Greetings, everyone, from the land of eternal spring, one of Rwanda’s nicknames. I thought rather than sending a long e-mail every week that I’d maintain a blog instead. That’s right, I’ve become part of the chattering class. I hope that rather than the fat guys with political agendas who never see the sun in the United States, I’ll actually have something interesting to say. I also hope that I will not get fat and that I will see the sun, but that’s another story.

Anyway, here’s how this is going to work. I’ll update this site periodically. Sometimes I’ll remember to e-mail out that I’ve done it, most of the time I won’t. So it’ll be your responsibility to check it periodically, at least a couple of times a week. You’ll be able to post a response, so if you think I’m insightful and helping your understanding of the country, post it. If you think I’m a government shill, any government, post it. You can call me any names you want. Any names, except late for dinner.

I’ll also remember to put links to my stories when they’re published in other newspapers and wire services.

So, here we go with the first missive:

August 2, 2005

So we’re here. In Kigali, at Chez Lando. Our luggage isn’t with us, except for the stuff we carried onto the plane ourselves. It never made the jump from our Baltimore to London flight to our London to Nairobi flight. Don’t worry though, we do have enough changes of underwear to weather this particular storm, and our bags should arrive today or tomorrow. At least that’s what British Airways says.

Rebecca is off at work, meeting new people, doing exciting things. Me, well, I tried to go for a walk, to try to find a good place to sit and write. That’s no easy task when you’re in a city with barely any street names, and even fewer maps. So I’m sitting on a bench in Chez Lando’s parking lot. And I really have nothing to write about, except about how I’ve got almost nothing to write about. Yet. It hasn’t even been 24 hours since we arrived.

I am determined to find my way around. I will not whine. I will not complain. I don’t have a choice. It’ll be much easier when Rebecca and I finally have a place to live that’s not a hotel. She might be fine living out of a suitcase. I am too, up to a point. So far it’s been 10 days at the Stich apartment, three nights with Amanda, three nights on airplanes, a night in Nairobi and a night at Chez Lando with no end in sight.

This is all going to take some time. I have to get over my fear of French. It’s not an inability to speak the language. It’s a fear of hearing the words come out of my mouth. They’re not English, in case any of you were wondering, and it still feels wrong to speak them. Like everything else here, it’s just going to take some time and I’ll get used to it. Until then, I’ll just sort of muddle through.

Now, enough about me. Let’s talk about Kigali, since that’s what most of you are probably wondering about. What are my first impressions, you’re probably wondering. Sorry, but I’m a journalist. I don’t do impressions. If I did, however, I would impersonate a cloud of dust. Yesterday when Rebecca and I were being driven back from the Catholic Relief Services headquarters, I was brought to tears by a cloud that snuck around my sunglasses and into the whites of my eyes. I may have to wear goggles.

Other than that, I haven’t seen very much. Chez Lando is between the government area, where CRS is based, and the central city, or what there is of a central city. Of course, that means that it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. It’s a 25 to 30 minute walk to get either area, and with the blistering UV levels, that’s probably not going to be a possibility for me. Chez Lando is a hopping spot at night, however. Of course, since it’s named after Lando Calrissian, how could it not be? Don’t quote me on the Lando Calrissian bit, though. It is, however, truly its own little city in the clouds.

Other than the dust, Kigali is simply beautiful. It is built on two hills, and incorporates the valley in between. It is studded with trees, although we arrived during one of the two dry seasons, so it’s not nearly as green as it will be here. There is construction going on everywhere. Modern buildings, some with glass walls others with the ubiquitous stucco of the developing world, are going up everywhere.

It’s all a part of rebuilding the country, which is much easier to do physically. Business appears to be picking up, although it doesn’t mask the grinding poverty. Reading some of the statistics on the country paints a picture of a nation with a host of problems it will be tough to overcome. The life expectancy averages about 49 years. The HIV/AIDS infection rate is 11 to 13 percent of the population. Infant mortality rates are 110 for every 1,000 births. Those are just off the top of my head. Rebecca’s got more.

As I said, there are good things going on here. Rwanda was just rated the top of the list in President Bush’s PEPFAR (I think that stands for President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief or some other nonsensical acronym from Uncle Sam), which means that it is getting anti-retroviral drugs and other AIDS treatments to its population more efficiently and completely than any country that receives the funds. Even in rural areas, which is most of the country. Prevention efforts by the government are a different story altogether, and one that I know little about. I plan on finding out about them.

As I said, there is construction going on all over Kigali. And there are traffic lights. That may not sound like such a big deal, and in fact they don’t necessarily work all that well – most of the signals I’ve seen are flashing yellow lights rather than full-on red, yellow and green – but it’s a sign that the folks who run this country are trying to instill a rule of law.

In most developed countries, traffic is heavily regulated, even if the regulations are usually ignored. In most developing countries that’s not the case. I don’t remember seeing one traffic light in Nairobi, although to be fair we really only drove from the airport to the hotel and back. I think there were two traffic lights in all of Cambodia, and anyway, people didn’t follow them. People here follow the lights and the signs, from what I’ve seen, and anyway, except for the motorcycle taxi drivers, don’t drive like maniacs. Everyone tells me not to use the moto guys, and since folks who have been here for over a year and have lived all over this continent tell me that, I’ll listen.

One other interesting phenomenon is the beginnings of a public transit system. There were always minibuses flying around Kigali. The minibuses are small Japanese vans from the 1980s, like the Shaggin’ Wagon, Mo. Until recently, they just went wherever the passengers wanted. Now, they have the neighborhood they’re going to marked clearly on the front and are starting to develop routes. I’m not sure if that’s a government thing, but it’s putting a bit of order into transport here. I don’t know any of the neighborhoods, so they’re of no use to me yet. I’m also going to have to figure out which private cars are actually taxis.

The government here appears to be ahead of the people in many ways, traffic being one prominent example. According to Rebecca’s boss, the people may just be starting to catch up.

I’m sure that those of you who know their history are waiting for me to mention the g-word. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve got to turn off the television and start reading more. The g-word I’m talking about is genocide, and it’s hard to not think about it when you first arrive here. When I look at someone older than say about 25, I wonder what they did, or when they moved back here. It’s simply not possible to avoid, although I’d like to think that I’ll move past that thought. More than 800,000 people were slaughtered out of a population of around 8 million in around 100 days. That’s about 10 percent of the population for those math-phobes. In fact, Rwanda had the second largest portion of its population killed in a genocide or political violence of any country, according to Rebecca’s boss. What country killed the most of its citizens? Cambodia. Do I know how to pick my developing countries or what?

The genocide hangs over everything here, and according to the few foreigners I’ve spoken to, it’s something Rwandans don’t talk about. There is a certain tension in the air at all times, these folks say. But it’s eased a bit over the last few weeks. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it. I’m just trying to learn how to talk about it with Rwandans, if they choose to talk about it. It’s not like asking about the weather, however.

Chances are when you meet people, they either lost family in the genocide, returned with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel group that ended the genocide, knew people who killed or who killed themselves. Cambodia was the same way, but when Rebecca and I were there, they had 30 years to move on from the Khmer Rouge, and they didn’t do it well. The Rwandan genocide happened only 11 years ago, and the country is still trying to figure out how to deal with it. But how does it move on and create a civil society? That’s one of the questions I hope to answer. A better way to phrase that is I hope there is an answer to that question, for the Rwandans’ sakes.

Around 36,000 people implicated in the killings were recently released from prison here because they were being held too long without a trial. They have to be reincorporated into society. A recent peace agreement with rebels in Congo is allowing many genocidaires, the people who brought you the violence, to return home, although the jury is still out on whether that will happen, and how it will work. The local gacaca (pronounced gachacha) tribunals, where a form of local justice is handed down on low-level offenders after a public trial, are still going on, and I plan on going to many to see how they work. The government appears to want to move ahead peacefully, and unlike other genocide sufferers actually is trying to prevent others from suffering the same fate. The Rwandan military, which by all accounts is trained to the standards of a Western military, is among the leaders of the African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, Sudan. And the government wants to send more troops. We’ll see how that works out.

Wow, so much for not having a lot to write about. I hope that this serves as a good introduction into what Rebecca and I have got us into. As you can see, there’s no shortage of stories here. Hopefully editors will want them. Look for another installment soon.