Akagera National Park

Sunday we went to Akagera National Park, which rests on Rwanda's Eastern border with Tanzania. The elevation is lower, being part of the Great Rift Valley, and is filled with swamps and lakes that attract the wildlife.

It was once quite a bit bigger (it's a third of its original size) and had a higher population of elephants and lions, but in the chaos following the genocide in 1994, there was no protection for the animals. As a result, farmers with cows like these:
would poison the carcasses of cows killed by lions, greatly reducing the lion population here. (Our guide, Samuel, has worked at Akagera since 1997, and has only encountered lions three times.) Other game was driven out by poachers and settlers. After the genocide, the government gave the Western portion of the park to refugees to return to and settle. So this is a park that is struggling, but could potentially be among the great game reserves of Africa; it contains a wide variety of terrains that allows animals to stay year-round, instead of migrating to distant water sources. It's relatively unknown; we only saw a couple other cars the whole time we were there. And it's home to several varieties of antelope- we saw impalas, waterbuck, Cape buffaloes, topi, and giant eland.

Topi (can run 55 mph)

Cape Buffalo- by himself. He had a broken leg.

Baboon family

L-R- Antonina, her husband Dmitri, guide Samuel, driver Gervais

Giraffe, obviously

We also saw zebras, hippos, warthogs, baboons, various birds, and (my favorite encounter) a 4-5 ft cobra that slithered across the road in front of us. (UPDATE: based on my extensive Googling, I think it was likely some variety of spitting cobra. The black-necked spitting cobra [naja nigricollis] is most common, so it was probably that. They can 'spit' venom accurately up to 10 feet or 3 m.) It was a pretty cool trip, I'll have to return some day during the rainy season when more animals are around.

2nd Trip to Gikongoro

Last week, I went south again to meet with the Loan Officers at the Gikongoro branch for a brief meeting. We were implementing some new processes and going over some questions they had, but that only took about an hour. The rest of the time, I took advantage of my translator/co-worker/Micro counter-part Gilbert who went to National University of Rwandain this part of the country. He showed me around the National Museum (pretty small, no pictures allowed) and the Royal Palace (the dwelling place of the monarchs until the 1950s. They charged to take pictures, so no pictures). We also visited Gilbert's old campus:

which was very beautiful, and also had MONKEYS:
which were exciting to see. Fortunately , they completely ignored us, so I have no stories of poop-flinging or attack. The photo at the top was taken on the NUR campus, near where the monkey troop (herd? school?) lived.

We also visited the Murambi Genocide Memorial near Butare, which is one of the largest and most famous of the memorials in Rwanda. It is built on the campus of what was originally a technical school. During the genocide, about 50,000 Tutsis fled there, and their Hutu attackers cut off the water supply to the compound and killed them all a few days later. They buried the bodies in several mass graves, which were later exhumed (in 1995). They found that a lot of the bodies had been deprived of oxygen in the grave and hadn't decomposed, so they preserved over 800 of these bodies and keep them in rooms for visitors to view. It's shocking, and sobering, especially when entering the rooms that contain the remains of children who were slaughtered. They keep these bodies uncovered so that no one in future years can deny that the genocide occured.

There are also plaques around that mark where mass graves were found, and where the French flag flew during 'Operation Turquoise,' where French soldiers moved in towards the last days of the genocide to protect Hutu genocidaires from the avenging RPF. Rwandans are still waiting for an official apology from the French- for this, and for supplying the Hutu militias with arms in hopes of supporting the existing power structure, and defending the Hutu refugees as they continued to attack from the DRC. The decision to switch from French to English has deep-rooted social/political causes behind the peripheral business causes.

P.S.- We also visited a craft co-op in Butare where I got some sweet souvenirs and gifts. If anybody wants anything specific, let me know and I can get it for you (wood carvings? baskets? jewelry? knives? toys?) when I go back down in a couple weeks.

Pics

Genocide Memorial near Butare

Street food vendor near Ruhengeri

School children in Kigali

Update

To fill everyone in on what I've been up to:

-Last Weekend: Rwanda-Tanzania Soccer Match at Amhoro ('Peace') Stadium in Kigali. Rwanda won 1-0. Those infernal plastic trumpets that you can hear at all the World Cup matches? Yes, they blew them for the entire 90+ minutes, including halftime.

-This week: trying to get in contact with KADET, the MFI in Nairobi who I will be visiting eventually. Finally heard from them on Friday, and as I assumed, they are too busy/not ready for training yet. They would like me to come in mid-July, more about that later.

-This weekend: WORLD CUP! I'm trying to get excited since I'm away from America and have moved to the 94% of the world that actually gives a crap about soccer. So I actually watched both games yesterday, and felt robbed when both of them ended up as ties. But I'm excited for tonight's USA-England match. It's easier to care when you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night to watch.

So future plans? I'm going to continue to supervise the Micro journals at VFC, but my workload is diminishing as I transfer my responsibilities. I will be traveling at least a couple more times to the field branches, as they do some more hiring and will need additional training. So I'm hoping I'll have time to do some 'vacationing,' like spending a few days up in Uganda. There's a lake close to the border that has a campsite on an island that's really cheap and you can canoe around, so that sounds amazing. I'll wait to see what's going to happen this July. If I'm extended for a month, I'll mostly be helping at KADET in Nairobi. I want to take the bus at least one way (at least 24 hour trip, unreliable, dangerous, classic African experience) but I'm not sure I'll be up to taking it both ways. We'll see.

Antonina's husband will be visiting in a couple weeks, and we're all planning on going to Akagera National Park out East, where there's giraffes, gazelles, and elephants (lions if we're lucky).

Please continue to pray for me, especially as I look toward the future after this internship is over.

House-mates

NAME: Yacob
NATIONALITY: Ethiopian
MOTHER TONGUE: Ankaran
FAMILY: six children, 1 of 9 siblings, thousands in extended family
ROLE AT VFC: Consultant, helping them lower their PAR, training


NAME: Antonina
NATIONALITY: Russian/Belgian
MOTHER TONGUE: Russian
FAMILY: Married
ROLE AT VFC: Mobile Banking

Our current living situation sounds like a sitcom pilot, a classic fish-out-of-water story with lots of crazy stereotypes and personalities to exploit. Aside from Yacob's crazy stories about 30 m pythons eating buffalo (seriously. He grew up in the bush, his father was a missionary) and Antonina's love of beets and vodka (just kidding), they're fairly normal people. There's also the very interesting political discussions that we're able to have. Both of them are very well informed on global and American politics and issues, so we've had some lively talks.

All in all, they're lovely people, and I've been blessed to get to know them so far. Yacob has just gone home to Ethiopia, but will return to VFC shortly after I leave.

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.