Adrift in a Sea of Rolling Hills
My time in the Pays des Mille Collines
Archive for December, 2008
December 30, 2008 at 5:55 pm · Filed under News
The founder of ASYV, Anne Heyman, was interviewed recently on Rwanda TV about the project. I think it’s possible this is the transcript of that interview. It is also possible it is the transcript of another interview. Either way, it gives the most complete understanding of the history and philosophy of the village you’ll get short of talking to her yourself:
…And we had a speaker, Paul Rusesabagina, who was the gentleman from the movie, Hotel Rwanda, that that movie had been made about. And I had dinner with him before the evening’s program. And my husband said to him, you know, “What’s the biggest problem facing Rwanda today?” And he said, “In a country where you have 1.2 million orphans, with no systemic solution to deal with them, there’s no future for the country.” Immediately it struck me that, you know, Israel doesn’t have an orphan problem. After the Second World War, there was certainly a tremendous influx of orphans. And what did they do with them? They built youth villages. And so I, actually, even at the table that night, said, “You should build youth villages.”…
For the full interview, click
.
And there’s more. Here are two links to a story by DJ Siegel about the village. She visited with the other journalist
, who I linked to last week. Alas, though DJ also interviewed me, I wasn’t good enough for her story either.
December 24, 2008 at 6:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
…wait, “cult”?
Me: Uh, so what exactly do you mean here when you write cult?
Mor (Israeli Volunteer): You know, like instead of church. We didn’t want to say church because we didn’t want it to seem mandatory.
Me: Do you know what cult means?
Mor: It’s like a nicer way of saying church.
Me: Not really.
Mor: So it’s bad?
Me: Yea. Maybe we should just use church.
December 23, 2008 at 11:41 am · Filed under Uncategorized
A journalist named Nicoe Kallmeyer visited us last week and wrote an article on the work we are doing.
Rwandan genocide survivor Innocent Gisanura doesn’t know much about Judaism, but the counselor at a new home for genocide orphans can explain the Jewish philosophies of tikkun halev and tikkun olam.
“The first is healing the heart, the second is healing the world,” he said.
These are the guiding principles of Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, built amid the undulating rural landscape of Rwanda’s Rwamagana district, 50 kilometers from the capital of Kigali…
They even interviewed me, but, alas, nothing I had to say seems to have made it into the article. I’ll have to work on becoming more interesting.
In the meantime, you can check out her full piece here.
December 21, 2008 at 7:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the volunteers, Benna, has been tutoring one of the kids here in English. On Friday, he came up to her at dinner and asked her a question he had obviously been practicing for a while:
“Benna, do you think we can really change Rwanda?”
“Yea”
“I think so too.”
December 15, 2008 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Well, the liveblog thing didn’t really work out today, but the kids are here nonetheless. I tried, but I wasn’t able to get stuff up (See: Internet at the Village). Either way, the are here and it’s totally amazing, if not also completely overwhelming. I’ve been juggling so many different things trying to get the village ready, I’m can barely think straight at this point. In the next couple of days I’ll be posting some more about these first days, but for now I’m off to bed.
December 15, 2008 at 9:47 am · Filed under News
Today is the day, as 125 orpans will start arriving any moment. I will try to post photos and updates throughout the day. Stay tuned to this “liveblog” of sorts as the kids come home again to ASYV.
December 12, 2008 at 9:26 pm · Filed under News
I wanted to share with you a recent piece by the Ugandan independent journalist Andrew Mwenda. He’s responding to someone’s accusation that he is justifying restrictions on free press in Rwanda. He reminds us before we tell people how they are supposed to act, to think about their unique history which shapes their society:
A nation’s laws are shaped by its experience and history. If you form a Jihad in Palestine or Afghanistan you would be seen as a liberation fighter. If you formed a Jihad in New York, you would be smoked out by the FBI as a terrorist. If you said that you wanted to commit suicide just before boarding a plane at Entebbe, officials there would laugh at you. If you did so in Los Angeles, you would be whisked off for questioning by the FBI.
Only 14 years ago, Rwanda lost nearly a million people in genocide. The mobilisation for the genocide was conducted using the mass media. The victims of the hate campaign were the Tutsi who now lead the government in Rwanda. Their experience with the mass media is not as an instrument of democracy but of extermination. It is that psychology that shapes their stance on media freedom. To ignore this reality – their experience – would be naive. In Uganda, the media has historically been an instrument of democracy. That is why press freedom enjoys broad national support. Not so for Rwanda because its experience is different.
The full piece is here.
December 12, 2008 at 9:14 pm · Filed under Stories
These past three days we’ve been training with the whole staff here to get ready for the village to open on Monday. Yesterday, our founder Anne was taking questions after one of the sessions and time was running a little short. She said she’d take one more question and called on Eddie:
Eddie: To save time, I have two questions.
Anne: Only one question.
….(long pause)….(Eddie is thinking about this)
Eddie (with a proud smile): OK. I have one question with two parts.
December 4, 2008 at 8:56 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Well, there’s no Whole Foods in Kigali, but there is Nakumatt and while browsing the store the other day I noticed a very small natural foods section. It’s true that I had seen this tiny kiosk before, but I always thought it just sold vitamins. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something that challenged everything I thought I knew about Africa - Tom’s Deodorant. I mean, even in the US it’s not like this is a standard product at most supermarkets outside of California, New York, and college towns. And it’s not even Tom’s most popular and original product - toothpaste. Instead, it’s deodorant that doesn’t even really work well for $18. Eighteen Dollars?!
Luckily, I brought a year’s supply of this stuff. If I have some left over when I leave, looks like I can make some decent pocket change.
By the way, Rice Dream? $10. Good thing I’m vegan around here.
That was all I saw in the way of American health food store goods.
Oh, and by the way, the headline comes from Lewis Black on The Daily Show who, after showing a clip of a CNN reporter in Zimbabwe buying 3 cans of beans for 1 Trillion Dollars back in August exclaimed, “I didn’t know there was a Whole Foods in Zimbabwe!” (Zimbabwe has 600 million percent inflation).
Well, there’s no Whole Foods in Zimbabwe either, but there may very well be a Nakumatt.
December 2, 2008 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
My meals here are pretty simple. Usually they’re very good - the chefs are excellent - but there’s not much for variety. Every meal has rice and beans, a rotating starch (potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, or cooking bananas), a mash of vegetables, and a sauce. There is also meat, but I stay away from it (usually chewy goat - inedible I’d say - hanging out in the sauce). I’m like a vegan. Finally, I’ve one upped by mother.
Anyways, today, at lunch, there was no rice and while at first I was thinking it was a nice change - finally, maybe a little variety - I soon found myself missing it. It was like my beans had been stood up, it didn’t make any sense. And the usual mash that all the ingredients soon become seemed runny without the rice to soak it up and give it form. Lunch just wasn’t the same.
It turns out what I originally thought was an inspired decision to switch things up - before I turned sour to the new state of things - was in fact just because somebody had forgot to buy rice.
What a relief. And sure enough, come dinner, the rice was back, mixing it up like salt to pepper with my trusty beans.
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