26 December 2005

Christmas and Hanukkah were joyeux.

Other than a little disagreement between the vegetable peeler and my left pointer finger, everything went off without a hitch. We had an intimate group of six, including our friend Anne, who was here for Thanksgiving and works for CRS, our friend Laura, another regular, and two Columbia Business School Students who are here doing a short-term consulting project, Jake and Tricia. I was the only non-business person at the gathering, but we were able to redirect the conversation out of the business world, except when I was off making the latkes.

The latkes, by the way, were a huge hit. Thanks Mom. They were the source of my injury, though. And the pot roast with a red wine reduction Bec made was fabulous as well. Normally Rwandan beef is ridiculously tough. But she managed to make it chewable, and tasty. Anne had the best theory as to why Rwandan beef is as tough as it is. “The cows have to walk up all these hills,” she said.

Laura lives up in Kimironko, a mostly middle-class neighborhood by Rwandan standards on the other side of town from us, in a house maintained by a joint Rwandan-American non-governmental organization (yup, yet another NGO) called RAPs – Rwandans and Americans in Partnership. Both Rebecca and I hate the name. Why can’t it just be Rwandan-American Partnership? Or Rwandan-American Partners? Why does it need the “in”? Why must it be like a Steven Seagal movie title?

Laura is starting another NGO here, a health services one that is putting a proper hospital in underserved rural areas. There are over 400 registered NGOs, Rwandan and international, in this country. That’s not including the UN and the various Western government aid agencies like USAID. There are probably more NGOs than there are private businesses in Rwanda. It’s gotten to the point where there are two international NGOs working here with the same acronym – FHI – but with two different functions. One does family planning and anti-AIDS work, the other food security. I’m sorry, but once we’ve run out of acronyms, we need fewer NGOs. One needs to change its name or go out of business. I have thought of two ways to do this. Either the organization that was in business first gets to keep the name, or gang fights between the rival executive boards. Their choice, but one FHI has to go.

Somehow the number of NGOs in Rwanda seems wrong. I fear it’s like Bec described in Central Asia, where a few people decided that they were going to form an NGO, they gave themselves a snappy name and mission statement, got a boatload of Western foundation money, and then…. Nothing. No work, just the founders living better than they had before.

I have no doubt that Laura and her backers are doing and will do good work. But people have to start thinking about making money here, or nothing will ever really develop. As much as non-profits are necessary – and one of them is paying my rent and employing my wife – a country needs a vibrant private sector in order to really grow.

Anyway, back to Laura. She’s from Hanover, N.H.; she is hysterical; and she’s ready for a vacation. She hasn’t had power in her house for a couple of months because the previous owner never paid the electric bill. So the current tenant is expected to cover the previous delinquent. That hardly seems fair, since RAPs was up to date on its bills. Anyway, the person in charge of paying the bills is a bit forgetful and didn’t take care of the previous bills before spending six weeks in the U.S.

And then Laura’s just grown tired of a lot of the nonsense I’ve written about. So one day, after a particularly annoying morning, she just went home and went to bed. And now she’s taken to swinging her umbrella like a Billy club. Her house manager, a Rwandan, told Laura she wanted to walk around with her American friend at night for protection. “As if me and my umbrella are going to do anything,” Laura said last night.

It’s comforting in it’s way to see other people at short ends, although I wish we weren’t. Laura said Rwanda is turning her mean, which she wasn’t before. She doesn’t like it. Sometimes I feel the same way. But I’m still able to laugh, and so is Laura. We just try to keep our equilibrium, and to keep our spirits as intact as possible.