7 August: Rwanda

Driving now with Bosco and Paul from Kigali to Gisenyi, the border town with DR Congo, at which point we'll call the IRC's Goma office to send a car to pick us up. We stopped for lunch at a buffet-style, roadside canteen where we departing diners left a lot of food on their plates. A sign of prosperity?

Our meals cost about half as much as my glass of white wine at Republika last night. Andi & Kate had picked me up from Hotel Iris around 10:30pm, after about 2 hours of chasing each other on phone/email/skype, the intervention of Raymond from the front desk, and directions from Paul Kagame's guard. They'd been in Rwanda for three months, working for sidHARTe, a Columbia program that trains health care professionals in emergency care at low-resource or rural hospitals in Ghana and Rwanda.

Republika, a restaurant in Kagame's own Kiyovu neighborhood, was beautiful: with a wide deck overlooking the Rwandan hills, nearly invisible in the blackness, and sprinkled with lights that were easily mistaken for stars in the night sky. We ate coconut curry fish with grilled banana and ginger rice, and stopped by their place on the way back to my hotel to pick up some mobile phones left by a colleague.

On the way, I asked if Andi or Kate had had any conversations with Rwandans about the genocide. It struck me as soon as I'd landed, looking at the middle-aged female customs official, the older man pushing luggage carts--what had they seen, what did they live through to be here today? And Kigali, such a beautiful, clear, cool city as soon as you enter it--how could one imagine neighbors walking up cobblestone streets and past well-manicured lawns and up bougainvillea-lined driveways to brutally attack and kill their neighbors?

Andi said that those who do mention it say they don't want to talk about it, and that Rwanda maintains a thin veneer of normalcy that foreigners and tourists rarely puncture, below which its people are still scarred and traumatized. "In my hospital, all the attending [phsyicians] are my age, with one grey-haired man that they all follow around like puppies; there are no more experienced, older doctors for them to learn from, because they were all killed or fled." Medicine, like law, is an apprenticeship and with whole generations missing, Rwandans our age are left without mentors and teachers.

The 5-minute drive back to Hotel Iris turned into a 20-minute walk to find a taxi, after we discovered Andi had a flat tire, and I ended a day-and-a-half of travelling by going to sleep at 1:15am. The next day, Bosco came to pick Paul (part of IRC's Health Technical Unit, based in NY) and I up at 8am... an hour earlier than expected. And now we're several hours into the ride and passing through Rushengeri, one of the entrance points to the Parc National des Virunga, home to the famous mountain gorillas. Statues and paintings of gorillas have greeted us in almost every town we've passed through so far, reminding me of the large Czech man I sat next to on the plane, who was "That Guy" flying to Rwanda with a large black t-shirt whose entire front was taken up by a giant gorilla face. Aside from gorillas, Rwanda also has endless terraced hills that reminded me of Ubud on Bali, or a more tropical version of Nepal.

In one town, we passed what I think was a memorial to the genocide: a white arch with yellow, green, and blue stripes, with a message in Kinyarwanda following in English with the words: "Never again." One of the country's larger genocide memorials consist of around 800 bodies, embalmed with lime and laying on pillars, many in the same positions in which they died.

We also passed Chinese foreman directing road crews, and several signs advertising the ease and advantages of doing business in Rwanda (the first Rwandan billboard you see upon crossing the border from Goma says: "Investment yes, Corruption no." I was told that official government documents squarely place blame for the genocide on colonialism, and are clear in their message to the international community: "We got ourselves out of that, we'll set the terms of our development and doing business here."

Speaking of development, Bosco said that he's seen pictures of the U.S. and wants to go there, because our villages are better than Kigali. I told him they're not better, just different.

mission statement

This blog does not promise anything interesting... no cunning expat commentary, or penetrating political analysis, or insightful views into local ways of life. In fact, I just looked up a synonym for "insightful" to avoid using it twice... a harbinger of things to come. (I also just looked up the definition of "harbinger", to make sure I'm using it correctly. Check.)

I'm starting this blog with the intention of writing for you, and for me. For you, because you're my friends and family and despite the long periods without an email or skype call, I think about you and have these conversations with you in my head all the time. You're always with me. So by writing down thoughts and posting photos here, I hope I can engage with you on a more regular basis, and in a way that doesn't require telepathy. I'm also doing it for me. I find journalling tedious, and usually process things via movement, either of my mouth (talking) or my legs (running). Or via cocktails. But I think there's value in having a record of one's thoughts, in being able to look back over time and place and experience and see how one has, or hasn't, changed.

For instance, while I was searching my gmail for details of the only other blog I've ever attempted, I found 3 things: the website address (now vacant), the name ("People and Borders"... ugh... thus I had to come up with a new name for this one, and I'm not so impressed with it, either), and a half-written post in my "drafts" folder, dated June 24, 2007, almost exactly one year after first arriving in Sudan:

Sometimes I just want to go to the movies every weekend. And meet my friends at the same diner for late-night coffees and milkshakes. And be surrounded by good friends that I grew up with, that know my family, that would take a bullet for me if it came down to it. And be able to walk around my town and say hi to familiar faces and be on good relations with the people at my grocery store. Hell, speak the same language as them. But instead I dip into new communities that I have nothing in common with, spend hours in isolation, with my computer as my only gateway to long-lost and much-loved friends and family, upload snapshots of my life instead of weave a tapestry, day by day, together with those I care about most. Why? Why. And should I do it again?

Reading that now, and looking at the date, I must've written it when I was deciding whether to take a second job (or "mission" as they say in the pseudo-evangelical world of humanitarian aid) with IRC/Darfur. And I did. And it was the best, most rewarding job I've ever had, in a large village where I formed a family of Sudanese brothers and sisters that I'm still in touch with thanks to facebook and gmail. I've spent a good chunk of my adult life living overseas, and in each place, I've come to feel at home, to make strong connections, yes, even with the people at the local store.

But finding that post reminds me of the times when I've felt guilty for not being at home, for not staying and building my community in one place, for constantly leaving people I love and care about very much. It also surprises me, since I don't remember ever craving movies or milkshakes. Maybe writing, whether in a journal or a blog, makes us more accountable like that. And while I feel a bit self-important doing it, I also think about those of you who say, we love it when you write us about what you're doing, what you're thinking. Besides, I'm not forcing you to read it... although there will be a quiz the next time we hang out.