15 September 2005

While I have often felt rudderless with my rudderless schedule, it does have its benefits.

Yesterday, after making some calls to get my Burundi trip set up – and yes, UNHCR did make the trip harder to get done than I would have liked – I rushed to send off some e-mails for the trip, and then to get my visa. I didn’t remember my two passport photos, so I had to fly home to get them before the visa office closed. I almost said visa line, but unless you’re a returning refugee, there’s not much of a clamor to go to Burundi. After the visa fiasco, I went to The New Times office – the main English paper here – to get some good contacts with the reporters, and the good contacts they have with the government.

But you’re wondering, after all that rushing around where the benefits of the rudderless schedule come in? After my New Times meetings, it was time for lunch. On the way to Baba’s, the African buffet near Bec’s office, I stopped by a traffic circle where Rwanda’s first public art show anyone can remember to see if the painters I knew were there. I wanted to see how the show was going, if the president had arrived, how much of the art they had sold.

They weren’t there. I continued down the hill, dodging traffic as I left the circle, and headed to Baba’s. That’s where I found Sekijege, a Rwandan painter, and Juuko, a Ugandan who helped organize the show and is an established painter himself. I sat down with them, and we started talking. The conversation spun from music to movies to what not to eat in Congo (actually, what I learned was don’t eat in Congo), what crocodile tastes like – a cross between chicken and fish, but a little sweeter – to freak-show American celebrities like Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson. Eventually Sekijege’s friend Norman, another Rwandan, joined in the discussion. We had a long debate about whether hyenas are the smartest animals on the savannah or the stupidest. Norman and I came don on the side of intelligence. Why? They sneak into where a pack of lions are eating, change their voices and pretend to be lion cubs. They rarely hunt, and food is essentially provided for them. You be the judge.

The conversation turned serious when we started to discuss the nasty buffoons in charge of the American government, and then the politics of Rwanda. In general, both Norman and Sekijege said that their current president and his government do a lot of good work for Rwanda, but he has some warts. Juuko started to ask about political rights in the country. There are rarely demonstrations, and people seem reluctant to speak out against the government. From my discussions with people, there is no viable political opposition based on ideas. There are opposition rebels based outside the country, but they are the same people who brought Rwanda the genocide, and therefore, in my mind, don’t count as a political opposition. All they are are murderous thugs with a racist ideology – essentially African Nazis, and I don’t throw that term around lightly.

Juuko said Rwandans needed to stand up and peacefully disagree for real democracy to develop. Sekijege and Norman said that 11 years after the genocide was too soon. Even environmental demonstrations were used by the previous regime to stir up anti-Tutsi anger, and that led to the bloodshed, they said. It was hard for Juuko and I to understand what it felt like to even discuss the genocide, we hadn’t lost any family members to it, and we couldn’t understand what it meant to put the country back together again, according to Sekijege.

Juuko insisted that he wasn’t talking about anything except Rwandans regaining their rights, and learning how to use them. I sat, watched and listened, throwing in a question now and then. “How will you know when it is time to allow open politics to develop?” I asked, and neither Norman nor Sekijege could answer concretely. There may not be a concrete answer. Maybe eventually people will know, and it will be time. Maybe it never will be. This is the first time two ethnic groups have been forced to live together in the same tiny space after one tried to eliminate the other.

In their own ways, I think both the Rwandan tandem and Juuko are both right. People do need to claim their political rights, but when they’re ready. And if people are still scared that a peaceful demonstration can lead to the machetes coming out, then it probably isn’t time. I certainly don’t think I’m in the position to tell them.

By this time Sekijege had to leave the table, while Norman stayed. We all decided that it was time to change the topic, and I asked Juuko how he could wear a turtleneck sweater in the middle of the afternoon. It was in the mid-to-upper 80s outside. He said he was cold.

And the next thing I knew, it was after 5 p.m. I had been at that table for over four hours. I imagined that this is what life was like for Hemingway’s lost generation in Paris – journalists and painters sitting, discussing anything and everything for hours on end, not realizing just how many had passed. Except we were sitting on a dusty porch over bottles of Coke and water with a grand view of a traffic circle and well-paved road, rather than overlooking the Seine with glasses of absinthe. Not a bad way to spend a year, especially when you’re finally producing stories.

I also noted that, for the most part, all of our friends are African – mostly Rwandans with the odd Ugandan thrown in. And I like that. You get a much better feel for the country, and I can hang out with Americans in America.

Right now, Bec’s in Kibuye, helping to training to rural folks in a savings program. She says she’s pretty much along the shore of Lake Kivu, Rwanda’s answer to a beach resort. The water of the volcanic lake is an astonishing crystal blue, Bec says, but that she hasn’t had a chance to go for a swim yet. She has to give two presentations en francais, and she’s done one already. She’s nervous, but I don’t think she needs to be. She knows the topic cold, and the language will come. She’s her own toughest critic.

So the house is a little empty, and it will be almost all next week when I’m gone. At my suggestion, Bec took the Gameboy. Since we don’t have TV, I don’t have much opportunity for mindless entertainment here. Icky.