I have not written in a long time. I have no good excuses, but I do have a funny story and some photos from the last four months, so enjoy!
Story:
The other day, one of the volunteers, Tanya, was wearing her rain boots when one of the kids, a young boy, came up to her and said “I like your…how do you call them?…boobs.” The Rwandese can be real slick operators.
Photos:
…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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
A couple weeks ago, this freelance photographer I know was telling me about his trade - about the politics of news. He regularly shoots for major papers and news agencies and had just returned from Goma.
He told me about a plane crash in Cyangugu, Rwanda about a year ago. One of the news agencies - maybe Reuters - called him and asked him how long it would take him to get there. He told them that Cyangugu was 5 hours from his house in Kigali and it would be dark by the time he got there. He could have a shot for them tomorrow morning. They said they’d call him back.
2 hours later they called back: “Only 18 dead, so nevermind.”
It’s difficult to overstate just how much the world cared about this election. Everyone I met, ex-pats from all over and Rwandese themselves, had an opinion on the election and were always quizzing me for my “expert” (read: American) opinion on what would happen. Throughout this election cycle, CNN International and BBC World News, those very sober news outlets, obsessed about the latest election news. The conventions and debates could be seen live on no less than 4 channels here (and there are only 14 channels altogether!), and come election day, whether you turned on the radio, switched on the TV, or walked down the street, all you heard was that America was going to vote. We say it often in America, with some sense of presumption it seemed, but people around the world honestly believe that the President of the USA is the most powerful person in the world and, this year, just like many Americans back home, they were deeply enthralled by the possibility that Barack Obama might next be that person.
Regular readers of this blog (if any do exist) will have caught on by now that Rwanda is a country transitioning from French to English (all the while with Kinyarwanda dominant). There are many logical reasons for this, but the one that the Education ministry has chosen to explain their formal shift in schooling from French to English is that the textbooks are cheaper.
Said the Education minister (from the New Times):
Mutsindashyaka said that the adoption of English would make education cheaper in the country.
“The cost of French textbooks is much higher than that of English books,” said Mutsindashyaka. He also criticised those who are rejecting the policy.
“What is the complication in this? The question instead should be why did the government delay in coming up with this policy!” he argued.
The State Minister also strongly denied relating the issue with the ill relations between Rwanda and France. “This Issue should not be politicised at any point,” he said.
Apparently it’s that simple, so we needn’t overthink it and start inventing other reasons (Like the Ugandan English speaking Rwandan refugees of the RPF replacing the francophone and french backed genocidaires, their firm belief that the language of IT - their chosen path to riches - and business is English, or their desire to be part of the East African community of English speaking Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and not the conflict ridden francophone community of Congo and Burundi).
So there you have it, cheaper textbooks are a compelling enough reason to retrain all of the country’s teachers, replace all the old textbooks, and completely rearrange a nation’s school system.
If you hadn’t already figured it out, the language of instruction at our school at ASYV will be English.