Rwandan History Part 1- Colonialism

I've been reading the excellent "The Fate of Africa" by Martin Meredith, and it's been very interesting to learn about Africa's transition from colonialism, and how its effects combined with the leaders of the time to bring about the Africa we know today.

Africa was dealt like so many cards among the great Western powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884. Rwanda and Burundi went to Germany for a few years, but after World War I they were transferred to Belgium. It was this relationship that had the biggest impact.

The Hutus and Tutsis in the kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi had lived together for hundreds of years. The Tutsis were taller and thinner, with features that were considered to be more European (such as a slender nose). They dealt with cattle and livestock, while the Hutus tended to be farmers. As a result, Tutsis were wealthier and acted as a feudal ruling class, discriminating against the poorer Hutus. But these lines were not solid because of generations of intermarriage and migration, and there were some wealthy Hutus, and there were some Tutsis who were servants. Status was more important than ethnicity, when talking about relationships and roles. Tutsis were about 15% of the population, and Hutus about 85%. The king of Rwanda was a Tutsi.

The Germans and Belgians used the existing power structure, relying on the Tutsi ruling class to extend their control over the Hutus. The Belgians took it another step, issuing ID cards to further separate the two groups. Since it was difficult to determine in many cases whether a person was a member of one group or the other, those of unsure heritage with ten cows or more were declared to be Tutsi, and those with less than ten were Hutus. This erased any hope for upward mobility for the Hutus, solidifying their secondary status in Rwandan culture.

This gap grew wider, since only Tutsis had government positions, they had the best education opportunities and became taskmasters over Hutu laborers in the Belgian forced labor system. The Belgians had taken the united Kingom of Rwanda, and erased all sense of national identity, replacing it with a solely ethnic one.

Hutu intellectuals challenged this system in 1957 by writing a political manifesto which decried the political monopoly that the Tutsis held. Church leaders, including Tutsis, also called for reform. The Belgians suggested removing ethnic identification from the ID cards, but this would mean that the Hutus would give up their 80% majority, and they refused. Ethnic identity manifested in political parties, and violence broke out on both sides. In 1959, Hutu gangs attacked Tutsis, destroying homes and property and killing hundreds. The Belgians caught scent of the winds of change, and took the Hutus' side. Over 100,000 Tutsis fled to surrounding countries as violence continued, and elections in 1960 gave Hutus complete control of government. They abolished the monarchy and declared a republic, replacing one racially-based dictatorship with another.

Next: 1960-1994

Nothing New

If you can't see the picture, this is what my internet does on a not-so-rare basis- spend five or ten minutes down at zero Kbps, and then suddenly jump to 60 (which is almost fast enough to go on youtube!) It's pretty annoying. And this is the good internet, which World Vision is paying about $80 a month for.


I thought I'd update, even though not much has been happening. Work continues to go slowly, as the branches are getting the update forms in at a glacial pace.

In other news, I'm almost halfway finished with my stay here. It's gone by very quickly, and there's a lot I plan on doing before I leave:

-Visit Uganda and Kenya. A co-worker of my dad has family in Kampala, so I'll contact them and see about crashing with them for a night or two. In Kenya, I'll make it a work/pleasure trip (so that hopefully VFI will pay for some of my travel) to visit the MFI in Nairobi and help them get their Micro program running. I might stay for a few days to a week, depending on how much I can actually help them with. Probably in two weeks, or when I know that VFC is going to be on track with the journals in my absence.

-Go on a safari. The multi-day ones are too expensive, so I'll try to do a day trip (Akagera park here in Rwanda is reasonable, and has all the giraffes/elephants/lions that you would expect to find) I'll investigate trips in Kenya as well.

-Go to the genocide memorials

-Write some blog posts about Rwanda and African politics. This weekend I'll try to do a couple. I think it'll be a series of four or five posts, talking about colonialism, the genocide, and current politics.

Gikongoro

I'm spending two nights at the Golden Monkey Hotel in Gikongoro, in the Southern part of Rwanda. Today I went over the new journal forms with the credit officers here, also touching on good vs bad client photos and the new processes we're implementing. It's all happening very slowly, partly because I haven't anticipated a lot of problems we've encountered, and because communication is painfully slow. So we're gonna have the branches hire another person, buy another computer (there's only one in the entire branch so far- owned by the branch manager) and buy a modem so they can have internet. They'll send the information into the head office by email (novel, I know) instead of by courier.

After this, we went out even further into the boonies to visit some clients and a field field office. This part of Rwanda is very poor, and World Vision has a large (sponsorship) presence. On the way back, we drove through part of Nyungwe Forest, but I unfortunately only saw one monkey and didn't get a picture.

This is Rwanda's tea country. They grow black tea here, which is one of the greenest and most beautiful plants I've seen so far:

Then we stopped at the Kitabi Tea Factory:
Where one of Jean Marie's friends took us on a tour. Now, if you're gonna take a tour of a factory, take it in a developing country where they aren't twisted in knots worried about lawsuits and cleanliness. (I'm comparing this in my mind to the Celestial Seasonings tour, which is way less interesting, and more about packaging than actual tea.) We walked right up to the machines, with their whirring blades and grinders, dodged hooks hanging from conveyor belts, and had a great time. Here's what I'm talking about:


This grinds the leaves into tiny little bits, and has a cover (r) that keeps people from falling in when it's shut. I'll post the rest of the pictures on facebook. Now here's some Rwandan kids:

Mt Kigali part 2

This chap was one of probably hundreds of children I encountered who yelled "Muzungu!" as I passed, calling their friends to come get a look. The first 3/4 of our journey up Mt Kigali was through a couple small settlements, sort of the suburbs of Kigali. Children were out everywhere playing with makeshift toys or helping carry water for their families, and all were interested in seeing a white guy. It's my only experience with any form of celebrity, so I enjoyed it; many came up to shake my hand and say 'Good morning' (A few years ago, they would have said 'Bonjour' - some small evidence of Rwanda's transition to Anglophone Africa). A few walked with us for half an hour or so. Some of the toys they've made for themselves are pretty cool, such as this one with stilts:


After the hike, we lunched at Claude's house. He is a student, but he has his own property and has three other young men renting from him. We had lunch of cooked bananas with a tomato sauce, sweet potatoes (the white kind, not the orange kind), beans, and some kind of cooked greens. Very filling fare, all washed down with banana beer. They bought me a bottle of the brew, more for entertainment than anything else; none of them were interested in sharing it. It's not too bad, not very banana-y at all, more like a wine than a beer, but sweet like rum. It's dark brown and pretty strong (13% abv), so I added some water to make it more palatable. While we were eating, Claude's 81 year old grandmother visited from her home up on the mountain, interested in meeting me as well. She vigorously sipped her bottle of banana wine while wondering why I diluted the "medicine" by adding water.

Lunch in Claude's living room:
Claude, Freddy, and Gilbert in front of a traditional mud house somewhere on Mt Kigali:

Mt Kigali - Part 1

I took a moto from home to the center of town, met Claude and walked west through Kigali through markets and south through the pictured shortcut, one of the slum areas of Kigali. We walked nonchalantly through, dodging chickens, drainage ditches, and many children who announced our approach with 'umuzungu!' (white guy). As far as slums go, this isn't that bad; if you look closely at the picture, you'll see mostly concrete houses with steel roofs, and walls that separate compounds. They are still very poor, but they are sort of the 'middle class' when compared with the people who live in the more rural areas.

This being the 'land of 1000 hills,' I got a lot of exercise. The first few miles were entirely downhill, and then sharply uphill to Gilbert's house where we had breakfast. He is 30, single, and lives with his sister on a compound in west Kigali. Their home was modest, with few of the comforts we're used to (TV, stove, refrigerator, flush toilet) but consisted of three buildings on a walled-in lot that was probably close to a half acre. They had a garden where they were growing tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cabbages, and bananas. We ate toast and milk tea for breakfast.

Gilbert preparing breakfast

Green Earth

Sunset a Couple Weeks Ago

click to enlarge

A Day in the Life

6:00 a.m.: Wake up. I don't set an alarm, this is when the surprisingly loud birds outside wake me up. Sometime in the next hour I'll shower, get dressed, do devos, etc.

7:05 a.m.: Breakfast. See my previous post.

7:40 a.m.: Driver picks us up for work, it takes 10-15 minutes depending on traffic.

8:00-8:30 a.m.: VFC devotionals. I follow along in the Kinyarwanda song book as best I can- occasionally it's a tune I know. Gilbert or Claude translate the brief message for me.

8:30-10:45 a.m.: Whatever work there is to do. I'm at the mercy of the branches; if they've sent in the journals for us to enter, we'll be hard at work on that. If they haven't, I'll surf the web and write emails. This morning, we had a pile of journals to do, and we knocked out all 30+ in two hours.

10:45 - 11:00 a.m. (approx): Tea break. It's tea with milk, with a lot of sugar and occasionally instant coffee mixed in. Very sweet, still makes me feel sick, but I'm getting used to it. Talk with co-workers about various things, they grill me on how they can get jobs in America. Today, they mentioned that the workers digging the new fiber-optic line outside earned about 1000 RWF a day, or less than $2 U.S. I realized that a worker in America doing the same job would make 30 times as much, assuming minimum wage. I'm reminded every day of how great America really is- every day people talk to me about their desire to move there.

11:00 a.m. - 1:oo p.m.- Work some more. Occasionally interrupted by Claude, who is working on his English and would like me to explain something or pronounce something.

1:00 - 2:30- Lunch back at the house. A full meal is usually waiting for us, prepared by our housekeeper Olive. We'll watch CNN after lunch until the driver picks us up.

2:30 - 6:00- Work some more. Today, having finished everything, I'm writing this blog post. At 4:00 someone is supposed to arrive from the northern and southern branches, carrying more updates for us to post.

6:00 - 8:00 - Go home, watch TV with Yacob, my Ethiopian housemate. Usually news, sometimes BBC Entertainment which has old 'Whose Line is it Anyway' reruns. Yacob laughs throughout, but I'm skeptical of how much he actually understands.

8:00- dinner. I'm starving by this time, not really sure why we eat so late. I asked Olive to move it up a little bit please, but I don't think she understood. Oh well.

10:00- I'm in bed, window open, mosquito net down. I've adjusted surprisingly well to the humidity and heat, don't really sweat so much at night anymore.

So, pretty boring. I have plans to see some of Kigali this weekend, and I'm traveling down south with Jean Marie Wednesday and Thursday next week. There I'll (re)train the branch staff on how to take good stories and pictures, and see some more of the countryside. I'll try to take lots of pictures.

VFC Staff

Here's a few pictures of the people I work with.

Jean-Marie:
Jean-Marie is the Credit Management Officer, kind of my point-man for getting things done. He greeted me at the airport upon arrival with a big hug, and also led Sue and I on a trip to Gisenyi, on the border of the DRC on lake Kivu.

Gilbert:
Gilbert, 30, was hired to help me translate the journals from Kinyarwanda to English. He was previously an English teacher at a secondary school in Kigali.

Freddy and Claude (L-R)
These are the two who work on Kiva loans. Freddy is married with a young son, and Claude is in the midst of a long engagement. His fiancee is has a degree in physical therapy from a med school in Kigali, and is currently training at a hospital in Colorado somewhere, but Claude doesn't know specifics. He was the one to help me translate the journals before Gilbert was hired. He also makes sure that I don't work through the tea break.