October 30, 2008 at 12:16 am · Filed under Uncategorized
If you’ve been following the news today, you’ll know that the situation in Northeast Congo, on the border with Rwanda, has been escalating. Yesterday rebels pushed back UN troops and moved into area in the Northeast; today they’ve surrounded the provincial capital, Goma, threatening to take it and shots were exchanged across the Rwanda border. At day’s end, the rebels were calling for a ceasefire,and the UN warned that Congo is on the verge of a catastrophic refugee and humanitarian crisis, as thousands of refugees are already fleeing Goma and other parts of Congo.
While Rwanda has been able to attain stability and peace since the genocide, it has been at the expense of instability throughout Eastern Congo. The RPF, the rebel force which liberated Rwanda, literally chased their war into the Congo. After the war, Hutu militia sought refuge in Congo and established camps, all with Congolese support. They continued their terror on the small Tutsi population in Congo, originally refugees themselves from Hutu pogroms in Rwanda. Since the genocide, for reasons of Congo’s own making and the overflow and leftovers of the war from Rwanda, Congo has been locked in civil war and instability all sparked from Northeast Congo.
Now the rebels, claiming to be protecting the small Tutsi population from the Hutu militia have taken much of Northeast Congo in a muddy battleground that includes the world’s largest UN peacekeeping force, inept Congolese forces, and, surely, Ugandan and Rwandan forces operating covertly in the area. It’s a mess.
For an excellent overview of the current crisis and “How’s Congo’s Heaven became Hell,” check out this article from the BBC.
October 24, 2008 at 7:10 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve a lot of time telling you about Rwanda already, but not much talking about genocide. It’s remarkable how easy it is to go along here without thinking about it - even forgetting about it - , notwithstanding working for an organization which directly engages the genocide. But it’s there.
October 18, 2008 at 3:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This post isn’t about Africa, but it was on the radio in Africa, which is close enough. While driving back from our village site yesterday, BBC Radio replayed a 1993 radio documentary called “Ghetto Life 101.” It features 13 year old Lee Allen Jones and his friend, 14 year old Lloyd Newman, narrating their life in the ghetto of South Side Chicago. They are at once soberingly innocent and all too aware of the hopeless world they live in. It’s startling and one of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever heard. Here I was driving through the countryside of a poor, African country who just one year after this piece aired, was victimized by civil war and genocide. And I was most horrified by the state of these parts of our own, “advanced” and “developed” country. In 14 years, Rwanda has come so far and in the same time, America’s ghettos have remain unchanged, marked by drugs, senseless violence, and overwhelming hopelessness.
October 17, 2008 at 2:57 am · Filed under Uncategorized
So apparently the some streets have names here (but try telling the Rwandese that) and mine is called Umuganda Boulevard. For the most part though, street names and addresses are more the stuff of Western legend than practical reality. When I registered with the US Embassy, under address I put Prima 2000, the name of my building (2000 as in the millenium, not a street number). Apparently this is how addresses work here.
Anyways, I find the street quite quiet and boring. We’re in a diplomatic part of the city (American Embassy, British Embassy, EU, President’s Office, Ministry of Education and other embassies all have their “addresses” on my street) and about 10 minutes away from the downtown (just one hill over). But my neighbor apparently (that’s the third time I’ve use that word in this post, I know) gets up early enough to see a much more interesting street than I do.
So for a good description of where I’m living, check it out at her blog.
While bankers in New York learn that what goes up must come down, it’s easy to feel somewhat inoculated here in Africa from the global financial unraveling. Indeed, without a major stock index on the entire continent (Apologies to Johannesburg, but you’ll need a market capitalization of at least $1 trillion to play in the minor leagues. Double that and we can talk about the Big Leagues.), doom and gloom don’t seem to be running wild here like other places around the globe (Zimbabwe’s 531 billion percent inflation excepted - though that seems to have little to do with sub-prime mortgages.) While there’s still plenty of regular doom and gloom abound, no one should be jumping from tall buildings any time soon (at least not in Kigali, where tall buildings are something of a rarity).
According to The Economist, arguably the world’s most important newspaper, Africa’s prospects are actually looking pretty good. It seems China’s still buying, Africa’s over-regulated banks were never allowed to invest irresponsibly abroad anyways, and the aid money and direct investment keeps flowing from governments (Japan, China, Malaysia, India, and the US, Europe, and Gulf States) eager to court Africa’s vast resources. Watch TV here and you see commercials for tax-free cities in Dubai and burgeoning stock markets in Poland - it’s bizarre.
Reports The Economist, even adjusting for the global slowdown, the IMF still expects something around 6% GDP growth for the continent. It was less than 1% at the beginning of the last decade. Prices for commodities will certainly fall, but even tempered demand will still be high. The US wants 25% of its oil to come from Africa by the next decade and China is an unscrupulus driller.
So maybe Africa is’nt such a bad place to be.
I asked one of my Rwandese co-workers why she cared about the US election. She said she just cares about the economy and someone fixing it. I told her the good news, that Africa is doing pretty well. So we (myself included) don’t have to worry, I told her. She reminded me that we work for an American organization. America goes down, we don’t have jobs. Not so un-inter-connected after all.
October 14, 2008 at 9:40 pm · Filed under Observations
The opening of Nakumatt’s (a Kenyan chain) first store in Rwanda in Kigali’s small but sleek central shopping center/ mall has been all the rage this past month. It’s not just that it’s huge (some people say it’s two floors because it has a small second level in the way back, I say 1 and a quarter), or that it sells everything (it’s like a miniture Wal-Mart), but that it’s absurdly open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I don’t know what life is like in Nairobi, but Kigali isn’t exactly a 24 hour a day kind of city. In fact, you find that “sleepy” is one of the most common words used to describe it.
Nakumatt’s supplies are all imported (even in a landlocked country, the fancy kind of imported) and mainly caters to the ex-pats and prosperous. Maybe the size of a normal sized supermarket (you know, the ones without the starbucks and the dry cleaner), it enters a market dominated by a small market also specializing in imports, but smaller than a large 7-11. Suffice to say, it’s light years ahead of the competition - and, honestly, Rwanda itself.
But by jettisoning a market that closes at a reasonable hour and early on Sundays, Rwanda is leaving their despised Francophone (good luck finding a French supermarket open on a Sunday, much less 24 hours) colonial roots for a firm desire to chase the promise of prosperity of American capitalism. Rwanda wants to speak English, not French (which is why our school will teach in English, by government decree); they want a buzzing capitalist center, not sleepy, sober cities; they want IT and long hours, not agriculture.
So bring on Nakumatt with it’s multiple floors, flat screen TVs, frozen foods, treadmills, imported fruit loops, dismal produce selection (doesn’t matter where you go, produce just shouldn’t be bought at supermarkets), multiple checkout stands, and fancy bar code scanners (beep..beep..beep..now that’s the sound of progress, American style!). If you want to speak like America and work like them, why not shop like them too?
It’s good to know when you’re an hour deep into the rainforest, in a heavy rainstorm, on a barely passable dirt road mud channel, there’s a village happy to help you out when you get stuck in the mud.
This week we took a ride to the Akagera Game Park in Western Rwanda. We saw quite a few animals and some amazing African landscapes. Quintessential Africa.
Rwanda is a land of hills and it’s difficult to grasp just how much that is true until you arrive here. There is literally no flat land here, one hill rolls into another ad infinitum. There are no straight roads either – they wind around the curved slopes of these hills – and going from point A to B is almost never as direct as it seems it should be.
Along these roads your find the people of this country and the activity of Rwanda. Up and down they walk, sometimes with great bundles on their heads or in tow – be it firewood, water, fruit, or construction supplies - they port it all by foot for miles. In a country where even a bike is a luxury, it is astonishing to see the things they carry.
Please note that all postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee or the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village.
