Congo Congo Congo!

On Friday I had to give a presentation in Gisenyi, a resort town on the Congo-Rwanda border which overlooks Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu is one of the largest interior lakes of Africa and is the highest (elevation almost 1500 m), and is nestled in between the 8 volcanos that straddle the Rwanda-DR Congo and Uganda borders - home of the gorillas.

The lake has very few fish due to elevated methane gas levels that are the results of volcanic gases that bubble up from the bottom occasionally - some areas of the lake are not safe to swim because these gases rise to the surface and will asphyxiate you! However, most areas are safe to swim in, and a side benefit of all the gases is that many of the nasty diseases you can catch from freshwater swimming in this area of the world aren't present.

It really is a beautiful setting - sandy beaches, an immense lake, with volcanos in the background. The highlight on Saturday was lunch - we went to a local restaurant with tables that were individual huts on the beachfront. We were told we had to pay a cover charge of ~1.40 USD, which included a free beer and music. Well, this music turned out to be a 3 hour concert on the lakeshore of traditional Rwandan dancing (with a couple of hiphop tunes thrown in) - about 30 musicians with drums, traditional instruments and a microphone they passed around. There were about 12 dancers, wearing traditional outfits - a combination of kilts and overalls, with tambourine-like bells strapped to the ankles. It was all highly choreographed, and a huge spectacle for an audience of less than 20.

On Sunday we crossed the border to enter the DR Congo, specifically their version of the Lake Kivu resort town, Goma. In 2002 the Nyiragongo volcano erupted, and within 2 hours the lava had reached Goma, running all the way down to the lake. The city was covered in 6 feet+ of lava, and today the evidence is still everywhere. Buildings buried so that just the roof is sticking out, a parking lot with 10 cars half covered - and now of course the lava has turned to gray rock, so those cars are stuck - rusted through but really immovable. People have taken the hardened lava and made fences out of it and used it as building material, and in general people have rebuilt right on top of all the lava.

There weren't really too many sights to see in Goma except for all the volcano damage, but its amazing the contrast that is immediately obvious on crossing the border that you're not in Rwanda anymore - the quality of the roads is atrocious (granted, the lava might have had an effect there!), there is trash everywhere on the sides of the roads, and things just seem more...dilapidated. To be fair, this region of Congo is currently at war (don't worry, we were safe - although fighting was going on 15km north and 20km south, Goma is the base of the UN operations, so is relatively secure...at least for an afternoon). It was also interesting to see how many mansions there were - our guide said they were vacation homes of those who'd gotten wealthy via diamonds.

The volcano isn't stable enough to be monitored, but experts are relatively sure it will blow again, and probably soon. There was smoke coming out the entire time we were there, and its possible to spend a day hiking the volcano, camp out at top, and peer into the crater and see lava bubbling below. Maybe next time!

Thirty

So, on this blog I try to talk less about myself and more about Rwanda, finding anecdotes that are interesting to people who've never been here and are curious what its like. But let's be honest, these "people" are basically my family and friends, this isn't exactly reaching millions of readers, and pretty much everyone who sees this knows that, today, I turned 30.

Yesterday I had my little crisis and am over it. My sister sent an email saying, "Hope they have cake there", and I am happy to report that indeed there is a fantastic bakery. My coworkers + Hannah threw a little surprise party this morning; I totally fell for the "we have an urgent team meeting in the conference room now," walked right in to all 12 or so of them singing and then we had chocolate and carrot cakes, both of which were delicious.

Tonight these coworkers, their spouses, and some of my (few, but I'm working on it) friends in Kigali are going to dinner at the Indian restaurant, which honestly is the best Indian food I've ever had. So, I'm living high on the hog as we say at home. Here that'd translate better as, high on the cow.

To bring this back to Rwanda, I'll talk about what a cow culture exists here. When the Belgian colonial administration initially divided the population into Tutsi and Hutu for identity card purposes, the criteria was cows: Own more than ten cows, you're a Tutsi, less, and you're a Hutu. Here cows are still given as wedding dowries and presents, and beef is much much more present than chicken in grocery stores.

So, while I haven't received a cow of my very own yet, it has been a great first birthday in Africa!

Rainy Season etc

My, my, time flies. A lot going on, so it's time for a lightning round of your questions/my random observations that haven't made it into other posts!

1. Hannah is here! She arrived almost two weeks ago now, has settled in amongst the bugs, and is looking for a job, with some successful leads so far. For all you blog junkies, she has her own at http://interestingencounters.blogspot.com

2. I've caught my first tropical disease! Ok, ok, perhaps that's a bit of an exagerration, but all my friends here exchange stories of malaria, giardia, bilharzia etc like its nothing, and I was feeling left out. So I went and got myself the flu. Or something that kept me in bed for 48 hours with body temperature "so high you could grill cheese between my legs"

3. I have hobbies! We joined the pool/tennis club at the Novotel. The courts are clay, the coaches/lessons are cheap and it seems to be a social center for expats.

4. It's now the short rainy season, which means it's slightly hotter during the morning, then at some point in the afternoon will rain for an hour or three - sometimes a sprinkle, sometimes a veritable downpour the likes of which I haven't seen in my life. Then the rest of the afternoon/evening is quite cool. This should last for a month or two, then back to dry.

5. Buffet restaurants seem to be very popular here. They usually consist of: bananas, fried plantain, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, a meet dish, a vegetable succotash (usually pea and carrot based), avocadoes, tomatoes and then fruit. And sometimes French fries. Mmmm.

6. There is basically no Diet Coke here. Coke everywhere, Fanta everywhere (orange and lemon), but no Diet Coke. You can buy cans of it in the two expat grocery stores I know (at a hefty price premium over Coke), but in restaurants, regular stores, etc - non-existent.

Any questions for the next lightning round can be submitted in the comments!

Umuganda

On the last Saturday of every month, from 7am-noon is Umuganda. I'm not sure how it translates exactly, but it basically is a morning of community work. Everyone is expected to participate, roads and businesses are closed, and everyone reports to their community organizer. Last weekend I saw tons of people cleaning the streets, building things, a real frenzy of activity. At first this struck me as a really nice idea, everyone working for the common good, building the community, etc. But as I've talked to people about it over the past week, its quite controversial apparently.

The arguments for it are that because the informal economic sector is so large in Rwanda, it is very difficult to collect taxes, and this service is in a way a method of collecting a tax. Also, everyone working alongside each other promotes Hutu-Tutsi collaboration and reconciliation, and of course the community and infrastructure benefit.

However, some people say that the idea isn't new and that it originated with the previous regime, and that certainly didn't result in ethnic reconciliation. Also, the idea that it is forced is a bit too Soviet-centralized-state-esque for comfort. When you participate, you get a card with a stamp to prove you've gone, and you're often asked to show this when you need government services, and if you have missed a Saturday, good luck getting power, water, etc. Wealthier Rwandans abuse this system by sending their houseboy, etc, to participate and get the boss' card stamped.

What do you think? Great community initiative? Good idea, but hard to implement equally? Scarily interventionist? In any case, it's definitely indicative of a different mentality than we are used to...

Rwanda in the NYT

September 28, 2007, 12:37 pm
The Word Is Getting Out
By Josh Ruxin

Josh Ruxin is a Columbia University expert on public health who has spent the last couple of years living in Rwanda. He’s an unusual mix of academic expert and mud-between-the-toes aid worker.

It was much to the dismay of family and friends that my wife and I moved to Rwanda. Having seen little more than “Hotel Rwanda” to educate them about the country, they believed it to be a hostile and unstable place. We had a different take: it’s safe, clean, friendly and relatively uncorrupted. Our perception is clearly shared by others and, now, the country’s resurgence is being recognized.

Tuesday, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation released the results of its “Ibrahim Index” — a holistic ranking of how African countries are doing across the dimension of governance. Ibrahim, one of Africa’s most successful and philanthropic entrepreneurs, set up the index to inform the Mo Ibrahim Prize — an annual award of $5 million for a former head of state who has demonstrated excellence in leadership. The surprise to all but Rwandan insiders was that Rwanda made the greatest progress of any country during the course of the last five years.

As the always insightful Steve Radelet pointed out in an earlier post, governance and democracy in Africa mean everything. Having worked in nearly a dozen countries in Africa, I decided to place my bets on Rwanda because it was the first place I’d never been asked to pay a bribe. I’m not alone: donors are lining up to invest in Rwanda, reassured that the money will reach the people who need it most.

None of this is to say that Rwanda is utopia: major challenges remain for improvements in the press and in democracy. Nevertheless, at a time when many nations are spiraling downward, it’s heartening to see little Rwanda making progress against all odds.

The News That Has Kigali Abuzz

From People magazine....I feel it could spark an intellectual debate on the role of celebrities in society, whether any attention is good attention, can fame play a role in economic development, etc. But....Paris Hilton?!?!? I can't bring myself to comment. Readers, thoughts?

It's not the typical sort of hot spot she's used to, but Paris Hilton says that she's planning to hit the road to Rwanda. Apparently making good on her post-jail promise to help others, the socialite, 26, tells E! Online about her African ambitions, "I'll be going in November, after I get back from filming my movie. There's so much need in that area, and I feel like if I go, it will bring more attention to what people can do to help." Though a trouble spot of notorious proportions – an infamous 1994 genocide in Rwanda claimed about a million lives (in a nation of 9 million) – the country's multitude of problems doesn't seem to worry Hilton, who vows to pay calls upon a variety of beleaguered regions. "I want to visit more countries where poverty and children's issues are a big concern," she says. "I know there's a lot of good I can do just by getting involved and bringing attention to these issues." Hilton reportedly will visit Rwanda at the invitation of Scott Lazerson, whose year-old Playing for Good charity assists celebrities and high-profile business personalities in getting involved with organizations that benefit those in need. Hilton's Rwanda trip will also cap a busy September, during which she's been in Toronto filming her upcoming movie Repo! The Genetic Opera, partying at the MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas and hitting a slew of Emmy parties in Los Angeles.

Language and Poetry

So, as I've mentioned, the language here is a mess. Kinyarwanda is the local language everyone speaks, Belgians instituted French in schooling system, was the most common language of the educated, but during the years leading up to and including the genocide, so many people fled eastwards and spent significant time in Anglophone countries that English is widely spoken, not to mention Swahili which exists quite a bit as a regional lingua franca.

So, its theoretically a tri-lingual (English, French, Kinyarwanda) country. Very few people though are fluent in all three. The past week I've run a few workshops for work, and usually the format was: the head of the organization would present for 15 min to his staff in Kinyarwanda to introduce us. Then my colleague from the US would present in English, and I'd translate slide by slide into French (using such hard to translate words as framework, balanced scorecard, etc). Then I'd present in English and a local colleague would translate into French and Kinyarwanda if necessary.

Something I've noticed though, is that people here are very, very good with metaphor. Not sure if its something thats used a lot in Kinyarwanda and they translate them, whether the educational system encourages it, or whether they are just a poetic people. When the audience of the presentations would ask questions of us, even in English or French (remember, not their native tongue) they would really have a way with words, giving vivid examples, etc As anyone who speaks other languages knows, you're usually just happy to get the grammar and the words right, let alone flowery speech worthy of literature.

The best example I can give is the following. At OTF, I'm managing two local consultants (kind of at the McKinsey equivalent of BA, the position right out of undergrad). One of them - whom I really, really like, is really smart, super nice and one of the few trilingual Rwandans - and I were working on a project on Friday. It was about 5:50pm, he was at my desk, and we were talking about how our meetings had gone that day and what needed to be done as the next steps. In my mind I was thinking, these are things that need to be done next week, but apparently that wasn't clear and he thought I was asking him to do them right then. He looked at me so earnestly, almost like a little boy (he is my age, married, and with a 3 month old son), and said, How long do you think this will take, I have a meeting with the queen of my heart tonight, and I am already twenty minutes late.

Referring to his wife as the queen of his heart. Isn't that the nicest thing you've ever heard?