First, an editorial correction to Part 5: Interahamwe and Habyarimana (the assassinated president) are the corrected spellings; and RPF stands for Rwandese Patriotic Front (the forces that overthrew the Interahamwe and have established the current government).
Now on to a discussion of daily life in Rwanda. It was all summed up in the second question asked at the Gacaca meeting our first day: water, electricity, roads -- the essentials of daily life are not easily achieved. First of all, water: While there is indoor plumbing, there is little or no water pressure to use it. I think I flushed a toilet twice during our 10 days with Laura and Matt. Mostly we would take a small bucket of water from the stowed water bucket in the bathroom (usually consisting of water that had been used to wash potatoes or laundry, and was otherwise waste), and toss it in the toilet to flush. Showers: hah! Rumor has it there was hot water one day, but by the time I tried it out, there wasn't enough pressure in the tank to get it to run through the shower head, so I never found out. Sponge baths, pulling water from the clean water bucket in the bathroom, were the order of the day. The water supply seems to dry up at irregular intervals, and, as I mentioned earlier, even the large holding tank had run dry our first weekend. People line up at public springs with large yellow jerry cans, and carry water home on their heads.
The Rwandan people have the most incredible posture. Everyone, man, woman, or child, could qualify as a Vogue model. They carry everything on their heads. Philip was making a photographic collection of the weirdest objects he could find people carrying -- food, logs, knapsacks were a norm. He even achieved the feat of going up the hill from the market with three pineapples balanced on his head, to the obvious delight of all who saw him!
Then there is electricity -- or, to be more precise, occasionally there is electricity. There seemed to be rolling blackouts, with no schedule -- but you could count on them happening at least two or three times an evening -- unless, of course they only happened once, for the entire evening. Our last day in Rwanda, we came home late and were totally stressed out trying to get all the packing done and the immense amount of junk we had purchased safely wrapped and stowed before the lights went out, because we were leaving for our plane at 4:00 a.m., and would not have any daylight at the other end to see to pack. Laura and Matt have kerosene lamps in every room, which they routinely light as the lights flicker off. The two most valuable items I brought to Rwanda were my water bottle and my flashlight. Philip travelled with a miner's light, and left it with Matt so he could safely run after dark. (Matt is a marathoner, and now that he is working can no longer do his runs in daylight).
Plumbing is another issue: Once the water came back on, it became clear that the pipes were
leaking -- and not for the first time. Apparently the plumber had been over consistently over
the past few weeks. Philip decided that the fix was eminently simple. All he needed was tape
and a monkey wrench, so he went shopping for them. Hah! Four hardware stores later, he became
convinced that there is no monkey wrench in Rwanda, and that is part of their problem in becoming part of
the developing world. These people have no tools. Even if they know how to fix something, they
haven't access to the most rudimentary tools that we count on for simple repairs. Furthermore, one
of the problems resulting from the genocide is that many craftsmen whose crafts had been handed down
through the generations had been murdered; so people are developing their knowledge of things like
plumbing from scratch, not from apprenticing with master craftspeople.
The impact of the genocide
hits at all levels.
Farm animals: In Ethiopia, we saw teams of oxen plowing the fields. Not in Rwanda. Here the people cleared the fields by hand and hand tools. Throughout Ethiopia burros carried heavy burdens down the roads. In Rwanda, people carried the same burdens -- be they rocks, wood, or water, and no matter how heavy -- on their heads. Animals were not harnessed for work to aid people in their daily tasks. The only animals we saw were cows and goats and some chickens. Oddly enough, even in the countryside I saw no rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, or other similar small animals scurrying through the countryside.
People were everywhere. This is one of the most populated countries of the world. Children seemed to spring out of the ground whereever we were. They'd stand and look, and if they'd beg, it would be for a pen or a water bottle. Empty water bottles were a true treasure. You could carry your own water to school or the fields if you had one. As we drove along the roads, no matter how far up the mountains, people would be walking along the roadside, carrying food, groceries, immense sacks of potatoes on their heads, heading to or from a market, miles from nowhere. As day lengthened into dusk the numbers would multiply exponentially. Driving down the road was like threading ones way through parade-type crowds. Yet people, dogs, even chickens and goats knew to get out of the way of the cars. While most main roads were paved, no smaller ones were, and the dust was everywhere.
Despite the dust, Rwanda is one of the cleanest countries I have ever been in. There was no litter anywhere. Nor were their litter boxes or trash bins. People didn't eat or drink in public, and they threw nothing on the ground.
Shopping in town was a community effort. Philip wanted to get a SIM card for his cell phone, and this required his finding someone to rewire his phone to override the block from using non-ATT software. The person he asked left his shop unattended to take us to a phone shop where there was a mechanic who might do this. When it turned out that the repair was too costly to be worth doing, and Philip needed other equipment, he escorted him down the block to other stores which might have the required merchandise -- still leaving his own shop unattended, and not caring that he might be losing other business during this interval. He literally became a host, helping us find what we needed in his neighborhood.
The food market was at the bottom of the very long hill (almost a mountain) that Laura and Matt lived on. We would stop to buy vegetables before going up the hill. As we'd be looking at the tomatoes, we also mentioned "chou" -- cabbage -- and the people selling tomatoes took us across the market to show us where to buy the cabbages. Those people helped us onward to locate pili pili (the extremely hot sauce that my son the Texan had to take home for all his southwest friends). As we'd look over the fruits and vegetables, the merchants would help us to find the best ones, not the ones that they most wanted to sell.
Back to tales of the trip: We arranged to rent the church van and driver to take us to Ruhengeri, in the northwestern part of the country. Molly was to attend a youth AIDs conference run by the Africa Great Lakes Initiative youth program, and we were to see the mountain gorillas. Afterwards, we were all going to experience the beautiful peace and serenity of Lake Kiva, at a guest house run by Catholic nuns in a town called Kagufi, near the Congo border. Our driver, Celestin, could have won the Daytona 500. His grace and ability to drive that car at speed down the worst rutted roads was amazing! And his ability to avoid all people, cows, goats, chickens while driving us home on Friday at warp speed was nothing short of incredible. Molly tends to sing when she's nervous. I closed my eyes, tried not to be sick, and listened to Molly singing steadily for two hours.
However, our trip out was leisurely. We arrived in Ruhengeri. Molly and I attended the
afternoon session of the AIDS conference, and Philip wandered the town. There were 25 kids in the
workshop. They began with a role play, boy picking up girl, first romancing, then propositioning
her. This was followed by discussion of what he thought; what she thought. They then began to
explore the questions of why a girl might accept and run the risk of getting AIDS; the male gender role in
the spread of AIDS by the way they press for sex. The questions posed were:
(1)
What pushes youth to have sexual relations?
(2) Reasons that lead youth to protect
themselves from AIDS
They broke into work groups, discussed issues, then had full discussion of their ideas:
In answer
to the question of why have sex relations: not having knowledge of AIDS; curiosity; making bad
decisions; women's shame mixed with lack of self-respect; drugs; poverty (a woman who is very poor might
respond to offers of gifts); being a widow; pornography. (Molly and I were meanwhile noticing the
absence of such ideas as love, lust, fun, excitement...) However, eventually one young man said:
"This is the way we are built. We are meant to have sex. Our bodies are made this way."
Another said "Trauma leads one to sex as an opiate, and everyone here has trauma in their
lives."
The initial discussions concentrated on abstinence. They discussed how AIDS is transmitted, and the misconceptions that people have -- such as, if people have pimples they have AIDS. They then began a discussion of condoms and their use or lack thereof. They said that young people have difficulty accepting the necessity of using them. Sometimes even people who use condoms get AIDS, so people don't believe it helps. Another person suggested that if you are monogamous, having relations with only one person and no one else, a situation of trust can develop and you stop using them because you have trust.
The group leaders supported either choice, abstinence or condoms, but put more emphasis on abstinence. One young man stated "I am a Christian and I don't accept the use of condoms. People should abstain. If condoms are in your pocket, it's like you're planning to have sex. People should just abstain." Both boys and girls took him on, countering his arguments, stating that condoms save lives, and that is more important. One person said "If you don't know why it is important to take precautions to avoid AIDS, go down to the hospital and walk through the AIDS ward. Then you'll understand."
Throughout our trip, in both Rwanda and Ethiopia, AIDS prevention posters were prevalent. In Ethiopia, the National Museum had an exhibit of AIDS posters. This is a major problem in both countries, and is being aggressively addressed.
I asked Matt what the major health problems in Rwanda were, and he said that one child in 5 dies before age 5. Many die of pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, some of malaria. AIDS is rampant.
Ruhengeri reminded me of a western town, dirt roads, saloons, almost ready for a shoot-out. It had great charm, and very wide streets. And, of course, no electricity. After the lights went out and Philip extricated me from my attempts to write Part 1 of this saga, we went in search of dinner. We found a charming restaurant, calling itself The Modern, which had gas lanterns and appeared to be serving. Someone who spoke English came over to help us read the menu. Every single choice that I made for dinner they were out of. Finally, he decided that maybe he should go into the kitchen to find out what they were serving -- and came back to offer us all my favorite foods: beans, rice, peas, potatoes.... So Philip and Molly ate dinner, and I kept them company and ate bread.
Okay, gang. Tomorrow at 5:00 a.m. -- Gorillas