A Thousand Hills, A Thousand Valleys

Rwanda is often called “The Land of a Thousand Hills”, or “Le Pays des Mille Collines.” It’s a majestic title, and fitting. I just revisited the North of the country, and it is pretty majestic. As you travel farther north, the lush, green hills get thicker and taller, and the morning air has that foggy chill that reminds me of so many Boy Scout mornings, of unzipping the tent to the mist of the quiet Appalachians.

Ahhh, The Land of a Thousand Hills. The Rwandans have another phrase for it. Imisoze igihumba, Ibibaze igihumba, they say with a smile and a shake of the head. A thousand hills, a thousand problems. Except it’s more poetic than that. It means something like A thousand hills, a thousand valleys.














This weekend we took our show on the road. We traveled to a school in the North of the country in a little town called Buberuka. We found a welcome audience of about 400 students for our dual curriculum of peace/music and peace/football, honed by 3 weeks of lessons in our home school in Kigali.

I’ve been in Kigali so long now, I forgot how much I love the mountainous northern province. Kigali is hilly, too, but much less dramatically. And there’s nothing green in the city. Plenty of brown, though. Everything seems covered by a constant carpet of honks and dust.

An attentive bus ride spent at a window seat might be my favorite way to get to know a country, or, in this case, to reintroduce myself. In Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, there’s no real countryside to speak of, just house after sporadic house dotting the mountain road at every turn.














The brown, mud huts slouch into brown, dirt yards. Grandpas sit under a rusted tin awning next to a walking stick, next to a bright blue sign advertising Primus beer. I passed a group of bus passengers crowded around their broken down bus that looks exactly like mine, sweating in the sun and leaning over each other in the crowd to watch their driver change their flat. I saw a group of shirtless little boys throwing sticks up into an avocado tree.

The school in Buberuka was another 15-minute motorcycle ride past the closest bus stop. It sits in the middle of a huge field of tea bushes. The vast expanse of tea bushes is so pretty, I started to try to think of a good comparison – like a green shag carpet filling in the valleys! But really they just look like miles and miles of identical little bushes.

Imisoze igihumba, Ibibaze igihumba. A thousand hills, a thousand valleys. I recognized this same attitude after Friday night’s Shakespearian loss by Ghana, which I witnessed with a group of Rwandans from Buberuka. Ghana almost made it farther in the World Cup than any African nation ever had – almost – before crumbling in the final minutes. The questionable fouls, the last minute penalty kick misses… to the one billion Africans watching, I understood how this match was never just about football. Even one of the most prosperous and promising of African nations, even with their imported European coaches, Ghana couldn’t quite beat the odds against it. It was a cruel metaphor.














45% of Rwanda’s national budget comes from international aid. The president, Paul Kagame, is a tireless advocate of self-sufficiency and Rwandan entrepreneurship, and in the coming years he wants to decrease this percentage of dependency. But right now, if USAID were found written on any more things around here, it would start to look like an occupied territory.

Someone this weekend told me about Paul Kagame that he is the only thing – the only thing – keeping this place together. You get these flashes of Rwandan honesty sometimes when you least expect them. “He must win the election in August,” this person told me, “or else these people will go right back to killing each other.” This was the first time I’ve heard that one put so bluntly.

This is one thing I love about Rwanda. A trip to a school is never just a trip to a school. The real gold of experiences seem to be found on the way and in between. Little exchanges, little impressions here and there. Maybe this is true of every place. Simple images, short quotes, these things that stick with me. I'll leave you with a few. Mini-stories. Harper's Index style.

- The way my host mom calls me for fresh juice in the morning. “Josephuuuuuu, joo-eeeeee-seeeee!!”

- When I asked my boss at a restaurant how to say ‘tip’ in French, he thought for a moment, gave up, and then said, “Probably they don’t have. You know, language is related to culture.”

- This oh-so-close attempt at hip-hope culture in a land learning English: the "Nigger Boy Saloon", a haircut place I pass on the way to work.

- Signs in Kigali: "Speak, Write, and Read Engrish in three months"
- "Saloon: We cut hair on small price"

-Tthe American embassy had a 4th of July party complete with face-painting, games of cornhole, glow-in-the-dark USA tattoos, mediocre hot dogs, and grass that was actually imported from Kentucky.

- The Kinyarwanda name one of my neighbors gave me: Kuberuka. I still have no idea what it means.

- The big brother billboard on the way to town that says, "Important date to remember, August 9th, 2010. I cannot wait to elect my president. Vote Wisely."

- The roadside goat brochettes: 20 cents.