“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain
December's been a busy month. It would have been busy under any circumstances since the end of the year brings all sorts of deadlines for annual reports and donor updates, but this December was even busier than usual since the Ministry of Home Affairs finally decided to officially close Nduta Camp. The thousand-or-so Congolese and mixed nationality refugees who had been living in Nduta had been transferred to Kanembwa Camp (also in Kibondo) back in October, so the remaining caseload of about 10,000 Burundians have been given the choice of repatriating or relocating to Mtabila Camp (down in Kasulu). Not surprisingly, the majority are opting to relocate, so convoys have been shuttling back and forth for the past 2 weeks and by the end of the month the empty camp will be handed over to the government (only 6 months behind schedule!).
The past few weeks have been especially busy for me since I'd planned to stretch my second R&R out by combining it with the Christmas Eve/Christmas/Boxing Day/New Years Eve/New Years holidays, so I needed to finish all those reports and proposals up before leaving for my extended vacation. After putting in some long hours at the office all week, I packed my bags and caught my ride to Mwanza. By afternoon, I was marveling at the difference that 6-7 hours (and 1 ferry ride) makes. I'd known that Mwanza was Tanzania's second largest city but after several months in Kibondo my expectations were pretty low ... and in this case, incorrectly so. Not only was Mwanza beautiful (it's situated right on Lake Victoria), but it's quite the bustling metropolis and (as it turned out) full of fun, interesting expats. I spent the night at Tunza Lodge ... which meant that in addition to meeting a number of those fun, interesting expats, I also got to wake up to the sound of the lake's waves lapping practically at my doorstep. Saturday brought several hours worth of airline headaches (which seem to be par for the course for me anymore), but I finally got on a plane around 7 and was in Dar soon enough. A short taxi ride later, I met up with Tim (fellow PiAf-er) who I'm crashing with for a few days before we head to Zanzibar for the holidays.
For the first time in my life (I think at least ... not sure about year 1 and 2), I wasn't in upstate New York for Thanksgiving. No long car trip spent tucked between tins of scones, Christmas presents for the cousins, and luggage made bulky by snow gear; for that matter, no snow or miserably cold almost-but-not-quite-going-to-snow weather; no English muffins after a night spent sleeping on Grandma's special sheets; no Macy's Day parade; no crowding around the table and passing dish after dish after dish down the line. Odd years, that table would be in Campbell with the Andersons; even years it'd be in Lewiston or Colden with the Russells. But always with family.
The closest I got to that this year was a skype conference call with the Russell clan - a long shot from the real thing but definitely the highlight of my day. I'd known that this would be a lonely Thanksgiving though, so I woke up yesterday with a plan. If I couldn't have family, then I'd least have the second best part of Thanksgiving: mashed potatoes.
So I got up early and, armed with my dictionary, sat down and translated a recipe for Prisca. She's a bit of a magician when it comes to cooking, so I was pretty sure Operation Potato would be a success, but I had a few doubts ... what if she's never heard of mashed potatoes? what if she buys cassava instead of potatoes? what if my translation makes no sense and instead of writing "peel the potatoes" I wrote something like "make the potatoes naked"? I mean, we're talking about my favorite food here - not something to be taken lightly!
Prisca rose to the occasion though - I came home to find a hot pot brimming with perfectly mashed potatoes ... and a tasty lentil curry that was quite a nice surprise side dish. I whipped up a batch of cornbread and a salad, poured myself a glass of passion fruit juice, and ended up with a pretty nice Thanksgiving dinner! As for the potatoes ... they weren't quite as good as my Grandma's, but then again, nobody's mashed potatoes are quite as good as my Grandma's, so that was to be expected. Plus, as I was sitting down to eat, it occurred to me that there is no potato masher in my kitchen ... or any other sort of similar utensil ... and yet these potatoes were as smooth as possible - not a single lump! Like I said, she's a bit of a magician :-D
I got back from Uganda a couple of months ago and found a cat on my porch. And by "on my porch," I mean, if cats wore clothes and my porch had a set of drawers, his would have been neatly folded and put away - no luggage in sight ... this cat had made himself thoroughly at home and was giving me a look that said "well it's about time you showed up - what's for dinner?"
Cats around here aren't usually the friendliest animals ... not that they're mean, they just tend to be skittish and shy, so I was both surprised and pleased to discover that this cat was not your average Tanzanian cat. Skittish and shy are definitely not his MO - friendly and demanding is more like it. As for me, I've been waiting 9 years to live in a cat-friendly environment (i.e., not a dorm and not with my brother), so I promptly started bribing the cat with tuna fish to discourage him from moving out. (After a few days, I decided it was ridiculous to spend more on cat food than on my own food, so I switched to table scraps ... turns out cats will eat pasta, vegetables, beans, and basically anything else if they're hungry.)
It also turns out that this cat has a serious set of vocal cords on him - and he's not the least bit shy about expressing his outrage at being ignored. As soon as he hears me wake up in the morning, the yowling starts ... as soon as I go read on the porch or let him inside, though, he curls up on my lap and turns into the purring little engine that could. A spoiled brat one minute, the most affectionate animal I've ever met the next.
When he first showed up, I spent a few days trying out different names for him. I'd settled on "Mlizi" (noisemaker) when I mentioned him to Eva and she said, "oh? you mean Harry?" And for some reason, ever since I found out that someone else had already named him, it felt wrong to rename him. But since I'm not a big fan of the name that person picked, now I just call him "it" or "cat" or "you."
...is this plant: When I first moved in, I thought that there was some sort of overgrown bush growing in front of my house ... never imagining that it was actually a beautiful flowering tree that was just waiting for the rains to start. I have no idea what it's called, but I do know that it blooms at night, is wonderfully fragrant, and is planted right in between both of my bedroom windows. Between the chirps of the crickets and the scent of these flowers wafting in, it's like sleeping in a garden :-)
Did you know that at least one out of three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime? I didn't. I could be cynical and suggest that the UN has skewed its statistics to make for more sensational publicity, but I doubt that's the case. The recent surge in instability across the border in eastern DRC has led to such drastic increases in the incidences of sexual violence that aid workers are calling the region "the worst place in the world to be a woman." A couple of months ago, a woman in one of the camps here left her newborn baby in the bottom of a pit latrine - because she believed that her brother would not let her join his household in Burundi if there was an additional mouth to feed. It's not an exaggeration to say that the burden of poverty weighs more heavily on women - they are less likely to have access to education, more likely to be targeted by traffickers, more likely to be forced into early marriage or sexual encounters, and more likely to be trapped in situations where their rights are limited and their voices silenced. That all of this is perhaps more visible here does not mean violence against women is a problem unique to the developing world; women in the US, Canada, Europe, etc. are certainly not immune to gender-based discrimination and violence.
To add to the list of things I didn't know before, today (November 25) is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It's also the anniversary of the assassinations of three of the Mirabal sisters by Rafael Trujillo in 1960 ... and it marks the first of 16 days of activism that symbolically link violence against women and human rights. So the 16 days start today, include World AIDS Day (December 1) as well as the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (December 6, and conclude with International Human Rights Day on December 10.
I've heard rumors of celebrations and speeches being planned in the camps, so perhaps I'll be able to follow this post with pictures and stories that aren't quite as sobering...
I got to take my first business trip a couple of weeks ago.And not just my first business trip – my first international business trip … pretty exciting stuff in a yikes-that’s-a-grown-up-kind-of-thing-to-do kind of way :-)Plus, it completed my “tour de East Africa:” living in Tanzania, vacationing in Rwanda & Uganda, visiting Burundi for work, flying through Kenya (yeah, yeah, so it doesn’t quite count; hopefully I’ll get that Kenyan passport stamp later this year), and seeing the mountains of the DRC from Uganda (I know, that doesn’t count either, but I’m not enormously keen on getting all that much closer to the DRC!)
For all that I spent a week in Burundi, I was there for work and didn’t get to visit Bujumbura (its capital) or any of Burundi’s supposedly amazing inland beaches, so there isn’t really anything exciting to report.
I stayed with another PiAf fellow though, which was nice.Plus, it was good to get to see some of the country that Kibondo’s refugees are returning to, as well as some of the projects that LWF-Burundi (our partner organization) has been implementing there.AND, unlike Tanzania (which was colonized by the Germans and then the British), prior to independence Burundi was occupied by the Belgians, which means that a trip to Burundi = a chance to eat some really good bread … and a chance to drive on the “correct” side of the road (which, after several months in Tanzania, was actually a little unsettling!)Another local delicacy (yes, I’m counting bread as a delicacy) that I got to try was pineapple wine, brewed by the nuns of convent in Ruyigi – not only was it delicious but resourceful, too!I’m told that there are a few other varieties of fruit wines (orange, possibly banana, etc.) and that they’re available on this side of the border as well, so should the opportunity arise, further research will be forthcoming!
I also used the trip as an opportunity to keep my ears open and pick up a few phrases of Kirundi (which is very similar to Kiha).So now, when the Mamas in Kibondo laugh and exclaim “anajua Kiha!”(she knows Kiha!) after hearing me use the handful of greetings that I know, I can respond, “ego,ndazi Kiha ukeuke” (no, I only know a little bit of Kiha) … which doesn’t actually do much to convince them that I don’t know Kiha (if anything, it just impresses them more), but it’s still definitely a crowd-pleaser, so we all walk away with smiles on our faces :-)
I've been trying to grab a picture of one of these for ages and finally lucked out. Ladies and gents, I give you ..... the short-sleeved suit coat! In addition to the bold pattern worn below by my unsuspecting model, this stylish garment comes in a whole array of other colors. Whether it's plain black, olive green, blue pinstripe, or covered in colorful designs, I assure you that this style is the height of men's fashion here. I know it's a bit different from anything you'd find in America, but I love it for 2 reasons: 1. it makes sense (we're in Africa, after all, if you think wearing a full length suit coat is hot where you're working, imagine wearing it in Africa ... and without air-conditioning!) and 3. the clothing here is so much more colorful and vibrant than clothing in the US, and I think it's beautiful.
I will admit that (compared to the women) the men might have gotten the short end of the stick as far as fashions go here, but that's probably true in most parts of the world. Then again, maybe being female has made me biased. I'll let you all be the judges though - Tanzania Vogue, the female edition, coming soon!
When I was in Kampala a few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of What is the What, Dave Egger’s autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng - one of the thousands of Sudanese refugees (one of the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan”) who was relocated to America.I just finished reading it and now want to try to make sure that everybody I know also reads it :-D
Why?To begin with, because it’s beautifully written and one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read.But more importantly, because it speaks honestly about a part of the world that few care about and about events that few know much about.Because it gives voice to the suffering of the silent – of those who have been silenced, of those who have no one to speak for them, of those who have no one to speak to, of those whose lives and deaths should not be so easily ignored.
On a final more personal note, if you’ve ever wondered what the refugee camps here are like, this book describes them infinitely better and more vividly than I could ever hope to.Different country, different conflict, different people, but fundamentally similar situations – suffering, after all, doesn’t discriminate … and neither does hope.
October 14 is the ninth anniversary of Julius Nyerere’s death and a national holiday in Tanzania. Yes, I’m at the office anyway (I’ve discovered that the public holidays are more for local staff than for me), although I should be able to take off a bit early today if I stop blogging and finish editing this proposal. :-D In honor of Nyerere Day though, I thought I’d share a quick history lesson about one of Africa’s great leaders. In order to be able to enjoy the rest of my Nyerere Day, however, I’m going to borrow that lesson from one of the websites I found (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-nye.htm) instead of writing it myself.
And (before I get back to work) some words of wisdom from the mwalimu himself that are no less relevant now than they were years ago: “a nation which refuses to learn from foreign cultures is nothing but a nation of idiots and lunatics …[but] to learn from other cultures does not mean we should abandon our own.”
Like much of Africa, Tanzania really only has two seasons: the dry season and the rainy season. Or perhaps more accurately (for Kibondo at least): dusty and muddy! The rains started a little early this year, with a handful of thunderstorms temporarily damping down that ubiquitous dusty haze toward the end of August and through September. It’s only been within the last week or so though that the rains have really started to hit their stride. And when I say “rains,” I don’t mean any of your run-of-the-mill showers. I mean dark ominous masses of storm clouds rolling in across the horizon and eclipsing the sun. I mean thunder and lightening as loud as any I’ve ever heard and gusts of wind that tear entire roofs off of houses. I mean torrential downpours of rain falling as hard as you think possible – until it starts raining even harder five minutes later. I mean some serious, serious rain … sometimes all day, sometimes for just 20-30 minutes a day, but always with a stunning volume of water pouring out of the sky – never just a sprinkle here or a light rainfall there.
As with my initial fascination with the dust, I imagine my enchantment with the new weather patterns will fade eventually. For now though, the pros still outweigh the cons:
PROS -cooler weather (especially at night/in the morning) -less dust! -everything’s greener (both because things are growing and the thick layer of dust has been washed off all the plants) -bigger vegetables -mangos -awesome storms to watch from my porch
CONS -less dust, but lots of mud -cars getting stuck in the mud -sudden downpours aren’t conducive to dry laundry -more mosquitoes (or so I’ve been told) and probably other creepy crawly things appearing in my house
I’d originally hoped to return to Kibondo by way of Bukoba and/or Mwanza (i.e. come down from Kampala through the north of Tanzania) but my plans were thwarted by Tanzania’s fickle transportation infrastructure. (By fickle I mean I could have finagled passage on the freight ferry to Mwanza, but the boat only departs Uganda once a week … on Thursdays. I also could have flown from Entebbe to Mwanza, but the 45 minute flight would have cost about $400 – assuming it didn’t get canceled at the last minute of course. Or I could have caught a bus Saturday that – assuming it didn’t break down of course – would have dropped me in Bukoba late Saturday night or in Mwanza Sunday afternoon … and as far as I know, there are no Sunday buses from Bukoba to Kibondo and the Mwanza buses all depart early in the morning. Please note that you can practically draw a straight line between Kampala, Bukoba, and Kibondo … and yet it was faster and easier to get back to Kibondo by retracing my steps through Kigali, Rusumo, and Nyakanazi. Forget 2-ply toilet paper for the undergrad dorms – if I ever become one of those wealthy Princeton alum, I’m paving the roads in western Tanzania!!!)
The upside of returning the same way I came was that I could sleep on the buses without worrying about missing some part of the region I hadn’t seen before … and believe me, that 9 hour bus ride from Kampala to Kigali goes a lot faster when you aren’t awake to feel every pothole! I ended up taking a night bus out of Kampala (departing at 1am, arriving around 9am), which put me at the Rwanda/Tanzania border early Saturday afternoon (true to Kate-form (and to the amusement of my fellow passengers), I slept most of the way from Kigali to Rusumo as well). I lucked out and caught a ride from the border to Nyakanazi, where I spent the night in this fantastically decorated motel. (A small voice in my head scolded me for falling prey to such blatantly tourist-targeted advertising, but it was hushed by the other voice in my head (the one that wanted to be able to take a picture of it and then tell people I’d actually stayed there). I also assumed that if they could afford to put enormous wooden animals in their front yard, then the rooms would at least have the basics: bed, electricity, running water. You’d think I would’ve learnt to stop making assumptions by now, right? *sigh* Suffice to say from now on I’ll be making sure that water comes out of the faucets before handing my money over…)
The waterless faucets were the first in a series of incidents that had me silently mimicking Dorothy’s “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” remark … except swapping the “Kansas” for “Rwanda.” The second welcome-back-to-Tanzania moment came in the form of the bus I boarded the next morning for the last leg of my trip. The next time you see a bus driving down the road, try to imagine what that bus would look like if it were several decades old, covered in graffiti, and carrying about 150 passengers. 150’s actually probably a low estimate – this bus was so full you hardly had to hold whenever we hit bumps (which is saying something since we left the pavement behind in Nyakanazi and the rest of the way was about as bumpy as it gets) – after all, it’s hard to lose your balance when there isn’t actually any room for your body to move. I spent the first third of the trip standing in the aisle (trying to make myself as small as possible so the kid smashed up against me could have more air to breathe), until the guy I was standing next to indicated that I should take his seat when he got off at the next stop.
Cue incident #3. For as long as I’d been on the bus, there had been a little girl sleeping on this guy’s lap. She was still fast asleep when we got to his stop, so I held onto her for him for him while he battled his way toward the door. I figured he had luggage in the hold below the bus, and that once he'd grabbed it, I'd either hand the baby to him through the window or pass her from person to person until she made it to the front of the bus. That type of thing is normal enough here, especially on jam-packed buses or daladalas.
But then he didn't come back. And the bus continued on its way. Leaving me, sitting there, with a baby sleeping on my lap, trying desperately to remain calm (I didn't want to wake her up) about the fact that this guy had apparently decided his baby was better off with a strange mzungu than with him! Fast forward another thirty minutes to another stop where even more people got on the bus, and another baby ended up in my lap. I knew what this one's mother looked like though, and I figured the baby was safer on my lap than trapped in the crush in the aisle, so I was more amused than alarmed by her presence. Baby #1, however, was not as keen on giving up some of her lap real-estate to make room for the newcomer and, upon waking up trundled across the aisle and back a row to her mother. I don’t think I need to describe what a huge mental sigh of relief that resulted in!
I’m going to keep this post short because I’ve now spent about 12 hours of my 2-day Eid vacation in the office and because, in this case, the pictures pretty much say it all :-)
To sum up:
At the recommendation of my trusty Lonely Planet guide book, I’d booked a spot on one of Red Chili Hideaway’s MurchinsonFalls safaris, so I met up with the other 7 people in the group Wednesday morning, and we headed north.After stopping for lunch in Masindi, we arrived at our camp in the MurchinsonFalls park mid-afternoon and then paired off to stake our claims on the tents we’d be sleeping in.The original plan was to wake up bright and early the next morning, catch the ferry to the north bank for a game drive, take a boat ride up the Nile to the base of the falls that afternoon, and then do a hike around the top of the falls Friday morning before returning to Kampala.At some point Wednesday evening though, we found out that the ferry was currently out of service, so things got switched around a bit.We ended up doing the boat ride Thursday morning, the hike around the falls that afternoon (after sitting out a thunderstorm around lunchtime), and then – since they’d managed to fix the ferry (hooray!) – the game drive Friday morning.As my mom already knows (thanks to the ecstatic text I sent her Thursday), we saw elephants from the boat (too far away for my digital camera, so no photographic evidence sadly) … which was definitely the highlight of that day for me.The hippos, alligators, warthogs, water buffalo, water bucks, eagles, and beautiful scenery were pretty cool, too though :-)And then the next morning, we added lion, giraffes, and even more elephants (!!!) to the list.In short: beautiful scenery, fun people, and finally getting to see elephants in the wild … it was like my own personal MasterCard commercial – priceless!
In so many ways Kampala reminded me of Dar … it was a city, first of all, complete with paved roads and crowds of people and streets lined with busy stores and traffic! The weather was also a bit hot and muggy like Dar, and I could hear Swahili on the street (for this reason (the absence of Swahili), Kigali did not remind me as much of Dar). The daladala (or, to be geo-linguistically correct, matatu) kandas hung out of the side windows in the same way, shouting their destinations out in the same singsong way as their cars careened through traffic or idled curbside while waiting for new passengers. Their cars even looked the same – pretty-well banged up that is and with the colorful paint starting to chip away from the slogans splashed across their rear windows. And like the daladalas in Dar, the slogans all tended to fall into three categories: God (“God is Good,” “His Grace,” “Glory Be to the Lord”), soccer (“Man United,” “Arsenal”), and the amusingly random (“One Missed Call,” “Puff Daddy,” “Never,” “Relax”). The only visible differences were the taxi lights they actually had sitting on the roofs and the “Emergency Door” lettering on all of the back doors. Plus, I saw a few with ads in place of a slogan: “Fly Emirates,” or “JK Investments.” The buildings in both Kampala and Dar (and Kigali for that matter) had a similar look to them – it’s hard to pin down what exactly but there’s something about them that’s distinctly African … or at least distinctly not American or European. Mobile “top-up” signs can be seen on every street corner (and usually at more than a few stores in between those corners) in both cities, along with the ubiquitous produce sellers strolling past with their wares casually balanced on their heads and the street vendors sitting on the sidewalks in the midst of their carefully arranged newspapers, bibles, watches, pens, and wallets. And there were the beggars – cripples, small children, thin women with their tiny babies – they were reminiscent of Dar as well … and just as sobering to see in Kampala as in Dar.
But in other ways, Kampala was quite different. There was much more English (written and spoken) for one thing – almost all of the billboards, store signs, and traffic advisories used English (with fairly good grammar, too!), and I didn’t encounter a single person who didn’t speak some English (and most were conversant, erring on the side of near-fluency). Kampala also seemed cleaner than Dar … although not as meticulously clean as Kigali … just clean in the sense that trash actually ends up in garbage cans at least as often as it ends up on the street or in the gutter. Size-wise, Kampala felt quite a bit bigger than Dar, and it certainly appeared to be wealthier and more developed. (I’m not sure if the wealth is the chicken or the egg in this case, but there were also a lot more wazungu … or perhaps it just seemed that way to me after three practically wazungu-free months in Kibondo!) And one of the most novel differences of all: the 1:1 (or, at a stretch, 1.5:1) seat to bodies ratio on the matatus, buses, and bodabodas … not 3:1 or 5:1 or as-many-as-possible:1 but one person per seat!
I would have loved to have been able to spend more time getting know Kampala and Kigali, but that would have come at the cost of the Murchinson Falls trip … and cities are all well and good, but elephants are even better!
While driving through Rwanda, it was almost impossible to not think about the genocide.Even before we stepped on to Rwandan soil, the genocide was present: the river that separates Tanzania and Rwanda cascades into a waterfall at the border – a waterfall that would have been beautiful if I could have looked at it without thinking of how bodies floated down that very river during the genocide and accumulated at the falls … or of how my neighbor was one of a group of men who volunteered to remove and bury those bodies.The reminders didn’t stop at Rusumo, either – there were memorials in every town we drove through.Even without the memorials, the shadow of the genocide would still be there.Not only because the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children cannot and should not be forgotten, but because there’s something about Rwanda today that feels a little off.It wasn’t just the smoothly paved roads or the drainage canals that had E and I staring with wide-eyed excitement … it was the cumulative effect of little things like the absence of any litter whatsoever, the strictly observed traffic laws, the flowers planted in every front yard, and knowing about laws that have made all sorts of things illegal (plastic bags, cutting down trees for firewood, razor wire on top of walls, discussing ethnicity ) or legally required (front yard gardens, monthly volunteerism, motorcycle helmets).It’s almost as if in less than two decades, the country has gone from one extreme (inhumane chaos) to another (unnatural orderliness).
For all that it was so difficult to not think about the Rwandan genocide, it was somehow quite easy to spend days in Uganda without about Idi Amin’s ethnic cleansing and the subsequent years of violence and instability.I was actually shocked to discover how hard it was to imagine a thoroughly looted Kampala full of buildings and buses riddled with bullet holes.And even more alarmed to realize how easy it was to forget about the LRA and their ongoing insurgency in northern Uganda.I don’t know why this is.Perhaps it’s because the Rwandan genocide was slightly more recent than Idi Amin and Obote’s respective reigns of terror – although that certainly doesn’t explain why it’s easier to remember a genocide that ended when I was 8 than a viciously violent war that’s been plaguing Uganda for my entire lifetime.Perhaps it’s because I studied the Rwandan genocide in several classes at Princeton but never covered Uganda.Or perhaps it’s because Uganda (or at least the part of Uganda I visited) seems to have a firmer grasp on its sanity.Don’t get me wrong, I loved Rwanda and don’t mean to imply that it’s poised for a nervous breakdown.It’s an absolutely beautiful country and by all accounts, Kigali is one of the safest cities in sub-Saharan Africa today.It’s just lovely and tragic at the same time … and while the same can be said for Uganda, Uganda still just feels a little more normal – while Rwanda feels like it’s trying a little too hard to prove its normalcy.
Or perhaps the well-maintained infrastructure and absence of garbage were too much of a shock to my system, and I’m grabbing at straws to try and explain this African anomaly … hard to say, really.:-D
Three months in to my year here in Kibondo, I had my first week of leave – or, as it’s called around here, “R&R” (rest and relaxation).Typing that out has made me realize for the first time what a redundant term it is.But moving on … for all that this is my third time in Tanzania, neither of the first two trips involved traveling very far outside of Dar es Salaam, let alone outside of the country, so with 9 whole days of freedom and almost as many countries along Tanzania’s borders, I set out to rectify that situation.
The itinerary:
Day 1 (Saturday, September 20): catch a ride to the Rwandan border with IRC (one of their doctors was also setting off on a trip (albeit a much longer one) and the first leg of her trip conveniently coincided with my plans) and make our way over to Kigali
Day 2: bus to Kampala from Kigali
Days 3-4: hang out in Kampala while staying with some fellow PiAf’ers
Days 5-7: trip to MurchinsonFalls (boat trip up the Nile to the base of the Falls, hike around the top of the Falls, and game drive around MurchinsonFallsPark)
Days 7-8: travel from Kampala to Kigali to Rusumo to Nyakanazi
Day 9: bus from Nyakanazi back to Kibondo
The irony of the whole “rest and relaxation” thing is that getting, well, anywhere, from Kibondo is anything but relaxing.For all that I can see Burundi from here on a clear day – and for all that Rwanda, Uganda, the DRC, Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi aren’t that much farther away – when the roads seem less like roads and more like interminable stretches of moguls on a double black diamond ski slope, traveling even short distances is inevitably slow and unpleasant.In other words, I spent more hours than I care to remember this past week jostling down roads in Tanzania and Uganda.There are paved roads in Tanzania … the majority of them just happen to be located elsewhere, with the notable exception of the (all too short) stretch of road from Nyakanazi to the Rwandan border.I didn’t think it was possible for something as simple as tarmac to make me so incredibly happy, but wow.We hit that pavement, I turned to look at E, saw that my huge grin was mirrored on her face, and we both burst into laughter.Every few minutes after that, one of us would poke the other and whisper something along the lines of “check it out – a curb!” or “a speed limit sign! No way!” or “woah, there’s even a guide rail!”We were still basking in the tarmac-glow when got to the Rwandan border (a good 80 kilometers or so from Nyakanazi) … and as far as simple pleasures go, Rwanda was the gift that kept on giving.Paved road the whole way to Kigali – and not just any old paved road, but a flawlessly paved one … complete with painted lines, pedestrian crossings, and not a single pothole.Not one!And then there were all those other little things that E and I gleefully ogled like country bumpkins: drainage canals running alongside the road! no piles (or even pieces) of garbage lying around! people getting turned away from the minibus because all the seats were already taken! traffic lights! power lines!But more than anything, we were just happy to be sailing along on that wonderfully smooth road :-D
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend much time in Kigali as we had to catch an early bus to Kampala the next morning, but perhaps some other time.Rwanda’s a pretty tiny country, so getting to the Ugandan border the next day didn’t take long at all.Driving through southern Uganda felt a little bit like driving through Pennsylvania: the roads aren’t as good as its neighbors, it takes forever, and there isn’t much to see until you get to the city on the far end of it … but as far as 7-8 hour bus rides go, it wasn’t so bad.I spent just enough time in Kampala to remember how annoying traffic is … but not quite enough time to stop thinking that as long as my destination’s the wonderfully well-stocked bookstore in the Garden City Mall, I don’t care how annoying the traffic is!The bookstores aren’t the only things Kampala has going for it … there’s also the cheese, ice cream, round-the-clock power, and three great PiAf fellows to hang out with :-)
(Rounds 2, 3, 4, etc. of the R&R blog updates coming soon …)
The Friday before last, a few of my co-workers stopped by office and mentioned that TCRS had been invited to attend the graduation ceremony at Rubanga School (one of the secondary schools outside of Kibondo that TCRS has been supporting) that Saturday.It sounded like a good way to liven up a Kibondo weekend, so I eagerly leapt at the chance to tag along with Gonza (education officer) and Judy (office secretary).
In order to fully appreciate what an experience this graduation ceremony was, I should explain that I went into it having made a couple of assumptions:
I’d be back in Kibondo in time for lunch (there were only about 40 students graduating … it couldn’t possibly last all that long, right?)
I’d be sitting somewhere in the back of the audience (after all, I’ve only been here for a few months and have never met any of the graduates … how could I be more than just a fly on the wall?)
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting the ceremony to be exactly like any of the ones I’ve attended in the US.But it was still a graduation (same fundamental concept … how different could it be?), so I figured those were pretty safe assumptions to make.
In retrospect, I should’ve known better than to make the first assumption.This is a country where next to nothing happens quickly and a culture where a church service is considered “very short” if it’s “only” three hours long.So perhaps I shouldn’t have expected to be home for lunch (we left Kibondo around 8am).But surely home in time for a late lunch, right?Wrong.All told, the graduation extravaganza lasted for roughly 10 hours – and we didn’t even stay for the party at the end!10 hours!!!!! For 40-some graduates!!!!
As for the second assumption, I probably should’ve known better about that one, too.Upon arriving at the school, I discovered that not only would I be part of the entrance procession, I would also be seated at the front table.There were only four seats at this table: one for the principal, one for Gonza (who was giving the keynote speech), one for an important official from the District, and one for me, the mzungu.The rest of the “guests of honor” sat in folding chairs behind us (and all of them were more deserving of sitting in my seat, believe me).The fun continued about halfway through the ceremony when the MC decided to let all the guests of honor introduce themselves rather than be introduced by him.Which means that, inevitably, the microphone landed in my hands.Thankfully, I’d had some time to gather my thoughts … although not enough time to work up the nerve to try the rowdy “Rubango Hoyee! … Form 4 Hoyee!” holler everyone else had led with.And, despite feeling my face was about to burst into flames from blushing, I did manage to introduce myself articulately (to the amused approval of everyone in the audience).And the spectacle didn’t stop there.As it turned out, sitting at the head table meant shaking the hand of every graduate as they got their diploma … and once the ceremony was finally over, it meant posing for pictures with a decent portion of the graduating class.On the one hand, it was flattering, and I was honored to be part of the occasion.On the other hand, I felt a little like a theme park gimmick and also found it rather upsetting that I was sitting at the head table for no better reason than being a mzungu.
Mistaken assumptions aside, the graduation really was a remarkable event.I would have been less enthusiastic if those 10 hours had been full of speeches, but the speeches were surprisingly short and the bulk of the ceremony actually involved performances: singing, dancing, drumming, rapping, and the like.And not just any old songs or dances … they had all be composed and prepared specifically for the graduation, with lyrics and gestures that related to the graduating class.Form 4 (the graduates) preformed several times, and the other classes had all prepared pieces as well – it was really impressive!
I’d hoped to take lots of pictures, but sitting in front of everyone made me shy, so I only have a couple.I did manage to capture some video of the dancing (which was amazing – I think these kids have double-jointed hips!) … unfortunately blogspot isn’t cooperating with my attempts to upload the videos, so I’ll have to try again later.
The diploma receiving line
The top male and female student received academic honors (the necklaces were given to them by their parents after they got their diplomas)
Female graduates line up to receive the graduation gifts we brought (TCRS kangas)
The past few days have been unusually eventful. I spent most of my Saturday at the graduation ceremony for Rubanga Secondary School (stay tuned for more on that later), went to a goodbye party that night for a friend from IRC who's leaving this weekend, and have had lots of work to do in the office all week. Plus, as if walking sewing machines and Steelers games weren't enough to make for a memorable evening, a few minutes after I arrived at the IRC compound on Monday, my (mostly futile) attempts to make friends with the new kittens were interrupted by an earthquake. Discovery of the day: Kibondo's located on/near the Rift Valley fault line. Cool, huh? And to top off the eventfulness of the week, a band of little kids followed me the whole way home from work yesterday. I'd gotten used to them running to greet me at different points along my route, but they'd never actually left their yards before. I felt like the Pied Piper :-)
I've now spent a cumulative total of about 5 months in Africa and have gotten fairly used to seeing women walking around town with something/several things balanced on their heads. Full crates of bottled pop, enormous bunches of bananas, books, water bottles, it doesn't really faze me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still find it pretty amazing. I wish I could walk around town with tripping over rocks or my own feet, let alone walk around town with several pounds of goods balanced on my head and a baby strapped to my back. So, pretty amazing - yes. But also so commonplace that I've stopped being shocked by it or even really noticing it.
Or so I'd thought.
On my way to the IRC compound Monday night (to go watch the last few minutes of the re-broadcast of the Steelers-Browns game...which we won...woo!), a young woman walked past me (down a bumpy hill, I should add) with one of these balanced on her head:
A Singer sewing machine. Balanced on her head. No hands holding it in place...just the sewing machine.......ON HER HEAD!!!
I couldn't help myself - I stopped in my tracks and stared.
This month's Princeton in Africa newsletter featured a short article by yours truly about life here in Kibondo. If you're interested in checking it out and reading about what other PiAf-ers are up to, you can find it here.
When I arrived at the office a few days, I found this card waiting for me in my email. A good friend of mine saw it and thought of me. As you've probably gathered, "my" football team is not "his" football team ... but that's one of his only flaws, so I'm willing to look past it ... plus, we opened the pre-season by trouncing the Eagles, and there's nothing like trans-continental gloating to keep a friendship going :-D
Luckily for my loved ones this year, there's a rather substantial body of water helping to put some distance in between them and my flailing "comeonnn!" arms/attempts to convert them into Steelers fans/grumbles about regional network coverage/and all those other cute and endearing behaviors that tend to surface during NFL football season. Like yelling at the tv and glowering anyone cheering for the opposing team. Like I said, cute and endearing :-P
Unluckily for me, there are roughly 7 time zones and 8,000 miles between me and even the smallest chance that I'll be able to watch/hear any regular season games this year, so it looks like it will be a relatively football-less year for me. The jury's still out on whether or not this will actually give my emotions/nerves a rest, since without anything else to do on the weekends, there's a slight chance I'll just spend Sundays driving myself crazy by wondering how the game's going :-) That doesn't seem like fun for anyone though, so for the next few months I'll leave the more extreme football-related antics in the capable hands of the rest of the best fans in the NFLand will have to make do with post-game coverage.
I won't be entirely deprived of the black & gold though ... I've seen this guy a couple of times around town! (I was taking the picture on the sly, and he turned right as I was taking it ... but believe me, it's a Bettis jersey! Ironically, he's the kanda (guy who collects fares) of the bus that's just outside the frame of the picture.) Granted, I doubt he knows/cares about American football, but it's still enough to make my day every time I see him in town :-D
And on that note, the regular season starts this weekend! GOOOOOOOOOOOO STEELERS!!!
(the view from our place in Dar)
