Allan Thompson's Notes From the
Field
February 3, 2006 —
Goodbye Rwanda, until next time
This is my final blog entry from Rwanda:
a chronicle of the long goodbye that has been the last couple
of days. I knew I would be sad leaving Rwanda and
I suppose exhaustion can make you even more emotional. The
other night I went out for a farewell dinner with my Canadian
colleagues, Sylvia Thomson, Roger Bird and his wife Ann. (Sue
Montgomery is to arrive today just after my departure). We
were also joined by Alice Musabende, a journalism student
and development worker who has been acting as the local fixer
for our project. (We call Alice the African Queen). We had
agreed to meet at the restaurant at the Credo Hotel, which
boasts the only swimming pool in Butare. Next visit I will
have to find time for a swim. I was the first to arrive and
in the dark of early evening, I stood by the fence at the
back of the hotel property, looking out over the deep gorge
that separates the two high points in town. Atop the hill
on the right is the National University of Rwanda. Across
the valley, Butare’s Roman Catholic Cathedral commands
the other hilltop. The air was full of two sounds, the call
to prayer emanating from a mosque just down the way and the
blare of the latest Radio Rwanda news bulletin, piped from
a loud speaker by the restaurant bar. The others arrived just
as I was getting nostalgic.
Over dinner, we shared a toast to the successful
launch of our journalism teaching partnership, keeping our
fingers crossed I will be able to secure funding to carry
on with this project in the months to come. Then a cloudburst
of much-needed rain sent us scurrying for cover. You know
you have begun to settle down in a place when you are glad
to see rain because you know the local farmers desperately
need the precipitation.
The last couple of days before my departure
have been a mad scramble. I had to make a quick side trip
to Nairobi to fulfill a commitment to help with media training
sessions organized by the Canadian High Commission. I got
back to Rwanda yesterday afternoon and after the familiar
two-hour drive from Kigali to Butare, stopped at home long
enough to wash my face then went straight to my classroom
in the little computer lab where my students were waiting
for our last encounter. They were busily working on their
final assignment for me, a piece of opinion writing. We didn’t
have a lecture today. This was just about saying goodbye and
it was much, much more difficult than I had anticipated. They
gave me a present, a simple woodcarving and a tray with Rwanda
written on it. But it was the card that just about did me
in. After reading their handwritten messages I was quite simply
at a loss for words and afraid that if I tried to say much,
things would end in an embarrassing show of emotion. It touched
me so deeply to read messages from students who lost their
siblings or their parents in the genocide and wrote that they
now regarded me as a brother. So instead of the kind of graceful
speech Africans are accustomed to on such occasions, I simply
thanked them for our time together and said goodbye. I went
around the room to give every student a hug, caressing three
times in the Rwandan way. And with the men, each embrace ended
with us briefly touching our foreheads together, another traditional
greeting. To be honest, by the end of it, I just had to gather
up my things and leave. The sadness I felt when taking my
leave was compounded by another factor. One of the students
told me the class will be getting a bit of a holiday now.
There is no one available to teach their next course, so they
will simply have to wait until a teacher can be found.
In our short time together, we formed a kind
of bond. And for all that there is good reason to doubt the
future of journalism in Rwanda, the time I spent with these
nine young people gave me some hope that their country will
one day have a new generation of journalists.
The last word has to be a message to my students.
Diane, Solange, Nicolas, Prosper, Egide, Charles, Sixbert,
Edouard, Leon:
I am just about to leave your beautiful country
for the long trip back to Canada. I wanted to say goodbye
properly before my departure. My apologies, but during our
class yesterday I simply couldn't find the words to say goodbye.
I know that here in Africa, people are accustomed to long,
graceful speeches and kind words. But after reading the messages
in the card you presented me with, I found myself speechless
and quite frankly, I was afraid I would become too emotional
if I went on any further, so I just had to leave.
Let me thank you for a wonderful time together.
I learned a lot about your country, about each of you as individuals
and about your generation. For that reason, I leave Rwanda
hopeful that journalism has a better future in this country
because of people like you. Do your best.
Thank you for the good times we had outside
of the classroom and for making me feel so welcome. In a short
time together, I have grown very fond of you and I will miss
your company. I particularly enjoyed our trip to Maraba together.
I know this may sound strange to you, but it was such a pleasure
for me to be surrounded by so much joy, and enthusiasm and
love of life. The world needs to learn more about the Rwandan
spirit. Because of you, I am taking a bit of that Rwandan
spirit away with me.
A la prochaine,
Allan
^Top
February 1, 2006
— Nairobi
Today was taken up with media training
workshops organized by the Canadian High Commission for editors
and journalists here. I also managed to fit in a
quick side trip to the Makina Baptist School in the sprawling
Kibera slum. The public school in Ottawa that my son Laith
attends, Devonshire Community Public School, is twinned with
Makina Baptist and I made it my mission to visit the school
while in Africa. Nairobi seems like a sprawling mega-city
compared to Kigali and makes Butare look like a crossroads.
When I arrived last night, it took the better part of 45 minutes
to get downtown from the airport in stop and go traffic. The
workshops today were held at the Panafric Hotel. In the morning,
I joined Canadian High Commissioner Jim Wall and Rosemary
Okello, head of the Woman and Child Feature Service, in a
workshop with newspaper editors about the role of the media
in a multiethnic society like Kenya. The afternoon was taken
up with a roundtable involving Kenyan correspondents who had
come in from across the countryside. This evening I had a
chance to get together with two recent Carleton grads —
Tia Goldenberg and Ben Singer — who have been in Nairobi
for the last few months working as interns with the Nation
group of newspapers. The internship program for Carleton grads
was organized by the Aga Khan Foundation, which owns the Nation
media group.
^Top
January 31, 2006 —
A drive in the country
Had to head up to Kigali today to catch
a flight to Nairobi, in Kenya. Some time ago I agreed
to take part in a couple of media training workshops being
organized by the Canadian High Commission. The flight to Nairobi
leaves this afternoon, the workshop is tomorrow and I’ll
return to Rwanda on Feb. 2, just in time to wrap up with my
students, finish some banking and then prepare to head for
home on Feb. 3. During the two-hour drive from Butare to Kigali,
I am struck by how I no longer notice the panoply of life
along the roadsides here. It is becoming routine. So I decide
to take some notes. Everywhere, people are on the move, many
of them sweating and straining under heavy loads at the roadside,
or working in gangs in the fields. In Butare, there are motorcycle
taxis everywhere. Out in the countryside, you are just as
likely to see a bicycle taxi. We drive past a woman in an
elegant blue dress, sitting side saddle on the back of a touring
bike. Further along, there is another bike piled high with
a load of lumber. The boards, nearly three metres in length,
are stacked 10 or 12 high. How can that guy paddle that load
up the hill? In the fields, women with babies strapped to
their backs wield hoes and other farm tools in the fluffy
red soil that reminds me of a well-worked seed bed on the
farm. At virtually no time during the two-hour drive from
Butare to Kigali is there ever a point where there is not
a pedestrian in sight, or someone out working in the fields.
In this densely populated country, there always seem to be
people going about their business. On the right, a barefoot
man dressed in a ragged blue blazer — he looks to be
in his 50s — is pulling weeds from around the graves
at a genocide memorial site, then tossing the clumps over
the fence. In most places, the roadsides are lined with small
houses, one or two-room affairs, some with red tiles for a
roof, others with corrugated tin. There’s one man walking
with two canes. He has a leg missing from the knee down. One
of the vans that ferries people from Butare to Kigali is pulled
over at the roadside because of a flat tire and has disgorged
its squashed passengers onto the shoulder. Along the way,
many trees have been spray-painted with red Xs. Work crews
will later come and chop them down and do up the wood. At
one point, two men work an old-fashioned cross-cut saw, one
man standing on top of a large timber, his body glistening,
thrusting and pulling the saw up and down to make thick boards.
Every now and then there is a large billboard at the side
of the road, advertising for the few enterprises or causes
that can afford it: the National University of Rwanda, the
HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, the MTN mobile phone company
which now assures its customers they will pay per second for
cell phone calls. There is a little boy running by the side
of the road, in bare feet of course, using a stick to push
a tire rim along as a toy. Buses and transport trucks belch
out black clouds of exhaust fumes. Suddenly two motorcycles
with blaring sirens and flashing blue lights drive straight
towards us, the drivers using aggressive hand signals to tell
us to clear the road for a motorcade. Some senior government
official roars past in a blue sedan. Perhaps it is the prime
minister, who comes from the Gikongoro region. In front of
one mud-brick house which is covered with flaking clay stucco,
a man sits working at an ancient Singer sewing machine. Freshly
washed clothes hang on a bush to dry. A bike laden with three
burlap sacks jammed full of something is parked at the side
of the road. The driver is nearby in the ditch, taking a pee.
By now we are descending into Kigali, crossing the causeway
across a swampy area that gives way to the capital city around
the next curve. A drive in the country.
^Top
January 30, 2006 —
Rules of the road
I have been up and down the road from
Butare to Kigali so many times during this visit that I now
know most of the landmarks. And I have also picked
up on some of the intricate rules of the road in Rwanda. The
main highways in this country are well paved and maintained.
But the tortuous path they wind through hills and valleys
and around steep curves clinging to hillsides can make for
some pretty heart-stopping driving. Rwandans have long since
learned to adapt with a number of signals drivers use to help
each other out. If you are following behind a truck and need
to pass on a blind curve — of which there are many —
watch what the vehicle ahead does with its signal lights.
If it is okay to pass, the driver will turn on his right flasher.
If he can see a vehicle coming in the distance, he will flick
on the left signal to warn that it is not okay to overtake.
Oncoming vehicles use a code familiar to Canadian drivers
to signal when there are police on the road ahead -
flashing headlights. To reinforce the point, the driver of
the oncoming vehicle might make a hand single — jabbing
the index finger toward the ground — to indicate it
would be best to slow down. Now and then, an oncoming car
careening around a curve will put on a left signal light.
This means ‘move over and give me a bit more room.’
The driver of the other vehicle responds in kind, to indicate
that the message was received. And along the way, the most
clear-cut signal of all is the ubiquitous presence of Rwandan
police in crisp navy uniforms and helpful fluorescent green
jackets. There are cops standing at the roadside every few
kilometers along the major highways, waving cars over if they
have the impression the driver was going too fast, or driving
carelessly. These traffic officers will readily hand out tickets
for speeding - with no radar gun to assist them —
or even for swerving into the opposite lane or failing to
carry the right documents. And they do not take bribes.
^Top
January 25, 2006 —
Media training
My colleague Roger Bird and I (Roger
and Me?) today made our weekly trek to Kigali to conduct a
media training session with working journalists.
In addition to our journalism teaching partnership with the
National University of Rwanda, we have taken up a request
from government officials here in Rwanda to offer media training
for working journalists. We chose to begin with The New Times
newspaper, Rwanda’s main English-language paper. It
is published three times a week and is just about to launch
a Sunday edition. The paper is a crisp tabloid which seems
to carry a lot of pictures of President Paul Kagame on its
front page along with a good cross section of other news.
It is light on features and heavy on official government news
and wordy, opinionated commentaries by its stable of columnists.
Roger and I met last week with the newspaper’s managing
director, Edward Rwema and agreed that to take advantage of
Roger’s expertise as an editor, we would begin with
weekly training sessions with some of the newspaper’s
editors and copy editors before moving on to work with some
of its reporters. Edward said the newspaper’s main problem
is the fact that most of its reporters lack any formal media
training and many of its editors were hired for their language
abilities more so than their journalistic background. The
reality is that journalism is not a very well-paid profession
in Rwanda; the media sector was devastated by the genocide
when many journalists were either implicated in the killing
campaign, killed or driven into exile. And since then, as
such watchdogs as Reporters Without Borders will attest, the
media climate in this country has been far from ideal. No
wonder that veteran journalists are few and far between.
Today was our first formal session with the
New Times, a getting-to-know-you held in a meeting room at
the swish Novotel across the street from the newspaper’s
cramped office and newsroom. By a happy coincidence, today’s
issue of the newspaper carried a short story about Carleton’s
new journalism teaching partnership with the National University
of Rwanda.
Assembled around the table were 11 of the newspaper’s
senior editors. Roger and I introduced ourselves and our project,
then worked our way around the room to find out more about
our colleagues. The paper’s newly-appointed managing
editor said he had worked as a freelancer for the Monitor
in Uganda. He graduated from the Mass Communication program
at Makerere University in Kampala in 2002. The New Times society
editor (akin to the Life and Entertainment editor in a North
American newsroom) is a former secondary school teacher who
taught geography and English and did some freelancing for
newspapers in Uganda before joining the New Times. The news
editor graduated from the National University of Rwanda’s
journalism program in 2001 and worked on a student publication
in Butare before joining the New Times. The business editor
was a philosophy lecturer in Nairobi. The new Sunday editor
introduced himself as a published poet who joined the paper
in 2002. The production editor heads a team of four who produce
the paper using PageMaker and PhotoShop. The sub-editor of
the fledgling Sunday edition spent some time living in Canada
and worked for a while with the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
The only woman in the room, an associate editor and proofreader,
said she was a literature major in university who had also
worked on her school magazine. The deputy Sunday editor said
he did media training in Egypt and Tanzania before joining
the paper. The Editor completed a journalism diploma in 1994,
worked in Uganda as a stringer for television networks then
joined the New Times in 1998 as a proofreader. In 2001 he
did some further media training in the U.S., briefly ran his
own newspaper and then returned to the fold at the New Times
in 2004.
For the rest of the morning we discussed the
newspaper’s copy flow, the hierarchy among editors and
most important, the relationship between editors and reporters.
Jaws dropped around the table when I reported that at my former
employer, The Toronto Star, a lot of the copy produced by
reporters is routinely spiked or tossed back as being unworthy
of publication. At the New Times, virtually every story gets
published and often after hours of massaging by overworked
editors who are dealing with copy from junior reporters who
often have a tenuous grasp of journalism and difficulty writing
in English. Workload is a major issue and that translates
into published copy that is not properly sourced or lacks
context. The senior editors can only manage weekly meetings
— nothing like the twice daily news meetings convened
at The Star. The editorial team here is aware of the shortcomings
of their operation but also justifiably proud that they produce
a decent product in such trying circumstances. After a long
and productive session we agreed on a schedule for weekly
training sessions — back in the newsroom.
^Top
January 24, 2006 —
The field trip
Today my students and I escaped the
stuffy computer lab where we have been conducting our print
reporting classes and went on a field trip. To be
honest, we spent the first two hours of our field trip standing
on a curb in front of the university, waiting for our van
to show up. Apparently, someone had failed to fill out the
appropriate form in triplicate the night before, so it took
a bit of arranging to get our transport in place. But eventually
a sparkling white van arrived and off we went. Our destination
was a little village called Maraba, about 20 minutes outside
Butare. Our mission was to conduct interviews and gather information
for a series of stories my students will prepare on an innovative
coffee growers cooperative that has been established in Maraba.
Canadians who associate Rwanda only with genocide might be
surprised to learn that this country produces some of the
best coffee in the world, notably the specialty Arabica coffee
produced by the Maraba Coffee Cooperative (Abahuzamugambi
b’Ikawa ya Maraba). The coffee cooperative is working
closely with the Partnership
for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL),
a USAID-funded project led by Michigan State University. The
goal of the project is to help Rwanda to rebuild from the
impact of war and genocide by generating income through developing
its agricultural products and new markets. Before the genocide,
when world coffee prices were higher, coffee was Rwanda’s
main cash crop. But a crash in prices and the devastation
caused by the genocide was a body blow to this important industry.
The Maraba cooperative, formed in 2001, is one of many revitalizing
the coffee growing industry — particularly the premium
specialty brands. You will read more about this topic later
on the RwandaInitiative.ca website because my students will
be publishing their work here.
In Maraba, the students interviewed staff members
of the cooperative, coffee farmers young and old, experts
who work at the washing station for coffee beans and finally,
the “cuppers’’ who taste-test the local
coffee to compare it with leading world brands. Everyone had
been assigned a story and with virtually no coaching from
me, the students simply fanned out across the village, interviewing
everyone in sight. In between, we found time to have lunch
together on the front porch of a sparse roadside restaurant.
The owner, a hefty woman in a bright print dress, plunked
down a case of beer and a case of pop, then disappeared to
supervise making our lunch — goat shish kabobs. As the
supervisor for the outing, I decreed that since most of our
work was done, it would be okay to have a beer or two with
lunch. We are journalists after all. At the boulangerie next
door, one of the bakers carried large trays of uncooked buns
out to a roadside wood oven - from the outside the oven
looked like a clay hut. Moments later we got to sample the
piping hot buns while we waited for the kabobs. When the meat
finally arrived, my students gave me a lesson in how to grip
a piece of meat with my teeth and pull it off in one swoop.
I liked the chunks of meat but wasn’t as keen on the
second round of skewers, which I learned were some kind of
goat innards. One mouthful of goat intestine (zingalo in Kinyarwanda)
was enough for me. After lunch, we had a “cupping’’
session at the coffee cooperative with two women who have
become world-renowned experts in taste-testing coffee. They
showed us their technique of first sniffing the ground coffee
beans, then taking a whiff of coffee with hot water added
before carefully tasting — or rather slurping —
small mouthfuls of fresh hot coffee from a spoon. They would
swirl and chew the coffee, then spit it into a glass, just
like wine-tasting sommeliers. We all took turns doing the
same.
By now it was nearly the end of the afternoon
and time to head back to Butare. And the meek, timid students
I first met just a couple of weeks ago had now been transformed.
Or maybe they were just being themselves and I hadn’t
had a chance to notice before. They sang all the way back
to town. I mean they really sang. The class clown, Egide,
was leading the chorus, improvising a new lyric to describe
everyone in the vehicle while everyone else clapped their
hands. There was even a chorus for our driver who was slapping
his hands against the steering wheel. The only student who
didn’t join in at first was Edouard — a bit older,
a bit more reserved. That is until the group began singing
a famous military marching song, familiar to Edouard from
his days in the RPF. Now he too was belting out the tune as
our van careened down highway. Amid all the laughter and song,
I couldn’t help but reflect upon the seeming disconnect
between this overflowing joy and love of life and Rwanda’s
international reputation for stoicism, tragedy and sadness.
Yet another lesson learned by the teacher.
^Top
January 22, 2006 —
Murambi
On every trip to Rwanda, I try to visit
one of the memorials to the 1994 genocide. Today
I went to Murambi, about 45 minutes away from Butare, just
on the edge of the town of Gikongoro. The road from Butare
to Gikongoro passes through beautiful landscapes, sweeping,
terraced hills and lush green valleys. As usual, the roadside
was dotted with pedestrians, some in their Sunday best, others
straining to push bicycles laden with impossibly heavy loads.
The first time I visited Gikongoro was as a reporter for The
Toronto Star, in 1998, when I was in Rwanda writing a series
of feature stories. For one of those features I interviewed
a 15-year-old girl named Alphonsine Mukeshimana, an orphan
of the genocide who had long since abandoned her dream of
becoming a school teacher because she was now in charge of
a child-headed household, caring for her four younger brothers.
“I'm a widow, I'm a sister, I'm a mother, I'm everything,’’
she told me then.
On this quiet Sunday afternoon, I decided to
visit the memorial to those, like Alphonsine’s parents,
who perished in 1994. At the first crossroad in Gikongoro
there is a signpost marking the way to Murambi. A rutted,
dirt road leads to the former technical school complex which
has been converted into a shrine. This memorial, funded and
established by the Aegis Trust in Britain (www.aegistrust.org)
includes a Genocide Prevention Centre in the main building.
Behind, a dirt path leads to a series of long, low buildings
that look as if they may have been intended as dormitories
or classrooms for students.
Aegis estimates that some 40,000 to 50,000 perished
here on April 21, 1994 after taking refuge in the unfinished
school complex. Beside the main building are large graves,
sealed in concrete, containing the remains of most of those
who were killed here.
I traveled to the memorial with Ann Bird, the
wife of my colleague and fellow visiting lecturer Roger Bird.
When we arrived, the main building was locked and deserted.
But not long after our arrival, three vehicles pulled up the
drive and a man emerged with a set of keys. He looked anxious
and smelled of alcohol. He told us later that he lost 10 members
of his family here and as one of the survivors, he now maintains
the memorial. He beckoned Ann and I to follow him down the
path. He said to please hurry because he had others who were
coming to see the memorial. When we reached one of the long
buildings, he hurried ahead, unlocking and opening a series
of doors into the dormitory rooms.
Neither Ann nor I were prepared for what was
inside those rooms. “You can look at the dead bodies
now,’’ our guide said. “We have 24 rooms
here, for some of the 50,000 people who were buried in mass
graves. We moved some of them here, after covering them with
lime.’’
Inside each of the small rooms, partially mummified
bodies have been laid out on wooden pallets, which are raised
about a foot off the concrete floor. About 800 bodies have
been preserved this way in the entire complex. Ann went into
one of the rooms first and recoiled. The smell was overpowering.
All these years later, the partially preserved bodies continue
to decay. There were 40 or more in each room — not quite
skeletons, still wrapped in leathery flesh, hardened and white
from the lime. Some still had wisps of hair. Most were contorted
one way or another, some with wide grimaces in the open spaces
where their mouths used to be, or hands clawing heavenward.
One room seemed to be dedicated to children, the wooden platforms
covered with tiny, misshapen figures. I could only stand and
stare, before moving slowly from one room to the next, finally
taking some pictures. No one should ever forget the existence
of these lost souls.
I found myself looking for the longest time
at two figures. They seemed to be a couple. He had both arms
above his head, one hand clenched into a fist, with just the
index finger raised. The smaller figure next to him still
had a tuft of fine, curly black hair attached to its fractured
skull. Suddenly, I heard my own voice: “Who are you?’’
I asked. As if in reply, there was a loud clap of thunder,
followed by a torrent of rain that drenched the red earth
outside.
^Top
January 19, 2006 — Taxi?
After a quick return trip to Kigali
yesterday to arrange media training workshops at the New Times
newspaper, I flopped into bed last night without preparing
my lecture notes for this morning’s class. As
penance, I was up at 5.30 this morning, banging out some notes
and a lesson plan. My colleague Roger Bird and I usually share
a taxi to the university each morning at about 8 a.m. for
classes that begin at 8:30. But this morning, I had to head
in at about 7 a.m. to get on the internet so I could gather
up some more material for my class and check my email messages.
I decided to walk out to the main road and flag down a taxi.
In the dim morning light I headed down the red
dirt road that leads from our house to the highway, past the
Eglise Ste Therese where I could hear the choir singing and
finally, out onto the road that forms the main street of Butare.
Even at 7 a.m., the roadside was teeming with people. The
reality is that the most residents of Butare and the surrounding
area have no access to a vehicle and walk many kilometers
every day to go about their business. For that reason, I felt
stupid standing there waiting for a taxi and instead, merged
into the seemingly endless stream of pedestrians. I passed
men who were exchanging chickens at the roadside, others pushing
bicycles piled high with plastic water containers, sticks
or sacks of potatoes. (The other day I saw someone ride by
with a couch strapped to the back of his bicycle).
Eventually, I realized that it was going to
take me an hour to walk to the office and decided to try to
find some kind of transport. Just then, one of Butare’s
ubiquitous motorcycle taxis pulled up beside me. “Taxi?”
asked the driver, who was wearing a sort of blue apron, indicating
his was a commercial vehicle. “Oui,’’ I
replied, with some trepidation. He handed me a helmet, which
was two sizes too small. So he pulled off his own helmet and
we plunked it on my head. With my computer bag slung over
my shoulder, I hung on for dear life. It’s not that
there is all that much traffic in Butare. But the motorized
vehicles are in constant competition with seemingly suicidal
pedestrians. At first, I thought I would have to simply close
my eyes and hope for the best. But by the time we passed through
the middle of town, past the Ibis Hotel and restaurant, I
was already contemplating getting a motorcycle myself. My
driver deposited me at the front steps of the imposing central
building of the university, an art deco structure with peeling
white paint. I paid 350 Rwandan francs (about 75 cents), then
bounded up the steps to my office, another Rwandan experience
under my belt.
^Top
January 17, 2006 —
Looking for lecterns
My colleague Roger Bird was scheduled
to teach his first class today, and he was a nervous wreck.
Like Elvis, despite 30 years of experience in the
classroom, Roger still gets a bout of nerves before a show.
To my great good fortune, Roger agreed to come out of his
semi-retirement (he left teaching a year ago but still works
full-time as a freelance editor) to join this journalism teaching
partnership. Roger was one of my teachers at Carleton more
than two decades ago and I worked for one year as his teaching
assistant. I very much wanted him here to lend his vast knowledge
of journalism and journalism education to this project and
both his presence and his friendship have been invaluable.
For that reason, I was determined to make sure
Roger had everything he needed for his first class here in
Butare. I went ahead of time to the classroom he would be
using - a rather dreary former TV studio, full of those
kinds of university desks that have the little arm rest on
the side. But there was no lectern or podium of any kind at
the front of the room. I knew Roger’s media ethics course
would require intensive lectures, so I made it my mission
to get him a lectern. Earlier, I had spotted a furniture storage
area, behind one of the buildings on campus. So this morning,
I walked down to see what I could find. And lo and behold,
there were a number of beautiful new lecterns, made of local
softwood. But before I could cart one off, a woman who had
been busy varnishing the new furniture stopped me. We couldn’t
communicate very well, but we did establish that I couldn’t
just sling a lectern over my back and walk away. I had to
obtain someone’s permission.
She took me across the road and into a non-descript
building that turned out to be a busy woodworking shop were
carpenters were busy constructing lecterns, desks and other
university furniture. Amid the buzz of saws and a cloud of
sawdust, I explained to the manager of the woodworking shop
that I wanted a lectern. He took me to yet another building,
where I met with a man who was sitting in an office. He seemed
to be in charge of allotting furnishings on campus. I explained
that I was a visiting lecturer from Canada and would very
much like to have a lectern for a classroom. He agreed without
a moment’s hesitation and sent me on my way, back to
the storage area.
But when I tried to carry off a lectern,
the woman I had first encountered a few moments earlier grabbed
the piece of furniture and tried to tug it away from me. The
manager of the woodworking shop entered the fray. She wasn’t
trying to prevent me from taking the lectern, but she was
determined that she would carry it up the hill for me, to
the classroom. I insisted on carrying it myself. “Don’t
worry,’’ I said as I slung the lectern over my
shoulders. “I grew up on a farm in Canada.’’
With that I headed up the hill, to the snickers and glares
of onlookers, Roger’s lectern on my back. I arrived
just as Roger began his opening three-hour lecture on media
ethics. Now he has a lectern.
^Top
January 15, 2006 —
Underestimated students
I am ashamed to admit that I underestimated
my students. That first day in class, they all looked
so young, so timid. As their first assignment I called upon
that old chestnut used by journalism teachers: interview the
student sitting next to you and write a short profile. Tonight,
I sit here in my office at the National University of Rwanda,
reading those short biographies. The power has gone out and
I am shrouded in total darkness, but for the glow coming from
the screen of my laptop. And I am transfixed by the stories
of these shy, young people I had taken for novices.
Diane is already an accomplished filmmaker and
has produced a documentary that was broadcast on the French
network TV5. She is already at work on another documentary
in collaboration with a German non-government organization
and has been selected to represent Rwanda at an upcoming film
festival in Brussels.
Prosper is in his mid-30s and before enrolling
in the journalism school was chief editor of a military magazine
called Ingabo. He is a soldier who joined the Rwandan Patriotic
Army in 1994, just after the genocide. Before that, he taught
literature, sports and fine arts at a Kigali secondary school.
The student who wrote about Prosper ended the profile this
way: “He is one of four surviving children in a family
that lost eight members during the genocide.”
Egide, 25, who goes by the nickname Black Eagle
(his father gave each of his children a nickname associated
with an animal), is the Rwandan Patriotic Front vice-president
for the school of journalism. He has done internships at Radio
Maria and Studio Ijambo, both in Burundi.
Leon was born in Ukraine, where his parents
were studying at the time and returned to Rwanda at age 5.
He thought of being a lawyer, but friends convinced him to
enrol in the journalism program. He is the student representative
in the school of journalism and in that capacity, takes part
in much of the decision-making of the school and also represents
his peers in meetings with the university Rector and before
the academic Senate. He wants to follow one of his two passions
and be either a sports writer or a political reporter.
Edouard, 34, says his passion for journalism
started when, as a child, he would listen to radio announcers
and dream one day of becoming one of them. Edouard lost his
parents and four brothers during the genocide, when he joined
the RPF and later worked in a number of political posts in
the army. But his chosen profession is journalism and that
is what brought him to the university.
Solange, 26, has two passions, journalism and
dance. After secondary school she worked as a freelancer at
Radio Maria, in Bukavu, Congo. She has done internships at
Studio Ijambo in Burundi and Rwanda Television and is also
part of the university’s contemporary dance troupe.
She plans to be a great journalist.
Sixbert, 27, first worked as a journalist as
a little boy when his father, a primary school teacher, would
assign him to listen to the radio and then provide summaries
of the news. Sixbert joined the Rwandan Patriotic Army in
1994 and was later demobilized as a child soldier. In 1997,
after his secondary school education was interrupted by the
genocide, he returned to school to obtain his diploma. The
brief biography of Sixbert ends this way: he “survived
the genocide along with three of his young brothers. But three
other brothers and his father were lost in the 1994 holocaust.”
Charles, 25, was orphaned by the 1994 genocide.
He told a fellow student he had to work hard to get the marks
required for university. “I knew that only my efforts
could save my future,” he said. At first, he also had
to work fulltime as a receptionist at a local hotel, to fulfill
his dream of one day becoming a famous journalist. An article
he wrote about the 10th anniversary of the genocide was published
by a Swedish newspaper. The profile of Charles says “he
deeply regrets the loss of his lovely family members in the
1994 genocide, but has hope for the future.”
These are my students.
^Top
January 13, 2006 —
First class
Today I formally met my students and
held my first class in the fourth year, advanced print reporting
course that I am teaching here in Butare. Seven students
were in attendance, of nine who are registered for the course.
We met in the journalism computer lab at the National University
of Rwanda. The lab is a room about 20 feet square, with 10
computers on tables arranged around the edge. A handful of
the computers have been dead for some time now, but the others
are alive and well, connected to the Internet. After introducing
myself — explaining my background as a reporter with
the Toronto Star and outlining the purpose for this journalism
teaching partnership with Carleton University — I asked
the students to tell me a bit more about themselves: where
are you from, why are you here, why do you want to be a journalist?
For now at least, there are two women and five men in the
class. One of the women is from Bukavu, in Congo. The other
students are from various corners of Rwanda and most are in
their early 20s. Almost uniformly, they said they want to
improve journalism standards in Rwanda, to do better. Several
had worked on school newspapers during secondary school and
some have part-time jobs now in the media. One student used
to be the designated media monitor in his household, recounting
for his father the news and sports he had heard on the radio.
And all had a low opinion of Rwandan media. “When I
was young, I loved reading and read newspapers and magazines
all the time,’’ one student said. “But not
Rwandan newspapers. Even now, I don’t like to read Rwandan
newspapers. They are not so professional and everything is
about the government. I prefer reading newspapers and magazines
from outside, like Jeune Afrique.’’
In the end, it was a great first encounter.
We talked about reporting and newswriting, the role of journalists
and about how journalism is the way a free society has a conversation
with itself. And I told them about the time I ended up having
a physical confrontation with then Prime Minister Jean Chretien,
who grabbed me by the arm and pushed me out of the way when
he didn’t like my persistent line of questioning on
the stairway outside the House of Commons. They marveled when
I told them that a day or so later, Chretien went out of his
way to pick me out of the crowd at a press conference and
invited me to pose a question. The class will meet again on
Monday, and virtually every day thereafter until I depart
at the beginning of February.
In the afternoon, my colleague Roger Bird and
I attended a departmental meeting of the Butare journalism
faculty. This regularly scheduled meeting provided an opportunity
for the director, Prof. Jean-Pierre Gatsinzi, to formally
introduce the visiting Canadians. But the real purpose of
the meeting was to allow Gatsinzi to give his colleagues an
annual report on the school’s strategic plan, to finalize
teaching assignments for the coming academic year and to discuss
the school’s challenges. Notably, in addition to the
half dozen faculty members in attendance, two student representatives
played an equal role in the deliberations.
What was of most interest to me was to learn
more about the school’s shortage of teachers —
one of the primary needs the Carleton project is meant to
address. The academic year here runs from January through
to November and is divided into two semesters. The school
is still trying to figure out who is going to teach the photo-journalism
course scheduled for March, in addition to a course on public
opinion and propaganda, another on media management and a
fourth on writing for the broadcast media. Prof. Gatsinzi
has also asked if Carleton profs would be willing to act as
supervisors — in some cases by email — for fourth-year
students in Butare who are working on the thesis or “memoire”
they need to complete before graduation. The university is
also keen to get some assistance in designing a management
and programming structure for its new campus radio station,
Radio Salus. As it now stands, visiting teachers brought to
Rwanda through the Carleton project will teach a total of
five courses this year. But the school needs help with four
more courses between now and the summer. Funding for this
initial phase of Carleton’s journalism teaching partnership
with Rwanda runs out in March, but there is so much more to
do.
We ended the day — lucky Friday the 13th
— by hosting a cocktail party at our Butare home for
the rest of the journalism faculty and staff members. The
electricity had been out all afternoon, so the bottles of
local Mutzig and Amstel beer we had piled up in the fridge
were anything but frigid. After we positioned candles in strategic
locations all over the house, the power came back on, just
as our first guests arrived. We served warm beer and Scotch
— neat. The ice had all melted. It was just as well
that I didn’t crack open my secret supply of Glenmorangie
single malt, because most of our guests asked for their Scotch
mixed with Coca-Cola, a favourite local concoction. At the
end of the evening, Prof. Gatsinzi gave a gracious speech,
welcoming us to Butare and expressing his wish that the university
family would continue to grow.
^Top
January 12, 2006 - The
desk saga
I’m here. Now if I could just
get my students to show up. January is the beginning
of the academic year in Rwanda and during the first week of
classes, students tend to straggle in, pay their fees, find
a room and maybe, show up for class. So when I arrived at
the appointed time for my first session with the 10 students
registered in my fourth-year print reporting class, there
were three students in attendance. I thanked them for showing
up and asked them to please call or email their classmates
to spread the word that we will try again tomorrow, but that
I don’t plan on beginning until everyone is in attendance.
Then I shared the same message with the director of the school,
Prof. Jean-Pierre Gatsinzi, who promised to call each of the
students personally. We’ll see how it goes.
But don’t get me wrong, the universe is
unfolding as it should. I traveled up to Kigali to meet Roger
and Ann Bird at the airport yesterday. Roger has arrived to
join the teaching partnership and after a few days rest, will
plunge into teaching third-year print editing. He will also
co-teach a course in media ethics with a member of the faculty
here. It was exciting to greet Roger and Ann at the airport
and to show them Kigali, the road to Butare and finally Butare
itself - the house we will be living in during our stay
here, the main street, the university campus, the little office
we share with Prof. Jean-Bosco Rushingabigwi and my favourite
restaurant at the Ibis Hotel.
Truth be told, I spent most of the time since
my arrival on Saturday morning fussing around trying to set
up our house and make arrangements so that things would be
just right for Roger and Ann. The house is a nice four-bedroom
bungalow, just on the edge of town. It is comfortable, but
not lavish, nothing like some of the mansions down the street.
For the most part, the house is furnished. But I was determined
to set up little home offices, for Roger and myself. We’ll
be spending a lot of time in the evenings, marking and doing
lesson plans. So the other day I set off with Jean-Pierre
Gatsinzi in search of two basic desks. I’d seen a couple
of them at the side of the road at a woodworking shop, right
across the Credo Hotel, where I spent the first few days in
Butare. Ah, the saga of the desks.
The desks I wanted — rough-hewn wooden
ones that looked as if they’d been made the day before
— had already been sold to someone else, the man in
blue overalls said. They had a couple more desks in the back,
but they were a bit larger and had been stained an awful red
colour. We decided to shop around. As it turns out, there
is only one other place in Butare that makes furniture, a
sprawling woodworking shop behind the cathedral, property
of the Catholic church. The shop was the size of a hockey
arena and was jammed with odds and ends of furniture, mostly
primary school desks but alas, nothing that would work in
my home office. So, back we went to purchase the ugly red
desks at the first place. We rounded up a truck, Jean-Pierre
went to the bank to change some money for me and workers at
the shop began loading the desks into the back of the vehicle
— an operation in itself. Just as we were tying the
last knot on a rope to hold the desks in place, a passerby
began screaming at the top of his lungs in Kinyarwanda. As
I learned momentarily, he was saying something along the lines
of: “what the hell are you doing with my desks, those
are my desks so what are they doing in your truck,’’
then in French, as he stormed into the woodworking shop, hollering:
“j’ai deja paye” (I already paid). Chortling,
the workers from the shop dutifully untied the ropes, unloaded
the desks and carted them back into the shop. I retrieved
Jean-Pierre from the bank and he had a ‘conversation’
with the manager of the woodworking shop. The two desks I’d
had my eye on in the morning where still sitting there, so
I suggested to Jean-Pierre that we take those instead. “You
already sold me two desks that had been sold to someone else,
so why can’t you give me those two desks that were already
sold to someone else.” Money changed hands and the desks
were piled into the back of the pickup, where they were joined
moments later by my three gigantic suitcases from the hotel.
Like the Rwandan version of the Beverly Hillbillies,
we made our way up the main street of Butare, to my new, temporary
home on the edge of town. I have well and truly arrived.
^Top
January 5, 2006 - Rwanda
bound
This return journey to Rwanda has been
a long time coming. Loaded down with three enormous
suitcases (thank you KLM), I am bound for Butare, in southern
Rwanda, to launch a journalism teaching partnership between
Carleton University — my employer — and the National
University of Rwanda. One suitcase contains my entire collection
of beige pants and blue shirts. The other two are packed with
laptop computers and a data projector (donated by the Carleton
Cares program, my faculty and The Ottawa Citizen), about 75
lbs of textbooks and 100 toys selected with care from the
collection of my six-year-old son Laith. (The toys are for
an orphanage in Butare.) This will be my fifth visit to Rwanda.
Up to now, Laith has taken my travels and those
of his equally busy Mom in stride. His usual strategy is to
extract a promise to bring back presents as the price of his
acquiescence. This time was different. For two days, Laith
pleaded for a chance to come along. “I can pack my bags
really quickly Daddy, you’ll see. It will be ‘easy-peezy,
lemon-squeezy.’ “ My pledge to try and take him
along next time got me nowhere. In the end, after a lot of
tears, we all hugged and kissed and said goodbye, but with
more misgivings than usual.
I will be in Butare for a month, teaching a
fourth-year print reporting course and officially launching
this teaching partnership. I will be joined in a week or so
by Roger Bird, a retired journalism prof from Carleton for
whom I worked as a teaching assistant 20 years ago, when I
was doing my degree at Carleton. Roger’s wife Ann is
joining him as well and we will all be roommates in a house
the university is renting for us in Butare. In February, Montreal
Gazette reporter Sue Montgomery and CBC producer Sylvia Thomson
will also come on board. (We will all be blogging to the Rwanda
Initiative website).
The idea for this journalism teaching partnership
first emerged in late 2003, not long after I left my fulltime
employ at The Star for a teaching position at Carleton.
Katherine Graham, the Dean of Carleton’s
Faculty of Public Affairs and Management, encouraged me to
organize a conference on the role of the media in the 1994
Rwanda genocide. While pulling together that event, I came
in contact with Jean-Pierre Gatsinzi and Ines Mpambara, two
faculty members at the School of Journalism and Communication
in Butare. I wanted their input on the March 13, 2004 symposium,
which brought together an international group of experts to
discuss
the role of media inside and outside Rwanda during the genocide.
Both Ines (who has since left the university)
and Jean-Pierre encouraged me to try to find a way to have
Canadian teachers travel to the university in Butare, as visiting
lecturers. The director of our school, Prof. Chris Dornan,
gave me the green light to go ahead. Then came the hard part
- paying for it.
The International Development Research Centre,
which helped fund the conference, agreed to pay for some research
on how to implement the teaching project. And the Human Security
Program at Foreign Affairs Canada is funding this first phase
of the project itself. I went to Butare in June for a round
of meetings with university officials and near daily trips
up to the capital, Kigali, to outline the proposal for the
ministers of education and communications and the head of
the government information agency. Everyone greeted the proposal
with enthusiasm and all asked that in addition to helping
teach journalism students at the university, we also conduct
training workshops with working journalists in Kigali. So,
that’s what we’ll be doing.
As I have explained to Roger, Sue and Sylvia,
this teaching gig in Butare is a bit of a blind date. I’ve
been to Butare before, but only for a few days at a time and
my colleagues have not been to Rwanda at all. We all know
what our teaching assignments are - in theory. But we
know little more than the names of the courses that have been
assigned and have no idea how many days a week we will have
to teach, or in what circumstances.
The National University of Rwanda has a very
pleasant campus with bright, airy classrooms. But students
don’t have the same easy access to computers and the
internet that Carleton students now take for granted. Hence,
the drive to collect laptop computers, the data projector
and other equipment to enhance the teaching experience on
the ground. Inspired by the Canadian Tire geek, Roger and
I each purchased one of those Motomaster power packs that
promise to suck up electricity when the lights are on, then
provide a source of power for computers and equipment during
power outages, which are frequent in Butare. We’ll see
how that goes.
And so, the journey begins: KLM bus from
Ottawa to catch my flight at Trudeau airport in Montreal,
stops in Amsterdam and Nairobi and finally, Rwanda, the land
of a thousand hills.
^Top |