Bam!

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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.

So, I moved out of my cushy set up with the RI folk and found my own place in a neighbourhood called Nyamirambo – what many people – depending on your age and level of coolness consider to be either hip or seedy. When I tell people I live in Nyamirambo, they seem surprised. “Really, you live there? Isn’t it too rough for you?” to which I usually reply, “No, but I’m careful like I’d be as a woman anywhere in the world.”

No one has really challenged me on my reasoning, and I’ve made some friends in my hood. Everyday when I walk up the road coming home to my place, a group of six kids when they see me run up my gate and wait for me to get in safely.

I hate to admit it, but I usually vibe these things out, and of all the places I had looked at that one gave me the best feeling in my tum-tum. From what I see, there are a lot of young people – many who grow out their hair (a mild sign of being a thug here, I think) and the place looks more like the rest of Rwanda that I’ve seen rather than the manicured, gated community of where I used to stay.

Even though I’m at City Radio, I’ve taken on a one-month contract with an NGO, CARE International. In a fury of applying for jobs in Rwanda after I decided to stay on here longer (will explain that bit in a minute), little did I know that I applied for the second highest position in CARE’s regional office. I even stopped by to introduce myself and make sure my CV got to the right person. My ma would be so proud for ruthlessly going after what I want. Fortunately, someone passed along my CV to someone who had a project suitable for an entry-level candidate.

That brings me to what I’ve been up to the past few weeks.

CARE has a project of helping to resettle Rwandan refugees who were kicked out of Tanzania two years ago. In 2006, the Tanzanian government expelled around 15,000 Rwandans from the western part of the country. Most of them were forced out with just the clothes on their backs, leaving behind their old lives of raising cattle, and selling agriculture and dairy. Families were torn apart, mothers from children, husbands from wives.

CARE’s role in helping develop these communities is to provide them with the items – wash basins and cooking material, bricks for latrines, clothes and emergency food – and information – making abode bricks, digging latrines, figuring out a system to get clean water – they require to build a village community from scratch. It’s a very “hands-off” approach, with the utmost aim of building the capacity of the people rather than setting up a long-term donation relationship. In fact, CARE’s project is drawing to a close at the end of this year, which brings me around to my role.

I, along with Solange, a social work student from the National University, am interviewing a large cross-section of people at the two sites CARE works at – Rugeyo and Ndego. The aim is to both understand the effect CARE’s assistance has had on the lives of these people, and also to listen to their stories of how they came to these sites.

After only one week of interviewing at one site, I can see that the attempts to live off the land given to them by the Rwandan government, and the hard work needed just to stay alive seems to have worn thin their hopes of what their life will become.

I’ll post some of their stories as I write them up for CARE.

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