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
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