Women's Association and Bisoke!

While we were in Butare last week we visited this women's association that was in a small village up in the mountains. The road was AWFUL and small, and if you looked out the window you could see that there was nothing separating us from falling off the side of this cliff, and believe me, we were really high up! It was also raining, which made the muddy road even more difficult to drive on, so were were all kind of freaking out in this van that was literally hopping up and down because of the rocks in the road on the side of a mountain (while the guy driving us kept looking back at us and laughing instead of looking at the road!) Ok, it wasn't that bad, but definitely slightly scary! Anyway, we got to this village and filed into a room that was filled with rows of wooden benches. Several women were in the room vigorously stirring some yellow-ish looking liquid in an enormous bucket. We later learned that they were making soap to sell as an income generating activity. This women's association was formed organically after the genocide. There was a priest and a nun in this area that were working with a group of Tutsi women whose husband's had been killed during the genocide one day per week, and working with a group of Hutu women whose husbands where in jail as perpetrators of the genocide another day per week. The group of survivors told the priest that they wanted to see what he was teaching the other group of women. The wives of the perpetrators came to a meeting of the survivors, and then returned to a second meeting. At the second meeting, the wives of the perpetrators asked for forgiveness, which the survivors accepted. The two groups of women began living and working together, realizing that they were more alike than they thought. Though the circumstances and reasons were different, each group of women did not have their husbands, were raising their families by themselves, and were suffering from trauma in some form or another. They have been working on unity and reconciliation, and have become a force for promoting peace and reconciliation among their community. During our discussion, one of the women said,

"We lost so much human capital that all we want now is to be human beings and to share what we have to help each other. We don't care anymore about what happened, we now want to move on together."

I thought it was incredible to see how this group of women has come together to help and support each other, when so many things have happened in the past that would keep them apart, and even make them enemies. The women explained that it has been a long process and at times has been very difficult, but that it has really helped them to reconcile and form personal relationships with each other. I asked them whether their identity is more tied to the actions/outcomes of their husbands, or their shared female identity, and it was interesting to see how matter-of-fact their answers were. I'm not sure they have the same conception of "identity" as we do, and though I'm sure identity plays a role in their lives (especially because so much of the genocide and post-genocide discussions have to do with identity), it was not something they were interested in talking about in a theoretical way. They are all women who have endured very difficult circumstances and have now come together to support each other and bring a polarized community together, that is what matters, not "which part of their identity is more salient." I still do think it is interesting to think about, however, because i wonder if they truly do look at themselves as one group now, or if the past divisions still play a role in the association and in their lives. I think they have done incredible work so far, and it was really inspiring to see their desire to move forward and reconcile overpower the past animosity and problems, to create a unified group who is working together to promote peace. As we were about to leave, the women began singing and dancing so beautifully, pulling us in to join them. Unfortunately we couldn't stay and dance for long because it was beginning to rain harder and our academic director was worried that our van would get stuck in the mud on the mountain road if we didn't leave soon, but it was so wonderful to see the joy and smiles that they emanated as they were dancing, despite all of the hardships they have had to face.

This weekend, three other girls in my program and I decided to go climb a volcano in Volcanoes National Park. After class on Friday, we hopped on a two hour bus to the town of Rhengueri. We got there at about 7pm and found a hostel that had been recommended in the guidebook. The hostel is a restaurant, a bar, and a hostel, so the man led us through this 4 and a half foot tiny door (kinda like a hobit hole?), through this tunnel type thing that consisted of a sheet of metal separating the room from the restaurant, to our cozy toilet-smelling home for the weekend. It had a flushing toilet and and running water though, so we were happy as ever! The four of us shared two little twin beds, which had toy story and alphabet sheets on them. We went to a couple of little shops to get food for our hike the next day (a loaf of bread, peanut butter, chocolate spread, bananas, apples and peanuts) and then got dinner down at a restaurant down the street (a heaping plate of rice, beans, plain spaghetti, and potatoes for the equivalent of a dollar!)

My friend Chiara wrote about our hike on her blog, and since I don't have a lot of time to write it all out and i think she described it perfectly, I'll copy and paste hers and then add some more of my own comments!

"We started out walking through beautiful tea fields that went on an on until they hit the sides of a series of volcanoes far off in the distance. We reached the edge of the park and climbed over a short wall into what seemed like a jungle. The path we were walking along was narrow and extremely muddy because it had rained the night before. Initially. we were trying to hop around and over the mud puddles to keep clean, but as we went on it started to rain and the mud got worse and worse to the point where every step you took you were slipping and sliding and hoping you wouldn't face plant into the mud or the stinging nettles that bordered the path. It was exhausting because not only were you trying to scale 1000 meters up a volcano, but you also had to un-suction your feet from the mud as you went and pull yourself over particularly slippery parts using tree branches, vines, and our walking sticks. Lets just say that it may have been the most intense full body work-out that I've ever done. But it was beautiful, the surrounding jungle was gorgeous and at one point we had to make a detour off the path straight into the bushes because a pack of Gorillas had decided to use the path we were on. It was soo cool getting to see the huge animals, even if it was just for a second because one of our armed guards carrying an AK-47 was ushering us forward. I forgot to mention that we had two armed guards with guns accompanying us on our hike...reassuring? The volcano is actually directly on the boarder with the DRC. When we reached the top and look out over the crater lake we could see the DRC, they suspect that armed militia may be in the bush there, not to mention Gorilla poachers and the likes. The way down the mountain was extremely messy because it had rained for a good 2 hours of our hike up. We basically slide down the 1000 meters on our butts. Needless to say I was covered in mud, you couldn't even tell I was wearing shoes anymore. For some time I slide with an entire plant stuck into the mud that was caked onto my shoes. I wont lie, it got pretty old after a while. We were all really excited to get back to our room that smelled like toilet and take freezing cold bucket showers."

It was quite an experience! The hike was soooo unbelievably beautiful, and it was incredible to see the gorillas! People pay $500 to go gorilla trekking, and we just ran into them on our hike!! Our group was awesome and consisted of the four of us, a South African couple, 3 Rwandan porters and two armed guards. It was so exciting to get to the top of the volcano, it felt like we were on the top of the world! Going down the mountain was REALLY scary because we were slipping and sliding all over the place, but one of the porters was sooo helpful and pretty much held my hand down the mountain. It was half hilarious half terrifying, but I'd definitely say the hilarious end outweighed the terrifying part! It was an incredible experience!

Some of the women from the women's association



The volcano we climbed!


The gorilla we saw!


This is our "just conquered the mountain" pose!

The past two weeks

Last weekend was my first full weekend with my host family. On Saturday morning, two of my host sisters and the woman who works for the family and I went to the neighborhood outdoor market. There were people selling all kinds of different wares and it was divided into different sections based on the different products. There was the clothes section which consists mostly of used clothes from Western countries, there was the meats section (I avoided that...), the fruits and vegetables, the housewares, and so on. It was a whole morning affair to go to the market and shop for the food for the week, very different from the in and out mentality of a trip to the supermarket at home. My sisters would see people they know and catch up, greet community members, and bargain on the prices for each item. In most situations here bargaining is expected and is a friendly social practice. There is this green leafy vegetable that is boiled when it is prepared (it tastes like steamed spinach)that is very popular here. We bought some at the market, and waited for an hour while the woman ground it with an enormous mortar type thing. I couldn't help thinking that people in the US would never be patient enough to wait for this! I appreciated the fact that it felt more community-based, like the community came together to buy from each other, sell their products and for some people, to catch up on the week's events. At the same time, however, it did not seem like the care-free attitude of a farmers market at home. It was very hot out, and there was almost a sense of desperation and urgency. You could really tell that people's livelihoods depended on selling these goods, and there were young children weaving through the people with various types of fruits and vegetables on their heads, also trying to make a living. My host sister told me that orphans often start working from a very young age in order to make money to live.

On Sunday, my family took me to church with them. It was an enormous room that looked like a big gym or community center, with very little indication that it was in fact a church. The service was conducted both in Kinyerwanda and Swahili, with two people leading the service in two languages at the exact same time. I was definitely a little confused about what was going on at first! A couple of minutes into the service a man came and motioned for me to follow him. He took me to the side of the front of the church, where two chairs were sitting side by side. Another man came and sat down beside me and told me that he was the translator. He sat next to me for the entire three hour and 15 minute service, translating everything into English. The songs were beautiful, and it was clear that the service was affecting many of the congregants strongly, as some started crying or were singing with looks of pain, anguish, or hope on their faces during the different songs. Religion is a very big part of life here and has played a very interesting part both in the genocide and in reconciliation efforts, but i will write more about that when i have more time.

Last week, my group spent the first three days in a city in Southern Rwanda called Butare. We were staying on the campus of the National University of Rwanda. On the way to Butare, we stopped at the Murambi Genocide Memorial. Before the genocide, they were building a vocational school on this hilltop. When the genocide began, messages spread on the radio told Tutsi to go to the school to seek refuge. It was all a trap, however, because one day in April in 1994, Hutu militia came to kill everyone that was hiding there. About 50,000 people were killed, and only four people survived. After the massacre, the bodies were thrown into mass graves in order to hide what had happened. After the genocide, the mass graves were dug up, and some of the bodies were preserved with limestone and placed back in the classrooms in order to show people the awful things that occurred in this place.

I wasn't sure how i was going to react to the memorial- would i be emotional? Would i shut down and feel numb? I had only ever seen one dead body up close, and that had been my grandmother right before she was buried. I knew that the bodies wouldn't look like she had, because we would be seeing them 16 years after their last heartbeat. My first impression when we got to the site took me by surprise. I was struck by how beautiful the surroundings were. There were rolling green hills, houses nestled into the hillsides, and wildflowers spread throughout the grass creating patches of bright, beautiful color. However, my thoughts of the beauty of the location were quickly surmounted by the immense gravity and deep sadness of the situation that had occurred there.

Our guide told us a little bit about the school that was being built there, how it had turned into the site of a massacre, and the role that the French soldiers played when they set up camp there shortly after the massacre. We then walked to the first block of classrooms. I was towards the back of the group, so I saw everyone walking into the first classroom, and the looks on the faces of the first couple of people who walked out. As it was my turn to go in, I hesitated and had a moment of panic about what I was about to see. However, I continued to put one foot in front of the other, almost as if in a daze, and was then standing beside a row of preserved bodies. Some of the bodies were missing hands or other limbs, heads were separated from bodies, and some faces were forever stuck in looks of fear or pain. I felt torn between wanting to avert my eyes so that I was not staring at the bodies of these people who were killed in such cruel circumstances, and the urge to really look at them and implant their image in my mind so that i would never forget the affects of what happened there. One of the things that struck me about the bodies as I walked through the classrooms was that I could create no real picture and almost any picture in my head of these people, because from looking a these preserved bodies, they could have been anyone. Many of the Tutsi were identified during the genocide by their looks, however these features that had led to their death have faded into anonymous, partly decomposed body parts. While it did feel connected to all the Rwandan history i have been learning about, it also felt like a universal genocide memorial because it made me think about how these bodies could be the remains of anyone.

When i began to think of how each of these bodies had been a real person with hopes, dreams, problems and pasts, it became very overwhelming. It became even more overwhelming when i thought about how the bodies were just a small percentage of the people killed in this massacre, let alone in the entire genocide. However, I tried to control these thoughts and focus on the place i was in and the images that i was seeing in the moment. The thought that kept running through my head was, "what a waste." The lives of so many people were ended prematurely because of a lot of hate a socially constructed differences. From learning the history that led up to the genocide, I understand in a step-by-step sort of way how it happened, but on an abstract and ideological level, it is still so difficult for me to comprehend.

As I walked through the rooms of Murambi, I was somehow both numb and internally emotional, but not externally emotional. Though it sounds impossible to be both numb and emotional and the same time, it was such a mix of thoughts, emotions and feelings cycling through my head. The moment it all became real for me was when as i was coming out of the last classroom, I caught a glance of one of the four survivors from the massacre standing about 20 feet away. He was just standing there, watching us experience only a tiny portion of what he had experienced here 15 years ago. While this was a topic of study for us, this was his reality. He had sought refuge in this school and had been one of the extremely tiny percentage to come out alive. Seeing him made the whole thing so much more real because it somehow gave a face to those nearly faceless bodies, because though he was alive and they were dead, it could have just as easily been him in one of those rooms. That sounds absolutely awful to say, but it struck me really hard and it was at that moment that my emotions really took a hold of me.

As we exited the main hall of the school and walked to the hillside where the mass graves had once been, I was partially transported back to the present day. Though those harrowing images were still stuck in my mind, the sun was shining and i could hear children laughing and playing nearby. It seemed like such a strange contrast, but it showed me that life really just does have to go on. The genocide survivors who i have met here have all said this and it has been hard to comprehend, but it is true. It does no good to live solely mourning the past, and it is necessary to move into the future. The sound of children laughing was the most beautiful sound after just seeing such death and destruction, and left me with a sense of hope for both the healing of the people of Rwanda and humanity as a whole.

We were staying in singles in a hostel on campus, and none of us wanted to sleep alone that night. We moved all the furniture out of two of the rooms and moved all of the mattresses into those two rooms. After such an intense and emotionally draining day, we wanted to just be together, listen to music and try to get our minds off of the bad things in the world. After dinner, all 13 people in my group (12 girls and 1 guy) put on our pajamas, grabbed our pillows and headed to the room dubbed the "sleepover room." It was so nice to just relax, flush through some of our thoughts together, and then sing really loudly to bad (and good) american music. The door barely opened because of all the mattresses filling the room, and at one point the nun who works there knocked on the door. We immediately jumped onto Lewie (the one guy) so she wouldn't see him, but we realized that was pointless since the door only opened a couple of inches anyway. Luckily, she had come to ask what time we wanted breakfast and not to tell us to stop singing or ask about out crazy rearrangement of furniture. It must have looked truly bizarre though. Needless to say, we slept in the two mattress filled rooms (well, besides Lewie), happy for the company of friends.

We stayed in Butare for two more days, but i will have to write about the rest next time because it is beginning to get dark and i have to get home! But get excited to hear about this past weekend, I'll give you a sneak preview: it involves knee-deep mud, a gorilla and a volcano!

Homestay

I've now been in Rwanda for five days, though it feels like a lot longer! We have now moved into our homestays and settled into our schedule and classes. I am taking a class on Post Conflict Transformation, National and Ethnic Identity, Field Study and then my Independent Study which will be for the last month. I moved in with my host family the day before yesterday. The family consists of a mom, dad, six kids and the grandparents and an uncle that lives with them, so it is a busy household! The first night was difficult because there is SOO much to adjust to and it's hard to know what you're supposed to do, how things work, etc, especially because a lot of the family doesn't speak english. Most people here speak Kinyerwanda and French, but i've been finding more and more people who speak english. And, i've had a lot of opportunities to practice my Kinyerwanda! I guess foreigners don't generally know the language, so the people here LOVE IT when we try to speak Kinyerwanda (and they enjoy laughing at our attempts!) I have to go catch the bus because it's getting dark, but I promise a long post soon!!

Kampala and Kigali!!

Hello everyone!!

I can't believe I've been here now for almost a week! After my two ten hour plane rides, an 8 hour layover in amsterdam (with some snow-filled exploring!), an hour long plane ride, a lost bag, and about 7 hours in the ugandan airport, I arrived in Kampala! there is so much to say and so little time to write, but i will try to summarize as best as possible!

We stayed in a hotel in Kampala for 4 nights for the first part of orientation with everyone in the program (there are 27 of us). We did various orientation-type sessions (like talking about fears, expectations, ground rules, academic components, culture shock, etc), had some time to explore Kampala, went to the tombs of the Bagandan kings, saw the university, and had various other adventures! Kampala is a very crowded city with CRAZYY traffic (you literally just run across the street and hope to not get hit... there are no traffic light or crosswalks, or many rules when it comes to driving. i learned very quickly that pedestrians do not have the right of way!!) One night when we were free to have dinner wherever we wanted, i ended up having dinner at the house of a ugandan family. one of the girls in my program had met a ugandan girl our age the week before (she got here early) and when we went to visit her at the shop she works at, she invited us over for dinner! she lives with her two older sisters (one is 24 and one is 27) and her younger brother (the rest of their family still lives in the village that they are from) and they live in a part of the city that i had never been to before. it was so wonderful! when we first got to their house the electricity was out, so we sat in their living room lit by candlelight and they taught us how to eat jackfruit,it was like nothing i had ever had before! (Gwen, the texture would have been a huuuuge issue for you, haha). then the power went on and we all sat around the living room and made dinner (chopped up all different types of veggies and then put them over boiled potatoes) talking about our love lives, the ugandan economy, the war, school, and making fun of the soap opera that was playing on the tv. It was so nice to have such a wonderful and genuine interaction with ugandans around our age that we had just met, they were so warm and welcoming!!

yesterday our group of 27 split into two groups, and one went to gulu in northern uganda and one went to kigali, to capital of rwanda, and we will switch in a month. my group had a 12 hr bus ride from kampala to kigali, it was such a beautiful drive! we arrived at about 6pm and two of the other people on the program and i went on a walk to explore kigali. we ended up walking really far and getting sort of lost, but we eventually found our way back in time for dinner! we had our first kinyerwanda class today! they speak mostly kinyerwanda and french here which is definitely something to get used to after kampala, where nearly everyone knew english. i move in with my host family on tues, but up until then we are staying in a hotel and there is a balcony right outside my door that looks out over kigali, soooo beautiful!!

Ok, I need to run- we're about to go to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner, but I love you all and hope that everything is going well with you! New York people, i hear it is snowing there! So hard to imagine in the heat here! Please write to me and tell me how you are doing, i miss you guys!

love love love,
frees