something new. Beyond my ongoing language education, the mamas that run the co-op with which I work are raising me to be the perfect Rwandan bride and constantly comment on the good fortune of my future husband when I do something as mundane as pulling a weed or sticking my hand in a puddle of cow manure to plant a sweet potato. And these skills actually do equate into my appeal for marriage. I was recently informed that several men have, in fact, been by to visit the priests (my surrogate fathers for the next couple of years?) to ask for my hand in marriage. Thankfully, the fathers had the sense to tell them to ask me, knowing full well that none of them would muster the courage.

A few months ago, I would have found all of this undeserved attention rather undesirable. I would have assumed that people treated me with so much deference due to some sort of horrible socially-constructed racial divide, the precise barrier that I am trying to break down in being here. However, it seems that the doting is more of a result of my villages getting to know me than it is that they see me as a foreigner. They certainly wouldn't have been so comfortable commenting on my choices in fashion (earrings are a big deal around here) or grabbing my hair to fix it in the middle of the marketplace if they still saw me as a complete outsider. Buhoro buhoro (slowly by slowy, as they say here), I am working my way into this overgrown family of mine.

To Explain Why I Came from America

Ah! The joys of teaching. Today marked the official beginning of my World Wise Schools (WWS) correspondence program with students in America. I brought in letters from a 6th grade class that, conveniently enough, my mother teaches at the school I went to growing up in Evergreen. The chaos that ensued was too precious not to take some time away from marking papers to record it.

Right off the bat, my students were dumbfounded by the difficulty of the task: to read a letter and to write a letter. While their English is definitely at a level where they were able to understand the assignment, their self-confidence is not. After I explained the instructions for the task in each of my classes, there were absolutely no questions...that is, until it was time to begin. Suddenly, my instructions were completely unclear and my students were telling me they had no idea what I could possibly expect of them. When we went step by step through the instructions a second time, I found that they actually understood each word perfectly, so I asked the what the question was. The only response they had for me was, “It is difficult, teacher.” It wasn't that they didn't understand what I expected of them, it was that they were terrified of actually doing it.

Eventually, I did manage to calm them enough to break into groups to read the letters, but then I found that they wanted to write back in groups. Of course, we all know how the story of the group project. One person does all the work, the rest learn nothing, and they all end up with the same score. I had to vehemently deny this option and insist on the fact that my students are in fact separate entities and could, in fact, write a letter about themselves all on their own. I had overcome my second hurdle.

Once they began writing, the results were magnificent. First, Innocentos in my S6 class just about cried when he came to the end of a letter and found that the author had ended it by saying, “I can't wait to hear from you.” He started dashing madly around the classroom to ask each of his peers what it could have possibly meant and was convinced that it meant his pen pal was not looking forward to hearing him. Even after I had identified the problem, forced him to sit down, and explained that “I can't wait” is a common English phrase that also means “I am excited,” he didn't believe me and ended up including the following in his letter:

I'm not happy for you because at the end of your letter you wrote “I can't wait to hear back from you!” I will be happy when you will tell me why you wrote it.

Who knew such a harmless and well-intentioned phrase could cause so much damage?

On the whole though, the results of the letter writing project were phenomenal. Sure, some students copied their pen pal's letters word for word, which led them to write that I had once been a student at their school and that my mother is their teacher or that they had recently gotten a few inches of snow....none of which are true, but some of the other results were both hilarious and heartwarming.

One student had just been reading an entertainment section of The Denver Post in Newspaper Club on a day that I had introduced them to comics, crosswords, advice columns and letters to the editor. This particular student was completely shocked by what he read and just had to ask a student in America about it. He wrote:

Dear my friend: John

How are you Me I'am OK Because I have life.

I Had to ask you a few question

I have just read the letter from Disgusted in last week's copy of your news paper in it she makes very wild remarks about the youth of to day and suggests that we are all noisy selfish violent

Where is his evidence

I have met some very disagreeable adults even in my own short life, but know people young and old, are different

Remark like that of Disgusted help no one I am surprised that you found space in your paper to print it and promote his views

My GOD bless you

So there you have it, the opinion of a Rwandan youth on the opinion of an American adult on American youth. That's what this dialogue should be all about: asking questions about a different culture and thinking critically about differences of opinion. Students at the Montessori School of Evergreen are in for a real treat when those letters arrive.

They will also be receiving a huge dose of gratitude. One student wrote:
"Do you eat every morning break fast? How it can be possible?" serving as a reminder of how lucky many of us are to be eating three meals a day. My students' gratitude for having both parents or for having a family with siblings, coupled with decently awkward questions about the marital status of their pen pals (a perfectly normal topic of discussion, here in Rwanda) spoke volumes about the importance of family in this country as their questions about whether or not there are animals like cows and gorillas in Colorado were a good indicator that a correspondence program was a perfect choice to both break down some of the mental barriers constructed from leading an isolated, village life and teach them about life outside of their tiny country. Of course, they will probably also break down some of the barriers of living the sheltered and privileged life of Evergreen, Colorado.

Of course, reading through their letters tonight has also told me how appreciated I am...something a former English teacher of my own has recently reminded me is far too rare an occurrence in the life of an educator. One of my students wrote:

Catie is my teacher explain why she came from America to teach in Rwanda? But for school Catie is best teacher We love so much.

That's the thing about being a teacher, especially here in Rwanda, the benefits always outweigh the costs. Yes, I have come a long way from home to do this, and yes, one some days it has been challenging. Today itself was a challenge just to pull my students' teeth and get them to write a page-long letter a piece, but by the time I got down to reading those letters, it was all absolutely worth it.

A Baptism

Last week, Christine invited me to her baby, Benine's, baptism. Christine is one of the women I work with in the nun's co-op and she is also the primary caretaker of the rabbits, meaning that we end up spending a lot of time together and we were really starting to develop a friendship. So I couldn't possibly turn down her invitation.

Sunday Mass was like any other, crowded, hot, and sweaty and full of singing, standing up, and sitting down. Thankfully, my Kinyarwanda has come along enough at to the point where this is fairly tolerable since I can understand some of what is being said if I really apply myself.

Halfway through the service, it was time for the baptism. The mothers, who occupied the first couple of rows of seats in the central part of the Church and came forward together. First, the priest dabbed oil on the foreheads of all the babies in a row and then went back in the same order to pour water on their heads. None of the babies were too happy to be a part of that. I always feel sorry for babies at baptisms because it's meant to be their special day, but it always seems like it is one of the least enjoyable days they could imagine. But after the water, the hard part was over for them. The priest walked by and placed a cloth briefly over each of their heads while several attendants walked around to light the candles that the mothers had been given beforehand. Again, this seemed like a part of the ceremony that had given little thought to the feelings of its infant participants as most of the babies instantly tried to stick their hands in the candle flames that were right in front of them as their mothers sat back down and tried to pacify them.

When Church was over, I took photos of Christine and the nuns, as promised, outside. Little Shimwe, Christine's first child, did not look happy to see his baby sister getting all of the attention. Granted, despite being quite sweet, he always looks a bit disgruntled, which I have attributed to the fact that I have been told that he drinks beer already. The nuns picked him up and tried to cheer him up and I ended up taking a bunch of pictures and, in the hubbub, I got way too comfortable and my phone got stolen. At Church! When I was taking pictures for a baptism! This was not one of my warm, fuzzy Rwanda moments. I made a huge fuss in front of the entire congregation and made it clear that I felt like my trust had been broken. Here I was, alone, having given up an entire life in America so I could try to help people, and, in the midst of doing so, one of them had stolen my connection to my family from me.

Thankfully, everyone wanted to help. Father Vincent tried calling my phone several times and invited me over for lunch to calm me down. He seemed to not want what had happened to my phone to reflect badly on his community and kept on making the point that 99% of people are good, but it only takes 1 person to do a bad thing, which is true. I had momentarily forgotten that it was my confidence in the goodness of people that had driven me to do Peace Corps in the first place. In fact, the reason my phone had been so easily stolen was because I had grown so comfortable and trusting with that 99% that is good.

After lunch, I was invited to a bar and restaurant by my house to celebrate with Christine and another family that had just had their daughter baptised. Rwandan parties mostly consist of sitting around drinking soda and beer and eating meat and fried potatoes. I couldn't drink because I am a girl (unmarried women are all considered to be girls here) and I couldn't eat the meet, but it was a good get together anyways. As part of custom, everyone in the group got up and made a speech. Christine's husband made sure to include me in his own, extending an invitation to me for every family event they would have in the future. I really felt like I was a part of the family. Later, more of my friends showed up. Sister Rukundo handed Benine off to me and I sat, bouncing her up and down, while Marigo got up and danced, and Laurence, my Kinyarwanda tutor-to-be sat and chatted with me. It's good to be starting to have people to celebrate with here in Rwanda, even if it does just mean sitting around eating soda and fries.

"To Study Football"

Even more than I am a fan of soccer, I am a fan of African soccer fans. So, after hearing that my school had a TV, I had asked my students to tell me the next time there was a game in the Africa Cup so I could watch it with them. I thought the games were on Saturday though so I was caught off guard when Faustin was waiting for me on my porch on Friday afternoon when I was coming home from a walk with Beans. Apparently, Tunisia and Niger had started playing 12 minutes ago! It hadn't rained all week, but of course it started at that exact moment so we ran to the school under a couple of umbrellas only to find that there was no reception because of the storm. All the boys were crowded together in the cafeteria with their eyes fixed to a black screen while the one boy with a raincoat stood outside in his rain coat trying to adjust the satellite dish. Finally, the game was on and the teams were tied 1-1. My boys scooted around to make room on a bench for me in the front. The reception went in and out a couple of times and the image was fuzzy, but it was football! On TV! In the middle of nowhere, Rwanda! My students crowded around to explain Kinyarwanda soccer terms to me (of which, I only retained the off-sides rule or “kwiherera” that translates literally to mean “to be alone”). My students predicted Niger would win, but they would have been excited no matter what the result because they ended up cheering for just about everything. Tunisia ended up slaughtering Niger, scoring twice in the last 20 minutes, leaving the final score at 3-1.

It was time to eat. It was already 8:00 so those boys piled out to get their food FAST. I made my way out of the school to make my own dinner and overheard the girls singing in the dormitories, which made me realize that not a single one of them had been in the cafeteria. I guess it's not considered very feminine to take too much of an interest in sports.