25 November 2005

It was when I started to wonder whether I could jab my pen into a colleague’s eye, escape the conference room and slip past the soldiers on the compound that I knew I had to leave a meeting last night.

The president’s communication advisor called Wednesday night to invite me to a meeting of journalists to discuss how to work together better. At first I didn’t want to go, it was Thanksgiving after all. But it was at 4 p.m. and I was able to do my part of the prep work for the big dinner beforehand. Plus, they told me it was only supposed to last about an hour.

So I arrived at the president’s compound at 3:30, figuring that arriving early to get through security was a good idea. The soldiers at the gate had no idea what I was talking about. I tried in English and French. Finally, one of the soldiers told me to walk down to the fourth gate and I would find the meeting no problem.

I did that, except the fourth gate was at a different building, which was closing. The guards there saw me and, rather than asking what I was looking for, said “umuzungu” and laughed. “Yes, I am a white person,” I said. Then a guy who spoke enough English to tell me the office was closed walked by.

So I walked back to the soldiers and, although I tried to remain calm, told off the man with the machine gun. He sent another man with a machine gun who spoke French to show me where I was supposed to go. We walked past the second gate, then the third. And then we hopped over the drainage ditch, walked along the dirt path, across the basketball court down to where there was a group of cars, and the fourth gate. There were few people around, so I of course thought this was the end, part of some dastardly plan.

We were let into the conference room at 4:15. The meeting started at 4:30. There were four or five presidential advisors, representatives of Rwandan news organizations, Rwandan correspondents for the AP and Reuters and a few other foreign media outlets, the French Radio France Internationale correspondent and me. Since some Rwandans spoke French and some English, the meeting was conducted in Kinyarwanda, and the president’s speechwriter gamely translated for the RFI correspondent and me.

The meeting started out well, with reporters asking questions about access to sites, ministers and information and getting good answers in return, for the most part. But then the meeting turned. It is then that I fully comprehended the Rwandan capacity to sit and listen to each other blather on beyond any point of being useful.

Rebecca often tells me about her hours-long meetings at work where her colleagues all have to have their say, even if it’s repeating what the person next to them said. I always tell her that someone would have to die if I sat in those meetings, and it wouldn’t be me.

The RFI correspondent left our meeting a little after 5. She asked a question in English about taping at a judicial ‘earing. Most people didn’t understand what she was talking about, and she kept asking why she couldn’t tape the ‘earing but Radio Rwanda could. She claimed she had an interview when she left, but I think it was frustration. I figured I would stick around a little while longer, to see how the meeting ended.

The speechwriter kept translating, either by writing in my notebook or telling me what was going on. The questions people asked were long soliloquies, the answers 20 times longer. My translator kept getting called away from the meeting so I was lost most of the time. It felt like I was there for hours. But I had no idea because the soldiers were holding my mobile phone hostage for security reasons. I’m still wearing my broken watch you see.

I finally snuck a peak at someone’s watch. Five forty-five. I had been there for nearly two hours. But the speechwriter told someone he’d call them back in 20 minutes so I thought I could hold out a bit longer. Our guests were arriving around 6, so I’d just be a little late.

At 6:15, they said last question. Which turned into two last questions. Which then turned into three last questions, which then turned into my friend James raising his hand and my thoughts about making my bloody escape.

Instead I just got up and left. As I walked into the night, Arthur, the Reuters correspondent, said to me, “Leaving already.”

I spoke to my friend Gabi this morning, and he said the reporters were kept there for another hour after I left. He also said I looked like I was going to explode. Originally I thought the government was going to do something terrible to me on the way into the meeting. It turned out they were trying to bore me to death.

Anyway, I got home around 7:15 to find out that our cooking gas had run out while the turkey was cooking, so Rebecca’s boss donated the canister from his house. But despite that, and the scrawny but fatty turkey, Rebecca did a fabulous job cooking the bird. Our friends all had a good time, and overall it was a happy Thanksgiving.

23 November 2005

A turkey has taken over our Rebecca’s life.

I know what you’re thinking, but actually, we’re hosting Thanksgiving tomorrow. Twelve people, including two Japanese, a Swiss woman who in a former life was an au pair in Pelham, an Omani woman who grew up in Rwanda, a Brit and a Kenyan. The rest are garden variety American. It’s a very international Thanksgiving, no.

So the turkey is now brining in our fridge, neck down in a bag. That means that our washing bucket is in there. Fortunately our water has worked all week. I probably just jinxed it. It also means that shelves and racks that were in our refrigerator are now scattered all around the kitchen. Between those and the extra food we have lying around I think Claude may have a heart attack.

Rebecca has been incredibly brave during this whole process. The bird was dead, plucked and headless when we picked it up. But she cleaned out the insides: the heart, liver and what either were kidneys, gizzards or, my contention, testicles, were still inside. She chopped off the neck using our dull kitchen knife. All in all, she’s handled a lot of blood. I’ve cheered her on. It’s the reverse of our bug arrangement, where I’m responsible for killing and she handles clean up.

We’re making stuffing and sweet potato latkes (her idea). The International Committee of the Red Cross, who live up the street and have a bitchin’ pool table, is bringing veggies. Sean, Bec’s boss, is on mashed potatoes. We’re assuming he’s too busy to make them himself, not that he’s afraid to cook. Others are bringing desert, although we’re making an apple pie. It should be great fun.

The turkeys here don’t take steroids. There isn’t much breast meat. But they are free range. There’s a good chance it was walking around near our house before it came inside.

It feels a bit warm to be Thanksgiving, but hey, we’re in Africa. And, Rebecca doesn’t have the day off tomorrow. She’s leaving early, but she had Columbus Day off. Who cares about Columbus Day?

So, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Before you go and stuff yourselves, you’re going to get two stories. One is the departure of Father Guy. The other is the first one I wrote when we got here. Sure, it’s been about three months. But hey, it’s only news. That means there’s only one more lying around the Catholic News Service waiting to be published.

Father Theunis: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506673.htm

Rural AIDS: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506683.htm
The response to my query about biogas has been disappointing. Who out there would use it?

18 November 2005

Every time I’m ready to give up on Rwanda, I meet someone who convinces me this is a country worth knowing.

I was walking to do an interview this morning and had a chat with a 16-year old named Ronald. He stopped to ask me the time, and I pulled out my mobile phone since my watch is still not working. Anyway, it turned out we were going in the same direction so we chatted along the way.

We started out with the basics and pleasantries. Then he asked what I thought of Rwanda, and I hedged. I said there were parts I liked and parts I was having trouble adjusting to. So then I asked Ronald what he thought of his country, explaining that that was far more important.

He said he loved it, because Rwanda is moving forward. The reconciliation process was working. I asked if he saw any problems. Were people just not talking about ethnic divisions.

“No,” he said. “For example, I’m friends with the man who killed my father.”

I mumbled something meaningless about that being hard. He said it was at first, but the man has become a Christian, and had returned to Ronald his father’s watch. Ronald did admit when his new friend, pulled the watch out of his back pocket, Ronald assumed a fighting stance. Ronald said he didn’t know if it was a rock or a knife, something to complete the job.

I asked if Ronald asked the murderer why. Ronald said he hadn’t, but his mother had after the Gacaca hearing. He killed because he was jealous. He wanted Ronald’s father’s house, car, watch and money. The genocide was as good a reason as any to get it.

I asked Ronald how he could be friends with his father’s killer. He said simply that one has to forgive, and this was the only way Rwanda can move forward. His voice never changed tone, and his face stayed impassive. It was like he was giving me directions.

We somehow managed to talk about other things. I gave Ronald my number, and hopefully I’ll hear from him soon. I’d like to talk to him some more, and to his mother. Most of all I want to talk to his new friend.

16 November 2005

So my meal ticket is still here. The Rwandan government, despite signing the agreement to extradite the priest, a court ordering them to do it expeditiously and the only outstanding matter being the signature of the justice minister, has decided to make Father Theunis sweat. The latest delay is that the entire Cabinet needs to discuss it, and that won’t happen until at least Friday. The next flight out to Brussels isn’t until Saturday. My secret hope is that they hold him until he’s on my flight to Brussels on Nov. 29. Then I just sidle up next to him and interview him over the course of the night.

It’s understandable why the Rwandans are doing this. They don’t want to look like they’re bowing down to a Western country, especially a really minor and pointless one like Belgium. It’s a power question. Also, there’s huge baggage since the Belgians colonized Rwanda, and institutionalized the Hutu-Tutsi divide in a way it hadn’t existed before.

And then there’s the matter of the thrill they’re probably getting out of holding this guy in prison. A white guy, a priest and someone they think helped arrange the genocide: what could be better than showing him that they can keep him locked up as long as they want?

Ah, pettiness. Where would journalism be without pettiness?

This seems as good a time as any to describe some of our recent adventures with Rwandan law enforcement.

The Rwandan traffic police are stationed around the city, usually unarmed except at night. They wear blue uniforms topped with a jaunty beret and usually have a neon yellow reflective jacket that says “TRAFFIC POLICE” in English on the back. You can’t miss them.

And apparently they can’t miss us.

Rebecca was wrongly pulled over because another driver performed a staggering maneuver around the traffic circle she takes to get to the office. She wasn’t assessed a fine or anything like that, not even a terribly stern talking to. It was just a little annoying.

Anyway, days later, she got pulled over again. As she fumbled around for her drivers’ license and registration (the insurance information is on a sticker on one of the car’s windows), the traffic cop walked to the window. “Bonjour, Rebecca. Ca va?”

Bec says she continued to look for the license and tentatively said, “Bonjour. Ca va.”

The cop continued, “Are you going to the office?” (This all happened in French. Bec’s getting quite good. I’m translating for your benefit and to prevent a revolt by my spell checker.)

“Yes.”

“Okay, have a nice day,” the officer replied and let Rebecca drive off.

A few days after that, we were driving home one of Bec’s co-workers who recently arrived in Kigali. She is still living at Chez Lando. The traffic police have set up checkpoints near Chez Lando because people are often drunk when they come out of there and it’s a fairly high traffic area.

The roadblock is a small, ground level, triangular stop sign that is almost impossible to see if not placed directly under the streetlights, when they are working. Rebecca almost blew right past it.

So we got pulled over. Again. After a few rounds of apologies and questions of what happened, the somewhat exasperated policeman said, “Vous avez violee le panneau!” Literally translated, that means, “You have violated the sign!”

We have no idea why the idea of violating the sign is so funny, but it is.

Anyway, that’s about all from here for now. So far only Mark, Mo and Rebecca (who took the chance to make fun of my intestinal tract’s sensitivity) have replied to my questions about biogas. Here they are again:

1) What is your first reaction to powering your home using biogas, or, in other words, to powering your home using the methane from your own poop?
2) Would you do it if you had the chance?

This is a serious scientific inquiry here people. So let’s get some responses.

Happy birthday Pookie and Ali.

14 November 2005

I’m hiding out in my house this morning and won’t leave until the madness is done.

That sounds really ominous in a country with Rwanda’s history, so I’ll explain. The government announced on Friday that businesses would be closed on Monday morning and all people were expected to plant government-provided trees.

On its face, tree-planting day sounds like a great idea. Deforestation and soil erosion are huge problems in Rwanda, and since Rwandans don’t really volunteer for anything unless there’s money involved, it’s good to get everyone out planting.

The tree planting is an extension of umuganda, where on the last Saturday of each month all Rwandans are expected to go out and do public works projects. Expected is the wrong word. Forced is more apt. Rebecca’s boss Sean says he’s been pulled over on many occasions driving to work on a Saturday, with the police trying to force him into clearing brush or something like that.

Again, on its face umuganda sounds like a great idea. Everyone pulls together to plant and spruce up the neighborhood.

But there are huge problems with this system. First of all, in a country trying to develop its economy, shutting everything down so people can plant trees is not necessarily the way to encourage growth. You want those shops open and money changing hands. That’s how economies grow. Everything was closed on Saturday morning by some sort of mysterious governmental decree. Our neighbor Kersty said that it was an extension of last month’s “Ask President Paul” event, where President Kagame gathered thousands of people into the main football (soccer) stadium and, in theory, everyone asked him a question. The president then decided to take a spin around Kigali, which necessitated shutting the place down.

“Ask President Paul” took place on the Saturday when umuganda was supposed to take place, so that was two Saturdays in a row where the city shut down. (Most shops close at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and aren’t open at all on Sundays.)

Not everyone was able to ask their questions during the session, so they shut everything down this past Saturday so people could ask remaining questions of their commune leaders, or as Rebecca calls them neighborhood spies. So that means the country has essentially been shut for two-and-a-half days. Gacaca days also cause everything in a neighborhood to close. There’s a Gacaca tribunal, quasi-traditional communal courts for trying low-level genocide suspects, going on somewhere in the country every day. And they want to grow an economy?

That’s just annoying. But umuganda has an air of menace to it. First of all, it is apparently a vestigial element of Belgian colonialism.

Second, it’s not hard to make some really uncomfortable leaps of logic. The government now is forcing everyone to get out and work, hoes, shovels and machetes in hand, for community improvement.

It was exactly the same message during the genocide. People were told to get out and complete their work. Essentially, if one wanted to, the genocide could be seen as a depraved 100-day umuganda, except the community improvement was getting rid of about 10 percent of the community.

Even with that understanding it’s hard to fathom how the majority of a population could be convinced that decimating their neighbors was community improvement. But once that threshold was crossed it’s not hard to see how the organizers could mobilize the population to do their “work.”

And I’m not comparing the government’s motives to those of the genocidal maniacs who used to run Rwanda. This is a commentary more on how Rwandans, for the most part, don’t question orders from authority, and the obvious dangers that poses when the power is abused.

So, now that I’ve bummed you out on a Monday morning, I’ll continue ducking when I walk past our windows. Rebecca seems to have passed through the tree police without getting caught, and is safely working away in her office. As for me, only an hour or so to go.

11 November 2005

Things in Rwanda often make no sense.

For example, we are in the middle of the first rainy season. Anyway, one would think that with the rains would come more water, and therefore better water in our house.

Ah, but this is not the case. At least a few mornings every week we don’t have enough pressure to take showers, so we do bucket baths. The water entirely stopped for most of Wednesday, and I was dreading the sanitary prospects if it didn’t come back soon. Fortunately, it returned that night.

Intellectually, I know what the problems are. The first is that Kigali grew so fast that the power and water utilities couldn’t keep up. The city has grown something like 10 times, maybe more, in the 11 years since the genocide.

I also know that when it rains, it rains hard. Mud and other stuff get caught in the pipes of the main aqueduct. While I figure that there must be some way to prevent this, Bec reminds me that 1) this is one of the poorest countries in the world and 2) it’s hard to stop nature. Finally, Kimihurura, our neighborhood, is notorious for having spotty water.

None of this makes me feel better in the morning as the water and my temper boils. If there’s more water outside, there should be more water inside.

That’s a small, if terribly annoying, example. Another thing that doesn’t make sense is the way language is handled in this country. Rwandan primary education is done entirely in Kinyarwanda. Students learn some French, but for the most part everything is done in Kinyarwanda. When kids get to secondary school, which only around six percent of the population does, everything is done in French because Kinyarwanda doesn’t have the words to do math, science and other advanced educational things. So kids are learning math and science in a language they don’t really speak. Meanwhile, they only have elementary Kinyarwanda.

It’s worse with English. Essentially, if you didn’t grow up in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania or some other English-speaking country, you don’t speak it.

As Rebecca points out, this means that people aren’t fluent in any language. The country for some reason doesn’t just Kinyarwand-ize French or English words that would expand their language, so people can’t express really complex thoughts in their native tongue. (The legal system is conducted entirely in Kinyarwanda, so presumably people being tried can’t understand much of what is happening. But if the legal system can incorporate these new words, why can’t the rest of the country?)

The French spoken here is bad because people are learning the workings of the human body in a language in which they can’t do basic grammar. And English is non-existent in people who grew up here.

One of Rebecca’s co-workers said that it’s okay, because everyone speaks Kinyarwanda to each other. They don’t lose it as they progress in school. But her French teacher says that people don’t even speak Kinyarwanda correctly.

Other things don’t make sense either. The government wants to stop food aid because it distorts the local economy, it makes people entirely dependent on outside food and they have no incentive to improve agriculture. All of this is true. Food aid, except in emergency situations, is terrible and should be stopped. The World Food Program is here, but they need to leave because they do more harm than good.

Of course, the government hasn’t put in any plans to ease people off of donated food, so agencies that provide it are forced to tell health centers, orphanages and other groups that rely on the vegetable oil, flour and cornmeal coming in that the food is simply stopping and nothing’s taking its place. As you can imagine, the US government, European Union and other developed countries are not eager to get rid of food aid because what else would they do with their surpluses? Farmers vote, you know.

And while I laud the government’s goal of making Rwanda a technology hub, even Kigali doesn’t have reliable electricity. And, oh yeah, at best half the country can read.

Someone, a Rwandan, recently said to Rebecca that it often seems like the government here governs an entirely different country than the one they live in. And that person has a point.

The question, of course, is where it comes from. Bec and I were talking about this the other night. At first, she thought it was almost sinister. The government came from somewhere else. So they didn’t trust the people that were here, even the Tutsis who survived the genocide. Trust is not something one sees a lot of in Rwanda.

I think it’s something far more benign. I think the government here says, “Hey, we have a great idea. Let’s do it!” and can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t agree. In essence, the government is trying to pull the country in its direction, and can’t understand resistance. It’s a little utopian if you think about it. Fascism and Communism, for extreme and not nearly applicable examples, were utopian as well.

Anyway, both of us agreed that in the end, not understanding whom you’re governing is dangerous. I don’t think it’s quite as dangerous as Bec does. I think that in a way a little pulling is good, especially in a country where people are happy to do what their fathers did even if their fathers nearly starved every year.

Eventually, though, people don’t like to get pulled, especially if they don’t trust the people doing the pulling. That’s where the danger comes in.

Anyway, not to change the topic too abruptly, I’m still waiting for biogas answers. Here are the questions again:

1) What is your first reaction to powering your home using biogas, or, in other words, to powering your home using the methane from your own poop?
2) Would you do it if you had the chance?

Talk to everyone soon.

9 November 2005

Howdy. It’s been a while, everybody. Sorry about that. But I can explain.

First of all, I usually write these at home so that I have a record in my computer. If I ever want to write a book (which sounds more and more daunting as I try to keep up this pace), everything I’ve written is there.

So the process is I save the entry onto a pocket-sized hard drive and upload it to the site when I go to an Internet café. In actuality, my trips to the Internet are mostly to see if the Rangers won. But I guess they benefit everyone.

So, I went to go send some documents to the Dallas Morning News last week after spending a day at a conference on the potential of Bird Flu in Africa. When I went to find the memory stick, it wasn’t there. I literally walked half of Kigali trying to find it. No dice. So far, Rwanda has eaten my memory stick, my watch and my Palm Pilot. (Is that Hannukah and Christmas I hear walking down the street?) Fortunately, the computer, digital camera and most importantly iPod are holding their own.

And the other thing is that sometimes the life of a journalist isn’t terribly exciting. I’ve been working on a finishing a story on the Gitarama weavers for DaMN, and I’ve over-reported it. Fortunately, Rebecca, the brains in the family, has taken a crack at it and save me from myself. It’s far better than it was, and it’s on its way to Texas now.

So, back to journalism. I pitched the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on bird flu. They had just done a series on it. I pitched Dallas on the same topic. What do they want? “Hey, I hear you’ve got a story on women basket weavers. Drop those bird flu, Belgian priest charged with genocide and alternative energy stories. We need women weaving baskets stat!” (That’s not actually what they said, but it’s the gist. And I’m happy to do that story. First of all, it actually is important as a development story. Second, I like Joy, Janet and Liz, the women who make it run. Third, DaMN pays me for one story more than what I made in a week at the Riverdale Press. If they publish a photo, it’s actually more. What can I say? I’m a mercenary.)

On a melancholy note, it looks like Father Guy, the Belgian priest accused of genocide (or as I like to call him, Meal Ticket), is headed back to Belgium for trial very soon. Anyway, here’s one of my last CNS stories on him (http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0506366.htm). I wrote another today, and took some photos. And I’ll probably have a third when he leaves. That’s it.

I actually got to interview the priest at yesterday’s hearing. God bless the Rwandan justice system. They brought him early, the judge was late and they left him sitting in the courtroom by himself. So after a little debate among the reporters, we started asking him questions.

As I said, I took photos at today’s hearing, and probably could have sat next to the judge if I had wanted to. Ah, access.

Finally, I’m doing the initial reporting on a story I want to send to magazines. It’ll probably be something I really sink my teeth into when we return from New York. But I need all of your help. Think of it as payment for the pleasure of reading this. Anyway, the story is about an alternative fuel source here. I need everyone who reads this to answer these two questions, either as posts to my blog or in an e-mail. Here we go:

1) What is your first reaction to powering your home using biogas, or, in other words, to powering your home using the methane from your own poop?
2) Would you do it if you had the chance?

Now, pass that question along to people you know. I’m doing an informal poll.

Talk to everyone later, and see many of you soon.