Rwanda, Rwanda

On June 20, I began my adventure to the land of a thousand hills--le pays de mille collines.
I left Atlanta for Frankfurt, Germany, where I spent most of my 12-hour layover exploring the city, including time spent in the home of the famous philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe, lunch and apfelwein (apple wine) on a boat-restaurant on the Main River, relaxing in Romer-- the old main town square, and lighting a candle in and admiring the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew, also known as the Dom, which was the site of the coronation of many kings and emperors from the 14th through 18th centuries. Next I stopped over in Brussels for another 12 hour layover, where I had a rather unpleasant sleep--I wouldn't recommend it. I'd probably only give it one star--and that's just because it was clean (I know because they were vacuuming around me as I tried to sleep...). But then I grabbed the last leg of my trip--straight to Kigali. 


Physically tired and mentally exhausted, I was more than relieved how easy it was to pick out the friendly woman who came to pick me up and is renting me a room for the next month (the last two and  half weeks I'm staying somewhere else.) because for six and a half weeks, I will be working as an intern for the public health organization Family Health International (FHI) whose whole mode of operating is to build capacity within communities by engaging community members to actually implement and help tailor the programs to their specific needs. FHI just provides technical support and funding to start up the programs--that way, if FHI loses its funding for that project/program, the communities are not left with nothing and will actually be able to continue in some manner without FHI.  It's a much more sustainable type of community development (some would even say it's the only sustainable way). (This way of thinking of civic engagement and community decision-making relates directly with the work I've been doing over the past year in my Community-Based Research Internship, a collaboration between New College at the University of Alabama and the David Mathews Center for Civic Life.) My internship at FHI this summer is part of an independent study I will be completing, looking at public health and strategies to address public health in Rwanda.

So in addition to that....I also have a video camera.

I will again be embarking on making another short documentary film for the Documenting Justice program through the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at UA. This will become my 3rd short documentary--the first (The Story of Beth and Mercy) I made last summer in Kenya with Lindsey Mullen, and the second (Fixing the Road) I just completed back home in Alabama with Will Schildknecht. We'll see how this one turns out... I haven't started filming yet--hopefully this weekend!

So, Rwanda--I know what you're probably thinking.

...isn't that where the genocide was in the 90s?

Yes. 1994. 
100 days of violence and hatred and murder. 
Most estimates show that 800,000 people were killed in that short amount of time. 
No one seems to be able to rationalize it--how it happened, why it happened.... but I really am not being idealistic or naive in saying that many Rwandans (not all, but many) are growing from it and learning to let it be "in the past". A friend from my work today was explaining to me that you can't forget. It's impossible for most people. But we have to say "it is in the past and let it stay there". He was in Burundi studying at a university during the genocide, as were his parents. But all of his cousins, aunts, uncles--everyone else in his family--were killed. And yet he wants to move beyond. He knows he must. He needs to. And stories like that are a really large part of what attracted me here. 

Really, I wanted to come to Rwanda for several reasons. There's something strong drawing me here. I've been slightly drawn in the direction of Rwanda since I started my college career. My freshman year in college I did a research paper on the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) in my International War Crimes class. And my sophomore year in my Music and Activism class, I focused on the use of music in the propagation of the genocide and then in the reconciliation efforts following the genocide in Rwanda. During my research, I discovered a lot about the reconciliation processes happening now on the ground, and was truly touched by how one woman described how spending time with a man who had killed her loved one and singing and talking together had allowed her to finally see him not as a murderer but as a human being. And I just can't even imagine that. What strength to be able to find the humanity in someone who has torn something so essential to your own life from you. I in no way imagine that that is an easy task to accomplish. But it gives credence to the concept of ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a Zulu word that describes a worldview common in many African nations and spoken of frequently by notables such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Ubuntu in Kinyarwanda (a native tongue of Rwanda) means 'human generosity' or 'humanity' or 'human's essence'. In Zulu, a South African language, it comes from the phrase umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu, meaning "a person is a person through other persons". It is the notion that our humanity is tied up in each other's humanity. That we are all interconnected. That to harm another is to harm ourselves. That to hate another is to take something from ourselves, for in hating we are choosing to ignore the humanity, to ignore our own selves, in each other. And I think that it must be an attitude like that that allows people to do this sort of forgiveness. And honestly, it's an attitude that I think would make a lot of us feel more whole in this world.

I was also moved by Carl Wilkens's account of his experience and the lessons he learned in Rwanda during the genocide as the only American who remained in the country when the genocide began, when all but a few abandoned Rwandans. Carl came to speak at a banquet that my student organization Apwonjo hosted in the spring of 2009 (Make the Connection). He spoke powerfully about the power of human connections and relationships.

There's also just a lot of really good and innovative things happening in Rwanda in terms of economic development. ("Rwanda is one of the few nations in the developing world that spends more on education than on the military."; "The country is secure and the World Bank's Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world last year." from "Nothing Good Comes out of Africa") President Kagame has been getting a lot of flack lately for restricting free speech. But so far everyone I've met says that may be so, and that yes, he does run an authoritarian government, but that maybe that's good. That he doesn't seem to be abusing it like so many others do. That he's really just trying to rebuild his country. That maybe that's what is needed right now. I don't know enough about Rwandan politics or international politics or building a government, but it does seem like he's helping this country really and truly rebuild, so you can't argue too much with that. (Presidential elections are actually coming up in August, two days after I leave. Kagame is expected to win again.)

Anyway, so I'm here working for a health and development organization. Health is just absolutely crucial in development, and here in East-Central Africa, we're at the heart of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But a lot of people are doing really amazing work, and I hope to learn from some of them this summer. 


So consider this blog as a trail of bread crumbs of my stay in Rwanda. Here I will post about what I am doing here, what I'm learning, what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing. I'll also occasionally post about what I'm reading (I have a long reading list) and what I'm watching (films related to Rwanda).

Read as you wish. Skip over parts that are boring. Ask me questions. Leave me comments. Read at your leisure. As you wish.