Daves Rwanda Trip, 20081010-11, Friday, off to Butare to meet with professors.
Again with the easy and cheap bus ride out to a city a couple of hours away. This time we went south, to Butare where the National University of Rwanda resides. It took a little over 2 hours to get here, and cost 3000 Frw for both of us. This driver was a bit more sedate... or maybe it was just that the engine wasn't big enough to pull us up those hills at such high speeds. But with other traffic ranging from pedestrians to motorcycles to huge trucks with ridiculous loads, it was still an exciting journey.
More pictures from the road, and from Butare, here:
http://www.thecathouse.homeftp.net/Filez/20081010-11
Watching the land around me I was struck by the sheer quantity of physical labor going on in the myriad of small plots of farmland covering everything. I was told later by a professor we were speaking to that the entire country is this way - almost completely divided up into farms, pastures, etc.. His observation by contrast was that America seemed empty to him. He spent a year at MSU and was struck by the open spaces between cities. I watched women, men, and children swinging these huge primitive hoes to chop up soil in the bright sun with no shelter and no technology to assist. I imagined how it would change things if I brought over one combine that we use to farm thousands of acres with one farmer.
But how would it change things? Would it just put thousands of Rwandans out of work, and create local economic disasters? You would need to simultaneously build up other industries. For example, close to Kigale we passed a brick factory - there's room for industry to build up houses into more solid structures resembling what we have, rather than stacks of what are essentially mud blocks with some wood frames. There's all the industry to support the combine. There's road work and bridges and schools to be built. And more luxuries to be made. But it's such a complicated web of industries that need to be in place before you can use machines to take away the menial labor jobs, so that people can move on to those better jobs. Because the worst thing for a country is to have a large young population of unemployed men. That's when wars start. That's when genocides happen.
Why are they still at this point when we are not? I can't help but think that it's because for decades, starting not long after the point when we were where they currently are on the technology curve, we current first worlders came here as colonialists and siphoned off most of the valuable output of their society. So while their country was getting more and more impoverished, and being trained that their lot in life was to be intrinsically inferior uneducated servants, our societies had an influx of goods and capital to feed into and build our network of industries that allow us to use technology to perform the basic tasks of farming and construction, and have that excess labor go into all these other luxuries that we now depend on. And we had this ready example that we were, in fact, superior and the bringers of civilization. And there were resources to spare, capital and materials to build up these things so quickly, partially because of the colonialism. The land here is rich and fertile. They have minerals in the soil. There's no reason why they couldn't be living like we are. They don't even have winter to deal with- their growing seasons repeat all year long. People have studied the reasons why our civilization got a head start - part of it has to do with climate, and grains, and the push of winter and the need to store food. So we got lucky there, and the Africans didn't. But it's not because of what the land can support. And it's not because of intelligence. And, I'm convinced, it was only a difference of decades that we beat them by, maybe a century or two. An evolutionary blink of the eye.
Then the engineer in me kicks in and wonders how a huge combine farming implement would deal with the hills here - you'd probably have to redesign it or bring smaller more agile tractors and other implements. The midwest does have the advantage of being ridiculously flat. And you would have to maintain some of the separation of fields by channels and ditches, so that when the rains come the soil doesn't wash down into the valley into the river and into the ocean. Many of the problems we've had with wind in the mid-west would apply here even more quickly. They've been studying erosion problems and developing techniques to deal with them, like counter slope ditches, and it's still an ongoing problem (we learned later at the museum). But I do not doubt that we could apply what we've learned and what they've learned and make the technology work here too.
We arrived in Butare right next to the Ibis hotel (apparently an Ibis is a type of bird?), where we got a room for the night. It's a nice place, with guest houses separated out in small buildings behind the main office, away from the main street that is most of what Butare is. We're in room 18, which turned out to be huge. There were several price options to choose from, next time we'll go down a notch and see what the difference really is. :-) If you ever visit here with a car- this would be a good place to choose, because you can drive back and park right by your room too. And the separation from the main road and night club down the street made for a nice quiet night.
We found close by one of the many places renting cell-phones - vendors like this are scattered about on the streets. The phone you use looks like a desktop office phone, but you can see the cell antenna sticking out the back. They also are everywhere selling airtime cards to recharge your personal cell-phone.
Thus Mandy called the professors she'd made contact with before. They both agreed to come meet us here at the hotel. So we wandered around town a bit, visited a local book store which carried many educational texts dealing with subjects ranging from English and French, to Agriculture, to Ethics, to studies of poverty in the region. There were also a fair number of religious texts. Then we returned to spend most of our time sitting in the Ibis restaurant meeting with people. I had a couple of cheeseburgers, and a couple of Cokes, and a couple of beers.
Random note from the restaurant, almost every socket here uses the new fluorescent light bulbs that we're really starting to push in the US. It's not universal yet, I see a few incandescent bulbs still, but this country seems to be moving in that direction faster than ours.
First we met with Professor Faustin Rutembesa, a history professor here at the University of Rwanda. Mandy asked questions related to her research, and we got into some very interesting conversations about what happened in Rwanda and where it's going now.
He spoke of the three pillars of society - language, religion, and how you deal with the environment. The Belgian colonialists essentially broke the first two here in Rwanda. Before colonization they had one religion and one language. Now much but not all of the country has converted to Christianity, and almost everyone speaks at least some French and some English, in addition to Kinyarwanda, and the signs and other writing everywhere are split. You hear all three languages with significant frequency on the radio as well.
And then also, of course, they introduced racism. Before the colonists arrived, the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa were more economic distinctions than anything else. If someone did well, had a lot of money, and owned businesses or was in power, they were considered Tutsi. But if they went bankrupt and became impoverished, they became Hutu. I'm not sure where the Twa fit in, but Faustin explained that there was mobility between the different groups, and they very much thought of themselves as all the same people. It wasn't until the Belgians came in and said no, you came to Rwanda from different places at different times, you are different people, different races, it wasn't until then that people started thinking of themselves as really different from their neighbors. This was classic indirect rule colonial technique- divide and conquer- take one group and tell them they're superior to another- so they fight each other instead of the colonists. The Belgians pushed it further than some, granted starting with divisions that already existed, but exaggerating and solidifying them, forcing everyone, regardless of intermarriage, to be defined as one or the other and having it fixed for eternity on their ID cards. It is important to note that the church- having spread as missionaries throughout the country, were critical in allowing this to happen, assisting with the assignment of race and tracking of people. That's when the real problems between the Hutu and the Tutsi started.
After decades of being told this by a dominant superior power, at least a couple of generations, they started buying it. And then you had two competing factions, the Hutu and the Tutsi, vying for power back and forth... Under colonial rule the Tutsi could treat the Hutu like slaves. There was a concept of forced labor, a certain number of days per year that Hutu were required to work on government projects for free (roads, etc.). There was onerous taxation, and accepted penalties involving beatings for disobedience. Soon the Hutu had good reason to hate the Tutsi. Then there were revolutions, and after Rwanda was granted independence by the Belgians, the Hutu took power, and the Tutsi became the underclass. Faustin, once a Tutsi, spoke of being kicked out of classes in the 70s because the Hutu decided they weren't going to let any Tutsi be there with them anymore. The genocide in 1994 was the peak of it, but the effect of the division has been felt before, in a cyclic fashion. It struck me as being much like our struggle against racism (though that hasn't cycled... yet), and the black/white divide that was so artificially created and maintained in the US. I look at the things we're doing to fight it, and see them doing the same things here. But it will take a long time. Faustin suggested that maybe in 15-20 years people will stop thinking of themselves as Hutu and Tutsi, and instead just as Rwandan. That's the direction they're trying to push now. Maybe a couple of hundred years from now we'll all think of ourselves as Human. Or maybe it will take an alien invasion to get to that point. :-P
He spoke of the current presidential campaign in the US, how people were referring to Obama as half black or half white, but how it was good that what really mattered is that both he and McCain were 100% American Citizens, and that they both had a good chance of winning because of it. Both have equal opportunity to run. He spoke of how he hopes that they can keep things that way, and that the current push is to get people thinking that way here in Rwanda as well. He no longer thinks of himself as Tutsi or Hutu, though he doesn't get mad when everyone asks him which he is.
I asked if he thought it would be better if the government pushed to go back to one language, to reject the colonial influences. But he said no, that you couldn't go back, and furthermore that it was more important to keep as many channels of communication open as possible. Rwanda is still dependant on the outside world to survive, and will be interacting with the international community forever regardless, so proficiency in multiple languages will help. And it helps to expand the mind anyway- to think and speak in different languages improves the ability to explore concepts and ideas. He hopes that Rwanda will continue to teach it's children all three languages (Kinyarwanda, French, English), and have it be the custom to be adept at each.
Faustin referred to himself as more of a francophone and was happy to get to practice his English, which he kept apologizing for even though it was very good. Humorously another colleague of his came up and chatted with us briefly, who was referred to by Faustin as more of an anglophone, but in the process of becoming more of a francophone through his travels to France etc.. It was interesting to hear them refer to themselves that way, rather than just speaking of proficiency with each language. I'm not sure if they were referring to more than just language or not.
Again it was cool to see that there was an active intellectual community here, and several people stopped and greeted both professors we met with during the course of our conversations.
He recommended that Mandy visit the University of Minnesota, where apparently there is a department dedicated to the study of holocaust and genocide, and that there would be many experts there with valuable things to contribute.
The discussion lasted a little over half an hour - he had to go soon, but he suggested we come back next week to talk some more, and to meet other professors at the university as well. He was also good to talk to just as a professor, as he had advice in general about narrowing down the topics to be included, and how to find focus for her thesis. Very typical of professors everywhere, I've had similar conversations at UM.
After Professor Faustin Rutembesa had to go (he's working on a paper that's due this month, and thus was very busy), we hung out a bit longer and had dinner, until the next professor arrived. Humorously enough he was there for half an hour at the next table over hanging out with his friends before Mandy called his cell-phone and found him. I think he was looking for a lone white woman and I was there to confuse the issue, while we were looking for a lone professor searching for someone, rather than someone joining his friends at their usual Friday night hang out spot. :-)
This professor was Georges Rwamasirabo (french spelling of George). Georges was more genial than Faustin (who was very nice, just more serious and focused), but then he was also a beer or two into the night already. He spoke fondly of a year that he spent in the US, at MSU as a visiting professor there. He was aware of the need to wear a green collar instead of a blue one, especially during certain seasons. :-) He also spoke of being blown away by the casual luxury we have - his friends had a cottage up north in the UP, a house that was large by any standards, and huge by standards here, that sat empty most of the year. So much space between towns, so much empty land not being used in the US. A definite contrast to here. But he liked Michigan and hopes to be able to visit again. He also spoke of being on a tour of the US as part of some sort of visiting dignitaries program - he met with elementary school students and others. He laughed at how a 6th grader he spoke to really didn't know much about Africa, he joked with her about how this is where gorillas come from, couldn't she see the resemblance? And she had a list of questions for him, the last of which was "Are there any McDonalds in Rwanda?". :-) Surprisingly the answer is no. Though coke has inserted itself very clearly, McDonalds has not, even in Kigali. But it's probably just a matter of time. We did have a cheeseburger and fries after all.
Our discussions were similar, going over what had happened and what was happening here. Georges has many recommendations of specific people at the University of Rwanda that Mandy should also talk to. Also he helped her translate the signs about the genocide that we've been seeing everywhere, especially in the northern regions. Apparently the northwest is the biggest trouble spot. It was most recently assimilated into Rwanda before the colonialists came, and as such has a rather independent spirit as well. It also pushed harder against the Tutsi after the colonials left, essentially forcing them to move until the region was almost 100% Hutu. So the northwest became one of the strongest sources of the genocide and the anti Tutsi events previous. In contrast the south, especially Butare near the university, was very much integrated, with more intermarriage etc. So in 1994 when the genocide began, it did not start here until much later, and then largely because external forces came in to push it on.
So as part of the recovery, the government is pushing hard in the northwest, with signs in every village, between every region, talking about never again repeating the genocide. The way the sign was worded, it was something about how genocidal ideas spread everywhere, but don't give them a place to sleep at night, i.e. they tend to nest and begin here in the northwest so quit it. :-) This is a rough translation, it seemed strangely worded to me, but apparently was appropriate political propaganda for the locals? Interesting that it openly suggesting that those in the northwest were previously responsible for pushing genocide and are in danger of doing so again. There were no such signs in Kigale, and few in other directions that we've travelled so far. So obviously some tension still in place and still being fought. Again, it will be a long road to recovery.
Georges, like Faustin, also suggested that we meet with several others here at the university, so we'll likely return next week, probably earlier in the da next time, coming out the night before, so we can be on campus when the professors are around. Many more meetings and discussions to come. :-)
I was pleasantly struck that there is a kind of universal language of intellectualism, a joy of discussing and analyzing and getting at the truth. I don't mean to sound arrogant, we were stumbling through language barriers and I certainly am just beginning to learn about everything here. But at points in our conversation, when we weren't stumbling to communicate, it felt very much like conversations with friends back at UM, like after the North show when we were discussion politics and socioeconomics for hours on end. I think the joy of studying and thinking and analyzing is universal. Like the conversation we got into with Jack back at the Sky Hotel that last night there. There are people who like to talk, who like to analyze, who like to share and attack and defend theories. It's fun to talk to those people wherever they come from.
Of course drinking helps. He was having Primus, and I was having Mutzeg. Both "local" beers, but also both owned by Anheizer or some other huge international beer conglomerate. But both good beers, 5% and 5.5% alcohol by volume. One definitely becomes talkative after a couple of those, though I can't really vouch for the depth or quality of the conversations. :-)
After these conversations I spent a fair bit of time thinking back to my observations about the farmers working in the fields, and why they don't have the technology we do to avoid all that manual labor. What are the steps required for a third world country to move in that direction? They already have cell phones, internet cafes, and hardware stores selling solar panels, so perhaps some of these steps have already begun. Pieces of our technology are present in the cities. Maybe it's just a matter of time now for them to spread outwards? It seems to me that key steps are:
1) Remove and make illegal colonial influences that systematically and openly steal resources and effectively enslave the population, government, etc. to the benefit of a foreign society instead of the local society. Check, done. Rwanda has been free for some time now, though you could argue that economic ties still exist to their disadvantage, but these are more subtle and difficult to track down so we'll leave them for now.
2) Eliminate racism, at least institutionally - make it illegal for preferences to exist in government jobs and other positions of power, and make it illegal to demand servitude of another. Check, done.
3) Provide education and resources to show people how things could be, who they could be. Give them a hand up to get them started on that path. This step seems to be in work right now, and I'm thinking it is the most valuable place for us to make contributions.
4) The people themselves need to stop thinking of themselves as backwards and poor and lesser compared to Western civilization. They need to get over decades of colonial rule telling them they are inferior, and to step up into it. One of the professors suggested this... that it's a matter of national and personal pride that will help carry things forward. The government is pushing in this direction now, and it seems like a good idea. This step is somewhat contradictory to step 3, so we have to be careful how we do things. Similar to things I said earlier, I don't give money to beggars, but I do buy more crafts and handiwork as souvenirs than I can reasonably fit in my bags to bring home. And I donated money to help build the library here. I need too research other ways to help.
But it seems that things are moving in the right direction, and far smarter people than I are studying how to make things better. I've gotten a very good impression of the current president - Paul Kagame. I hope that's correct. I look forward to seeing how things are in a few decades.
I hope we continue to help them with resources and money and education in a way that will support them getting to the point we're at. I hope we do it wisely and compassionately, and perhaps with a bit of a sense of guilt, i.e. thinking that what we're doing is paying back for all the harm that colonialism has done, rather than thinking of it completely as charity and loans and other ways that the World Bank and IMF tend to be guilty of. If in helping to build their economy we simultaneously obligate their economy financially to focus mainly on exporting dollars, force them to build their economy around what's valuable to us rather than to them, then we'll be continuing to cripple them as we have in the past. It's tricky, globalism has caused harm as well as good. But we're working on it.
As part of this, Rwanda is certainly encouraging us to come here too, and trying to make it better when we do. Georges was telling us that the current president - Kagame - had announced at some point "Touch one of them and you'll see me." where "them" is us white folks. Thus it's really very safe for us here. In some ways the special treatment seems unfair to me, but then again treating guests well is something I can support everywhere. So while I'm here biggest fear is that I'm bad at bargaining for the prices of things. :-) I don't feel unsafe in any other way. Because Kagame is watching everywhere- just like Big Brother - every business is apparently required to have a picture of him posted in their establishment, so we see him all the time. Under the photo he is referred to as "his Excellency". I'll have to get one as a souvenir, apparently they're available at the ORTPN, the same tourist place that does the city tours and the gorilla tours. It made me laugh to imagine how it would go over if they tried to pass such a law in the US - and told us to refer to Bush as His Excellency. I see lots of pictures with drawn in mustaches or devil horns and superimposed images of apes. :-)
A completely random note - from both Butare and Kigali - I see more physical affection here than in the US. Greetings involve more physical contact, and several times I've seen pairs of women or pairs of men walking down the street holding hands. It's not everyone, but you see it a few times a day. I think it's cool that they seem comfortable showing affection in that way. Interestingly I feel like I haven't seen male/female couples showing affection as much. So maybe when it involves sexuality it's kept more private? I have also seen far less sexual innuendo or blatantly suggestive tendencies in the advertising etc. here so far too. So perhaps in that way Rwandan society is more conservative? I've heard it suggested before that homosexuality is completely buried here - no one admits to it, so perhaps that makes same gender physical affection less of an issue because no one reads any implications from it. So it may be somewhat of a mixed blessing after all. I'd have to spend a lot more time here getting to know people to really have any claim of understanding. Just surface level observations.
We rested well in the Ibis hotel Friday night, and then on Saturday, after a latish start, grabbed a taxi the couple of kilometers up the road to the national museum there.
This museum was donated by the Belgians in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Rwandan independence. It's a general presentation of Rwandan geography, ecology, and cultural history. I definitely recommend it, especially early on, in any visit anyone makes here. It does a good presentation of how this country is situated now, and where it came from. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, occasionally swarmed by students or other tour groups. They asked us not to take pictures, though I'm sure anything there could be found online in better form than any pictures I could have taken.
Geographically I note again that it's very hilly here. Also, the weather patterns create two rainy seasons per year, one short and one long, interspersed with dry seasons. The interaction of the weather with the mountains creates a more wet and fertile zone in the western part of the country, with more dry and less useful land to the east (where I'm guessing I would see much more poverty, correspondingly, if we were to travel in that direction). Crops are planted in multiple cycles throughout the year. They grow lots of potatoes, sweet potatoes originally, and now white potatoes from Ireland that the colonists brought over. And a variety of other crops which I didn't memorize. :-)
The population is in a period of growth right now. They plotted the population distribution by age- there are more women than men by about 6% (12%? 56% women, 44% men). Good dating for the men. :-) But the most disturbing to my eye was that the density of people in the ages of 0-4 was significantly the highest, with 5-10 and other ages decreasing, monotonically up to the highest ages. So a population explosion is coming, with more mouths to feed, and more after that, with famine pretty much destined to come soon after. I think again on the vast amount of harm that Christian missionaries have begotten upon third world countries by showing up and teaching them medicine and health, and then simultaneously teaching that birth control is evil. Later, waiting for the bus to depart for Kigale, and beseeched as usual by beggars from the window, I was tempted to hand the woman carrying a small child a stack of condoms. Fortunately I realized that would be a pretty serious dick move and did not. Instead I spent some time showing off the GPS unit to the other kid who was begging too, but quickly distracted by it. Thinking about short term versus long term benefits, and how to help jump start progress out of third world status, it seems to me that a big component needs to be personal reproductive education, and technology to enable self control and self decision in that regard, for both women and men. Just one of the elements of breaking the cycle of poverty.
Technologically, the museum reported evidence of iron work in Rwanda as far back as 680 BC. By comparison, it was first invented near Aremenia in the 16th century BC? But there is evidence of conical ceramic forges and use of iron tools in similar time frames to it's development in European countries. Probably the technology spread via travelers, but it fit well in the iron rich hills in the northwest. More support of my theory that this country could have been on it's way to an industrial revolution on its own.
Towards the end of the museum was a wall displaying the last 6 or so presidents, since they started having presidents instead of kings, ending with the current Paul Kagame, who has reigned for some time now. The shortest was the guy who was in charge essentially just during the genocide, between when the previous president was killed when his plane was shot down in April 1994, and when the invading Tutsi army defeated the Hutus and set up a new government, about 100 days later. The museum didn't go into the genocide at all, except for this mention under the picture of this president (who's name I unfortunately can't remember now). They also had a cool display of the money, from it's inception several decades ago with individual Franc notes, to the current state where purchases are more made in the thousands.
I did make notes to myself to look up a couple of things on the net - the first was an animal called a Pangolin - apparently native to this area, that looks like a scaled armored snake, more out of a fantasy adventure movie than reality. The second was a cool game called Igisoro, played in an array of 4x8 cups or holes in the ground, where you move pieces ("cows") around and try to capture your opponents herd. Apparently it's rather complicated, and reminded me of Go.
At the end of our tour we bought many things in the gift shop. Not only as cool souvenirs of our trip, but also because the museum advertised that they found at risk youths in the area and employed them learning these historic skills (woodworking, weaving, etc.), as a means of getting them off the streets and setting them back on the right path. Much of the museum seemed to have the objective of focusing on national heritage, culture, and pride. Good to support. I resisted, however, getting one of the awesome giant drums that sounded so cool but would have been impossible to transport home.
Amusing to note that one of the songs playing on the bus on the way back was a hip-hop regge style song, the refrain of which was "Barack Obama". I also enjoyed the gangsta rap style "Cocaine Cowboy". Have to do some digging on iTunes to find those. It was also fun to listen to the soccer game, which also required no understanding of the language to follow. I can't understand the sports commentators in English either, so it was no disadvantage here, and boy did we know it when they scored. Many on the bus joined in the applause. I also notice they had to change commentators halfway through, presumably because the first had completely blown out his voice and could not continue. Shortly after the game we made a rest stop- where the driver and several others (only men) jumped out to the side of the road. Note that there are no rest areas on Rwanda that I've seen. There are, however, frequently guys peeing along the side of the road and not getting arrested for it. And no, no photograph to insert here. :-)
According to the GPS unit it was 85 km as the crow flies from Butare to Kigali. The road sign said it was about 125 km, so that gives some impression of how many switchbacks there were over the hills in between. For those of you with GPS units or Google Earth, the places we've been so far are:
Hotel Ibis in Butare: S 2˚36'7.0", E 29˚44'33.1"
Sky Hotel in Kigali: S 1˚57'11.6", E 30˚3'27.8"
Magnolia Bed & Breakfast in Kigali: S 1°56'50.65", E 30°03'46.72"
Kinigi Guest House north of Ruhengeri: S 1˚23'10.2", E 29˚36'50.2"
Anyone know how to find altitude information on a Garmin Nuvi?
Then Sunday, and so far today, Monday the 13th, we've been chilling out at the Magnolia and short distances around town. Partially so Mandy can assimilate what she's learned so far and to rewrite her questions for the next round of visiting with professors and others. In town here, later today, we're going to find the director of the reunification center. Faustin suggested we speak to her, and told us to tell her he sent us. She should be an excellent resource to learn what Rwanda is doing to move forward from the genocide at this point. We're also going to try to go on the city tour again, first time for me, and so Mandy can pick up more details. Getting a slow start so far due to some stomach discomfort on Mandy's part, but hopefully that will clear up soon. Despite imperfect attention to avoiding the local water supply and dangerous foods (and alcoholic mixed drinks) that UHS travel clinic warned us about, neither of us have had anything other than brief digestive issues while here. Here's to hoping that continues. I'm taking advantage of downtime to catch up on this journal, to continue my job search some (difficult since the net remains sporadic), and to work on my next paper to publish.