At the mall

I needed a SIM card, so I headed over to Mustafa Center, which I discovered is a 24-hour, multi-level warehouse store that rolls the thrill of shopping and the risk of dying in a stampede in one.

I pressed my way through shoes (1st), gold products (B1), and stuffed animals (B2) to the SIM card counter (way back of B2). Amit was standing there, and I showed him my phone, which I had bought in Rwanda and wasn't sure was in the same frequency zone as Singapore.

"Wanda?" he asked puzzled. I explained it was a country next to Sudan in Africa and watched as his eyes grew to the size of pingpong balls. "The place where many people are killed," he said. He shook his head, "A very bad country."

I paused to think about how to respond but not long enough because I blurted, "No, no! Every country has gone through a similar thing. Everywhere at some point, people have killed each other, even here in Singapore."

He did the thing I've noticed people do here when slightly embarrassed, which is to act as though the inappropriate thing that just happened, entirely didn't, the way maybe a crazy American grandmother might do. He told me I needed to get an adapter to plug in my phone and charge it before we could check the SIM card. I wove my way to House Appliances (front of B2), dug through bins for the adapter, waited in line behind a couple buying Jenga, a man buying AXE medicated lotion, and a teen buying a furry jacket with tiger stripes, and then headed back to Amit. He was stepping towards the direction of the exit. "Nine thirty, time for me to go home," he said. "Next guy comes at ten thirty. You wait for him if you need to call Wanda tonight."

Shades of gray

An update to the civil unrest that appeared to be brewing in Rwanda when I last left off: Last week, the government arrested an opposition politician for alleged genocide ideology. The many arrests of Hutu leadership so far signals a clear distrust of allowing the majority back into power.

Is there a point when the suppression of differing ideologies shifts from actions necessary to maintain the peace to actions necessary to maintain power? I'm not sure the answer really matters when we're talking about ideologies differing in terms of "genocide good" versus "genocide bad." But it certainly is not the case that being Hutu translates automatically to one or the other.

There is such thing too as a slow genocide--where silently and slowly, right before our eyes, an entire group of people is stepped on until they are ground into dust.

A way to help

I've gotten some questions about how to support WE-ACTx and the other organizations that I had the chance to work with on this trip.

WE-ACTx is about to throw two major fundraisers, one in San Francisco and the other in Boston. You can attend either event or donate online. Authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman will host the San Francisco event, and there will be lots of pretty bags made by the women at Ineza for sale, so it should be neat.

Another great organization to give to and that I worked with is CHABHA, which leads a number of associations that work directly with kids in need. One of these associations is Amahoro, which means "peace" in Kinyarwanda, and is managed by an enthusiastic group of young people who were orphaned by HIV/AIDS and themselves beneficiaries. They took me along for a visit to a tiny village called Bumgogo where four hundred children greeted us with songs and a dance before our presentation on legal rights. Many of the kids walk for hours to be there for Amahoro's weekly visit to play games, learn about everything from HIV to nutrition, and talk about their problems. Like many of the aid organizations in Rwanda, Amahoro is billed as a religious organization but in fact provides aid freely and without regard to class, clan, or religion.
In the Bumgogo schoolhouse, another example of Amahoro's thoughtful aid work. These rabbits now belong to some of the poorest families in the village. In some circles in Rwanda, owning livestock (in whatever form) is critical to social standing and acceptance.

Newsworthy rumors

The national and international media have not covered the most recent grenade attacks in the Southern and Eastern provinces of Rwanda. The justification seems to be, because acts of terrorism occur frequently along the borders of Rwanda, they aren't actually newsworthy. And so, these events (as well as some closer to Kigali) officially remain rumors.

What the media is failing to address is the fact that tensions here are high--some say as high as they were before the country imploded in 1994. While the seven grenade attacks that killed or wounded 47 people in the capital city of Kigali on February 19 and March 4 caught most of the media's attention, a number of other events reveal the mounting tensions here. On February 25, President Sarkozy was the first French leader to visit since 1994, ostensibly to open up relations between France and Rwanda, by apologizing (lamely), for France's starring role in supporting the genocide. Less known is that Sarkozy's visit was also to negotiate a horse trade, President Habyarimana's widow (a woman many know to many as "Lady Genocide"), whom the French have protected since Habyarimana's plane was shot down leading into the worst 100 days of the genocide, in exchange for the safety of the exiled former Rwandan Ambassador to India, who was until recently a respected member of the ruling party. The Ambassador is a former general who is said to have been organizing a split away from President Kagame's regime (read: coup) and is now seeking asylum in South Africa. The next presidential election is in September.

Fracturing within Kagame's RPF is the proverbial hole in the dike--the start of instability in a country that above all needs stability. Kagame's rule may be imperfect, but of the many things it has achieved is making Rwanda one of the safest countries in Eastern Africa in record time. Since the end of its civil war, Rwanda has become the haven to which refugees from the DRC, Uganda, and Burundi have run.

After the first grenade attacks in Kigali, President Kagame attempted to quell fears by assuring on national television that the country is safe. But the announcement seemed only to motivate the opposition party(ies) to prove him wrong. Alarmed by the threat of multiple mass attacks around the country, the government announced on March 7, that March 8 would be a "holiday." In the guise of celebrating International Women's Day, all businesses were closed (read: no one was to be on the streets). Since the forced holiday, the streets have remained noticeably more quiet during the day and almost empty by nightfall. While the UN and U.S. Embassy here have been publicly silent on the situation, internally, staff have been warned to avoid large public gatherings (markets, main thoroughfares), all public transportation, and going out after dark.

To make matters worse, April 6 marks the start of the annual 100 days of mourning throughout the country. Every year in anticipation of this time, medical clinics see a rise in cases of severe depression and PTSD, including flashbacks and severe withdrawal (patients often fail to make the connection between their mental and physical health, coming in with "stomach aches"). The bomb threats, threats of a coup, and now rumored snatching of young men off the streets to be forcibly recruited into various military factions, are reminding everyone of what happened the last time.

Living here and working with many Rwandans, however briefly, my view of the situation is of extreme concern. While I will have the luxury of leaving Rwanda later today, my colleagues and friends here do not. It is critically important for the international community to acknowledge the growing violence here. It is not an overstatement that Rwanda is again on the brink of implosion. As human beings, we owe Rwanda so much, but at the very least, we owe them the help we failed to provide the last time around.

Evil

The fraudulent invitation.

A dedicated member of the WE-ACTx team, a Rwandan who was inspired to work with orphans because he is one himself, showed me an email invitation he had just received to attend a conference of NGO leaders working on AIDS and environmental issues.

The invitation promised an opportunity to travel for free to Los Angeles to meet for a week with others fighting for the cause--all for just a registration fee of $275. He was concerned it was too good to be true. It hadn't even occurred to me that such a thing could be fraudulent. Unfortunately, he was right.

The alleged organizer, the Edith Travis AIDS Foundation, lists a phony contact address on its shady website and hasn't answered my emails requesting more information about their program. They just want me to pay the registration fee.

What kind of people would prey on those who work in Rwanda and other developing countries for HIV/AIDS, environmental, and human rights causes? The people at our organization work tirelessly to ensure access to medical care for more than 6000 women and children with HIV. They persuade guardians, who believe that a child with HIV has no future and therefore can be treated like a slave, to change their ways. They scrape together money to keep children in school who could not otherwise pay the (illegally levied) fees. They counsel women and children who have been traumatized by sexual violence. They act as parents to several hundred children who have been orphaned by AIDS. They provide meals to children and families who otherwise would eat just a few times a week. They manage income generation projects that teach business skills to women who are otherwise unemployable because of their mental health. They mediate property disputes among adults who are supposed to be using the property for the benefit of the children in their care. They do this on a shoestring organizational budget, sometimes supplemented with their own modest to meager personal funds.

If you would like to offer some choice words to the immoral con-artists known as the Edith Travis AIDS Foundation, contact them at etaf-africa@africamail.com.

Where the ingagi are

Rwanda may be small, but it has an uncomfortably concentrated population density of about 340 people per square kilometer. Fertile land is scarce, and so the land is tilled to within one millimeter of the protected peaks of the volcanoes in Virunga National Park.

The last 700 mountain gorillas in the world live within these islands of wilderness. They do not survive in captivity.

Tracking ingagi (gorillas!)

Igisura and Intovu: Poison and antidote

I had a little bit of time to step back from the project and take in some of the country, and so we decided to see about the mountain gorillas in the north along the Rwanda-DRC-Uganda border in Virunga National Park.

Of the many things that the guidebooks don't tell you about tracking gorillas are the stinging nettles covering every inch of the landscape. Igisura, as they are called in Kinyarwanda, grow up to 10 feet high but can also creep along the ground. In any of its varieties, a brush of bare skin against a leaf or stem causes an immediate burning and itching sensation that slowly devolves into a dull throbbing reminiscent of chronic arthritis (I'm told) that will disappear after about 24 hours.

After I grabbed a stalk trying to steady myself in knee-deep mud, our intrepid guide Felix, who has spent more than 20 years habituating gorillas and golden monkeys all over the Great Lakes region, picked a leaf from the intovu plant and showed me how to rub the white milk seeping out onto my skin. I felt immediate and complete relief, and wondered, when we finally saw the gorilla babies covered in stinging nettle burrs, whether their playful rolling around on and stomping of certain grasses belied their own knowledge of medicinal plants.

She's got some burrs in her furs.

Ideals

Today we spoke to a couple hundred orphaned and/or HIV positive children about how to use the law to protect themselves.

So many parts of children's lives do not match up with what the Constitution, UN Convention, or other laws provide. When we asked why knowing your rights is important, a young boy answered, "Knowing our rights is important, because they show us where we can go."

Some edible (packaged) Rwandan things

Pilipili sauce, a pure hot pepper oil, the point of which seems to be to cause physical pain without actually adding flavor (left). Inyange brand passionfruit juice, very tasty, with just a touch of Sodium Benzoate for kick (right).

And so on

As people here try to read into recents events to try to predict whether all of this is the start of another ethnic/socioeconomic civil war or just the start of an election season, life goes on.

A typographer was painting this Coca-Cola ad freehand in the middle of downtown. Being into type design and all things print, I was really excited to see someone practicing this mostly dying art form. He was surprised that I was so interested, and I was sorry to disappoint him with the news that very few signs are still painted like this in the United States.

Then we noticed the slogan, "No power sharing," on the back of his coveralls and were thrown back into thinking about Rwandan politics. We mistook it for an inflammatory statement about the power struggle between the Hutu and Tutsi. We were only slightly relieved when the typographer explained it referred to the tumult that was Kenyan politics in 2008, a period that involved a rigged election, international meddling, and many dead protestors.

Memoriam

We visited the Gisozi Genocide Memorial where more than 250,000 people are buried in mass graves.

A mass grave lies beneath this concrete slab.

We were hesitant to go since one of the grenades last night was detonated right outside. But it seemed important to visit in defiance of these most recent acts of terrorism. That people would attempt to restart the chaos and horror of Rwanda's past in this very place, demonstrates how humanity's fleeting memory is our great weakness.

In honor of the upcoming election

Two more grenade attacks just reported. I am starting to notice without much comfort that many articles on the subject make sure to mention, Kigali is among the safest capital cities in the world. I don't remember the conditional "capital" there before. No new travel advisories resulting so far.

From the U.S. State Department Warden Message:

The U.S. Embassy in Kigali confirms there were two grenade attacks in Kigali at approximately 8:00 p.m. local time. The first occurred in the Kimironko neighborhood near the Printemps Hotel. The second was in the Kinamba neighborhood near the Gisozi Genocide Memorial. Injuries and/or casualties are unknown at this time.

Past and present

It's easy to notice people convicted of genocide crimes, because they are dressed in bright pink. The irony of prison garb the color of rose petals, soap, and princess dresses is probably not lost on the prisoners.

On the way to the National University of Rwanda Law School in Huye (formerly Butare), we saw such a crew building a new genocide memorial. Memorials generally are placed on sites of significance to the nearby residents, and so often mark where mass murders of entire communities took place. I wonder if to those who carried out the genocide, marking the sites of their crimes bears much meaning. Worse, could participating in building permanent memorials of those acts nurture a perverse sense of pride? I haven't found any studies on this question. At the law school, we saw the incredible work of their Legal Aid Clinic, which runs every Thursday afternoon. The small group of law students offering free guidance to the most vulnerable members of the community was a starkly different act from that foisted on the prisoners. It was one of building a future rather than simply building upon the past.

Fellow passengers

We had to get from the Remera office to the Centreville office, so we took the city bus. They are essentially the size of the sort of Volkswaagen vans that a band of five would use to roam the United States, but instead somehow crammed with five rows of four and two seats with additional fold-down seats in the aisle. Since these aisle seats are always taken, no one has legroom and everyone in the aisle must stand up and fold their seat at each stop.

Today it was raining as we passed Parliament, a stark building riddled with mortar shells perched on top of a hill overlooking the city. As I sat glumly in my aisle seat, I felt two eyes peering at me. They belonged to a little kid in a white polo shirt and pressed khakis, who was trying to summon courage to say something to me. I broke the ice and said hello. Carefully, he started talking. "Hello. My name is Eric. I am nine. What is your name? What is your address and phone number?" His English vocabulary beyond this script was a little sparse, but he did manage to tell me he was on his way to sing a song on a radio show and that he practiced singing on Mondays and Tuesdays. He proudly pointed out the huge building where the station was, and continued trying out new phrases as we approached. When we reached his stop, I wished him luck and gave him a high-five, which made him smile broadly. As he jumped out of the bus, he cheerfully greeted an elderly gentleman in line, and then hopped down the street to his appointment.

Everyone on the bus began murmuring. My colleague J, a Rwandan attorney, translated. They had been struck by what a charming little kid Eric was. My colleague and I considered how great the world could be if we could all truly communicate with each other, despite our distinct languages. This led to him teaching me how to count in Kinyarwanda. I realized somewhere around "five" that everyone on the little bus was listening to the lesson. They would murmur approval when I got close to a decent pronunciation. Not wanting to let the good will slip away without offering something in return, I asked if anyone wanted to learn Chinese. They were all very excited about this, and so I taught them how to count from one to five in Mandarin and how to say, "thank you." "Ni byiza," some said in Kinyarwanda. "Tres bien," others said in French. When the bus emptied downtown, we said goodbye to one other in all our respective languages.

One Rimwe Yi Un

Two Kabiri Er Deux

Three Gatatu San Trois

Four Kane Si Quatre

Five Gatanu Wu Cinq

Thanks Murakoze Xie Xie Merci

Goodbye Murabeho Zai Jian Au revoir

Stealing souls

Until two years ago, Rwanda was officially Francophone--the enfranchised spoke both Kinyarwanda and French. Then President Kagame declared (after recognizing the economic advantages, not to mention some political upheaval) that Rwanda would be Anglophone. Of course, the transition could not be immediate. Given my limited French, in meetings with NGOs and aid organizations, I've relied at times on an interpreter.

Over Fantas and biscuits during a break, my interpreter F and I got into a discussion about decorum in our respective countries. I asked about, among other things, the protocol for introductions (shake hands, say "Mister" or "Ms.," the usual, as it turns out). Then, earnestly, he asked, "In the U.S., do people just take pictures of each other without asking?"

"Well, no," I said, embarassed. "We tourists just tend to forget that people are not just part of the landscape."

When traveling, I try hard to ask for permission when taking pictures of human beings, but, of course, it's impossible to get a candid photo of daily life unless you take a--well, candid shot. In Tibet, the locals have the photo racket down, refusing to stay still as tourists try to take pictures but immediately assuming a stock pose once paid. If that's my option, I'd rather just buy a postcard.

I spent the day taking pictures of the amazingly lush flora all around Kigali.

In the minority

The sidewalk of a non-litigious society.

I stand out in Rwanda, though not as much as I'd thought. There is a lot of development happening over here, and it's mainly being funded by Chinese companies. New beautifully paved roads are popping up overnight, and the miles of sidewalks accompanying them are built of meticulously laid, patterned bricks. It's not a surprise then that much of the new construction reminds me of what you find in parts of Guangzhou. The similarities extend all the way down to the widespread use of papaya trees and purple-leaved succulents in the landscaping.

Unlike in other parts of the world, the terms of the foreign development contracts keep the majority of the profits in Rwanda, while requiring a high reliance on local labor. These are concessions American and European companies were not willing to make, and so China is really getting a strong foothold. So far, the relationship appears to be going well, as I am greeted very warmly by everyone. No one really gets that I'm an American.

Still, there are far fewer Asian people than traditional muzungu here on the streets. While I am interesting enough to gawk at, I am apparently still not as captivating as people of European descent. A white colleague told the story of being packed next to a woman and her friend on one of the crowded, public minibuses. The woman rather boldly stroked my colleague's hand a few times before telling her friend, "I wanted to touch one before I died." "What does it feel like?" the friend asked. "Like a ripe banana," the woman said.

And now, to Rwanda

I am going to Rwanda. This upcoming trip came about through my work with an organization everyone ought to know about--Women's Equity in Access to Care & Treatment, or WE-ACTx for short.

It's an unwieldy name for an organization that manages to run an unwieldy number of incredible projects that aim to improve the lives of women and children in Rwanda. There are income generation collectives employing women who are disabled, physically and mentally, and are otherwise unemployable. Clinics staffed with physicians who provide critically needed health care. Yogis that run programs for the patients. And attorneys who counsel, advocate, and educate on the behalf of otherwise voiceless souls. This is where I come in.

We've been writing a book on children's legal rights that's now in its final phases. Rather than creating a theoretical book for academics and policy wonks destined to die as a doorstop, we tried to take a different tack and write the book for children. So, it starts with the story of a little frog who loses her mother and learns about her rights under the law to her father's support. More substantive sections on topics such as inheritance rights, filing for assistance for school fees, and reporting abuse follow.

The question is, how do you make something like a book useful in circumstances like these? In Rwanda, children without a mother and father make up nearly 9 percent of the total population. That's nearly 900,000 children cooking for themselves, working, learning how to pay for health care, fighting neighbors for the right to live in the house their parents left for them, and telling stories about their mother to siblings before turning out the light. Child-headed households in rural areas face bleaker prospects still. How do you explain all the things that their parents were supposed to have been able to teach? How do you urge them to recognize rights that exist only on paper? How much is fair to ask of a nation that was only just reborn? I keep reminding myself, if this book offers comfort to someone who picks it up, that would be something. It would be something where there had been nothing.