Notes From the Land of a Thousand Hills

Jim Handman

In the past two days, I have had the pleasure of experiencing two of Rwanda’s great past times: watching football and drinking beer. Now, you might say that nothing is more Canadian than watching football and drinking beer. But in this case, the football is actually soccer, and the beer is actually banana beer – made by nuns.

First the football. On Monday, we began to notice the signs of a big football match early in the day. Our house is next-door to a small motel with a Chinese restaurant (go figure) – and at noon, a very large bus pulled up outside and dislodged dozens of athletic-looking young men. We thought is might be a sports team. Then later in the day, as I was sitting in the internet café on the main street, with the door open to the outside, I could see and hear several mini-buses roaring down the street, horns honking loudly, and filled with people in Halloween-like masks leaning out the windows screaming in Kinyarwanda (reminiscent of Toronto louts screaming “Arrr-gohhhhhs” out of cars on Yonge Street in Toronto).

Then suddenly a young blonde muzungu woman came running into the café and yelled at another young muzungu beside me, “Come on – the game begins at 3.” It was five minutes before 3pm. I now realized that something big was happening at the stadium that lies mid-way between our home and the town.

So we quickly left the café and headed up the road to towards the stadium. The first thing we noticed were all the young men in the trees that line the road. These are very high trees – and they were filled with people – all the way to the top. They obviously hoped to get a free view of the stadium from the treetops. Some trees contained up to a dozen young men – as high as 50 feet in the air. Many had climbed up wearing only flip-flops on their feet. They cheered and waved when I took their pictures.

Then we arrived to a scene of total chaos and confusion at the stadium entrance. Barbed wire lined a path that led to the entrance, and hundreds of very young boys gathered along the outside of the fence. On the inside, people with tickets were being roughly pushed though a narrow doorway, that clanged shut every few minutes. The bouncers at the door would suddenly strike at someone in the line for no apparent reason, and then let several others in. On the outside of the wire fence, a woman in uniform kept threatening the kids who were trying to sneak in. Inside the wire, the bouncers would occasionally allow a bunch of young ruffians through the door – while beating them on the legs with his baton. The stadium was surrounded by a brick wall, about 3 metres high, with guards standing on top, armed with wooden sticks. Every few minutes, someone would try to scale the wall and be beaten back by the sentries.

We decided to try our chances at going in. But we couldn’t see anywhere to buy a ticket – and frankly, the gates of hell that loomed ahead were just a bit intimidating. Just then, we spotted one of our journalism students, Adolphe, who was covering the match for Radio Salus. He explained that this was a crucial match for the local Premier League team, Mukura, which was playing APR, the Rwandan Army team. The winner would go to Kigali for the season Cup final. He helped us buy tickets from a man standing amid the crowd, and ushered us towards the door to the stadium. There was a chaotic crush of humanity pressed against the door – and the bouncers seemed to arbitrarily allow a couple of people in at a time, while harshly shoving away others. We feared that the claustrophobic crush would continue on the other side of the door, and briefly considered giving up and turning back. But the bouncers spotted us and ushered us quickly through the door and into the open grassy field at one end of the stadium. The game was well underway, with the home team behind 1-0. The limited stands were full, so we stood on the backfield and enjoyed the action.

We stayed for a while – the only visible muzungu among many hundreds of Rwandans. But we left before the game ended. When we returned to our house, we continued to hear loud cheers from the not so distant stadium for more than an hour. It ended, apparently, in a 1-1 tie – but Mukura will go to the final, based on a complicated scoring formula. Yay, Butare.

Then the beer. On Tuesday evening, another student, named Oswald, invited us for “nuns banana beer.” We had heard of this exotic and mythical brew – but didn’t know where to find it. We now discover that in Butare town lies a small convent where the nuns brew beer made from bananas. We had read about this kind of beer while visiting the National Museum of Rwanda in Butare, which had a display that explained how farmers ferment and brew a powerful beer from bananas. They make it in pits dug in the ground. We were fairly sure that the nuns used a more hygienic and modern method – but we couldn’t be sure. Our students had told us that the government wanted to crack down on farmers making banana beer, because many people had become sick from it. But we took our chances and headed off in the early evening for the convent.

The convent is a non-descript low brick building, surrounded by the ubiquitous brick wall, not far off the main street. There is an unmarked narrow black door in the wall. We enter and are immediately ushered into a tiny, dark, shabby, rundown room, with benches or old torn couches on 3 sides, and the door on the fourth side. We catch a glimpse of an older nun outside in the courtyard – but she scurries away. The walls of the room are bare and streaked with age and dirt, the lighting is dim, the couch is well worn. A young man comes in with a tray containing 3 glasses and an uncorked bottle the size of a wine bottle. It contains a thick, opaque, yellowish-brown liquid, which Oswald pours into our glasses. It tastes both sweet and sour – with a very strong alcohol flavour. A bit like unfiltered apple juice combined with a healthy dose of vodka. We drink quietly, as the room fills up suddenly with many more people – four on either side of us. We are now 11 people in this tiny warm box of a room – with everyone quietly and somberly consuming their beer and saying little. It’s not exactly a party atmosphere. A friend of Oswald’s comes in and squeezes onto our 3-seat couch, which already contains 3 of us. We strike up a conversation with the 4 young men to our left. They are all computer science students at the university, and want to talk about the global recession. We are impressed with their knowledge and curiosity.

We finish the bottle among 3 of us, and I can feel the effect already. We walk out into the darkness that has quickly descended while we were inside, and head home – satisfied that we have experienced a unique Rwandan ritual.

Jim Handman

As you drive the highways of Rwanda, either by bus or car, the most prominent feature you notice are the people walking on the roads. The highways (which are among the best in Africa) are absolutely thronged with people – men, women, children – all of them walking to somewhere.

In a country where very, very few can afford to own a car, or even take a bus, people must walk … to work, to get water, to do their laundry, to get food. And that often means carrying a lot with you. So the highways are not only lined with people on the move, but many of them are carrying huge loads – on their heads.

The women – and it is primarily women – walk tall and straight, balancing extraordinary bundles on their heads: huge pottery urns, large plastic pales overflowing with vegetables, yellow plastic cans containing water, bundles of firewood, piles of clothing, enormous bags of rice or potatoes. And the men balance long sticks of wood, sticking out several feet in front and behind. And there are no shoulders on these highways – the people are on the highway itself. As your car or bus approaches, the driver will honk the horn – not to threaten the walkers, but rather to warn them not to stray into the path of the vehicle. Often you can see the women with their heavy loads heading up a rough, uneven, rocky path that leads off the highway to an unseen village – all the while, balancing these awkward bundles on their heads. It is an amazing feat of agility and grace.

In addition to the hordes of walkers on the highway are the bicycles. But very few of them carry just a cyclist. They also carry furniture, bags of food, giant metal milk cans, building materials, pipes, and even a couch. On the steeper slopes, the bicycles and their lopsided loads are pushed uphill.

The yellow plastic water can is ubiquitous. And more often than not, it is carried by children. Most families must walk long distances every day to get their drinking water from a communal tap or stream. In the old days, women would carry large, heavy clay pots on their heads to get the water. But the introduction of the light and portable plastic can revolutionized their lives. Now children – even young children – could go fetch the water, freeing up the women to take care of the other many chores in their lives.

The situation is not unique to Rwanda. Ryszard Kapuscinski, the late, great Polish foreign correspondent and writer, has called Africa a continent on the move. Refugees from wars, people seeking work, people seeking food, people seeking a mate, people walking hundreds of kilometers to attend a funeral or wedding – everywhere you look, people walking, walking, walking.

Jim Handman

One morning last week, while driving up the main road into the university, our car suddenly swerves sharply to the right to avoid a piece of road kill. Now back home, road kill is a fairly common occurrence. Virtually every single morning, while driving to work along Lakeshore Blvd in the east end of Toronto, I see at least one or more dead squirrels or raccoons – sometimes both. I seldom give them a second thought.

But this road kill is different. I get only a fleeting glimpse out the window of the car, but it is unmistakable: it’s a tiny dead Colobus monkey. It looks almost like a human fetus, curled up in the road, but with its long tail spread out behind it. I am shocked and dismayed. How could someone kill a tiny innocent monkey? But why do I react more to this dead animal than to a dead squirrel? Could it be that I can somehow see the common traits that we share with our distant primate relatives?

And if I can see something familiar in a monkey, which truly is a very, very distant cousin, then my reaction is even greater when, later, I come face to face with a gorilla. The gorillas, like chimps, bonobos, and orangutans, are Great Apes. They are our closest living relatives in the animal world. We share 96% of our DNA with chimps – only slightly less with gorillas. (at this point, you might guess correctly that I am a science journalist, and have met many primatologists over the past 10 years).

And so it was, this past weekend, when we went trekking in Volcano National Park, to see the gorillas in mist (made famous by Diana Fossey). After many arduous hours of hiking up steep mountain slopes, in rapidly thinning air that made breathing difficult, we finally did come face to face with a giant Alpha male silverback gorilla. His name, apparently, is Charles – which seems far too tame and civilized to truly capture his intimidating size and presence. But he just sat there quietly in the jungle, barely 15 feet away from us, chewing on his bamboo leaves, and observing us with a look of disdain and boredom. He has seen it all before, many times.

But as I sat there on the steep, dense jungle slope, and looked into his dark, sad, inscrutable eyes, I did see a reflection of our evolutionary past – when his prehistoric ancestors and ours were one and the same (about 6 million years ago, by the way). What is he thinking as he looks into my eyes? Is there recognition of something familiar as well? Does he know we are cousins? Likely not. But when I next look in the mirror, at the hairless ape in the reflection, I will think of Charles and our time together in the Virunga Mountains. Be well, my cousin, and enjoy the bamboo.

Jim Handman

As I was walking home by myself today from the university (a leisurely
and pleasant 50 minutes, with the internet cafe and hotel patio bar
strategically located at the half-way point) - I was drawn to a narrow
dusty side street by the unmistakable sound of Afro Beat music blasting
from loud speakers.

As I approached, I saw a large crowd of several hundred people crowded
around a raised stage. I was, of course, the only muzungu in the crowd.
The music was pulsing from a large pair of speakers above the stage, and
onstage was what appeared to be a bizarre outdoor version of Rwanda’s
Got Talent. A tall, thin, wild, crazed jumping, screaming MC was yelling
into a microphone in Kinyarwanda, while in front on him on the stage, 2
young boys (about 10 years old) where dancing to the music. They were
doing a variety of complicated hip hop moves, combined with an Afro
groove attitude. The crazy MC would periodically stand behind one or the
other, point at the boy’s head, and scream something into his mic. The
crowd would then respond with the appropriate level of approval, yelling
and clapping. This went on for about 15 minutes.

Finally, the music and dancing stopped, and the MC once again asked for
a verbal vote for each young contestant. The applause and yelling
appeared pretty evenly split, and the MC awarded a yellow T-shirt to
one, and a yellow baseball cap to the other. Everyone seemed pleased
with the results.

Then the MC said something, and everyone in the crowd suddenly pulled
out their cell phones. He appeared to be reading out some numbers, which
everyone frantically punched into their phones. He teased the crowd,
read out some false numbers, made jokes, started again, yelling and
dancing about the stage the entire time. Finally he read out the numbers
for real - and someone at the far back of the crowd cheered and ran onto
the stage. He received what I think was a SIM card - which are
extensively used here to charge up your cell phones with credit minutes.

Then the MC started singing “Yello, Yello, Yello”. I thought this was
some kind of Kinyarwandan phrase - but then I noticed that the stage was
decorated in yellow bunting, all the people on stage wore yellow shirts,
the dancing kids had received yellow prizes, and all round were people
in yellow vests, selling SIM cards. Then it dawned on me. Yellow is the
colour of MTN - the cell phone monopoly in Rwanda. The entire event was
a huge promotion for the company.

But everyone seemed to be having a good time - including me. And I do,
of course, have an MTN cell phone

Jim Handman

Today I taught my radio journalism class in a soccer stadium. That truly
must be a first for the Rwanda Initiative.

I arrived, as usual, at 8am, at the classroom where I had been teaching
for all of last week. I am instructing a group of second year students
and trying to impart the basics of radio storytelling in a very
condensed 4 week module. My students, all 36 of them, were engaged in a
spirited argument with another group of students, both claiming the
classroom for themselves.

My group, loyal to a fault, proclaimed loudly in Kinyarwandan, that they
had been there since the start of the course, and it belonged to
Professor Jim. The others countered that they were scheduled in that
same room. A standoff ensued - with a bewildered me in the middle. Then
a nice female professor showed up, with a piece of paper that confirmed,
alas, that she was indeed scheduled in that room at that time. I of
course, lacked any written proof of my ownership of the space.

So while my group milled about in the open corridor, I ran down to the
Director’s office. He was sympathetic - yes, we have too many students
and not enough classrooms - but had no solution. So he sent a student in
search of an appropriate space for my class.

In a few minutes, the student returned and said the “stade” was free. I
of course, assumed this was the nickname for a large but comfortable
classroom. I was wrong. It was, in fact, the football (or soccer, as we
illiterate North Americans call it) stadium.

So off we trouped, and the students sat on the lower concrete bleachers,
as I stood on the field and pretended to write on the imaginary
blackboard, and they pretended to read my lessons.

Good thing they don’t have a hockey arena.