The Mzungu and The Power and The Glory, For Ever and Ever Amen

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." – Heart of Darkness

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Mzungu Curuju is a Rwandan phrase I’ve learned and learned to love. I love it for all its messy implications, for the hints of insight it just might give into the complicated mind of this tiny African country I’m currently calling home.














Mzungu Curuju. I’ll break it down: Mzungu means white person, or more generally, someone American or of European descent – any kind of outsider, really. You can find the word throughout the Bantu family of languages in East an Central Africa. I’ve heard it plenty in Uganda and Tanzania, too, enough to get curious about the etymology, so I looked it up. Apparently, translated literally from the original Swahili, mzungu means not white or foreigner but "one who wanders aimlessly", maybe a reminder of a time when the Africans couldn’t figure out what these strange-looking colonizers and missionaries were doing wandering around so far from home, a time a hundred years or so ago when the whole wide white world showed up on this continent and fell on Africa with all its weight.

Anyway, uruju means skin. It conveniently rhymes with mzungu, making the combination an interesting little catchphrase in modern Rwanda. Mzungu Curuju means something like "a mzungu only skin deep". It can be used to describe a poor white person or one who just isn’t acting as a proper white person should act, as in me, most of the time – for example, when I am dirty and wandering around in a market, the kids all scream mzungu curuju! Mzungu curuju! Alternately, it can be used to describe a rich African, or one who otherwise acts too much like a white person – for example, I‘ve heard the phrase when a black person is behind the wheel of one of those NGO Land Rovers that speeds through the village dirt roads – mzungu curuju! – or, more generally, if an African is known for being punctual. Seriously, that part is true. (A note about those common NGO Land Rovers: my boss calls them "health clinics", as in, "Look at that smart new car! They're driving around in our health clinic!")

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On Sunday I found myself sitting front row center in another pentecostal church service. I tried to choose a less conspicous seat this time, somewhere tucked in the back, but they were not having it. Some sort of assistant pastor came back to me, grabbed my wrist, and led me to what must be the honored guest pew. Front row center. I acted honored. It’s not that I mind the attention – as I’ve said before, it can be a lot of fun – but in church, I tend not to want my presence to be such a distraction, since staring at the back of a mzungu’s head isn’t what I imagine these people walked all the way to church for. Or so I thought. More on that in a minute.

The pew was wooden and hard, and soon I was sweating through my fishing shirt. The service started with music, continued with music, and besides a few impressively explosive 5 minute sermons sprinkled throughout, was made up mostly of music. So you can imagine how happy that made me. I love the music. I love the choirs. And I don't just love them because they tickle my traveler’s adventure bone, as I might love some mundane African things just because they remind me I'm in mother Africa – no, no no, I love the choirs because they’re really good. There’s something about the warmth and fullness of African church choir harmony that hits the soul just right.

Jubilation! Joyful noise! I never enjoy church quite so much as this. It's great - you don't even have to understand the words. One of my favorite parts of the pentecostal festivities is that every congregation seems to have a few token members with holy spirit Tourette‘s. It's not my personal style of worship, but hey - I enjoy the atmosphere. They punctuate the joyful songs with the occasional burst of Hallelujah! or Yesu! or, my favorite, this crazy high-pitched ululating bird song thing. I couldn’t even mimic it with my mouth, so its definitely hard to write it.

But I’ve never had one of these Holy Spirit Tourette’s people right behind me. This was a different experience. Every few minutes, at some point during every song, the woman seated directly behind me screamed, "HALLELUJAH!" Her mouth was about 6 inches behind my ears. These bursts were hard to get used to. I tried to figure out their approximate frequency so I could prepare myself for the sudden, ear-splitting screams, but I had no luck. She was unpredictable. Every single time – HALLELUJAH! – I was shocked forward in surprise. God, the sheer volume and force of them was enough to make me almost – oh good god jesus – almost jump out of my seat. HALLELUJAH! My neighbors must have really thought I was catching the holy spirit.

I didn’t understand the words of the songs, of course, but luckily I had a friend right next to me who was doing his best to translate for me into English the basic thesis of each tune, screaming his nice and concise summaries right into my left ear over the noise of the choir and jubilant congregation. I really appreciated his efforts, though, because they started to show me a theme running through the songs, for the most part. Here are some examples:

“This song says, One day we will be with no problems!... no troubles!... no sadness!”

“This song says, Soon we will be to heaven!”

“This song is about Job – you know Job? – from the Bible? – about how he had a problem!” (Yes, a big problem, I agreed.)

“OK, (he had to pause to think about this one) this one says that human beings are composed… composed of three things: spirit, and blood – you know, blood (he tapped his wrist to illustrate) – and muscles. And air!” ... I never did figure that one out.

After the song about muscles and air a woman came to the front and took the microphone. Her sermon didn’t start slow and then crescendo, as I’ve known many sermons to do. This woman took a different approach. She started her sermon at a shrieking climax and just rode along that plateau for about the next 10 minutes. It was impressive. Screeeaaammming into the microphone. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I cringed at every syllable. Couldn’t help it. I don't know how no one else around me was shocked by the violent decibels ricocheting off the concrete walls and bare tin roof, as if her shrieks were exorcising the sin right out through my eardrums.

HALLELUJAH! The woman behind me yelled. I felt like I was in a war zone.

I didn’t understand the words of the woman’s sermon, but someone behind me thrust me an English Bible and fingered the verse she was preaching on. It was Matthew 24:9, and I kid you not:

“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom…

I was reading the words as everyone else was hearing them. I was covered in a carpet of excited yells. Hallelujah! Yesu!

"…Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

I realized this was not at all the sermon I expected to hear in a church out in the boondocks of Rwanda. Either that or it is exactly the sermon I should have expected to hear in a church out in the boondocks of Rwanda. I was silent. The passage continued…

“…At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”

I was reading this passage in kind of a trance of disbelief. Remember, this wasn’t a quiet reading and reflection time; I was a lone island of calm on a rumbling pew surrounded by all the aural fireworks of Sodom and Gomorrah and weeping and moaning and wailing and HALLELUJAH on all sides.

“…For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again… How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!”

I was still reading the passage, the noise around me showing no signs of stopping, the woman with the microphone still on a roll, and then I heard the one thing that could have pulled me out of my trance. I heard the woman say the word mzungu (yes, I’m bringing this article full circle). I heard it a number of times – mzungu...! – and it was surrounded by a flood of other words I didn’t understand, of course, but I was sure of this one, because at the same time as one of the mzungus she gestured to me, the deer in headlights on the front row, thus calling the crowd into cheers and grateful stares in my direction. I reflexively smiled and waved back at the congregation, but I had no idea what was going on. No idea.

Just then my neighbor leaned over and found my ear and explained that the woman was telling the crowd that they should be so honored to have a white man join them for worship today because it reminds us of how Jesus was a white man and how at the end times of the destruction of the world when Jesus comes back we will all be turned into white men when we are saved and taken to heaven.

Wow.

Wow. If you're not feeling the shock that I felt after hearing this, any further reflection on my part's not going to mean much. Fascination kinda stopped me in my tracks - dropped jaw - and whoops - guilt - the realization that as the congregation heard (and enthusiastically accepted) this particular end-times theory they got to look at a mzungu in person who was goofily smiling and nodding his head. Well, I've seen a lot of African church services - Quaker, Anglican, Pentecostal, and more - in three different countries, but this particular Revelations revelation shook me something special.

There are some things that are OK everywhere, there are some things that are OK nowhere, and there seem to be a class of things that are OK only in Africa. Call them what you will - the continent provides its share of unique joys and frustrations. And I think the tendency for an open-minded, adventurous-spirited, culturally-awed traveler can sometimes be to root for that last category, to try to excuse things as "cultural" or to gloss over the messy parts with adjectives like fascinating. But let us remember, and let me remind myself, that some things are OK nowhere.

I can't help but pity a group of people who don't recognize their own deep Sunday morning self-loathing. Is it some kind of culture-wide"identifying with the aggressor"? Deep colonial wounds healing slowly? At the same time, these people had walked or bused their way to church from who-knows-how-far from the boonies/bush/banana groves, and aside from any mentally corrosive, wacko beliefs, I felt them huddle together for community and celebrate in joyful song - for whatever reason, they did it.

I know I've got you right where I want you, if you've made it through this marathon post, to lay down my own sweeping thesis statement to summarize the event. But I don't have one yet. Let me know if any of you out there have thoughts about it. I'd love to hear. Religion in Rwanda!

And now for more pictures of a sunset soccer match.

The Chinese Are Coming

I can do many things in Africa, but one thing I can’t do is blend in. Comes with the territory, and for the most part, I’m used to it.

Entering my second month in Rwanda – 4th month, cumulatively, counting last year – I’m in the weird gray area between ‘traveling’ and ‘living’ in Rwanda, between making first impressions and really getting to know her. I’m not living out of my backpack anymore. For the most part, I have a handle on the geography of the country and the city, and for the most part, I can make my way around. I know how to haggle with a taxi man. I can gnaw a hunk of sugar cane with the best of them. Maybe I should say I’m traveling deep rather than wide. But again, no matter how long I stay here, no matter how comfortable I feel here, I’m going to be obvious in a crowd.

I have a blast with neighborhood kids who seem to think my presence is just the most hilarious novelty of the season. I don’t think I’ve ever been so entertaining as when I get to show off my limited Kinyarwanda skills to the kids here around Ndera. I’m talking shrieks of joy, all their munchkin jaws unhinged with awe. It’s rare to be such the king of the show like that, so that’s fun. And on the more professional side of things, my fascinating presence – especially accompanied by a guitar – can pave the way for some great teachable moments to a rapt classroom audience. So that’s good too.

Of course there’s a dark side of always being so inescapably obvious. As I get more comfortable with the country, I would like to expect a respectful reciprocation from the country, some sort of sign, a tip of the hat, something simple – anything, really – to show that yes, we, too, are getting more comfortable with you, you strange-looking outsider. And you’re not so bad after all! But it doesn’t happen like that. Sometimes I’m frustrated at my unending power to distract (and this is true more in rural areas than the more cosmopolitan Kigali). Sometimes I feel like I'm not really experiencing the bustling bus park of Kigali as much as I'm experiencing a version of the bus park where I'm a little asterisk, where the crowd parts around me like a stream around a rock. Sometimes I’d just rather just exist and observe, a body among the bodies. But instead I’m a big, white sore thumb, and, you know, c’est la vie.

Anyway, I am many things here, but so far inconspicuous has not been one of those things.

The other night I sat down for a goat brochette during the Japan-Denmark match at a loud bar down the road. It was loud because its World Cup season. In World Cup season, places with TVs are always loud and fun. Looking for some characters, looking for some action, looking for some stories, I'm drawn to these matches like a bug to a porch light, not so much for the football as for all the richness of atmosphere and encounters that surround it. And for the football. I'm growing used to the frustrating 90 minute matches.

Now, anyway, why were a bunch of Rwandans sitting around watching Japan and Denmark kick a ball around? I can understand the continental pride in rooting for Cameroon or Ghana, but why Denmark? The easy answer is that during World Cup season, they will watch anybody kick a ball around. While a very small representation of the population makes actually playing football the national sport, the rest of the people earn their stripes by yelling at a TV with a beer in their hand. It' no less a national pasttime for lacking a ball.

The perhaps deeper answer to this question is that Rwanda is a country pretty focused on their own population, their own heroic rebuilding efforts, their own divisive differences – ethnic and political – right here in their own country. And even though Rwanda is a patchwork society made up of many East African cultures and tongues – Swahili, Lingala, and Kirundi, not to mention two colonial languages still vying for the top spot – brought in and out largely by the past half century of movement by refugees… and even though you can’t throw a rock in Kigali without hitting a Land Rover with USAID or AUSAID or some foreign NGOs logo stuck to the door… and even though, for the record, no one would dare to throw a rock in Kigali for fear of being confused as a political dissident and thrown in jail for a very long time, or at least until after election season… still, the point is, most of their international attention is E.Africa-focused, and they generally have enough drama at home to keep them engaged inwardly. The World Cup, however, gives Rwandans a rare excuse to really focus outward and beyond their borders. And as the obvious outsider, the resident authority on the American promised land of Kenny Rogers (he’s really popular, I swear), Michael Jackson, Obama, and the LA Lakers, I find myself the subject of some really good questions.

Watching the Japanese players, the man next to me observed, “They are so little! But so fast. Yes, very fast.” This seemed to get him thinking. He yelled in my ear, over the din of the crowd, “In your country, do the Chinese have the supermarkets?”

It’s a shame sometimes, but I’ve learned to recognize the situations where, due to limited English, its futile to start to explain subjects like American population demographics or something called a Harris Teeter, and, in a loud bar buzzing with grunts and vuvuzelas (*), this was definitely one of those times, so after a pause I decided on a simple ‘no’ to answer his question.

(*Here’s a test: you know you’re in America if you haven’t heard the word “vuvuzela” this month)

The stranger smirked and settled back into his chair. “Don’t worry,” he said, “they will come.”

P.S. I went to a Quaker church service today and a Pentecostal one yesterday. Interesting in many ways in both cases... stay tuned.

You can’t not talk about the Genocide: A long post about The Ellipsis, accidental cynicism, and occasional American Arrogance (also accidental)

I caught myself in a moment of cynicism. In a recent post I said that Rwanda is a place that “shouldn’t be able to produce idealists.” I shouldn’t say that. I’ll try to explain what I meant.

One of my current duties for Shalom, the NGO I’m working with, is to help compose a speech that my boss has been invited to give at an international conference in October. The topic is the role of religion in healing Rwanda after the genocide. (An overwhelming number of church institutions were complicit in the genocide of almost one million Rwandans in 1994. Many bishops and pastors simply stepped aside, or used their clout to flee the country. The Pope refused to officially condemn the massacres. The shepherds failed to protect their flock. But somehow, after the genocide, instead of asking Where Was God? they asked Which Way to Church? 97% of the country now belongs to an organized church or mosque). These’ll be his ideas, organized and hopefully eloquentized by my native English. (I tried to explain that being a Religious Studies major doesn’t really give me the authority to write about it, but he was excited anyway).

So I’ve spent a few hours interviewing him about the details of his Genocide experience – he was 20 at the time. I have, I admit, been blown away by his somehow level-headed optimism. We are humans. This thing happened. But this is community. This is how we heal. I won’t tell his story, but I’ll tell my own. Living in Rwanda, you can’t not think about the genocide.

First, there is an important and obvious note about living in Rwanda: genocide becomes the backdrop with which to compare everything. There is a time called ‘before’ and a time called ‘after’. Any unremarkable statement about the place seems to end with an ellipsis, a dramatic pause before someone says the G word that everyone is thinking. This constant comparison gives you kind of an awful and skewed scale of judgment, but you can’t help it. As I’ve said before, I’ve been lucky to have had Rwandan friends open up to me and tell me their stories – you never pry for them, of course, but you know they’re valuable and incredible – and important – and also dripping with ooohs and ahhhs, and they’re always just below the surface like a precious jewel you’re not allowed to dig for. So when someone opens up, you listen. You lean in and quiet down, your eyes get wide. I remember in great detail some stories I’ve been told – among them Jean de Dieu’s, one of a teacher in the Shyira primary school, and one of a guide I had in the national park last summer.

I don’t have the right to share these stories in detail, but I’ll give you an illustration of what I mean. Just two days ago I was at lunch with a Rwandan man, enjoying tea in a suburb of Kigali, sitting at a table next to a semi-rural dirt street. A worker walked by with a bundled swath of long grass balanced on his head – feed for cows. One of his hands helped balance the grass. The other hung by his side, holding a machete. My Rwandan friend did a double-take and kind of shuddered. His face flashed something that I might describe as a pained grimace – I noticed it – and then he caught himself, came back to his senses, and gave a weird, over-compensating laugh. “Sometimes, still,” he laughed, “when I see a machete…”

And there was The Ellipsis. He didn’t finish his thought, but obviously I knew exactly what he meant. And I wasn’t laughing.

Once your catalogue of shocking personal stories begins to grow, you realize something even more disturbing: these stories aren’t uncommon at all. They’re very, very common, maybe the most common thing of all. In some ways they are the only common thing that matters – these shared memories of trauma just might be the fragile thread that holds this whole darn place together. And they are as mundane to them as they are powerful to us. To a Rwandan, they are the banal fabric of everyday life.

But I’m not a Rwandan, so they take some getting used to. And here’s another thing: I’ve hung out with enough travelers and ex-pats here to notice patterns in the accepted vocabulary of in-the-know outsiders – the parlance of our times, if you catch my drift. Just like in any place, there’s an in crowd here, and it’s in among the outsider in crowd to comment on the broken soul of Rwanda. This is going to be really cynical of me, again, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have to be honest. I’ve too many times been out at a restaurant with other outsiders when some white guy – probably a really nice guy, a traveler, let’s say – ends his rumination by sighing, looking off into the distance, and saying something like “… but in Rwanda…” Or some well-meaning white girl – a really nice girl, a missionary, maybe – furrows her brow, shakes her head, and says in a tone of genuine concern – and I have no reason to think it’s anything but genuine – “yes…especially in Rwanda.”

In some ways I much prefer the jaded aid worker to these sometimes self-important Lonely Planet types. I know, I know – I’ve certainly been that person before. Or I still am. And maybe this blog is just as guilty as their sighs and ellipses, and maybe we are all just a bunch of people who have been earnestly impacted by a shared experience in the emotional weight of Rwanda, and we’re all expressing it in different ways, so who am I to judge? I know, I know. In some ways Rwanda now belongs to all of us – it is a story for all of humanity – but I can’t help but be embarrassed on behalf of these outsiders who pretend that they really get the emotional plight of Rwanda. What would my Rwandan friends say if they saw us talking, musing about genocide, sighing into the distance, unphased by the sight of machetes?

We should learn the history, we should listen to the stories, we should take from them the lessons we can learn – but we must also know when to tread lightly on other people’s sacred ground. Sometimes during these ex-pat dinners I end up being the quiet one in the room just because I’m afraid if I say anything it’s going to be along the lines of Go back to America.

And I apologize, but I had to get that out. My judgmental flights of cynicism are very much the exception in my time in Rwanda, not the rule. But I’ve realized that I could easily go through a whole summer of blogging by highlighting only the wonderful experiences of picturesque travel in Mother Africa. And there will be many of those. Sunsets over banana trees, passion fruit (!), playing guitar in a Pentecostal church, the unexpected kindness of strangers… but what would real, adventurous travel be without, say, persistent diarrhea? Traveling gives you plenty of these less picturesque moments, and any amount of time spent in a place as fascinating and deeply conflicted as Rwanda is going to give you conflicted thoughts and feelings, too – guilt and shame, curiosity and awe.

I’ve described traveling as the art of rolling with the punches. I’ll stand by that, and I’ll try to keep this blog an honest account of all the best punches.

Pentecostals know how to rock

This is me and the Chorale Evangelique of Butare's Pentecostal Church. Butare is the university town of the country, the intellectual capital of Rwanda, the Chapel Hill of the Hills. The congregation was about 2000. We were sweating, shaking, and shouting with the holy spirit. Turns out they had an extra guitar lying around.

A Day In The Life

I wake up, roll out of bed, drag a comb across my head...

With all this talk of World Cup matches and gorilla festivals, I figured some of you might be wondering what I'm actually doing here.

I'm working with an organization called Shalom Educating for Peace. I help with the general operational stuff of the NGO, and I’m also working with a project of Shalom called PREST - Peace and Reconciliation Education through Songs and Theatre, conducted every afternoon at a local high school. The Songs and Theatre part - that's me. The Peace and Reconciliation part – that’s my boss, Jean de Dieu.

He’s kind of jolly. He has a big, endearing gap in his front teeth. He is the kind of guy who just beams a smile everywhere he goes, and he can’t walk down a single Kigali block without stopping to hug and chat with a few old friends, even in the busy, bustling city. He is a man of big ideas, and I’ve found that to be the most striking thing about him: he is an idealist in a place that shouldn’t be able to produce idealism. And he does a lot of great work with Shalom. I’m proud to be working with a guy who has his stuff together like Jean de Dieu.

Since I last wrote, I've spent a great week in Ndera, a suburb of Kigali (the capital city), with my homestay family. Mary and Peter are about at retirement age. They spent most of their lives in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, so the house is always filled with a funky rhythmic medley of Kinyarwanda, Swahili, French, and the heavily Africanized English I've come to love. (We are together!... Josephu, How is it?... You are going where?) They slip in and out of their four languages easily. They seem not to notice. A typical exchange:

Il y a Amata? Sijui, mama Raissa. Oui, thank you!

Mary and Peter are Rwandans who left the country long ago and returned in the wake of the genocide, when Kigali was pretty much a wasteland, no electricity, ruined roads, and a heavy emotional weight on the place, I imagine, even if you didn’t personally witness any killings. Peter told me about coming back here to buy the land and build a house, "Here there was nothing. Nothing!" And he sort of swept his hand through the air toward the front yard, which now contains banana trees over a nice little shady garden. What has Peter done? Build a house, plant some trees. As you often find in Rwanda, against a great backdrop of suffering, here and there a little lesson in human resiliency. But I digress, and a little dramatically.

The house has cows in the backyard and orange trees right outside the window of my guest bedroom. It is simple and comfortable. Every morning I wake up with a hose shower, cold as an Asheville stream in October. The orange trees outside are filled with little orange balls, just how I've always imagined them. The sugar cane stands as tall as a tall man, etc. It's a nice place, and breezy. Few mosquitoes up here on the breezy side of a mountain.

When I want to go into town, I either take a bus (during the daytime) or splurge the 3 dollars it costs for the 20-minute motorcycle taxi ride downtown. I’ll refrain from details on the long moto rides, only because people back home who care about my safety might be concerned about how much I’m enjoying them.

More soon.

Love,
Joe

Let's Go Africa

Last night I watched the USA-England World Cup match. If you didn't know it already, the World Cup is not just in South Africa this year - It's in AFRICA. There's a feeling on this continent that soccer has finally come home.

Excuse me, football. Last night I walked down the road to a local secondary school where I had heard the match would be playing. I didn't see any action on the streets. Nobody was around. Finally I found a kid walking by and asked, "Football?" And he said, "Yes. Come." He took my wrist and pulled me around the side of a long classroom building. A generator was whirring inside, and about 300 Rwandans packed inside facing a small, living-room sized TV up against the blackboard. Behind the TV on the blackboard was a big star drawn in chalk, inside it written, "IT REMAINS 40 DAYS!" Apparently a countdown for their vacation.

This week I have been teaching in the same primary school where I spent 2 months last summer. The kids are older, some of them have hit impressive growth spurts, and their collective English skills have improved dramatically. They even remember the words to the songs we learned last year. The first day we had a blast singing "Is This Love?", and then the class got up to perform for me a dance they had practiced for the song. And though these kids occasionally see a white face coming to teach or help with something-or-other, these "visitors", as they call us, rarely return. So, even though I only came back to Shyira for about 10 days, it really meant something to these kids to see a familiar face. And I felt it. I felt twice as famous upon my return as I was after 2 months. But I do suspect that has something to do with the fact that a guitar makes for a much more fun classroom than copying off a blackboard.

Anyway - the world cup. Luckily, all the local kids know me. Standing in the back, craning my neck on tip-toes to see tiny little figures on a tiny little screen (It's like we're really there!), some of my kids found me - Josephu! - and pulled me around to the front. Right up next to the screen. Apparently the Rwandan crowd noticed that they had a special and very visible visitor - and representing one of the night's featured teams! I admit, soon I got into it. The hospitality, the sweaty, electric energy, the screams and butt-numbing benches... I got into it. When USA scored to tie it 1 to 1, I got up and swung my hat around. I might have even started a chant of USA! USA! USA! The guy next to me - he was holding a handheld radio next to his face and we had been grabbing eachother at clutch corner-kick moments - yelled in my ear, "You from USA, Me from England! We are together (Too - geh- thaaa!!)!!"

No, he didn't have his prepositions mixed up. I got what he meant. It struck me that besides me and the few hundred people around me watching the game, and the few thousand in the surrounding areas, and the maybe few hundred thousand in the country, that around the world Billions of people are watching this same human event. This might be the closest thing we have to a universal human experience. Birth, Love, Death, Taxes - and the World Cup. Ahhhh, so THIS is the world cup. This is the world cup in Africa. I got the feeling that I was right smack dab in the ventricle of the heart of an African - no, a human - experience, right there riding the heartbeat.

Sorry, no pictures. I was in the moment.

Mr. President, Baby Gorillas, and the Battle of Free Lunch

Yesterday I spent the day at Rwanda's Kwita Izina festival. I'll just say it was a day filled with interesting juxtaposition.

I ate lunch at the table next to Don Cheadle's. I was hugged by a man in a gorilla costume. I met a bunch of chain smoking Peace Corps volunteers. I narrowly escaped participating in a small riot. I have witnessed - and am powerless to describe - an angry Chinese man trying to speak in Kinyarwanda. I shook the hand of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. He is 6'5'' and lanky, and had a band-aid on his thumb.

But why, out of a sea of 15,000 screaming Rwandans, was I standing comfortably in the presidential receiving line? Well, in a way that was the day's central question. I feel a little guilty about it. For one thing, I was lucky to have wandered my way in the right direction. Right place, right time. But to be completely honest, I was there because I had white skin and a camera. I let myself into the press section. I was uninvited, but not unwelcome. Unqualified to enter, but not unable.

Let me set the scene a little:

Every year Rwanda holds a special celebration called Kwita Izina, a ceremony where names are given to the newest Rwandan baby gorillas. There are only about 700 of these mountain gorillas left in the world, so a birth of twenty babies makes for a pretty special occasion. Dignitaries from all over the world that have done something special for Rwanda are dressed in traditional robes and allowed to name baby gorillas. It sounds cute. They gave a weird variety of names, from "Wakka Wakka" to "Celebrity", although some of them were in Kinyarwanda and did have poignant meaning attached. (The catch - you don't actually get to see any baby gorillas. The catch to the catch - there are a bunch of kids dressed in gorilla costumes that crawl on stage during the ceremony. Cuteness recovered.)

Anyway, that’s not the most important part of the day's events - just the excuse for the occasion. Rwandan pop artists sing and dance. Traditional dance groups perform and play the drums. Honored guests - this year, the one and only Don Cheadle - give speeches in English to scattered, unenthusiastic applause. See, most of the crowd only speaks Kinyarwanda. The general admission crowd - the hoards, throngs, masses of packed brown bodies - came to see the President, Paul Kagame, really an incredible man and the leader of an incredible national recovery, called by Philip Gourevich “one of the most formidable political figures of our age.”

Bamboo poles and school desks stood as barricades to hold back the crowd. Police guards were peppered throughout. When the crowd packed in too close, the police guards beat them back with black batons.

The ceremony is held in Parc National des Volcanes, close to the habitat of the gorillas. It's not anywhere near Shyira - way up in the rural mountains, where I'm staying this week (with Logan Mauney - great to have a travel buddy). To get to the ceremony we had to ride on the back of moto taxis for an hour and a half. I know its not the safest way to travel, but they do give you a helmet. And you feel pretty damn cool speeding along dirt roads through banana groves and dusty markets. Grandma, I don't know if you know what a blog is, but I didn't mean to use the word damn.

Cue arrival at the front gate of the Kwita Izina ceremony. Cars were slowed to a crawl for the closest few miles. Public buses, pickup trucks packed with people, NGO Land Rovers - this seemed to be the hottest party in Rwanda. Both sides of the street were packed with people moving our direction, a veritable pilgrimage to this yearly Rwandan celebration. Agile on our motos, we weaved in and out of the waiting cars, got to the gate and hopped out at the "visitor" entrance. Quickly we realized that we were the only people in line without tickets in the form of personalized invitations, but we blended in in one very important way. This was the VIP line for international guests. We fell in line with some Peace Corps volunteers, and decided to give it a go anyway.

"Hi, sir, we don't actually have tickets right now, but -"
"Sorry. You cannot enter."
"Ok, but do you think we can get tickets somewhere around here, or maybe wait in a different line somewhere..."
(very nice Peace corps vol, Annie) "Sir, my ticket says 'plus guest', so maybe they can come in with me."
"Yes, but this is meant for plus one, not plus four."

Then, a pause. He looked at us and said, "Okay, yes, you can enter. But just this once."

We were gatecrashers. I did not feel proud about the privilege so freely thrown our way. But in our defense, the 'invitations' were free. The government wanted international guests in the country to come, to show off their ceremony, and I could have gotten a ticket had I known they were needed beforehand. Looking a half-mile to our right, I saw masses of Rwandans funneling through the general admission entrance.

On stage a Bob Marley cover band was playing a song called "Crazy Baldheads."

"I and I build a cabin
I and I plant the corn
Didn't my people before me
Slave for this country?
Now you look at me with scorn.

We've got to chase those crazy baldheads,
Chase those crazy baldheads out of town."

A sea of Africans --- a wall --- a group of outsiders in chairs in a fancy tent. We were in the fancy tent.

In seats around me I saw the Peace Corps crowd, the NGO workers, the lonely planet crew, the foreign dignitaries or heads of German telecommunications companies or Japanese construction companies who were invited for starting contracts in Rwanda. On our side of the fence, it was an interesting mix.

As I said before, soon a couple of us left the stuffy tent and found our way to the press section. From the press section, after the ceremony on stage, we were led to a free buffet lunch, complete with white tablecloths and - literally - silver platters at each place. I was sitting next to a man whose wife works at the American embassy, the guys I came with (Logan and Boyd), and a few Peace Corps volunteers. When we sat down the tables were filled with drinks. Fanta, Coke, juices, bottles of wine and dozens of beers. Rather than serving drinks they just left them lying everywhere. It was a Thanksgiving of excess. To our right, Don and the Prez seemed to be having a serious conversation.

We all ate, then the president got up to leave, we all rose and applauded, and he was escorted out by men in black suits who occasionally touched their curlicue ear pieces and spoke into their wrists.

Then came the interesting part. Somehow the floodgate opened up. The masses found their way to the VIP tent, and they rushed the place. We were still sitting quietly at our table, finishing our beef and plantains, as Rwandans stormed the tent. Mostly young men and boys. It was like the starting wave of the Boston Marathon coming toward our table. A sea of brown engulfed us. We were surrounded by people grabbing plates of food, upending empty chairs, ripping off beer tops with the leverage of their molars, tossing away corks and chugging red wine. The caterers were not happy. Then the police came with batons, and they were not happy. We stayed mostly out of the fray - a little island of muzungus sipping Coca-cola in the middle of police officers and caterers beating hungry locals with sticks and batons.

"Well," said the Peace Corps volunteer next to me, "Drink up."

Eventually the uninvited crowd was chased out of our tent. The battle moved outside. It was raining. Event staff started breaking branches off of decorative bamboo poles, then a few minutes later moved to breaking off the poles themselves. It was like a free-for-all Rwandan mass of American summer camp freeze tag. Except instead of getting tagged you get beat with stick. At this point I had followed the exodus outside to witness the action, and the game continued around me. Only one man approached me, grinning widely, offering me an unopened Hieneken.

I moved forward across the crowded lawn towards a knee-high pile of trash the event staff had just dumped at the edge of the compound. Children swarmed the pile, tearing at each other, stuffing empty plastic bottles into coat pockets or clutching armfulls to their chests like frantic little running backs. I have had kids ask me for plastic bottles - 'agachupa' - many times. I knew they would reuse the bottles or sell them later for a few cents. Soon the pile was reduced to half its size. The kids moved on to scavenge elsewhere.

I walked on and passed a small tailgating tent set up with a man underneath - European of some variety, I hypothesized - sitting on a folding chair next to a pile of beer bottles. He was talking really slowly and loudly, in the usual manner of people trying to help foreigners understand their English. I only caught the tail end of what he was saying. "... TEN BEERS. FORRRR MEEEEE, TENNN BEEERS."

Soon we had to leave. We were some of the last 'international visitors' out of there. Without a transportation plan for getting back to the nearest city, we started walking, hoping to find a ride along the way. Within five minutes, a Rwandan man pulled over his pickup truck next to us - this is me, Logan, Boyd, and a Peace Corps volunteer - and we jumped in the bed, along with 6 or 7 other Rwandan guys who had been walking near us.


And so we sped off into the sunset. At the time it felt like a pretty picturesque and metaphorical end to the adventure. Misty mountains behind us, open road ahead. There we were in the pickup, thanks to the kindness of a Rwandan stranger, huddled into the laps of the same public we had spent the day forced to avoid. We all smiled and relaxed, let the wind dry our sweat, laughed through some communication in a funny mix of English and Kinyarwanda. We even made it back to the city before the rain started again.

15 hours in Amsterdam

I arrived in Amsterdam at the crack of Dutch dawn. I was tired. Sleepless flight. But the fresh air of an old city was just what I needed to wake up.

I've learned this lesson before, but any amount of time living in the vast and untravelable US can make you forget it: public transportation in Europe is awesome. From inside the airport I took a free 15 minute train ride to the central Amsterdam station. Right smack dab in the middle of the city. The sun was rising and the city was waking up. Paper boys carried stack to their kiosks. Fleets of men in suits were biking to work. There were canals! And winding alleyways! It was a foggy, chilly day, and I hit the pavement.

Some highlights from my day in Amsterdam:

Finding a restaurant just opening up, willing to serve me some land food. Sat on the balcony overlooking a canal... Sat down in a quiet park and played my guitar....I thought I would do something cultural/educational. Then I got kicked out of the line outside the Anne Frank house. They said the guitar/backpack combo was too big. Apparantly it's a really small space inside, and they can't keep bags for you.... some churches, some shops, some local cuisine. Nothing too exciting, but a great day exploring a beautiful city.

I've finally arrived in Kigali, safe and sound and in one piece. The best news is that my guitar made it safe and in one piece too. I've got a few days in the city to meet up with the project directors of a couple of organizations I'll be helping with this summer - Shalom Educating for Peace, and the National Organization of Baptist Youth. Then I'm heading west, to Shyira, to visit with Drs. Caleb and Louise King, who i stayed with last summer.

I don't yet know how often, but I'll try to keep this blog updated along the way.
Love from Kigali,
Joseph