Amy's Blog
Sept. 5, 2006
Thinking about my time in Rwanda,
I think my most memorable experiences (meaning the things
I will never forget) have happened on a bus.
At any given time, there are 20
people shoved in one very cramped space. Interaction is inevitable, but the type
of interaction I have experienced has been … strange.
I have had an old man stroke my
hair, an infant pull her hand out of her mouth to wipe
her nose before deciding to grab my hand, and a man ask
me to read his resume. I
have heard someone sing loudly along to the radio in an otherwise
quiet bus, showing no signs of shyness or embarrassment. I
have listened to a joke travel from the front of the bus
to the back (and the joke could very well have been at my
expense, considering everyone turned to me, expecting me
to somehow respond.) I have seen a number of women
think nothing about pulling down the tops of their dresses
to breastfeed their babies. I have ridden with my knees
to my chest, my feet propped up on a large bag of bananas,
and with children yelling “muzungu” at me as
I pass, waiting for me to wave.
But despite the often awkward and uncomfortable trips,
I think the bus rides say a lot about the characters of the
people of Rwanda.
In Canada, the buses are designed
to give you as much space as possible. Still, any person
would rather sit by him or herself, just waiting to get
from point A to point B. People
will put bags down on the seat next to them so as to avoid
having anyone sit there. If there are two people seated
side by side, and an open pair opens up, one person will
always move.
The minibuses of Rwanda consist of
five rows of seating, which each holds four people. There is no such thing as personal
space. Instead of ignoring one another, the passengers
often chat as they travel. I have had numerous conversations
during my bus rides with the person who is sitting next to
me, or in front of me, or even a couple of rows back. In
fact, on more than one occasion, I have seen a conversation
break out amidst everyone on the bus. If two people are
having a conversation, someone sitting next to them has no
problem throwing in his or her two cents. And this might
spark a response from another passenger, and then the driver
might laugh. They aren’t all friends and many don’t
know each other; at the end of trip, each person goes his or
her own way, and probably thinks nothing of it. But for
me, as someone who can’t even participate in the discussion,
these short conversations speak volumes about the friendly
and forward nature of Rwanda’s people.
^Top
August 28, 2006
The nights in Kigali
tend to be a little bit boring. Darkness
falls around 6 pm and most evenings consist of eating cold
food before watching reruns on a tiny computer screen, and
an extremely early trip to bed. When I get a chance
to get out of the house, I take it.
So last night, I volunteered to
return some mosquito nets to the previous landlady’s house after work, thinking
it could give me something to do. (The last set of
interns had complications with payments and was asked to
leave the first house that TNT arranged for us. Two
mosquito nets were taken in the jumble of the move.) I
started out a little bit later than I planned, leaving around
7, and when it was dark. I have never really felt unsafe
in Kigali, but no matter where I am, I am a little bit apprehensive
about being in a strange place, by myself, after dark. On
most of the roads in Kigali, there are no streetlights, but
plenty of bumps, not to mention the ditches that run along
the side of the road.
Shortly after I set off, a man fell
in step beside me. I
turned to look at him and smiled. He said “Muraho” or
hello in Kinyarwanda. I said it back and we continued
along. I could tell he was friendly and I actually
felt safer having him walk with me. If I sped up a
bit, so did he. If I slowed down at all, he would too. I
stopped to adjust my shoe, and he waited.
He then said something that went
way beyond my understanding of the local language. To me, the language is very
complicated, mainly because it sounds nothing like English
and isn’t structured in a way that I have learned. I
give him a puzzled look and tried to signify that I couldn’t
speak the language. He nodded his head and said something
else unrecognizable. I did catch the word “English” though
and responded “Yes!”
We went along in silence for a bit,
and then he said another sentence is Kinyarwanda. Not knowing what he was asking
me, I told him my name in English. For fifteen minutes,
we walked along. He would say something in Kinyarwanda
and I would reply in English, hoping what I was saying related
to what he was asking. When I arrived at the landlady’s
house, he waved good-bye and continued on his way.
It was a strange experience because
we both knew we couldn’t
understand each other but continued to talk anyway. We
may have been talking about two totally different things, and
I will never know otherwise. I kind of missed the company
on my walk back.
^Top
August 20, 2006
Today I decided to
make my way to Gisenyi, a lakeside town by Lake Kivu in
the Northwest corner of the country. Despite
the fact that I have been in the country for two weeks, I
hadn’t left Kigali. Even though I was warned
that the ride was long and tiresome, I decided to chance
it.
I left the house as the sun was
coming up, and made my way downtown. Cross-country buses aren’t much different
than the buses used in the city, so I bought my ticket and
settled into a tiny corner, making sure I was beside the
window. Unfortunately, the bus was full, and I had
to prepare myself for a cramped three-hour ride. But
I don’t think it was possible to prepare my stomach.
The roads in Kigali are less than
desirable, to say the least. Most are unpaved and dusty, worn and washed-out. Outside
of the city is worse. The roads were paved but there
were more potholes than pavement. Plus, due to Rwanda’s
rolling landscape, the road snaked through the countryside. The
ride consisted of the driver going breakneck speeds around
the curves while swerving to miss the potholes (which wasn’t
possible so we hit one every few minutes). I actually
leaned over to check the speedometer at one point. It
was broken.
By the time I reached Gisenyi, I
almost fell out of the bus in gratitude. According to the Bradt travel guide
on Rwanda (the only one available and thus the only reference
material to which we have access), Gisenyi is a bit of a
tourist town, and used to foreigners. Not true.
“Muzungu” is a word that I hear on a daily basis,
a word used to make reference to a white person. It’s
not usually used malicious and people just seem to be curious
about who I am and where I come from. Children, with
their uninhibited young voices, are the first to say it,
shyly waving or approaching to shake my hand.
In Gisenyi, it was much more blatant. I felt as if
I were on parade. As I made my way towards the beach,
everyone I passed stopped to stare. At one point, I
had a group of children jumping around me and screaming. (I
felt like I should have been throwing candy.) One little
boy was screaming “Muzungu! Muzungu! Muzungu!” at
the top of his lungs, over and over. I honestly expected
him to pass out.
When I reached the water, I relaxed
a bit, ate some lunch and walked along the water, taking
photos (something else to draw attention to myself). As I was walking along,
a young boy on crutches sitting by the side of the road came
up to me. He was missing a leg. My stomach dropped,
thinking that he would ask me for money. At the start
of the trip I decided to give a decent amount of money to
one street kid instead of 100 FRW to many (the equivalent
of 20 cents). I already had someone in mind, a little
girl and her mother who sit at the top of the hill near where
we live. It would be hard to say no to this boy.
But he just wanted me to take a picture
of him. He stood
perfectly still, with a small smile on his face. He didn’t
move until I said okay. And then asked if he could try
to take one. I let him, and showed him the pictures on
the camera. He smiled, waved goodbye and left. Ending
the afternoon on a positive note, I actually started to look
forward to the long journey back to Kigali.
^Top
August 17, 2006
Today I waited 45 minutes before
catching a minibus home – I
could have walked it in 30.
The bus system in Kigali is crazy. It took me a couple
of weeks to understand the layout of the town and how to
get around. Minibuses, which are really just vans,
pull to the side of the road. Young guys slam open
the door, leaping out, yelling, while pointing the direction
that the bus is going.
People crowd the side door to the
van, pushing in hopes of getting a seat. This doesn’t
work for me, since I might be one of the most passive people
you will ever meet.
There was a family of four waiting
to get on one of the buses – a mother with a teenage daughter and two younger
boys. I watched as they all tried to get on the same
bus. The mother and daughter would often make it to
the front of the crowd, but would step aside once they realize
the boys were still standing on the curb. Eventually,
they gave up and went in pairs.
Me, being my passive self, sat waiting
as patiently as I could, hoping that the busy period would
pass – it only worsened. A
couple of times, I stood up, near the curb, hoping to get lucky. I
was always beat by people running at full tilt to get there
first. Eventually, I noticed that the passenger’s
seat was empty and slipped around the side as everyone else
clamored to get in the back. I could have been there
forever.
^Top
August 8, 2006
My first few days
in Rwanda have been a whirlwind – as
cliché as it sounds, you never realize the differences
until you experience it first hand. But the thing that
struck me most was not cultural differences, but the physical
ones.
I have always thought Canada’s landscape was gorgeous:
the open spaces, the trees and the numerous small bodies
of water. Coming from a small town, our cities have
never really appealed to me. But living in Kigali,
despite the fact that it is roughly the same size of Ottawa,
is unlike Canadian city living. There is the housing,
buildings, traffic and people, but this doesn’t detract
from the breathtaking landscape.
Rwanda is the country of a thousand
hills, and Kigali is no exception. Driving from the airport to our house
in Remera, a short distance, I was blown away by everything
I could see in all directions. The road from the airport
to the house is on the crest of a hill, and the sides of
the hills sloping down to the valleys are all covered in
housing. In Canada, each person has their own house
with their own distinguishable yard. From my vantage
point, Kigali just seemed to be a mish-mash of clustered
houses. And the colours elevate the country’s
beauty to another level. Rwanda seems to be covered
in red dust (as the stained soles of my feet will attest)
but is spotted with leafy green vegetation. The contrast
is pretty amazing.
The newsroom came as a bit of a
surprise too. I first
entered the New Times newsroom on a Sunday, so it was calmer
than normal. But calm is an exaggeration; compared
to the newsrooms in Canada, it was beyond dead. It
is basically one large room cut into smaller spaces using
dividers. It actually kind of looked like something
out of the movie Office Space (although on a much smaller
scale.)
On Monday, I returned and sat down
at a computer to try and send off an email to my friends
and family (with little success, the internet is temperamental)
when George Kalisa, the social desk editor, came up to
me.
“I want you to write a letter
to the editor.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“A letter to the editor?”
“About what?”
“Some observation you have made about Rwanda.”
“But …”
“Anything you have seen, or experienced … can you write it today?”
I had been in the country for about
48 hours and I had observed a lot. But write a letter to the editor? This
is usually reserved for people who READ the paper, and not
write for it. I haven’t done either. I’m
not the most argumentative person and was still getting adjusted. Plus,
it seemed like a bit of a conflict of interest. I think
the staff was just looking for a way to fill a hole in the
content and I presented an opportunity to do just that.
I am kind of ashamed to admit that
I did write one, though, despite the obvious moral issues. I
guess I just wrote a bit of a mini-column; a little observation
on patience, actually.
I am a pretty impatient person … I’m terrible
at staying still and I’m not a big fan of waiting. Here
is Rwanda, I was quickly informed of what my fellow Canadians
call “African Time.” Basically, everything
slows to a snail’s pace. Sunday night, at a local
restaurant, I waited for more than an hour for a grilled cheese
sandwich. At the newsroom, if a press conference is held,
it might be a couple of days before the story comes out. But
the walking pace takes the cake. I’m 5”2,
and in Canada, I usually have to run to keep up with my friends. Here,
I always seem to be miles ahead of anyone I walk with. I
guess I should take it as a welcome change from the hectic
everyday of North America, but it’s definitely going
to take some getting used to. ^Top |
