Journey to the Edge of Rugeyo

On the way to Rugeyo

The day starts pretty early. By the time my colleague and I eat breakfast – usually a crepe-thin omelet and a chunk of hard white wonder bread – many people in Kabarondo, the village where we’re spending our nights, have already started their days. Women walk with large baskets of bananas trying to find some eager buyers, men ride bikes on both sides of the street carrying almost anything from people to large potato sacks of carrots on the back rack, while stray chickens try and stay out of the way. People congregate in groups waiting for the local transport to come hoping one of the trucks driving by will give them lift. (I know this because  we stopped to by bananas from a lady who was standing with a group who were quite insistent that the CARE truck should give them a ride.)

Our destination every morning so far has been Rugeyo – a small village established recently in an area that used to be part of Akagera National Park. A particularly remote part of the village has been erected very recently when the Tanzanian government kicked out all Rwandan refugees in the western part of their country. In 2006, almost 15,000 Rwandans were forced back over the border, leaving their property and everything they had worked for in Tanzania behind. Many people were even born in Tanzania, as their parent left Rwanda in 1959 when the first expulsion of Tutsis happened, but were expelled nonetheless.

The roads leading to Rugeyo seem to just get bumpier the closer you get. If you relax into it, it can be a really great massage. The way there is mostly dirt roads that wind and twist around many hills and bits of settled communities and are definitely the dustiest routes I’ve experienced in the country. When another vehicle passes going the other way, you almost have to slow down for half a minute to wait for the burnt orange cloud to settle.

During the last leg, we’ve often stopped to take pictures of gazelles, monkeys and even the three hippos that live in the nearby lake – the main water source for drinking, washing and constructing mud bricks for house for the residents who live on the edge of Rugeyo.

… Details of the village life and profiles of the people who live in it coming soon…

On the way back is when all of the chlldren in Rugeyo proper seem to be out. Barreling through the village in a Toyota 4X4 whizzing by their lives at a speed faster then the villagers have ever known, we might as well be in a space ship. Looking out the window, I see the kids drop whatever they’re doing and coming running to the sound of an engine.

“Hiyeee! Hiyeee!” they shout, with both hands waving furiously.

But soon they see that there’s another reason to look.

There’s a muzungu (white person) in the car.

I’ve gotten used to people remarking about the colour of my skin in Kigali. But it’s usually in a subtle way, like everything just being more expensive for myself and my Rwandan friends with me.

But driving through such a rural place I feel like a celebrity. After the kids drop whatever they’re doing, and run to the side of the road, they started jumping up and down and pushing each other screaming “umuzungu!, umuzungu!”

A posse of kids looks like a bunch of circles staring in amazement, their pie-shaped eyes matching the movements of their mouths when they say it: ooh-mooh-zoon-goo!

And if they yell loud enough one group of kids tips off the other and they get a head start to the side of the road. Driving through the village ends up sounding like a vertiginous stream of kids echoing the same word at different times.

There’s nothing I can do but smile and wave like the queen.

Bam!

Wow. It’s been over a month since I’ve posted, and for no good reason. I’m having such memorable and intense experiences both personally and as a journalist, but alas time slips through the fingers and I’ve had little time to reflect on them in the blogosphere.

So the first update: I’m no longer an intern for the Rwanda Initiative. I finished my two-month term at the end of June. I had originally wanted to stay on a few weeks longer in East Africa to travel, but my some opportunities have extended my stay a bit longer.

I am still at City Radio, the private station I’ve been at since the beginning of my stay. Kelvin, the station manager, has kindly offered me a position as a daily journalist. I think his kind heart saw in my eyes how much I love this place.

Carrot and Stick

* Note: These descriptions are not universal practice at all. They’ve happened enough times, however, to make note of.

I’ve come to learn that some organizations that hold press conferences here offer small but notable benefits to the journalists who attend.

Most times, these perks are simply a bottle of water, an accompanying glass and a serviette that greets you upon arrival.

But there have been more than a few occasions where complimentary coffee, sandwiches and sweets are offered after the meeting. Hanging around after conferences talking casually to other journalists took some getting used to, as my instinct is to rush back to the office and start cutting clips and hammering out the story. But I would stay and grab a cup of steaming black coffee, mostly because I didn’t want to seem impatient and rush out when everyone else seemed to chat it up.

Even though coffee and cake are small offerings, I find it strange to accept anything from the organization whose practices I’m supposed to be somehow critically writing about in an unbiased way. This was one of the first ethical issues discussed in class, and it’s definitely trickier dealing with it in another culture that has very different ideas of hospitality.

I’ve mentioned in a past blog that at the end of a press conference-cum-workshop, the sponsoring ministry provided lunch for all of those who attended – a five-star meal at a top scale restaurant in one of the best hotels in the city.

The most recent, and perhaps most shocking example happened to me a few weeks ago.

Pretty typical of all press conferences here is for the organizers to pass around a sheet for the attendees to write their name, number, email, as well as their affiliated media house.

When I first encountered this, I thought it was strange – government agencies and PR people having my personal contact information. I guess I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to it, although it has produced some interesting effects – I’ll explain later.

Anyway, that wasn’t the only sheet passed around that day.

The second one circulated, coming to rest in my hands. This one looked different than the first. It had a space for name, number, affiliation and then the last column was called ‘stipend.’ I was the third person to receive the sheet, and the two entries before mine entered a number – 8,000 – in this space.

I turned to the man sitting next to me who I recognized from earlier meetings, and asked what this number was all about. He said, “Just put 8,000, that’s what everyone is putting in.” I asked what the money was for, and his response was transportation and other expenses.

I scratched my name out and passed the sheet along to the next person.

I wasn’t going to say anything about it there and then, but the man next to me laughed and said that his Canadian colleague who came last year wouldn’t take the money either.

“Canadians can afford to pass up free money,” he said, which got me thinking, and then over-thinking, about whether or not I did the right thing. Should I have taken the money like everyone else? Should I have taken it and given it to someone? Maybe to the station I work for? I mean, anyone could use an extra fifteen bucks, right?

It’s a fact that journalists here aren’t as well paid as they are back home. So, it would be hard to find a journalist who would turn down these offers because of some ethical principle.

In the end, although I was fifteen bucks behind the rest and the private finance corporation was that much richer, the experience inspired a topic that continues to bring about interesting discussions among my colleagues.

Oddly enough, the habit of give-outs can exist alongside an interesting practice of, well, conference organizers basically badgering journalists to commit their attendance to the meeting.

This is where those sheets collecting contact information come in.

The first phone call I got – early last Monday morning – was from the same finance corporation.

“Hi Stephanie, we’re calling to invite you to a two-day conference taking place next week on leasing practices in Africa.”

I openly thanked them for the invitation, and in my mind for the story idea. In my limited experience as a journalist, it’s rare for people to phone you up with a good local story idea.

“That’s great. I’ll pitch it to my editor and perhaps I’ll be there,” I said.

I made a mental note and went on with my day.

My phone rang again in the afternoon. It was the same PR person I spoke to in the morning asking if I could confirm my attendance. I declined giving an answer, partly because I didn’t know and partly because I thought imy presence at the conference shouldn’t make a difference to this private company.

They seemed to think differently, and were more persistent than I imagined. They called me everyday that week only to me met with my same answer.

“I still don’t know.”

The morning of the meeting finally came, but my editor had already decided what the three local stories were going to be. And mine wasn’t one of them.

I thought nothing of it, and started researching the other stories I was to cover that day.

And then my phone rings.

“Stephanie, where are you? Are you coming?”

My instinct was to hang up. This is borderline harassment, I thought.

Instead I politely thanked them again for the umpteenth time for the invitation and said that I wouldn’t be coming.

Anyhow, this wasn’t the only series of phone calls I’ve received about meetings. There were more. And emails as well. And phone calls following up on those emails.

Definitely not used to the carrot and stick approach to publicity.

A day at the Saloon

My first week in Kigali, whether a passenger in a moto, a bus or a taxi, I was whisked through the streets with wide eyes and an open mind for all I might see. Hustlers on every street corner selling anything from a phone call, to a belt, to a brand new kitchen knife set. Why would one ever need to enter a store again and look for items when they can come to you…

But not everything is on the street. I noticed that out of the many stores that seemed to be only a background to the transient sellers on the street, I saw many signs painted onto the front of the building that read the same thing.

“Saloon.”

Saloon after saloon. One after the other, like a huge country western film set.

I had yet to go out to the many night clubs Kigali has to offer, and so I believed that these saloons were the local watering holes. I imagined beyond the wooden swinging doors, to a smoky, barren room with only a few tables and rickety chairs, an old beer fridge and maybe a transistor radio playing some crackly tunes in the corner. A disinterested beer maid among a slew of local regulars.

I asked someone who has lived here for a bit what the best saloon was to go and get a drink. Is there a good one near our house to have a few too many at?

The answer I got was a hearty chuckle followed by an explanation of what these saloons really were.

Beauty parlours. Salons.

That makes far more sense, as Rwanda presents itself more as a nation full of women with beautifully kempt hair rather than a nation full of drunks.

I began to pay closer attention to women’s hair. The teeny tiny braids that hang loosely, the fatter braids drawn taught to the head, interesting parts and updos with the braids, twisted pieces that look like a piece of licorice, and the list does on. Women’s hairdos here are like fingerprints – you’ll never see two that are the same.

Given that my thick course hay-like hair has, for my whole life, proven to be quite unmanageable, I began to consider visiting one of these saloons.

I asked a local friend how I should go about getting my hair done. “Where do your sisters go?” I asked.

“My sister will do it for you,” he replied.

I asked where her saloon is, and he said, “her living room.”

I’ve learned through my short experience that Rwandans, when they host, are serious.

Sure enough, the next weekend I was invited to spend the day at Banura’s place in Nymirambo – a neighbourhood in Kigali that is packed with clothes shops, mosques, and you guessed it, saloons.

Turns out that my first time get my hair done would be in a more intimate setting – in my friend’s sister’s living room with more than one pair of hands helping out. (His auntie spent some time of the hair before she painted my toenails).

After watching a gospel concert DVD, a breakfast break, two films, three episodes of Desperate Housewives and a Beyonce concert, the braids were done.

My forehead felt pulled taught back – maybe these kind of braids are nature’s suggested face-lift.

“It’ll loosen by the end of the week,” Banura said, when she saw me wincing when I pulled the stray pieces in my face back into a make shift ponytail.

Speaking now at the end of the week, thankfully that’s true. Sleeping was tricky, as it trying to the moto helmets to fit me properly (I thought I was big-headed before).

But they’re here to stay for at least a month, and I feel lucky to have had the private saloon experience…

Ahem… Attention please, speech.

My next birthday wish will be to one day celebrate my birthday Rwandese style because here, there’s just a little bit more icing on the cake.

Let me explain.

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to be invited to a colleague’s house for his birthday, and it seems that there’s no better venue to witness how people here value the time that they spend with each other than at a birthday party.

After an introductory room full of handshakes (I think I’ve so far failed to mention the handshaking culture here) and kind offerings of drinks and food, a fellow colleague, Pedro, stood up and began to recite a speech. Although it was all in Kinyarwanda, I gathered by tone and gesture that he was talking about what kind of a person Victor – the birthday boy – is.

The speech didn’t stop with Pedro. I soon discovered that Pedro was the emcee who would introduce the next twenty minutes of speeches made by members of Victor’s family, his long-time friends, and his colleagues. They spoke of their first meeting with Victor, funny stories from the past, and the qualities that make him a good friend.

Again, I didn’t understand the details of what was being said, but the warmth and openness in a room where people, some who haven’t met each other, got to know one another through sharing their stories of Victor was truly touching.

I can’t recall any event involving people of my age group back home where a chunk of time is devoted for such sincere expression of emotions. I mean, usually birthdays when your twenty-something mean countless shots and loud dance floors.

I’ve already observed that they way people interact in Rwanda is generally different than how they do in North America. On average, I think it’s safe to say that people here make more time for each other and are not caught up with being busy. Computers suck up way less time here than they do at home and I believe this is not only an access issue, but also a matter of choice. Lunches are longer and many people have enough time to go home to eat and even take a short rest. People stroll down the sidewalk at 8 a.m. on their way to work instead of the keeping up with the bustling shuffle you face in most Canadian cities. And like I said, upon arrival pretty much anywhere you go, you shake everyone’s hand and probably exchange a few sentences about how life is. It’s so nice to spend the first ten minutes of every day greeting your coworkers.

I guess we reserve these love fests for ‘monumental’ occasions, like a 50th birthday, or a retirement party. But some good things don’t necessarily have to wait until your older. I’m definitely going to up the ante for the next birthday that comes around.

Back at Victor’s place, after “Happy Birthday” was sung in both English and French, the coffee table was pushed to the side of the room for the living room dance party that stretched long into the night.

Hell of a big closet

Identity is a complicated thing.

Composed of intangible expressions and ways of being in the world that are rooted in a particular time, place and history, identity often is a site of contestation in political debates, at home, in the workplace, and in the media.

And the space given in Rwanda to discuss homosexuality is much smaller and less tolerant than in Canada.

I consider my political orientation almost militantly open-minded – though I don’t always feel the need to verbalize my views. I choose my battles, but I generally advocate that people have the right to believe what they want so long that they respect a common living and conversational space.

Good, old textbook style Canadian upbringing.

I suppose that I just grew up with the idea that being gay is okay. My parents have always had gay friends, and lots of my friends are homosexual.

But in Rwanda, homosexuality is illegal. When people told me that before I arrived, I assumed that meant that gay marriage is not legal. I thought that its prohibition existed in the upper echelons of bureaucracy, written on the pages of some dusty legal texts. Not in the viewpoints of the average Rwandese.

First Days on the Job

I’ve had some interesting first days on the job as a reporter at City Radio. It’s a private station based in Kigali but its broadcasts reach most of the country. The programming is a mixture of music and news (mostly the former) and broadcasts in Kinyarwanda, French and English.

I cut my teeth on a press conference yesterday morning. The Supreme Court of Rwanda invited a bunch of journalists to a conference room in a five-star hotel to discuss the current state of court reporting. The conference and the workshop that followed was one hundred per cent in Kinyarwanda, so it was a challenging first story to report on. I was fortunate enough to sit beside a man named Mark from a weekly paper called Umuseke who kindly translated the important details enough that allowed me to write a story.

The Vice President of the SC spoke first, and basically said that legal experts and journalists should work more closely so that the media can better cover legal issues. He also encouraged journalists to be more knowledgeable in media law, so that they may know their rights as to what they are allowed to report on.

After talking to some journalists at the conference, I understand that the main problem with court reporting in this country is that many journalists don’t know the intricacies of the court system, and as a consequence, shy away from covering such stories. The obvious result is a weak culture of public journalism monitoring the development and execution of the law, leaving legal behaviour largely unchecked.

The workshop that followed – which involved a judge and other legal officials made a few long speeches and a few Q & A periods with the fifty odd journalists in attendance – is the first of many to come. And from what Mark explained to me, the journalists there expressed an enthusiasm through the kinds of questions they were asking toward sharpening their legal minds to become better reporters.

I had the opportunity to interview the Secretary General of the Supreme Court, and included the clip on my evening news report. It’s not very common to hear clips here because many newsrooms don’t have recorders and microphones for their reporters. The news bulletins at City Radio are usually a long script read by one person.

I had written up my story on my laptop, and when I had finished I called the news editor over to check it out. He seemed impressed that I managed to scrounge up an English story from a four-hour meeting in Kinyarwanda. He then began handwriting my story out on the back of a sheet of paper. I then realized that I hadn’t seen a printer anywhere in the office, and it dawned on me that they must write out the newscast everyday. Three times a day. In three languages. I remembered all of the paper we used in our radio workshop at Carleton, printing off draft after draft of the same story with extra-large font.

It’s the simplest things we take for granted.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying my first week at City Radio, and the people that I’ve met there are infinitely warm and kind. I’m looking forward to the work I’ll get to do over the next two months.

For Bob

Hidden Afternoon Jams.

So, we got into a taxi and told him to take us to Kimisagara - a neighbourhood in Kigali that we haven’t been to yet. We soon discovered that it’s a bit off the beaten path for the muzungu.

We made it to the edge of the hill that we live on, and then ascended up onto another one. The three of us ladies hopped out of the taxi when he stopped in front of a sign that read “Kimisagara.” To our surprise we didn’t find a club or a bar - what we expected to host the reggae jam our colleague Ian invited us to. Rather, we were met by the sight of hundreds of people gathered to watch a football game in the field at the bottom of the hill. The outer edge of the sea of people watching the game made no qualms about staring at us, pointing and laughing, and saying something about muzungus. I guess a lot of them don’t make it out there.

We thought for a second that we missed the concert, as we were an hour late.

But Jesse reminded us that this is African time – and here, nothing happens on time.

We walked around a bit, taking in all of the googly-eyes on the sidelines, and then we heard the bass. It was coming from somewhere to the left of the sea of people.

Rather than walking through the crowd of people who seemed to think that we were an event competing with the soccer match, we decided to turn around and take ‘the back way.’

After turning even more heads because our shortcut ended up being through backyards and alleys, we found the hall the reggae jam was at.

Here’s the evidence.

Hosed

This afternoon was my first real experience of the markets in Kigali. I heckled with the best of ‘em, but I was also had.

I walked around with Kate and Tanya in search of a few necessary things. First, an FM radio so I can start listening to the station I’m going to work for next week. Next, I needed to get a pair of shoes because the ones I brought here are DESTROYED already. The walk from our house to the place where we catch the motos is along a dirt road - a red dirt road. Yes, the earth is like a burnt rusty blush powder, and it sticks to black suede shoes like a wad of gum on your favourite sandals. I should also mention that this brilliant powder gets all over my legs, making me self conscious about how unclean I must look (you can’t see it on everyone else’s legs).

Anyway, the point of this story is not what I bought or how dirty I am, but how I managed to get myself some good deals. I called on my past experiences of heckling with sales people - they always call out an outrageous price, so you reply with one that is equally outrageous. You dance back forth, walk away a few times, both knowing all along that you’ll meet somewhere in middle.

I managed to get decent prices for a small radio and a nice pair of bronzed coloured flats  (I thought they’d go nicely with the burnt orange ankles).

Tired from all of the heckling, I decided to cross the street and grab something to drink and read the paper. I found a paper boy and paid him the three-hundred francs for a copy of The New Times. The paper boy takes the money and walks away. Another man came up behind Kate and I, and offered to sell her the paper. I showed him that we already have one. Then he said, “No today, today.”

I looked at the paper I just bought, and the paper boy - who was off around the corner - sold me a paper from May 1. After all of that heckling for the big stuff, some street newspaper boy ended up scamming a journalist of all people into buying a week old daily newspaper.

So funny!

Moto-Loco

It’s like coffee times a thousand.

Today, Shelley, the program coordinator (and our babysitter extraordinaire thus far), thought we were ready to experience the cheapest way of getting around Kigali - by ‘moto’, a little diesel-powered motorbike that weaves its way through people and heavy traffic. My first ride was early this morning and I if I’m going to be starting out every morning like that, I can definitely skip the coffee.

It was the first time the bunch of us “muzungus” (a.k.a. foreigners) split up, to make our way downtown on a mission to get cell phones and check out our future media placements. There are no addresses here, so you name drop locations and landmarks, and hope that you’ve reached an understanding with your driver and get to the place you want to go.

Even though I spent the entire heart-racing twenty minutes white-knuckled and mumbling profanities in a language the driver couldn’t understand, by the end of it, I felt completely exhilarated, and halfway confident that I can get back on the back of the bike and do it all again.

I quickly observed the traffic rules that prevail here: the largest has the right-of-way. The larger taxi-buses do whatever the hell they want, then there are these cute little semi-trucks things, cars come next, and finally the motos. The few cyclers are at the bottom of the chain, and my sympathy goes out to their nervous system.

Don’t worry mom, I’m wearing a helmet.

In the afternoon, the lot of us went to check out the media locations Kate and I will be working at. Kate’s at Newsline – a weekly-(ish) alternative newspaper. It’s impressive that they can do so much with what appears to be very little resources.

Next we went to City Radio, the private radio station that I’ll be starting at sometime this week or next. It seemed pretty chill, somebody was checking out the latest Ciara video. Everyone seemed open to having me there – I’ll definitely have to work on my French.

Anyway, post more later… running out of battery and internet time.

Love y’all.