Measure of the Soul (a poem for Rwanda)

After a several-year dry spell I have at last had the itch to write poetry again! I mostly credit the amount of time I have on my hands here in Rwanda: I have a daily ritual of stretching out in my front yard and reading and writing poetry while the sun sets.My house seems made for beauty and creativity. I wrote this one a while ago, trying to capture some of the deep love and grief that I have for Rwanda. Thought I would share it, sense I have not posted in a while! 

Measure of the Soul

Dizzy in the darkness

secondhand horror.

I try your mask

a borrowed ache you

believe it.

This choir of death:

My love my blindness to

believe in you again.

I cannot forgive

life – white and dry and twisted.

And now I know

there is no limit

we do not break – even for mercy

built for pain and evil

a frankenstein creation.

And now I know

my skin is monstrous

and the shadows in my heart are bottomless.

And now I know

no God

but one that is broken.

And now I know

the bitterness of life

bitter: the beauty of it

the sweetness

bitter

the knowledge

the monster

bitter

that I cannot stop loving.

The Price of Memory

This week, commemoration week, genocide is constant. Strange twinkly songs spill from the radio, the only of word I understand is 'genocide', televisions flash image after image after image of the dead. Kigali turns to a city of the dead. The whole town shuts down during genocide memorials, by mandate, and so I when go out to buy a mango or an avocado I often wander past locked doors and darkened windows for miles.

Sunday I went to the main memorial: a long 'walk to remember' to the national stadium for an evening of songs and speeches and thousands of candles, flames spread from the memorial bonfire. In Rwandan culture when someon

e dies you keep a fire going for seven days and seven nights and stay by it, remembering the dead. This week fires burn all across the country, and we are all around them.

Candles at the stadium. You can see the lights better out of focus. 

Memory comes with a price. As we left the stadium on Sunday there was a scream in the dark: a howl of grief so brutal I cannot even comprehend the physical pain that must have been at the center of it. Three volunteers ran past us, carrying a writhing, screaming woman. She wailed and beat against them, lost in the torture of memory, while they repeated 'Ntakebazo' – it's ok – over and over again.

This is not uncommon during commemoration week. As we walked I heard screams again, and again, agony so physical it seemed to cut the dark and twisted my guts, made my skin prickle and shudder. Before Rwanda I thought there was a limit to pain. I believed because I cannot imagine grief beyond a certain point that the human spirit must not be able to take it, that we must simply break from the weight of it. Now I know better. We are made to endure, and this is our blessing and our curse. This is the price of memory. The dead never die. The screams in the night do not cease. Genocide in Rwanda is never entirely over. This week it goes on behind the eyes of every face I see.

I write this from another memorial. I am here with AVEGA, sitting quietly with my psychologist mentors to be there when and if the screams begin again. It is past midnight, raining and cold, and the faces around me are heavy with grief and exhaustion. I am on blood-stained ground: at the beginning of the genocide many Rwandans and foreigners fled to this school to escape from the Interhamwe. The UN came to the rescue: but only for the whites. They took the few foreigners out of the screaming begging crowd, and drove away. As the UN cars disappeared down the road the genocidaires moved in. Guilt seeps into my stomach -- I am nauseous with disgust. As a student turned researcher I feel out of place, a voyeuristic observer of pain too sharp for me to ever touch. In the cold air, orange from smoke and streetlights, I begin to imagine myself not an outsider peering into someone else's pain, but a mourner, keeping vigil for the dead.

Tonight we keep them close.  

Muzungus in Paradise

Life has changed a good deal in the past few days! I am now in the research portion of my study abroad, which means classes are over and for the next month I will do an independent research project on trauma. For this time we move out of our host families, and I am living in an amazing house with 5 of my friends.

Check out our Gazebo!

This is what I look at as I eat breakfast every day.

The house is lovely, has a fully equipped kitchen and we all have our own bedrooms. As a future development worker who expects to make very little money, this might well be the nicest house I ever live in. We even have a house boy, who is awesome and does our dishes and is confused by our insistence on cooking for ourselves. As a student I feel I don't deserve this, somehow, but it was the cheapest thing we could find with furnishing and enough bedrooms.

While I am doing my research, and for the next three months, I have an internship with AVEGA, an organization created for genocide widows to address trauma and healthcare. They later expanded to work on legal advocacy and economic projects, and pretty much awesome. Check out their website! http://avegaagahozo.org/ I am working under two psychologist, which is perfect, because post-conflict trauma healing work is what I want to do with my life. So far I have attended a two day trauma counseling workshop!

Another piece of good news: I officially have a major! I applied and got into the Global Development major at my school! I have been planning on since I got into UVA, but have been a little nervous about because the major is small and competitive – less than 1 in 3 applicants got in last year. So its really nice to have a major :) I may also double major in religious studies, which is something I never would have planned, but I have just really enjoyed religious studies classes at UVA and have taken a lot of them, so I may as well get a double major out of it!

So life is pretty good :) Having my own house and making my own food has somehow made Rwanda feel mine. It is really home now. Some weird stuff is going on because of Genocide Commemoration Week, but that is a story for another day.  

Muzungus in Uganda!

Gulu, Uganda

Uganda has been full of some amazing tourist experiences! I wish I could write them out for you, but for some things pictures are just better. So here is a photographic journal of our adventures in Uganda!

On our second day in Uganda we crossed the equator!! Turns out the equator is a line painted across a road surrounded by cows. Who knew??

Then we crossed the Nile!!

And fed some crazy baboons who lie in wait and mob buses for their bananas. I am really not exaggerating that much. 

Then after a couple of days in Gulu we went for a field trip out to this amazing rocky outcrop in the middle of the Savanah, which stretched out forever. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been: the most spectacular thing I have seen in Africa! We spent the morning scrambling around the rocks, guided by the local king: Chief Jeremiah.

Gulu has been a lovely break from the comparatively large and busy Kigali. I enjoyed wandering the dusty streets in search of food – Indian, Ethiopian, Ugandan, even Pizza -- Gulu is home of the best food I've eaten in months. We learned a lot about Uganda's recent struggles with the LRA and went to the headquarters of the now somewhat infamous 'Invisible Children'. If you are looking for a place to put your money I would still not necessarily recommend them, but they are not the bumbling imperialist fools I have heard them described as either.

Look for a post on the ultimate tourist destination, SAFARI, soon!  

The Pied Piper of Refugee Children

Hello from Uganda! 

The beautiful mountains of Uganda, close to Rwandan boarder

I've been here a week with the whole group, with another week of mad adventuring to go before returning to Kigali. I will post about some of the awesome touristy things we have done soon. But on our first day in Uganda we went to visit Nakivale Refugee Settlement, a sprawling home of 70,00, more of a rural town than a camp. We drove through drizzling skys and rutted, muddy roads which pitched our bus at startling angles to the town, between rows of vegetable stalls and huts of scrap wood and UN-provided tarps.  

We got to meet with Rwandan refugees, and hear for the first time the voices in the shadows of the current regime. We heard of midnight disappearances, short jail sentences from which husbands and brothers never return, wives and children that had been killed in revenge for the genocide. It is the darkness of the sparkling story of resurrection we hear over and over, the sacrifices this government claims for the sake of stability, which the refugees claim is for the sake of power only. The truth is a shifty thing. I am convinced everything I have heard in this country has some truth to it, but many lies as well. Do I live in a democracy or dictatorship? Yes and yes. Is Rwanda a miracle of development or a festering of old hatreds? Yes and yes. But I begin to see the connections and what I think may be the turth behind the state. It is far cleverer than I could have ever guessed without living here. Nothing is simple. Nothing is only what it looks on the surface.

After the unsettling talk we wandered the camp with a Rwandan guide. At least, that is how it began but quickly my guides became the hoards of children who followed giggling and calling 'Muzunguu!” A brave little girl with six fingers in a torn purple velvet dress held my hand for an hour. She was quickly joined by at least a dozen children who held onto my fingers and wrists and elbows, and we moved like a massive shambling beast giggling madly whenever we looked at each other. 

This camp affirmed so much for me. In a town of 70,000 who had all suffered immensely there was not a single psychologist or program for addressing trauma. I want more than anything to work on trauma healing with refugees, and this day confirmed this completely. If I could move there tomorrow I would – though I will have to wait years until I've gathered enough skills to be genuinely useful. Now more than ever I know the path my life should take. 

The super amazing kids at the camp. The girl to my right reaching for the camera was my best friend for the day. 

10 Reasons I love Kigali

I have now officially been in Rwanda for over a month, and Kigali feels more like home with every day that passes. I keep imagining myself years from now. I wanted to celebrate this feeling of home by sharing my joys of Rwanda with you, rather than the bones and sorrows.

In no particular order: 10 of my loves of Rwanda

1. Transport
   
   
   I have a strange love of the rickety, overcrowded transportation system of Kigali. Crammed buses and ever present moto-taxis make the whole city available for a few cents. While buses challenge Western notions of personal space (like, the idea we should have some) and are occasionally a horrifying testament to the general lack of deodorant in this country, I have found I really enjoy the people watching on them as I sit next to university students, business men, mums with their babies, teens absorbed by cell phones: its a view into Rwanda.

2. Markets

The truth is I love the adventure of labyrinthine, dim markets of thousands of oddly specific stalls (Need Katchup? Go two aisles to the right for the condiment sales-man) more than the sterility of our grocery stores. It's not as easy, but it turns shopping from a chore to scavenger hunt, and buying from a meaningless interchange of money to a conversation and depending on the extent of the bargaining: a game.

3. Colors

From orange sunrises, misty gray/green evenings, to the explosions of vibrancy from women's traditional skirts, to the inevitable buildings painted as advertising for competing cell phone companies, everywhere I am surrounded by color.

Traditional dresses at a concert

4. Beauty

I have found Kigali to be one the most beautiful non-European capitol city I have been in. Not for the architecture, which consists of basic concrete and 'developing-country-blue' glass, but for the mountains, which make every street a vista. I feel I can see forever from wherever I am. That I walk to school across the top of the earth. At night the hills speckled with streetlights look like waves of stars. 

5. My Host family

Of course, I cannot leave out my vibrant, silly, wonderful host family. I spend my time at home with my host siblings: singing, playing cards, or watching bizarre movies (everything from allegorical christian horror films to 40 year old Kung Fu movies in the original racist accents).

Me and Mugisha (left) Christine, a family friend (middle) and Peace (right) 

6. Kids

As a Muzungu in Rwanda, I am instantly loved by every child ever. I don't quite know why, but my foreignness warrants high fives, jumping up and down, and excited calls of 'How are youuuuuu?!?!?'. It also sometime warrants demands to 'give me money!', but this makes angry at the misguided whites who treat children like beggars, not the kids themselves. 

7. Fruit

I can't even begin to tell you how good the fruit is here. I gorge myself on mangoes, passion-fruit, avacados and bananas at every opportunity.

Several kilos, and just a couple of dollars, worth of fruit. 

8. 'Ailmentations'

While I may have mentioned the tragedy of Rwanda's potato-cuisine before, I do really love the little convenience stores that dot the city selling cookies, 'amandazi' doughnuts, samosas, chapatis, and fruit. I am always hungry here, so snacking is critical.

9. Unpredictability

One of the greatest adventures of traveling is the break from routine. I am happiest when I can relax enough to be amused by the dubious coughing and rattling of my bus, suddenly canceled meetings, instantaneous hail storms, or power outages that leave us giggling by candlelight. The only unpredictability I cannot stand is that of my greatest addiction: the internet.

10. Appreciation 

Travel teaches you more about yourself than anything else. Looking around every day I am reminded of how much I have and how lucky I am to have it. Though I am living out of two suitcases, I still have more possessions than even well-off Rwandans. My western privilege is disconcerting, but precious. And getting to truly know that is another privilege in itself. I am grateful every day for being here For getting to struggle with the depth of human darkness, but at the same time having the honor to witness the extremes of our resilience.  

A message for America

“The weapon I had in my heart was love.”

People like Atanas and Samuel should not have to exist, but the fact that they do gives me hope, even among the bones and graves. They were Hutu, but when the orders came to take up machetes against the Tutsi these two men refused, even surrounded by neighbors, friends, brothers, who they knew might kill them at any minute for their refusal. Samuel told us “By then you were not thinking about your own life. You were between life and death, and knew you would die as soon as you were caught.”

Samuel told a story that will stay with me always. He overheard two women walked by his house talking about a Tutsi woman who was going into labor by the side of the road. He went out to find the woman, and found her and a 3 year old child, beaten and naked by the side of the road. The woman had spent hours in agony begging passerbys for help, but the most anyone had done was to bring her a little water. Samuel ran back and told his wife to bring clothes for the woman and her child, and then went to get a midwife. The midwife's husband refused to allow her to 'look at the legs of a Tutsi', and though Samuel cried and begged, they refused to help. So he went to the house of a doctor, who, though very ill, agreed to come and help the woman. Samuel had to half-carry the doctor through the rain to the Tutsi woman, who had by this time lost her baby, and was too weak and sick to deliver the placenta. The doctor helped to her to finish the delivery, and Samuel and his wife carried the woman and her child back to their home and hid them in the roof. She was still desperately ill from the delivery, and would have been killed if she went to a hospital. So Samuel taught himself to administer penicillin, and gradually nursed her back to health. Both she and her three year old child are still alive today. He saved 21 others by digging a trench for them to hide in in his banana field. I was honored just to shake his hand.

They asked us to bring the truth about the genocide back to America. They wanted us, and you, to understand that this genocide was not the ethnic tension of backwards Africans, but a carefully created evil that could happen anywhere. He said “I can assure you, you can change people and they will be how you want.” They told us that to end war “you must let go of your life as the first objective. In all means, you must fight for peace.”

I do not think that we all have to let go of our lives for peace. But I do think that we all have something to learn for Samuel, who chose not to turn away from suffering. I think most evil in the world comes not from aggression, but from apathy. From people who see suffering, and see no way to change it, and so pretend it is not there. I ask you not to give away your life as Samuel did, but to consider if your life encourages suffering by inaction. What companies might you tacitly support that create suffering among their workers so you can have things for a little less money? Can you ease some of the pain in your own town through supporting shelters or soup kitchens with time or money? We cannot be perfect, but we can remember how blessed we are. We cannot all be heroes like Samuel, but we can honor people like him by sharing some of that blessing.

Samuel and Terrance were not the only amazing people I met while in Butare this week! Our group took a picture with this women's organization of genocide widows, and the wives of genocidal working together for reconciliation and development.

The meeting was a school, and we arrived right at recess, and so were greeted by a mob of children who alternatively clung to us and fled in herds, screaming delighted in terror at the bizarre Muzungus.