Leaving Rwanda

Oh, I really, really don’t want to do it, but the contract is up, I am expected back in Montana, and I have used up that year of leave. Therefore, tomorrow I am leaving Rwanda. Time certainly does fly especially, as the old saying goes, when you are having fun. There were many things about Rwanda that I had hoped to find the time to write in depth write about, but now have run out of time to do so. Therefore, I would like to add a few more tidbits about this lovely country before leaving and so that you are not wondering why I am still blogging about Rwanda from Montana.

Illegal Contraband

Plastic Bags: They are illegal….yep, how cool is that? Why the rest of the world can’t get with this simple concept is beyond me. It is strictly paper or bring your own here. Before coming here I had read that you may have your luggage searched upon entering the country and have any plastic bags confiscated as outlawed items, but I thought it was a bit of a tale told when it did not happen on the way into Rwanda via the airport. However, upon returning by bus from Burundi every bag on the bus was taken off, officially searched, and all plastic bags seized. I was delighted! I was delighted even when it meant dumping out the contents of my own plastic bag into the mess that was innards of my backpack.

Now having said all that a few things are packaged in plastic. Things such as pillows, electronics, and various other items from China so a bit of plastic does make it through, however, these bits of rogue plastic that slip through the cracks are not to be found laying around or blowing like flags in the wind because they are useful, or at least used. Read further.

Footballs: Rwanda is a place where one finds few spoiled kids. Rather the children here are responsible, polite, industrious, and inventive. I believe they are many of these things for many reasons, but they are inventive as they do not have much that is given to them. One does not see any commercially made toys or the million pieces of gimcrack that adults give children in North America for those shimmering few moments of happiness that plastic cars, guns, or windup toys are meant to provide. The few toys I have seen are the classic found circular object to be rolled and controlled by a stick and homemade footballs (Yes, I mean soccer ball, but come on let’s get with the rest of the world and call it by its proper name-shall we? It’s embarrassing!) These footballs are made with whatever plastic, string, cloth, or the like that can be found and put together or attached to create a sphere. They are widely used and I have seen a new trend where kids will be walking home from school with one of these homemade footballs fastened to a longer piece of string tied to their wrist so that they can kick the ball home without chasing it. Brilliant.

What would happen when I wanted a photo of games being played.

Games Kids Play: Speaking of which one of the things I really, really wish I had properly written about are the many games kids play here and the way in which they play them. Because I am a teacher who has had her fair share of playground duty I can honestly say that the students here are more inventive with their games, fairer with one another, and more able to self regulate and supervise their own games. In fact, I think everyone here would be roundly disturbed at even the thought of playground monitors. Two of the games I have watched in fascination are a wild version of cricket/dodge ball and the other a rhythm game, I am not even sure I will be able to describe.

The wild version of cricket-dodge ball has about ten people either standing in a circle with perhaps six or seven rocks in the middle or standing a bit further back on opposite sides of the rocks. People take turns standing in the middle trying to dodge a homemade ball and when there is time stacking rocks from one pile to another and counting how many you are stacking before having to dodge the ball again. You are out if you are hit by the ball and then another person steps in. I never did get if they had teams, winners or losers, or if it was all about stacking rocks for your personal best.

 Okay this next one was a fascination to watch and was played, as far as I could tell, by only by girls. It was a mix of clapping, stamping, falling back into the arms of others, and being tossed back up again. I think, what was happening is that a rhythm was being stamped and clapped by one person to another and if they got it right they got to fall back into the arms of others in the circle to be tossed back up to create the next rhyme for another person in the circle. It would happen fast and seemingly with a random pattern so I am not exactly sure what I was watching other than a sort of beautiful dance that on many levels had to be really good for the brain.

  

Oh, just one more…clump of greens for hacky sack. This definitely was a version of hacky sack, but it was played with a little spray of fresh green foliage knotted with a piece of grass and not in a group but on your own. 

School Lunch: I did not realize upon arriving in Bugesera District that it was one of the few districts, if not the only one, that had a school lunch program. I enjoyed many a lunch with teachers at various schools consisting of beans and corn mash prepared over a fire in the school’s kitchen. Each with just hint of wood smoke flavor-delicious. Because teachers do not eat with students the students are left to self monitor and regulate lunch. Wonderfully the students carry, serve, and clean up the lunch themselves with no adult supervision. I did not initially know that this program was a result of a drought in the district some years back into which the World Food Program had stepped. As a result of this program more students began coming to school and parents were relieved of the strain of finding more food for their children in a time when that was challenging due to the drought. Unfortunately this program is being phased out with the hope that parents will begin to pay for their student’s lunch. This has not been the case and on the days when lunch is not being served there is a significant drop in student attendance.



Teacher's Lunch Time



Singing: People here love to sing and they sing well. As a guest entering a classroom the students will often stand up and sing you a song. It is lovely and having spent the past six summers in Newfoundland I wonder how these groups of students would do in the international choral competition that is held on the rock every few years. They sing beautifully together without any great efforts put into the practice, so one wonders. I also like that when the power goes out...and it often does the world of electronic boom-boom music is replaced with neighbors and families singing together. It is beautiful and makes one wonder also why it does not prevail over the electronic boom-boom music. Then again this type of music is usually played and played loudly, by young male youth.

Getting Clothing Made at the Market: Buy some cloth, suggest a design and watch them work their magic.  The cost?  Between four to five dollars.  This may be one of the things I miss the most.  The other thing that these pro-league sewers do is alter any clothing bought at the market. Why oh why can't we have something like this?  Clothes that fit you!   I will definitely miss this.  Pure magic.

I know that there were many more things I would have liked to have written about, but I get on the plane tomorrow and have some final details to take care of. I am not anxious to leave Rwanda and would encourage anyone who gets a chance to visit this or another place in Africa to do so as I think it is no small number of North Americans that have some erroneous perceptions of this country and this continent. Misperceptions that do none of us any good. I am thrilled to say that my time here was more than I could have hoped for and that my memories will indeed be sweet. I also have new learnings to struggle with from my time here. In particular, the issues around money, charity, and sustainability.

Many thanks to all the support from home and here in Rwanda. Until the next adventure. Adieu.

P.S. Just as I am flying home to the United States my brother Tim and his wife Denise will be flying across the pond to take up a post as a visiting teacher in Edinburgh, Scotland. The link to his blog recording his Scottish adventures is:

http://timscotland.blogspot.com/  
 

Motorcycle Club

I believe sometime ago one or two of brothers had asked that I post a picture of me riding to work on the motorcycle.  Well, with less than two weeks left in Rwanda here they are. 

It has been interesting to me that riding a motorcycle nearly everyday went from the one reason I might not want to take a placement as a methodology trainer in Rwanda to one of my favorite parts of any day.  While riding a motorcycle over unpaved roads for sometimes nearly two hours one way can be physically taxing, it is never boring.  Rather it is like a free documentary movie on Rwanda every time I hop on to ride.  During these documentary style rides I have laughed, had my breath taken away, been awed, saddened, intrigued, and seen some of most pure displays of human and natural beauty in my life.  All fleeting, all brightly lit, in three D, and with surround sound.

While I still hang on with both hands, the reason has changed.  Initially I was hanging on with a full vice death grip because I felt uncomfortable; fearing, I guess, that I was going to fall off at any moment or somehow go flying off into the ditch with the slightest bump or swerve.  I now know that this is very unlikely to happen and I hang on with both hands as I like to look around (I am no longer trying to drive the moto with my eyes), relax, lean back on my arms, and enjoy the scenery.  It also does help for those occasional quick stop or series of bumps that even the best of drivers cannot avoid.

I suppose that there are many volunteers around the world who use this mode of transportation who have several humorous stories to tell about their adventures.  I do not, although I got a fairly good chuckle, rightly or wrongly, out of a young lad wearing a surfer’s wet suit as his-going-to-market attire today. (No, you really don’t need to wonder where all your donated clothes go-they go to places like here, but that is another story.)  I suppose others have tales of woe, flat tires, and mud soaked adventure as they too ply the back or busy roads. For the most part I do not, although I did have one disturbing walk in the middle of nowhere after a flat tire for which I was escorted by someone suffering from mental illness and carrying a sharpened sickle, but that too is another story.  Instead my moto riding has been a series of brief and gorgeous glimpses into the life of Rwandans living outside of any city center or town; people going about their daily lives without fanfare or expectations of sudden changes.

Most of the roads that I take go through the heavily farmed land of Bugesera District,  therefore, I have had the privilege of watching the many subsistence farmers go about their business in this land of field to mouth living.   I have watched them plant and harvest their crops in a variety and succession that would make many an American farmer’s market farmer envious.  I have seen them pick each coffee bean as it ripens, use the patience of a Buddhist monk to willow and clean the tiny sorghum grains, slowly and methodically turn a field that had gone to seed into a field ready for planting with the use of only a hoe, and I have seen an entire human-labored rice harvest in the converted marshes of the Akagere River.

I have watched what it means to truly, without much choice, live off the land using every available natural resource to its best advantage.  As such I have seen people build homes from the sun dried bricks they shaped from the soil on their small plot of land.  I have seen them cut and carry wood for cooking, tools, and homes.  I have seen them collect grasses from the swamps for weaving baskets or as larder for the goats.  I have also seen people collect and carry their water on a daily basis where sometimes the easiest source is the muddy puddle left behind from a rain storm.   Usually it is a small child we swerve around who is using this source, scoop after muddy red scoop filling his yellow jeri can with precious water.

I have laughed as the smallest of child waves, dances, claps and shouts out, “Komera Muzungu!”  their cheers of, “be strong,” helping me to get through some of my difficult moments of being a Muzungu here.  I have been saddened to see children too poor to go to school dressed in dun colored rags, often with the distended stomach of malnutrition, watching their peers on their way to school, elderly people still flogging their body into work to survive, and one too many men drinking local beer out of recycled yellow cooking oil jugs in front of their local brewer’s home in the early morning hours.  I have been charmed by the attire of some of the older men in their Woody Allen spectacles, suit coat, dress shirt, and fedora, the antics of goats, and the packs of students getting themselves to school from great distances including the smallest of the small; usually running, usually carrying water or sticks to contribute to the school lunch efforts, and almost always smiling.

I have observed pure beauty on these moto rides and often wished I could stop and tell the people who have given me these moments of their beauty.  I wish I could stop and tell them that for at least one person at one moment in time they were perfect.  If I could do this I would tell the old woman riding a bike taxi side saddle dressed in her finest clothes, head wrap, glittery shawl, and sunglasses that no one ever looked more self assured, beautiful, or chill.  I would tell the women who stop their monotonous work in the fields that when their faces break into a smile as they return my wave that they possess beauty women of means have cut and injected their own faces for in the pursuit to attain a fraction of this beauty.  I would tell the new mother with her baby strapped to her back holding a colorful umbrella overhead as she walks down the red dirt road to the market that both she and her child are a stunning picture I wish I could keep and capture.  I would tell the young boy running down the steep hill in graceful abandon that he is perfect in his youthful, loping athleticism.  Perhaps, if I am brave, I will still find the time to tell the old man in suit and tie, out sewing in front of his pale blue home every morning with gold rimmed glasses on, tape measure slung over his shoulders, that he is still the most handsome of men.  Perhaps…

I will miss these rides through the beautiful countryside of Rwanda; red dirt beneath green banana trees, rolling hills and flowering trees.  How can I not?

P.S. Thanks to Reverien for all the safe rides!

Feats of Strength: Finale

What inspired it all in the first place…

I was riding a bus to Kigali some several months ago when the bus came up on a dump truck which, although moving quickly, was not moving as quickly as the bus.  An occurrence I was glad for as it afforded me my first glimpse of one of the many Rwandan feats of strength to follow; feats that have continually shamed my own physical and mental capabilities of endurance. 

It was raining quite heavily and the usual 80 plus degree temperatures must have been a mere 70 degrees as the bus approached this truck speeding down the road. Through the steam fringed windows I could see three young men on bicycles hanging onto the back bumper, hitching a free ride as the truck roared down one hill, bumped heavily over a bridge, swerved to miss another bike, and then accelerated up the hill on the other side.  I was riveted and only briefly took my eyes from this exploit to see if my fellow passengers were as equally amazed as I was, only to be further amazed to see that they were not. 

It was without a doubt riveting to watch this spectacle of strength as spray continually splattered these young men dressed only in light cotton shorts and t-shirts, drenching them in road slime and grease, exhaust fumes spewing in their faces, and our large bus bearing down on them for the near 10 kilometers we followed them. However, what I remember most from this captivating scene are their hands and their faces.  Each youth with one thin arm stretched out to hang on with four slim fingers to cold metal as their other arm remained in contact with the bike, their faces showing neither stress, fatigue, nor concern.  Rather all three had their heads down, eyes half closed, faces relaxed; all as if in quiet repose as the road churned below them.

Not having a camera that day I was unable to capture this mode of calorie saving ingenuity or foolishness by these young men who make a living by hauling goods on their bicycles.  However, while visiting Burundi recently Dan and I were able to take a few less dramatic shots of some “long haul” bicycle taxis working from the capital city of Bujumbura.  The road out of Bujumbura is as long as it is steep and winding.  It is stunning and it is home to hundreds of these stalwart bicyclists.  Riding the bus up out of Bujumbura we passed truck after slow moving truck belching its way up the mountain, each with at least one bicyclist hitching a ride up.  So too as these bicyclists rode up those who had already endured the free ride up were flying back down laden with goods for the city that only the countryside can provide.  Their clothing rippling in the draft, eyes focused, and their faces impassive.

I am sure someone has made a documentary film about this type of work, and if no one has someone should.  However, whether someone has or has not here are a few shots of what started me thinking about feats of strength in the first place.

Feats of Strength: Part III

FEATS OF STRENGTH III: Kings and Queens of the Road

I think there is a person under there

Rwanda is loosely translated as ‘land of one thousand hills.’ But the inaccuracy lay in the likelihood that there may be more like ten thousand hills. The capital, Kigali, is a city spread over four major hills. When you walk from mumuji (downtown) in any direction you go downhill. To reach the outskirts of town (another loose idea since adjacent towns seldom leave a gap between the city limits) you walk down hill for a mile or more then climb an equal distance up hill before reaching the boundary somewhere over the crest if not somewhere down the hill on the other side. That is true in all directions except for north and south where the Akagera River flows in and out of the city. To the north it is just a long walk downhill and some miles of flood plain. To the south, it’s some miles of twisted, long and gradual highway before you leave town. In a country rebuilding and developing its road infrastructure, working two-lane pavement in any direction is more important than a single major highway. Thus major trucking routes do not exist as many of us imagine.

 That is not to say that trucks do not ply the highways carrying materials and goods from one part of the country to another. But it does mean that most of those trucks are long-haul. The business of getting things from farms to town, farms to farms, or town to farms is left to much smaller vehicles. No doubt pickup trucks prowl the paved roads and some of the dirt roads. However, the real moving is done by two-wheeled vehicles. Yes, it is bicycles which rule the transportation industry of Rwanda in sheer numbers of rider/drivers and overall volume. Bicyclists haul people, animals, and every imaginable thing everywhere and do it with a fearlessness and purpose that make this country work.

20 cents gets you a long way

They start hauling hours before the sun rises, throughout the hot or rainy day, and late into the evening.  They are fearless not only in their wild abandon as they fly down every hill, the repeated whoosh of their decent ringing in one’s ear as each successive daredevil flies by, but also in their  faith that the diesel powered vehicles they share the road with will be able to see them and therefore avoid them in the darkness. It is a wonder to see them pushing unimaginable loads up monster hills burning more calories than the money they can be earning could buy to replace them. All the while, sweat dripping and faces impassive, they turn their pedals.  It is a wonder to see also the ingenuity and deftness with which they load these bicycles.  Multiple one hundred kilo bags arranged to get the maximum load and if an additional twenty kilo can be carried on your head all the better.  Metal doors, lumber, chickens, goats, monster bags of cabbage or pineapples, bunches and bunches of green bananas, six, seven or eight water containers, metal roofing three meters across or vertical, wooden bed frames, and absolutely massive bags of empty jerry cans all find transport on these average sized bicycles.  In all the time I have been here I have only seen two mishaps: a bag of beans fell off the back of a bike, spilling gracefully across the road, and an unfortunate rooster who found his neck in a rather precarious position between the bike frame and wheel.

The hierarchy of the road is as follows: big trucks, small trucks, pickups and SUV’s, bicycles, wheel barrels and pedestrians. If in doubt about who yields to who consult the pecking order above. Pedestrians move to the far right if a bicycle bell rings. Bicycles move right as far as possible when a pickup truck honks. Everyone scrambles when a big horn leads the way for the big trucks. It may not be right, but might makes right on the Rwandan pavement, dirt and, some, barely recognizable roads. Dear reader you may choose to discount the veracity of this since there is no picture to back it up: I saw a live pig, a large live pig, strapped onto the cargo platform of a bike just a few days ago. The pig lay on its side, feet toward the road and head hanging over the shoulder. Does a person reach for a camera every time? Or does a person, once in a while, just stare in wonder and enjoy the moment? I will end with this: the pig did not look happy.

weaving materials

beer distributor...really

earthenware headed for market

gotta feed the goats

100 kg = 230 lbs

For good measure, a reminder that some places require the most primitive of transport methods

here come the muzungus



erin's new boyfriend



‘here come the m’zungus’

One thinks only Dianne Fossey and a few select others walk amongst the mountain gorillas. Embarking on a gorilla tracking expedition conjures images of fleeting glimpses or distant viewing at best. Rwanda may have the most reliable and secure mountain gorilla tours in Africa, an easy statement to back-up since Uganda’s tours are known to be less than 100% successful (one gorilla family simply moved out of the Impenetrable Forest National Park – really, that’s its name, bespeaking difficulty – into the DRC, or Congo; further, Congo is really unavailable to the average tourist except via the Rwanda border, thus the gorillas are far less available, and perhaps uncounted). With only 700 or so mountain gorillas remaining and more than 350 of them in Rwanda’s Volcano National Park, Rwanda is the safest bet. But there is more.

land adjacent to park

First, the plight of the mountain gorilla is unlike that of its kin the lowland gorilla. Estimates of 100,000 of the latter type were made just a couple of years ago in the Congo Basin and speak of a separate specie altogether. Thus, gorillas are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The mountain gorilla, however, faces peril from all directions: Rwanda has the highest human population density on the continent; and, looking across the border to Uganda the landscape is pretty much the same; alas, the Congo border has an additional population issue with ex-pat Rwandans. People have been cutting down the forest to create arable land for many years, even at an accelerated rate in the past two decades. The crops have been grown ever-higher and the parkland has shrunk. Efforts have been made to stop this shrinkage. Reports abound of some one million people volunteering to build a wall made of volcanic rock to permanently demark the Volcano National Park boundary.

And there is one reason for this community, nay, national, effort: gorillas are big business. While few Rwandans pay to track gorillas, fifty-six non-Rwandans pay to see them every day. At $500 per person (less for certain individuals with green cards or some other government connection) the number of jobs created far exceeds the value of more tennis court size farm plots. Each group of seven trackers, as we’re called, is lead by a guide and escorted by an armed security person (elephants and water buffalo seem to like the park as well). After an hour* of climbing through farm plots the volcanic rock wall is reached and the guide gets serious about the rules: no loud vocalizations, no bathroom breaks, no walking sticks or backpacks or quick movements once a group is within 100 meters of the first gorilla. The guide has a short conversation on a two-way radio and we start moving further up the mountain. Fifteen minutes into the park we step over some steaming scat. I ask the guide, ‘water buffalo?’ and he shakes his head, ‘gorilla.’ Hmm, I hadn’t really thought about that.

We stop when we run into another group of armed men, the men who spend their days following the gorilla family, protecting them from poachers and keeping track of their position. This is a business, after all, and the jobs start to add up: five employees in the field for each group of seven plus the park management and ancillary posts. At this point we drop our gear and step off the freshly macheted trail into the bush. We were just on the other side of a knob from a gorilla because when we walked 50 meters and stepped around a tree and there sat eating, two meters away, the first gorilla, not even raising an eyebrow at our presence (I might be making up gorillas actually having eyebrows). A couple of ‘wows’ and digitally produced shutter snaps and the realization that there’s a gorilla down the hill to the right, another in a tree, another above that one and another up the hill to the left starts to sink in. The clock starts ticking.



13 day old twins born to the Susa group



Socialization means a lot of things. Dogs can be socialized. Humans can be socialized. Both should be in order to get along in this crazy world. As it turns out, gorilla socialization is helping them to have a place as well. But a dog will at least look up when something changes in its field of view. When the leader of the group, a silverback named Kumira, came into view as we made our way into the group, he didn’t even look down at us from his space overlooking the side of the jungle, just kept eating. One cheeky male reached out and whapped me on the leg then stood in front of Erin and did a little chest pounding before the guides grunted him off. A one year old looked up from his play with an older group member before rolling down the hill right between us. But the big male just stared into space and chewed.

Big? At first impression, gorillas are not as big as one would expect. That’s not to say they’re small, but I did not feel dwarfed by any means. Okay, forget arm length. But Kumira was another story. He was fully twice the height of the biggest female and easily four times the mass. Massive, in fact, is the best word. After half an hour (the clock is still ticking, 0:30 to go) the dominant silverback stirred and started moving down the hill. The difference in size was remarkable – see how I’m remarking now? – and, as he moved directly toward us, every person took a step back at the same time. I know I didn’t think about taking that step back. I just made more space because one of the lords of the earth approached. Still not looking at any one person, Kumira strutted his stuff down that steep slope some three meters away (about 10 feet, America), stopping about six meters away, below us now and promptly seemed to fall asleep. The one-year old kept playing, rolling down the hill in the path the group’s number one male had just taken. His playmate rolled down the hill behind him(?). The mother with the twins continued feeding and holding. The pair that had been in the tree returned to the tree and picked leaves and ate and ate. The mischievous sub-adult that had thumped me on the leg sat in a nest of nettles and gorged, stripping leaves off a stalk smoothly and methodically grabbing another stalk with one hand as the other shoved copious leaves into his mouth with the other. Ten minutes left.

This is where it gets difficult to wrap up the synopsis, as difficult as wrapping up the hour of ‘viewing’. Socialization is finite. Another silverback emerged into view and sat a few paces from Kumira. According to the guide there is another silverback in the group and he was somewhere nearby. One hour for us seemed a blink of an eye and it was about to end. I do not know how long we would have been tolerated, but for one hour we were in the middle of perfection. There is another patch of nettles for Thumper to eat tomorrow, and around 9:30 A.M. on every morrow, Kumira will not even look up when he thinks to himself, to quote the lead guide, Vincent, “that’s just the m’zungus coming.”  

* each tracking group is sent to a different gorilla family loosely based on apparent fitness and desire for longer or shorter walks; we chose the longest more because of the opportunity to see the largest group, Susa, but also because of the opportunity to walk through more unmolested African rainforest; people we spoke with who saw a different group the day before parked at the park boundary and walked just a few minutes into the park to see one group; in fact, one gorilla was outside the park wall eating potatoes from one of the fields, sitting just 10m from someone working the field

 

see y'all tomorrow



Feats of Strength: Part II

One clump of dirt at a time…

Rwanda often speaks about the fact that one of their most abundant resources is their people.  In fact, they are right as Rwanda does have the distinction of being the most heavily populated country per square kilometer in Africa.  Due to this dense population concentration, it seems that when there is a job to do there are plenty of people around to help do it; in the process shunning all machinery to do these jobs whether on purpose, or otherwise.

A very fancy mutatu.

As I ride the motos and mutatus (mini buses) around Rwanda, other than in the capital city of Kigali, and even there the sightings have been few, I have not seen a bulldozer, backhoe, tractor, jackhammer, mill, or any other kind of road, farm, wood works, or infrastructure building machinery in use.  To be honest I think the only machinery I have seen is a jackhammer in Kigali.  Instead I see roads, houses, gas stations, stadiums, bridges, culverts, ditches, parking lots, water lines, electric lines, furniture, and hotels being built, dug, tunneled, mined, nudged, excavated, moved, broken, and sawed, along with crops plowed, planted and harvested by human exertion; sweat pouring, muscles focused.  In other words, Rwanda is most definitely a country built by a great and many fabulous feats of strength.

One of my favorite of these feats is to see a person slowly and methodically chop down a good sized tree with a machete, remove the branches, and then get a friend or two to hoist it onto their heads or shoulders to help them carry it a few kilometers and perhaps up and down a few steep inclines to a local “mill”.  The mill (and oh how I wish I had a picture of this) consists primarily of three large logs fashioned together so that the first two are positioned at an angle with the third across the top of these about five feet above the ground.  This design allows the recently cut tree to rest on the cross beam where someone with a large saw, somehow, perfectly saws it into beautifully straight and even planks.  From there the planks may be used as is, and while I have not yet seen the step in which the bark is removed I have no doubt it is done by hand, or they may then be sawed in half and be subsequently hand planed into gorgeous two by twos, which are then transported back to the original owner for their chosen use on the top of someone’s head.  To Rwanda’s green ambition credit not a drop of fuel is used in this process or in the many to follow, just lots of human energy, patience, and endurance. 

When I first arrived in Nyamata the district offices I work out of were in the process of getting a new parking lot.  No tar or heavy machinery in sight, just sand, bricks, a few hand tools, string, and a crew of about ten.  My first thought was that this would be a one or two month project as each brick had to be fit into place and made level for this significantly large parking area.  However, to my surprise, the project was complete in a mere two weeks.  Complete, perfect, happening almost as if by magic, and the first of many examples that makes me believe that Rwanda must have some of the finest bricklayers and stone masons in the world.

I say this as I have seen gorgeous stone walls go up in a week, a taxi park the size of several football fields have a two foot wide and three foot high cascading wall built around it in a short three weeks along with other such examples of stone and brick work to salivate over because it is done so attractively, expertly, and seemingly naturally; meaning I do not see a lot of talking, measuring, angling, or hesitation in the work, just self confident movement.  Interestingly, many of these stone workers are women, not just as transport for the large stones on their heads, but as actual stone workers in the process of building.  Also, because Nyamata is booming in anticipation of the new international airport, I have seen large banks, conference halls, shops, and other buildings go up in short order using only basic log scaffolding, hand tools, and hard work. (Usually going up next to small homes of mud with no water or electricity, but I suppose those will change soon too.)

If you closely you can see half a gutter done.

About three years ago a beautiful German-engineered highway was built from Kigali through Nyamata, and on south to the Burundi border.  However, for whatever reason the side gutters are still kilometer by kilometer being built.  Just like in Japan I find this foot and a half wide side gutter on either side of the road a bit dangerous and concerning, but that is the style here and the speed with which a dusty side of the road can be transformed into a stone lined gutter gains pure admiration on my part.  Part of this infrastructure construction is being done by folks who have fallen on hard times and need work to make ends meet, part of Rwanda’s initial attempts at a kind of social welfare.  Therefore, alongside the expected young man of twenty-something in his tank top masterfully placing and moving rock, you may see an older gentleman who seems impossibly thin, in worn suit coat, dress pants, and faded fedora working alongside a young woman in her long African fabric wrap around skirt and sandals doing their best to add to the work’s completion.  What is lovely to see it that none seem concerned about the differences of ability and rather continue to work at their own task as that is the purpose-the work.

A little early morning wood collection for school.



For about two weeks in May as I rode the moto about I saw feats of community strength as all able bodied persons seemed to be out working on maintaining the country’s dusty side roads.  In mass, and I mean in mass, communities would be out clearing brush from the side of the road, filling in potholes, cutting a cleaner edge to the road, hauling in gravel, and all other tasks assigned to any road crew anywhere.  Tiny little children too young to be in school would be moving rocks, elderly men and women would be taking a turn with a hoe or pick axe, while folks of every age in between took on work of varying difficulty to ensure a mwiza umuhanda (good road).  The work was over in about two weeks and while it lasts the bumpy roads of January, February, March, and April have given way to level, bright iron red, side roads that rival any gray, machine grated dirt roads in Montana, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.

 

 

My best, but not great shot of lining up for water.

 Recently I was without electricity for two weeks as the underground cable that had been delivering power to my home to heat water for my all important morning cup of french press coffee had had it.  While I know many folks with ready electricity might think living without electricity for two weeks was a feat of strength, not a single person here could even understand why I would even mention it as only roughly 5% of the people in this district have electricity, and after the fourth or fifth blank stare I did indeed stop mentioning it, buy some candles, and enjoy the ritual of heating my water by candle light-literally.  However, that is not the point.  The point is the single man that for five or six days toiled away to unearth several kilometers of underground electrical cable with a pick axe, swing, by methodical swing to find the problem.  When I would catch a glimpse of him in those hot sunny days I only saw him resting once, sitting briefly to take a sip of water, before taking up the pick axe again for a fee unknown to me, but one that I am guessing would motivate very few of those with ready electricity to do the same.  He is one of many examples of feats of strength here that are both mental and physical in nature and that I admire so much.

The primary occupation of nearly everyone I pass on my moto rides is farming.   Farming by the sweat of one’s brow, strength of muscles, determination of mind, and a serious garden hoe.  Every clump of dirt and weed moved and taken out by the swing of this implement and every seed placed by hand.  With the end of the rainy season beans, peas, peanuts, and coffee are now being harvested in earnest.  Large bundles of the legumes are being carried down the road on top of mother’s and their children’s heads.  These bundles brought back to homes alongside roads or far off into the bush to be thrashed with long thin tree branches by men young or old, girls, women, or anyone else who hopes to benefit from their selling.  This thrashing leaving behind piles of dried foliage that is then moved to compost the still growing corn plants.  Once the compost is moved off colorful beans, dried peas, and tiny peanuts are picked off the ground one by one, placed on a sheet of some sort, cleaned, dried, packed, and transported in a rice sack on the back of a bicycle or on top of one’s head to the local sector pick up point to be sold for a price quite unknown to me, but one I may be staggered to consider knowing the calories burned in the effort.  Coffee beans are also currently being harvested, but with a kind of attention to selection that makes me wonder at the persistence and patience involved.  Coffee beans here are watched and monitored so that each is picked at its full ripeness, bean by bean.  There is no shaking of the tree or machine for this work, but rather beans picked a fistful at a time.  A process so delicate and meticulous that I no longer wonder why Rwandan coffee is in actual fact so delicious.

 

Feats of strength indeed, everyday, all day acts of physical labor are performed to build an ever increasingly sophisticated infrastructure, maintain the infrastructure already in place, feed a nation and one’s family, and grow the country’s crucial exports.  What strikes an American like myself watching all this is the lack of complaint, the consistency and simplicity of the day in and day out physical labor, and the focus of this work.  Faces do not contort in pain or effort, hands do not fly up to lower backs as the person leans back to loosen sore muscles, necks do not get cracked or twisted, and children do not flail and cry on the ground when there is work to do.  This is not to say that this work does not wear on those who perform it.  I see the sweat, the steely resolve of the eyes, and the grim determination required, especially from the older workers.  However, I also see that there is an understanding that work is work and without it there is no life.  I also see some of the fun and benefit to a life lived so close to one’s labor, children diving and tumbling through the chafe of the bean plants like any child in the north woods playing in a pile of recently raked leaves, families or neighbors chatting as they sort through millions of beans or peas, husbands and wives picking coffee beans together as their child sleeps in the shade of these trees, a commute that involves no traffic jams, flat tires, gas fumes, or expense, children spending their days with mothers, fathers, and siblings to maintain their home, and loaded bicycles ridden with free abandon down hills trying to get every inch of glide possible for the sweat inducing upside.

Bicycles…perhaps the king and queen of Rwanda’s feats of strength and the final installment of my countrywide homage to these incredible feats of strength.  Until then…

Feats of Strength

Part I-The Carry

While I am not a huge fan of television in general I am a fan of the episode of Seinfeld in which George’s father wants to celebrate Festavist. (Sorry, I don’t really know how he spelled that?) I like that as a part of that celebration he wanted to include feats of strength; I like this as I have long been a fan of hernia inducing activities in general.  I believe George’s father, as he obviously appreciates gut busting acts of strength, would find that many of the people in Rwanda were celebrating, “Festavist for the rest of us!” on a daily basis and be quite pleased…if not get into the act himself. 

I am lucky as my commute to work here in Rwanda via motorcycle taxi is through some very beautiful, striking, and interesting countryside.  Initially, I spent much of this open road commute thinking that I could drive the motorcycle with my eyes and hanging onto the back handle for dear life, thus participating in my own feats of strength, and in the process developing the hand muscles of a circus performer.  However, now that I am accustomed to this mode of travel, and actually enjoy it, I use my travel time instead to observe and consider the life and activities around me, including manifold examples of incredible feats of strength. 

Look closely for the potato carry.

These feats of strength that I pass by can range from the simple, to the extreme, to the truly outlandish so that sometimes I think they may even just be showing off a little bit.  Therefore, I thought I would work my way through these displays of muscle supremacy starting with the ones that are mere child’s play to those that should earn the performer a spot on some Olympic team somewhere if not become an Olympic sport in of itself.

Water Carry:  I have seen children as young as three or four years old to persons as old as a person can get carrying jeri cans full of water down lengthy stretches of road.  They carry these jeri cans after completing feats of patience by waiting in a long line that can be up to fifty plus people waiting to fill their container.  After these displays of patience, some then carry one measly two or three gallon jug to and from the local water source and home while others may carry a five to ten gallon container.  The folks in the one jug competition are usually the little tikes in their blue or gold school uniforms carrying the cans home through the early morning mist as fast as their little legs can carry them before dashing off to school where additional water carrying may be required. Many of the participants in the water jug on the head competition are mothers who tend to carry the container on their head with a baby strapped to their back or in their arms. Although they also can be in the single container carry, they add to the feat with the baby strapped to their back and an additional load of pineapples or some other fruit or vegetable in a basket or bag balanced on their head.  Others like to get a bit more ambitious and go for one in each hand with a third jeri can or some other load balanced on their head to show their prowess.   Can you imagine this?  Carrying three, ten gallon jeri cans; one on your head and one in each hand?  I see it, am amazed by it and realize that while I may be able to compete in the two jeri can competition, and that would be at *short distances only, when it comes to adding the final third container to my head I fear even the trying.

*Short Distance = ten feet on a good day.

Miscellaneous Carry:  I suppose I need to state again that these carrying feats also run the range in ages from old enough to walk, so evidently old enough to carry to old enough to not to have to.  I have spent the last two Saturdays out in an area near some of the schools I am working with and see that most of those students spend their Saturdays collecting and then carrying wood piled on their head.  Large pointy piles neatly stacked and tied on their heads.   These students are in rather large groups plying up and down the dusty dirt road so I wonder if it is a kind of social event barring little chance for any others.  In similar vein it is now the peanut harvest and folks of all ages and sizes are carrying large bundles of peanut vine home from the fields so that they can then separate the tiny peanuts from their shells for their own use and to sell at the market.  Bundles of beans, corn, sorghum, and any other similar crops get the same treatment.  Potatoes, sweet and Irish, get to add to a carriers’ prestige by being loaded into sacks of unbelievable proportions to be again carried on one’s head, or so heavily loaded onto a bike that the bike is barely visible as the bicyclist pedals down the road, or pushes the load up a long steep hill.  I have also seen large rocks, carried on a person’s head, goats slung over shoulders, enormous pots of corn mash hiked up to a person’s cranium and then carried balanced down the road, like so many other loads famously balanced on people’s heads here. 

  People have to carry goods and life’s necessities as the vast majority do not have cars, and even fewer have trucks, four-wheelers, or even a wheel barrel.  Strewn alongside the road then are a kind of circular head cushion fashioned from vegetation to carry things on, and for which I have a photo.  I do not have many photos for this topic as I am usually on the motorcycle when I witness the majority of these feats of strength and it is just not the sort of thing you can predict or stop and photograph-although I yearn to do so.  I made the mistake early on of waving to folks or giving them the thumbs up because I was so impressed with their efforts, but soon learned that being the friendly and polite people that Rwandans are they would instinctually wave and nearly lose the load they were carrying.  Ah, sorry.

Up next…building a country’s infastructure one swing of a pick axe at a time.