Tabara

The morning after we went to Heaven, Katie and I were up bright and early on a trek across town for a 9am meeting… on a Saturday. Those familiar with me might well be wondering what on earth might have dragged me out of the house on a Saturday morning before I’d even had a cup of coffee… The answer is Tabara.

Tabara is an NGO just getting started here in Kigali, which is aiming to provide support and assistance to single parents in the city, and Saturday morning was their first public meeting. I’d come across Tabara while reading the blog of a VSO volunteer, Marion, based here in Kigali; the organization is an initiative started up by a Ugandan friend of hers, Jasmine. I’d been looking for something to get involved with since I arrived here, and decided to get in touch with them to see what I might be able to contribute. Luckily a meeting with Marion, Jasmine, Florence (another Tabara member), Katie and I proved successful and two weeks later, Katie and I were knocking on Jasmine’s door so we could head over to the preschool Tabara had borrowed for the morning. It was a tiny room with about 18 tiny wooden benches; Jasmine was telling me that up to five little children fill each bench every day!

To be honest, none of us expected very many people to show up. Jasmine had said she’d told a few parents about the meeting but didn’t expect more than about ten people… By 9:30, the tiny schoolroom was packed with over fifty parents (and some of their children). It was unreal. Jasmine and the Pastor who serves as Tabara’s president (because Rwandan NGOs must be officially run by a Rwandan) introduced the organization and what support it hoped to provide to Kigali’s single parents, and we began taking down people’s names and information about their children. Jasmine organized the parents (which, while mostly women did include two men) into small groups to discuss what the parents wanted Tabara to do for them, primarily concerning income-generating activities. There was so much discussion (of course, almost none I could understand, although Jasmine is a lifesaver about translations) about what each of these parents wanted to be able to do to improve their lives and the lives of their children, and it was so exciting to see so many who had come out for no incentive other than trying to start making a difference for their kids. I was so excited for Jasmine that there was such a turn out. Someone from the district council stopped by, and sent a photographer over to take pictures, which will really help to demonstrate that there is a real need for supporting such an organization.

This is something I am so excited to be a part of. It’s personal for me – it’s only circumstance that separates myself and my child from these men and women I met. I’m so pleased to try and share some of what I’ve learned from being involved in parenting groups in Canada and seeing what might apply here, particularly in terms of setting up support networks and working to improve health and education opportunities for these children. There is so much to be done for single parents and their kids here in Kigali, but Tabara is a big step forward.

Friday Night in Heaven

Last Friday, the girls and I met in Heaven. Luckily, the trip there was relatively painless and didn’t involve anyone dying (although there was the usual confusion over exactly why Katie paid one fare for the bus and I paid nothing at all). Heaven, touted as Rwanda’s first international quality venue produced by Rwandans (but owned by Americans), is an absolutely gorgeous restaurant in Kigali, overlooking the valley between Kiyovu and Kacyiru… Great wine, great food, and a great view. This was mine and Katie’s first trip to Heaven, and we were there for a silent art auction organized by Ivuka Arts Studios, a Rwandan-owned arts cooperative of young Rwandese artists producing contemporary Rwandese art. The whole night was spectacular.

We started the evening off with a great glass of wine (at the happy hour price of 1500 RWF, making it a not totally unreasonably treat), which we enjoyed while watching Intore dancers! These ones were more special than others I’ve seen – because they were mostly children! The man who started Ivuka Arts also organized a dance troupe, RwaMakondera, made up of former street and other disadvantaged children. The troupe is hired out for events, and the money earned goes to the children in order to pay their school fees and other expenses as a means of keeping them off the streets. The kids were fantastic – and I was delighted to see that dance recitals are the same the world over, with kids eagerly grinning at the crowd, a beat or two off from each other, looking at the child to their left or right to see if they’re doing the right move at the right time. It was wonderful. There were beautiful little girls, including one tiny child that couldn’t be more than three years old; the boys were dressed in traditional Intore costumes with bells and shields and headdresses. Adults also danced, and played and sang the music the children danced along to.

And then there was the art… Traditional Rwandan art (such as imigongo, which are geometrical designs made of cow dung… seriously) doesn’t really appeal to me, so I wasn’t sure what to expect of ‘contemporary’ Rwandan art. I was more than pleasantly surprised by what was on display at Heaven that night, and had to really hold myself back from making a purchase. There were two artists doing live painting at the restaurant as well, which was lovely to watch. I was particularly drawn to one artist’s work in particular – a lot of themes of women and motherhood and women’s bodies. None of the paintings I loved were auctioned off that night, and I’m hoping a trip to the studio in Kacyiru might result in me coming home with one of the ones I loved the most. The talent of these young artists was overwhelming and I can’t wait to see more.
Much to my and Katie’s delight, we stayed at Heaven for supper – great service and wonderful food… minus the fact that Katie got food poisoning! Regardless, it was a great night out in Kigali and a repeat trip to Heaven is in the works to celebrate Logan’s birthday in October.

New House!

As the title suggests... I moved! About 50 feet from where I lived before but it's amazing the difference both Katie and I are feeling now. We spent two months in an apartment with no running water, no real kitchen (a hot plate that shocked us every chance it got...), bedrooms furnished only with beds (so we were living out of suitcases... as were cockroaches!)... just a really awful situation. We'd tried finding a new place with no luck at all, and had fully resigned ourselves to four more months of no water, no cooking and not feeling settled in. Luckily, our landlady is actually pretty awesome (just a bit flighty...) and offered us her newly-vacant one-bedroom apartments attached to her house, for the same rent we pay now. Hello running water (showers? washing dishes? COOKING?!), clean floors, a workable kitchen and a place to hang my clothes. I'm pretty much in heaven.

Nothing more than tourists?

My dad was kind enough to scan an article out of a recent Maclean's for me. Here is the online version... Not quite ready to comment with my own thoughts, but let's just say the article hits quite close to home. A lot like reading about myself and my own experiences, as disappointing as that is. By the end of my six months, I might have more to say but for now I just wanted to share what I think is a fairly accurate insight into my current experience.

Kampala Adventures

This past weekend was a long one in Rwanda – parliamentary elections on Monday meant that our offices were closed – so Katie and I decided to take the opportunity to do a little travelling. Destination, Kampala… a 10 hour bus ride away. We set off at 5am by taxi to Nyabugogo bus park, which managed to be busy even at 530 in the morning. The bus set off promptly at 6am (I’ll admit some surprise that something ran on time here…) and off we went. I napped most of the way up to the Ugandan border, which is okay as I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Rwanda looks the same. So it’s 730 and border-crossing time. To get into Uganda, you must queue up (in the longest, slowest lines of life, really) to have your departure card looked at and your passport stamped with an exit stamp to sign you out of the country. You then have to walk a short distance through ‘no-man’s land’ until you reach a post where a fairly unofficial-looking guy will have a brief look at your passport and send you on your way to the Uganda Immigration office, where you fill out a form, pay your $50 US for a single entry visa (if you’re not from the Great Lakes region, anyway) and get a Ugandan visa. The guy who stamped mine gave me a visa for up to seven days, because as he said “Kampala is great fun and you just never know what might happen.”

Cue getting back on the bus (more passport checking) and off you go through the Ugandan countryside… Which at first seemed just like Rwanda, only less people and a lot of pigs. We also saw a goat being gutted at the roadside, lovely. The scenery changed quickly though- Ugandan hills are beautiful, green, rolling things topped with such beautiful trees. I wished we’d had the chance to stop once in awhile to take pictures; it was beautiful. But really, so many less people- Uganda has a much bigger population than Rwanda, but it’s also about 4 times the size. You haven’t seen population density until you’ve driven through rural Rwanda, let me tell you, and Uganda was quite different- definitely people around but not as much overall movement, fewer people working the fields and not nearly as many walking along the road. Lots of neat things to see out the windows though, like the roadside market stands where Ugandan women pile their fruit and vegetables up in the exact same formations, all over the south-western part of the country…. It was neat to see little red tomato pyramids in each town we passed through all the way up to Kampala. The bus ride was full of entertaining Swahili-dubbed action movies and the Boney M Christmas album (which happens to be a favourite of both Katie and I, so we enjoyed it regardless of the odd season). We arrived in Kampala around 430pm, a long nine and a half hours after we set out (Uganda is an hour ahead of Rwanda), with no Ugandan shillings, a very small map of Kampala printed from Lonely Planet’s chapter on Uganda, and only the vaguest ideas of where we ought to go. Such is travelling in Africa when you really only decided to go somewhere a day or two before.

So we set off on a walk and wound up nearly where we wanted to be- at a branch of Barclay’s bank which, charmingly, gave me shillings without charging me any service fees (thanks to a partnership with Scotiabank… nice change from the bank fees from hell that I’m charged in Kigali). From there, we wandered through a mall (supposedly Kampala’s first and still best, ha) and up to Kampala Rd, where we had supper (vegetarian pizza), investigated our surroundings a bit and wound up catching a bus toward our hostel (the Red Chilli Hideaway, recommended by the way) with the help of a nice boda-boda driver (a moto driver). So we’re on the bus and we see what we think is the right place for us to get off; this notion is supported by others on the bus when we tell them where the directions to the hostel say to go. So off we get… and wander around the area for half an hour to no avail. We call the hostel- turns out we’re not even close to being in the right place and it’s another 30 minute walk away. So we get brave and hop onto a boda-boda, without helmets (!!!) as they just hardly use them here. A big deal, even for me, the self-professed moto lover here in Kigali. Luckily it was a short ride and he drove pretty carefully; we arrived in one piece (well, two pieces, because Katie and I were on the same one… which is so illegal in Rwanda).

The guard at the hostel gate opened it, greeted us and asked us (and I quote) “Are you here to see some whites?” Took all the self-restraint we possessed to stop from cracking up on the spot. We checked in, had a berry Fanta (doesn’t exist in Rwanda and turns out that’s okay, as it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had) and dropped our things off. It was by now after 9pm, so we got ourselves looking clean and pretty and stopped in the hostel bar for a beer. When it closed, the bartender recommended we check out a club he knew called Rouge (just like one at home) so off we went. The bouncer at the club was telling us the differences between his club and the one right next door- he said the cover was cheaper there, so we thought we’d check it out. Turned out is the same price, but the bouncer there let us in for free. Thank goodness, because it wasn’t worth paying; we watched a few minutes of Big Brother Africa, checked to make sure the unconscious guy sitting across from us was still breathing, and headed over to the other club. Definitely more upscale, busy but not packed and filled with well-dressed Ugandans… and a whole lot of young white men on the prowl. I’ll save my thoughts on that for another occasion. We spent the night avoiding being chatted up by creeps (one who just wouldn’t let up for the life of him… awful) and dancing a bit. Headed home around 2am, which is, of course, closing time for clubs at home… but African clubs go strong until dawn.

Sunday morning saw us getting up and heading downtown on a few shopping missions… This shopping trip increased in necessity when Katie’s sandal broke just as we left the hostel – the only shoes she had with her. We caught a bus downtown, walked to this crazy shopping mall (just like at home, really) and took a look around. Being Sunday, a lot of places were closed… Still interesting to see I guess! More walking around in search for a used bookshop someone at the hostel told us about (closed, naturally) and a long, long walk downtown to find the bus office to buy tickets home… Of course, the office was not at all where the map thought it should be, so we ended up wandering through some… interesting… parts of Kampala.

Good to have a look around, though, and no harm done as we soon figured out where we were and where we needed to be. Tickets bought, we headed back downtown, still on foot despite Katie’s sandal, because the traffic was moving so slowly we figured we’d get there before a bus would. Had some tasty veggie burgers at a fast food restaurant on Kampala Rd and had a bit more of a wander before heading back to the hostel. Our plans to sit around the bar with a drink and a book were foiled as we met an Australian woman who we ended up hanging out with through the night; she’s applying to all sorts of primatologist/conservationist jobs in the region using Kampala as a base for now. Quite a neat woman; it never ceases to amaze me the things people do for a living! Later on, I headed out to an area called Kabalagala with some friends I’d made; this was clearly the place to be on a Sunday night. Jam-packed with people, loud music all over, tons of bars. Had a great time and good conversation, and fell into bed around 2am despite needing to be up around 6 to get ready for the bus. Monday morning was about as eventful as Sunday, as we caught a bus going generally in the direction we needed but not quite there… We ended up walking through yet another odd part of the city until we recognized the street we needed to be on and soon enough we were boarding the bus to make it back to Kigali. The ride was much more comfortable this time – we paid 5000 Ugandan shillings more but that couple of dollars was worth the extra space and comfort. Much easier getting back across the border and we now have a new 90 day visa for Rwanda… but of course our Christmas plans start on the 95th day, so we’ll need to take another trip somewhere to renew our visas again.

So Kampala was great fun, although I wish I’d had more time there to really enjoy. It was so lovely to get a break from Kigali, as I’d really been having a bit of a bad time of it lately and wasn’t feeling so great about being here. Funny though… I realized while in Kampala that I absolutely think of Kigali as ‘home’ now. I’d catch myself talking to someone or thinking to myself “Oh, at home it’s like this…” and was thinking completely of Kigali and not at all of Canada. Odd how a place becomes so much a part of you without you even realizing it.

A Numbers Game

10,548… is the number of kilometers between home and Kigali.
7,000… is the number of Francs I spent on a bus ticket to Kampala today.
5,000… is the number of Francs Katie and I are paying a taxi driver to take us to Nyabugogo bus station at 5am tomorrow.
300… is the number of Canadian dollars I have to live off of until my next stipend comes sometime in October…
142… is the number of days I have left in Rwanda.
46… is the number of schoolchildren I watched running after an FPR propaganda truck today.
19… is the number of times my internet has stopped working today.
10… is the number of hours I’ll be spending on a bus to Kampala tomorrow.
4… is the number of buses I missed this morning on my way to work.
3… is the number of cups of poorly-made coffee I’ve drank today.
3… is also the number of men I’ve seen beaten up by the police this week.
2… is the number of field visits I’ve been on since arriving here (but 0 is the number I suspect I’ll be going on in the near future).
2... is also the number of people who've called me fat since I got here.
0… is the number of new emails I had this morning (now that’s depressing).

As you may have noticed, I am off to Kampala tomorrow morning. Katie and I are braving the 10 hour bus ride at 6am tomorrow, coming back sometime on Monday, which is election day here for members of parliament and thus a holiday. We have no real plans, other than shopping a bit and seeing what kind of characters we meet at the hostel we're staying at. Adventures will be revealed when we get back!

FESPAD 2008 (from August...)

So back at the beginning of August (yes, it's taken this long to upload the videos!), the girls and I - along with Franco, the anesthesiologist from Montreal who was staying with Claire at the KHI guesthouse, and Hilaire, a Rwandan friend Claire met on her last trip to Rwanda – went to the closing ceremonies of the Festival of Pan-African Dance (FESPAD). We hadn’t managed to get to any of the other events but the closing ceremony was simply amazing.

We got there around 5pm, after a ridiculously complicated taxi ride. The performances started soon after, in a replica of the King’s Palace, complete with risers carved into the ground. The first few acts were Rwandan artists- almost all in Kinyarwanda, so it made it a little difficult to understand! The music was all very good though. It was too hard to catch the names of the artists, which was too bad as I really liked some of it… I’ll admit, mostly I liked the dancing, which was occasionally pretty ridiculous. After the modern Rwandan musicians came traditional music and dance from different African countries- all the region’s countries were represented (Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo) as well as Congo-Brazzaville, Namibia and Guinea. The group from Burundi was my absolute favourite – a group of men carrying huge drums on their heads… and actually drumming on them like that! It was amazing. Last came an hour-long performance by traditional Rwandan musicians and dancers… It was INCREDIBLE! Lots of drumming and singing, women dancing with pots and baskets, and finally the Intore dancers… It was just fantastic.

I don’t think I can describe it well enough in words, so I’ll let the videos I took do the talking. In some of them, you can’t see a whole lot- the lighting and distance made it a little bit difficult to get great shots, but at the least, the music is great.

A good old-fashioned rant.

Things I need to get used to in Rwanda…

• Spitting everywhere, by everyone. Kids, grandmothers, men in business suits – doesn’t matter who or where (although people are generally kind enough to direct it away from you). Interestingly enough, there’s a letter at least once a week in The New Times, Kigali’s primary English-language newspaper, from someone asking everyone to please stop spitting in public. I’ve unfortunately not yet met an anti-spitter…
• Somewhat related to the first point… Everyone picking their nose. It’s absolutely acceptable to pick one’s nose in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with someone else, and acceptable still to flick whatever you’ve pulled out of your nose toward the shoes of your companion… I’m still finding it shockingly hard to keep a straight face when whomever I’m speaking to starts digging around…
• Also about snot: people blowing their noses everywhere… onto the ground. The funniest I’ve seen was a man using his handkerchief to hold one nostril closed while he launched snot out the other onto the sidewalk. Katie wins, however, because she saw people blowing their noses off the side of a pool one day. Classic.
• Still related to bodily functions and fluids… The sheer number of men I’ve seen peeing all over the place. On the sides of buildings, next to the street (more often than not facing traffic), in the middle of the sidewalk. I’ve watched men of all ages zipping back up along the roadside. This is definitely a gendered activity, as I’ve not seen any women squatting wherever they please. Needless to say, I’ve seen an awful lot of penises here...
• Everyone’s desire to touch me all the time. It’s never a harassment thing (and in fact, it’s split 50-50 between men and women doing it) so it technically isn’t a problem… but it is interesting. I’ve had women slipping their arms around my waist casually while we’re waiting to get on the bus, men rubbing my arm (one was kind enough to explain it was because as a child, he thought that when you rubbed at white skin, it came off), and children running their hands through my hair. They don’t need to know me (and often don’t); it’s just considered acceptable to touch the muzungu.

I decided over lunch a few days ago that I needed to write a bit of a rant. A lot of the time, my blog entries and my emails home are about all these amazing things about Rwanda – and there are so many amazing things, really. I’m lucky to be here, and I love living here, for all the quirks and things I’ve had to adapt to (like showering out of a bucket, whacking cockroaches with shoes, and having to wash my feet about 60 million times a day so I don’t look as dirty as I am). Most of the time, I wake up happy that I’m here, even if I’m not terribly happy about heading to work unshowered in wrinkled clothes on a 25 minute bus ride. The problem is that through the course of the day, some things just start to wear at me. Another volunteer in Rwanda described living here on her blog as being in a permanent state of PMS, and I’d have to say that’s fairly apt most of the time, as I can swing from loving Rwanda and everyone I meet to feeling like I’m going to turn around and smack the next person who lets muzungu slip out of their mouth.

The worst of my frustrations can be put into two categories, as follows:

• Men. I almost feel like not bothering to explain as any woman who’s travelled through Africa will likely understand, and everyone else can probably make the leap to understanding quite easily. I meet a lot of men here – for a population where women outnumber the men (one of the many consequences of the genocide and subsequent imprisonment of a large number of men, there are roughly 88 men for every 100 women), I meet perhaps 10 men to every 1 woman. Perhaps “encounter” is a better word than “meet,” because so often these meetings take the following form:
  o Man (or group of men) on sidewalk/sitting outside a building/guarding a parking lot/guiding people onto the buses/you name it: “Muzungu! Hey, sister! Hey, hey! Bonjour! Good morning! How are you? Sister, sister, come here. Where are you coming from? Your name? Muzungu! Tst tst tst [this ridiculous hissing noise Rwandese use to get someone’s attention, be it a waitress, moto driver, or white girl] Muzungu! Where are you going? Sister, how are you?” and on and on and on.
  o Me: Usually an awkward, tight smile, a nod or if they’ve not hissed or used muzungu to get my attention, I’ll generally politely answer their questions or say “hi.”
  I’m always torn. I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to encourage the unwanted attention, so I generally resort to the least contact as possible without actually being rude or ignoring them. I just get so tired of the constant stream of attention and would give anything to blend into the background most of the time; it just gets old hearing the same thing day in, day out, over and over and over. Part of me keeps trying to remind myself that while I’ve heard it a million times already today, it’s rarely the same guy trying to talk to me over and over, so I shouldn’t get so annoyed with it… But at the same time, they’re all aware of how many times I and every other expat woman hears it. Also tiresome, the constant demand for my phone number. Originally I was giving out my Rwandese friend, David’s, phone number as a ploy to avoid unwanted calls… The problem is that Rwandese often have a habit of ‘beeping’ your number when you give it to them, to check if it’s the right number or not. Having been a bit embarrassed by this before, I’ve given in and give my number, usually taking care to save theirs into my contact list with something that tells me if it’s someone I’d ever want to speak to again. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve met a lot of great people (men included) and have begun to make some friends and contacts that are really nice and sincere people. But I’m also getting chatted up regularly by men of all ages (coming back from lunch when I wrote this the other day, a man in his 40s started talking to me from the balcony of the building next door… Could barely understand him and yet he still asked for my number. Worse still, he works right next door, so avoiding him may become a daily activity). I just would like some peace once in awhile.
• Children. I wrote before about how difficult it is to see mothers with young infants and toddlers begging on the streets, especially when the children are the ones with their hands out. It’s still hard to see, and it still occasionally makes me struggle inside a bit with my no-money policy. Luckily, the sheer numbers of painfully obnoxious children who beg from me regularly just for sport snap me back out of that struggle. There are the kids who beg because they have to, and you can tell those ones from a mile away – the kids wearing discarded winter jackets for clothes, barefoot and still out on the street at midnight. Interestingly enough, they’ve been some of the most polite kids I’ve met here. Then there are the kids who are just plain awful, really. The kids who will see me coming up the street and yell “Muzungu! Give me money! Donnez-moi l’argent!” It’s so frustrating! This happens multiple times a day and it never gets any less tiresome. The worst was Saturday when Katie and I were in the new grocery store that opened up downtown. A little girl, maybe about ten and very well-dressed with packets of cookies in her hand, stopped to talk to me. It started out pretty innocently- a “bonjour, comment ca va? Comment t’appelle tu?” etc. And then “Donnez-moi l’argent!” It just blew my mind. I hate that I’m seen as this infinite source of money – when in fact I’m here volunteering and my monthly stipend is less than what my coworkers earn. I get that a lot of the time, whites who are working here do have quite a bit of money, and I get that other people have set a bad precedent in giving kids money/candy/pens/you name it… but I do have such a firm stance against it as a whole and I really dislike the kids who expect you to hand over whatever you have happily because they demanded it. I think it’s the expectation that really does me in, as the children who ask politely rarely grate on my nerves like this. From the street kids downtown, it’s a pretty regular chorus of “Cent francs a manger” (100 Francs to eat) but more often than not, they’re the ones who back down quickly when you say no and more often than not will tell you to have a good day as you walk on.

I’ve had a difficult few days lately – feeling a little overwhelmed by the constant attention, struggling with language barriers and just generally feeling a bit cranky (let’s blame the heat, shall we?) and writing it all out makes it seem so much less of a big deal… And really, it isn’t. It’s good to know though that even when I forget why I’m here and start to wish I was back home, the people who know me best think I’m exactly where I should be and are there to remind me (thanks, Chris!).