Between a monkey and a hard place

It’s the “big rains” season now. The few months of beating sun and red dust on cracking roads didn’t last long. Everyday the clouds inch in and a dark, ominous gray hangs low over the city.  The wind tosses the trees back and forth, and the angry sky pours down for hours. The roads are slippery and soft. Life comes to a pause. People can’t go to work, appointments are missed. We’re caught inside; trapped behind a sea of water under leaky roofs. The power goes out every hour. Our laundry hanging on the line will never dry.

On Sunday morning, the monkeys come around. They hang on our wall beneath the papaya tree, glaring threatening glares as they thumb through the fruit. “Damn monkeys better not eat my tomatoes,” exclaims my British roommate, sure they understand.  One day, she tries to face them head on, brave and daring, waving a broomstick at their faces. “Go away monkeys! Get out of here!” we shout. All they do is show their teeth and move closer, completely unafraid. “Maybe we can get one of the men outside to scare it away.” “-But what kind of women are we? We can’t even scare away our own monkeys.” Eventually we’re defeated, we move inside clutching the pineapple and coffee. It seems we’ve lost the battle - we’re going to have to get used to our new neighbors. My German shepherd puppy, Mowgli, won’t go near them. Turns out she’s not a very good guard dog.

Work has been all consuming. Survivors Fund and Happy Kids are all I think about, breathe about, worry about. My friends have a good way of snapping me out of it – reminding me to drink a beer on our porch and watch the lights scattered over the hills across from us. As time has gone on, and the staff at Survivors Fund realized I’m not just a blond, child-sized intern, my responsibilities have gone up exponentially. Frustratingly, people still walk into the office and ask what I’m doing there. “What’s the 16 year old doing at a desk?” they ask. I scowl at them, explain that I am in fact an adult. I’ve come to realize that people will always underestimate me at first. But I suppose it’s okay, because they usually don’t underestimate me for very long.

So lately, in addition to monitoring and evaluating our widow’s projects, I’m also looking into new projects. I’m trying to find more innovative ways for the women in our programs to lift themselves out of poverty. I’ve bounced around in a 4X4 all around Rwanda, tumbling from side to side on paths that can’t be considered “roads”,  sure that the car was going to fall over. I’ve found kitchen gardens that can be constructed from a few sacks, dirt and manure, which can help to alleviate household malnutrition. Bunny rabbits that can be bred and sold to pay children’s school fees. Special ways of farming pineapple seedlings that can give rural women a place as producers in the supply chain. Unique water collection systems that free up hours typically spent fetching buckets of it.  

I’ve also been writing some big grants for a project that will create employment while addressing underlying issues of trauma for young genocide survivors. And as I was designing these projects I wondered if I’d be here to see them come to fruition. I knew I needed to be comfortable with instability, but I also desperately wanted to know exactly where it is I’d end up.  

And I do go back and forth. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have consistent running water. I imagine a world where people don’t show up to meetings 2 hours late. What if I lived in the same city as my friends, or stayed in one place long enough to actually establish deep relationships with people? What if I wasn’t hit on by literally every man I come across, both professionally and on the street? What if I was one of those normal people that lived in the country they were born in?

Mention the word “home” among my friends, and we don’t really know the answer. “Home” is in and of itself a strange concept to us. “Where’ve you been? Where are you going next?” seem questions better suited to us. It’s strange - we don’t fit in the places we came from anymore but we also don’t really fit in here. Because regardless of how long you stay here, you’re always going to be the weird looking muzungu walking down the street. Kids are always going to run up to you and ask for money or say, “give me chocolate.” Give you chocolate? Why don’t you give me some chocolate? Because I’d love some. 

It’s not easy financially either. I’m not one to complain – but I’ve been struggling here. In 6 months I’ve gone through every dime of savings I had, all but enough for a ticket to Ghana, which I won’t touch. By the 4^th week of the every month, I’m down to my last 10 dollars, and there’s no safety net. It’s beginning to set in that I’ve chosen a career where I’m always going to struggle financially. Even more ironic? Everyone in this country thinks I’m rich.

So I had a choice to make, and it was not an easy choice. But as frustrated as I can be working and living here, the ending punctuation on every question mark comes to the fact that of course I want to stay. Truthfully, every time I see expat friends here leaving, I do understand it. Eventually everyone goes back; at some point you want to settle in the land of functioning Internet and hot water. But while I understand it, I never envy it. In fact, I feel bad for them. I feel bad that they’re leaving this life – that they leave the adventure and intensity. I know they’ll miss the sound of pounding rain on a tin roof, radios blasting from a porch step, fireflies and the hiss of grasshoppers. If I left, all I would think about was getting back here. So when my boss offered me a promotion as Project Officer, and a contract for at least another year – I took it. I jumped up and down and high fived everyone I could on the walk home.

I am here to stay, at least for a while. I know how lucky I am to be so passionate and fascinated by my job, but it’s worth mentioning that missing the people I love will never go away. Where I’ll end up exactly? To be honest, I’m not sure. But I do know for now that I’m in the right place. Even so, I hope that you’ll continue to endure the time difference and awkwardly frozen skype calls, because having that support system is part of why I’m able to stay.

Some of the greatest women I've ever met

We’re in the East, traipsing through a small path searching for this woman’s house. We’re not doing normal field visits, where we assess the woman in training and talk to them before they start new businesses. These visits are for me to write up success stories, which requires a much more in-depth interview. It requires me to pry into a history I don’t understand.

Yesterday I was sitting on a woman’s couch in her living room. She handed me faded framed photos of family that were no longer alive, and I told her they were beautiful. She explained how she had been raped during the genocide. She was subsequently infected with HIV, which she then unknowingly passed onto her husband, and he died six years later. As she spoke, her voice would slow and pause, quieting to a whisper. At that point she had adopted 10 orphans, totaling 13 kids, and she didn’t know how they would survive. The way she stumbles over her words is brutal. Everything bad that could’ve happened to her happened, and it hurts my soul. But then she became a member of one of our partner Widows organizations and they taught her how to bake cakes. From this she opened her own businesses and turned things around. Most of her children are grown up and have started University. She’s even a grandma, she said, motioning to two 8x10 photos on the wall behind me. Two beautiful toddlers. Now she provides counseling and training to other HIV positive women in the village, and she even had enough money to build a small rental house outside. I took pictures of her standing proudly beside it, shook her hand and said thank you, thank you.

When we finally find the woman’s house, she excitedly hugs me, squeezing me three times. We sit on her couch and I ask her name. Esperanz. She is shocked when I’m able to guess and spell it correctly, and keeps talking about how well I speak Kinyarwanda. I tell her that I’m trying as I introduce myself. First as Kelsey, and then as my given Kinyarwanda name, which is “Mukasine” (pronounced Moo-kah-see-nay). She bursts out hysterically laughing, “Mukasine” she questions, and asks if I know what it means. Yeah, it means “good looking cow” I tell her. She starts crying she’s laughing so hard. It was a joke thought up by one of my colleagues on a slow day, and somehow it stuck. It is a real Rwandan name, and it’s much easier to pronounce and remember than Kelsey. At first I was unsure about my losing my English name to the women we help, but then I embraced it. Plus it makes them laugh, which I love. And who’s going to turn down being called a ‘good looking cow’?

Esperanz is still laughing and she keeps saying “Hm, Mukasine. MukASINE”, nodding in approval. But then I ask what happened during the genocide and watch every ounce of joy fade from her face. She is quiet, solemn, and I hate it.

During the genocide, I lived here. When it started on April 7^th, we began grouping together. We were together for three days, and then decided to split up. Some of them went to the church, and others went to the school. They thought they would especially be safe in a house of god, but those who went to the church were all killed.* I went to the school with my children, but my entire family; my parents, husband, they all died. In the day we would run from the school and hide in the bush. We lived that way, in the bush, for a month. On the 15^th of May the RPF came and brought us out. I survived with my one child and four orphans.

When we came back the neighborhood was empty. It was a very very hard time, taking care of the 5 kids by myself. I started thinking how will I survive, how will I cultivate crops for these kids. One day I was in the field working, and I had a flashback of the violence of the genocide. I dropped to my knees. But then I left the field. I didn’t want my kids to know I was weak.

Esperanz doesn’t stumble over her words. They spill out of her. The way she speaks is captivating and powerful, with large gestures. Every so often she brings her hands together, folds them in her lap, and bends forward to meet my eyes.

After that I was elected head of the village for AVEGA, so I gathered the other survivors to come together to help one another. We formed an association to save, going from farm to farm. We were 12 widows and would contribute 100 francs every month. We were able to bring our kids back to school. We also formed a Widows of Six group where every evening we would go clean where the people were killed. Their bodies were still there, but many had their fingers or heads or arms cut off. Every night we would meet and put them back together, in the right way. Many people thought we would get sick. The district leader even came and told us to cover our hands or to stop. I said no; these are our parents, our husbands, our families. We should not cover our hands. 

There was a nonprofit organization that came to give us counseling. They sat under the trees and explained that we had survived for a purpose.  At that time my main purpose of life was to look after my kids. I thought even if I die tomorrow, I want them to be left in some better way. As we saw development around us, we realized that we didn’t have to be alone and always live with the consequences of genocide. We wanted to open our minds, so we decided to take the training and apply for a loan.

She’s talking so fast and so hard that when I ask her to pause so I can get a translation, she falls back in her seat laughing at herself. She continues to talk about what she’s done with the training and the loan. I ask her how her life has changed, and what she’s done with the profit.

What have I done? Look above you. I have electricity in my home. I’m able to prepare for my kids after I’m gone, and give them food when they visit. In that time before, I was supposed to die tomorrow, but I’m still alive.

As we move on, some of the other group members have gathered in her living room. We echo hello and Esperanz introduces me as Mukasine, giggles, and shakes her head up and down as she explains how well I had spelled in Kiyarwanda. Her compliments are bit generous, but I accept them nonetheless. The rest of the women in the room are just as impressive; some have bought land, cows, rebuilt houses. We talk in more detail about the logistics of the project and how they’ll be applying for their third loan. When I tell Esperanz she is free to apply to a different microfinance institution with lower interest, she stands up and dances. The heaviness of the previous conversation has evaporated, and we’re all dancing.

The time flows by before I realize that we've been sitting on her couch for hours, but I could've stayed there forever. Whatever it is that she was, I wanted to soak it up, carry it with me. I promised her that I would keep practicing my Kinyarwanda and maybe next time I wouldn’t need a translator. I promised her I would bring copies of the photos I’d taken, and after hugging everyone we said goodbye.

We waited on the side of the dusty road for a bus that never came. I hopped on a rusty and gurgling moto, winding through the green hills for the 45 minutes it took to get back to Kigali.

At the end of the day, it becomes ever more clear that the world I left behind is not one that I fit into anymore. I realize how impossible it would be to go back. Impossible to move beyond these stories and not work to stop this from happening again, or help those suffering the consequences of simply being born in the wrong place. Irregardless of how much I desperately miss my friends and family, this is my normal now. I want to dig into this place. I want to settle without the temporality of it all looming over my head. And so I’ve decided I want to stay in Rwanda. I want my contract to be extended past June 30^th, and if isn’t I’ll look for another job here. I just hope I can find one.

*One of the most famous massacres of the Rwandan genocide, where at least 5,000 were killed. It’s down the road from her house, and is now a memorial made up of skulls, bones and raggedy clothing that hang from the church pillars. 

Agahozo = "to dry your tears"

Part of my new job is doing field visits to women's income generating groups throughout Rwanda. The groups are facilitated through our partner organization, a widows organization called AVEGA Agahozo (agahozo means “to dry your tears”). I wasn’t told much, other than when we would be leaving and that I should compile some questions to ask the women how they feel about the project. So on my third day of work I was thrown into a rickety old car and driven deep into the hills of Northern Rwanda.

I was really nervous about whether I might say the wrong thing or ask the wrong questions, bring up old wounds or rub salt in new ones. I wasn’t sure how I would relate or what the tone would be. Turns out you don’t relate, you just listen. And the tone isn’t always solemn – every group laughs for about 20 minutes straight every time I try to speak Kinyarwanda.

Luckily, my colleague was sent with me to act as translator. When we arrived, we were led into a hall where the IGA (income generating activity) class took place. The class had about 50 women. We started out by discussing the purpose of the project; that this was the opportunity for them to transform their lives through utilizing the training of how to find a market, work a budget sheet, keep customers, and lastly apply for a loan. They would receive this loan with remarkably low interest because our organization had arranged it with the bank. Then they would open new businesses; businesses that would give them independence and stability. After the project was explained, we opened up the floor to them for their testimonies, thoughts, or disagreements. They all spoke about how grateful they were for the opportunity and the specific skills, but it became obvious that they’d gained more than just entrepreneurship training. I had become distracted trying to hastily write everything that the translator was telling me, so much so that I wasn’t really processing what they were saying. Until one woman stood up and caught my attention.

Beforehand, most of the women had been looking at the translator, but this woman looked at me. She said, “After the genocide, we thought that life was impossible. But now that we see people are here and they are helping us, and they care, we see that life is possible.” As she was speaking she motioned to me. And just like that, I had been woven into the story. My being there had somehow validated their pain and their hope simultaneously. This recognition was entirely undeserving, as I hadn’t actually done anything yet in Rwanda. I’m just a lowly American intern. 

This perspective turned out to not be unique among the groups. Many women spoke of a regained sense of hope. One talked about how she had always been angry before; that she had watched her children and family being murdered and could never find herself smiling. She said that now on Fridays she smiles because she gets to see her friends. Another woman from the same group stood and spoke quite candidly about how she had been raped and been given aids during the genocide. “I always used to be lonely and sick” she continued, “but now, even when I am in the hospital the women come to visit me. I know now that I am not alone.”

It doesn’t seem to matter that the genocide was 18 years ago. The memory is still just as fresh today as it was then. The trauma, although distant, is still just as debilitating.

And these stories are everywhere. When traveling on a bus one of my happy, silly friends told me that his mother had been killed. I asked how, and he told me that he had watched her being dragged into a bush and hacked with a machete. He ran so fast and so long that he ended up in the Congo, where a Rwandan family found him walking down the street and adopted him. He was six.

Sometimes I find myself looking at the deep open sewers on the side of the road and imagining how many dead bodies must have been piled inside, spilling out onto the road. And why is the dirt so red? This deep, maroon, almost purple-red clay dirt that’s darker than any other that I’ve seen. The Shona in South Africa have a theory that the dirt is so red there from all the blood that’s been spilled over the land. But I’m really just getting carried away.

I wonder if anyone in this country was not affected by the genocide and its collective madness. The case of Rwanda is particularly odd in that ordinary citizens became genocidaires, with neighbors literally killing neighbors. I asked my Rwandan friend if after witnessing such a thing he believed that people were inherently good or inherently bad. He said neither. “All people in the world are capable of being good or bad. It’s not something you’re born with, it’s something you become.” That’s the dark reality of this place: is everyone really capable of being brainwashed into killing someone simply because they were born a different ethnicity? And even for those that aren’t, are those of us that remain silent as these acts occur really any less guilty? 

But despite the world’s convenient blindness during the genocide and the scars it left, there is a strange, incredible thing about Rwanda…After the genocide it rebuilt, grew, and healed. It would’ve been really easy for the country to keep spiraling into an ethnically divided, traumatized and lawless place, but instead it did the opposite. Rwanda offers a fascinating perspective in that you have the most brutal possibilities of humankind in its history juxtaposed next to the most optimistic, determined and resilient people of the present. After the genocide, the new government abolished the idea of ethnic division and made unification a law. And people take care of one another. Perhaps the widespread devastation of it all helped demonstrate everyone’s common humanity. For example, if you’re standing on the side of the road at night a bus will stop and drive you where you need to go for free, just to help you out. Every last Saturday of the month the entire country shuts down to clean the streets and do community service. There is free universal primary education. The government even has a program called “One Cow Per Family” where they give a poor family a free cow. Once that free cow has a calf or produces milk the family must give the calf and milk to their neighbors. There are innovative, widespread, effective development programs in the works. Every year Rwanda’s economy is growing, and less and less people live under the poverty line. It’s also incredibly safe. Really really safe. While I still get the whole “Muzungu” (white person) thing every now and then, for the most part I am left alone. Petty crime and muggings almost don’t exist here.

Over and over again, you find happy, hopeful people just going about their business and moving on with their lives. So while it’s important to recognize the history of this place and seek justice for survivors, it’s also important to recognize how far everyone has come since 1994. 

The Land of a Thousand Hills

[Written October 16]

Sometimes I wake up and forget where I am. My eyes are half open and I panic, stumble around a room looking for a sign of something familiar, all the while trying to remind myself where it is I’ve ended up. Cape Town, Ghana, Santa Barbara? I could just as easily be in my tiny twin bed in South Africa, or in a tent somewhere in Botswana, or on the floor of the Happy Kids girls dormitory - a cockroach laying beside me on its back, legs flailing in the air. I listen to the whizzing ceiling fan and the chickens outside until little girl eyes open and smile at me from inside their mosquito nets. Or maybe I’m in Santa Barbara, back in America, back in the developed world. On a couch at one of my best friend’s houses, last night’s wine glasses still on the table. As many times as this happens, I still have a hard time knowing. This is the somewhat hilarious frustration that comes with moving around so much. My mind has a hard time catching up with my eyes.

This is how I woke up my first day in Rwanda. Only in the midst of my confusion my ankle got caught in my mosquito net and I fell, face first, onto the concrete floor. Ah, that’s right. I moved to Rwanda. So what now?

When I landed it was night and because Rwanda is made of hills, you are almost always looking down or across, never up, so that all you can see is the darkness pierced by the scattered white lights of people’s homes across from you. In this way, it seems as if the sky has fallen to the earth. It's beautiful.

In the morning, I decided to wander into the city to find internet and a sim card for my phone. Motorcycle taxis (“moto’s”) are the most common form of transportation here, so I walked up to a driver, negotiated the price and hopped on. All of the motos have an extra helmet for you to use, but they are most often useless; oversized, cracked, and taped with duct tape…not too reassuring as you weave through traffic, pinching between a crowded minibus and a rusty truck at the last second. They are an incredibly fun and interesting way to see the city – but they are dangerous as hell. I’ve had some cringe worthy rides; some very close calls that tempt me to close my eyes, until I remember the story of my friend that had to jump off of one in a split second, right before his moto and another crashed into one another. Danger aside, motos are convenient, good if you need to get somewhere fast, and they're cheap. 

After I got my introduction to motos I moved into my new house, which I’d arranged prior to my arrival. My house is in a vibrant neighborhood called “Nyamirambo.” It’s the only part of the sleepy Kigali city that is always moving. It’s also the cheapest part of the city to live in, and is hilariously nicknamed Gangster’s Paradise. It’s packed with tiny, colorful shops. Only the main street is paved and the rest are either cobble stone roads or dirt. It has character and feels more alive, more authentic. The rest of Kigali is rather quiet and calm. My house is also great. There’s 6 of us that live there; all expats from various parts of the world…America, Holland, Denmark, and Britain. Everyone is smart, motivated, and most are working in development. I have my own room with a bed and a desk, and we even have a water heater! Granted, the water pressure is so bad that most of the time I have to boil water beforehand and then shower with a small lemonade pitcher (which I fill twice). It’s not fancy, but it’s home, and I love it.

For those that don’t know how I ended up in this dusty city, I’ve come to work for a UK based organization called Survivors Fund (SURF). SURF supports genocide survivors through a wide variety of projects, but I’ll be working mainly on their Widowed Survivors Empowerment Project. The project provides capacity building, counseling, legal and health support to older, widowed survivors of the 1994 genocide. While I’m not 100% sure what my day-to-day job duties will be, I can’t wait to dive in and get started on what I’ve always wanted to do: post-conflict development. My contract with SURF is only an initial 3 months, but I’m hoping it will either be extended or I’m able to find work somewhere else. I love getting to know a country, its language and its people, and I know that can’t be done in 3 months.

But I didn’t just come here because I needed a job. There is a fascinating curiosity that I, and I’m sure others, have always had with Rwanda. I will borrow the words from Phillip Gourevitch’s book “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”, as I’m sure mine would be woefully inadequate:

“I presume you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extremity with me, you hope for some understanding, some insight, some flick of self-knowledge—a moral, or a lesson, or a clue about how to behave in this world: some such information. I don’t discount the possibility, but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it.”