I had the best sleep of my time in Rwanda, maybe even my life, in Eugene’s super comfortable bed. I had also had one really long, clear dream that was hilariously appropriate to how I have been feeling lately. Everyone I knew was in a huge feud with each other, the sides were arbitrarily determined, and I was stuck in the middle of everyone’s fighting. I would try to broker peace and communication, and everyone was rational and would listen calmly, and then matter-of-factly explain how they wouldn’t let the vendetta drop. I woke up feeling really good.
I had been upset and frustrated the last couple of days and letting my emotions get the best of me, and now I feel like I had taken a deep breath and cleared my head. It’s true I was seeing a lot of problems here that I want to do something about. They are the same ones that I’ve known the world to have my entire life. Already I’ve seen more than I could possibly help or change in my lifetime, let alone the three months I will be here, and I decided I should focus on what I can do. Getting depressed isn’t going to do anyone any good. So what can I do? All I did was bring my gear, my ability to operate said gear moderately, and my limited knowledge. I sat down with Lama and told him about this, how I felt like we had been seeing, noting, and talking about all the problems we’re encountering here, but we’re not doing a thing and I’d really like to focus on what we can do and do it. He agreed, and together we thought up that I could hold some workshops at UNATEK and teach a small group of students everything I know and how to make a video/documentary. I could have a workshop on the camera, how to use it and control things like the iris, the framerate, etc. Then I could have one about audio and mic’ing people as well as lighting for interviews. Then I could have one about capturing and organizing footage, and then finally one on editing and output. The idea would be to stagger the workshops across the three months I am here, and then by the end, hopefully the students could have made an entire project start to finish with my only supervising and adding feedback.
This idea coincides really well with another project that Lama is working on. He has a relationship with a school in Creston BC that would like to help and work with Lama’s NGO Building Bridges with Rwanda. They have previously sponsored five elementary school students in Kazo, and would like to do more but have requested that Lama show them how they can help. Lama wants to have a community center built at the school in Kazo, so the kids can have a place to play and exercise. He asked me if I would help make a short documentary about that, show Creston how the five sponsored students are doing, and then we’d have something to show Creston to garner support for the project. Lama and I agreed that what I could do is combine that project with the idea of teaching workshops so that the kids themselves will make the documentary about Kazo. I think it’s a great idea, and it is something I can do.
After Lama’s and my conversation that morning, we all showered, ate, and left Eugene’s for Gashora to visit the COVAGA women, the reason I’m here in the first place. We stopped by this mall called the MTN center (MTN is like the Rwandan Telus), and it was unbelievably posh. The Bourbon Coffee that was inside it was nice for anywhere in the world, not just Rwanda. We bought some snacks at a completely modern grocery store for the ride, and were on our way. It is still bizarre to so quickly transition from the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor.
Gashora was smaller and poorer than even Kibungo. The COVAGA women weave and work in a run-down building in dire need of repair, and as we walked in, there were 35 women and their children sitting there waiting for us and they gave us applause. I don’t know what they expect from us and our project here, and I really hope we don’t disappoint them. We talked through Lama and Evanitie, the head and founder of COVAGA, to explain what we were doing and how we hoped to work with them instead of for them. After talking, we decided it would be good to get some footage and photos of the place. Kara and I also wanted to take portraits of everyone there too. Although that didn’t really pan out for me. A large group of kids were swarming me interested in the cameras I had and what I was doing. After seeing how amazing it was when Cynthia was introduced to photography, I just handed over my cameras to the kids, and they went to town. I am much more interested in what they want to shoot and see anyway. The women all joined in too and everyone took turns trying out both cameras. I haven’t watched the footage yet, but the stills they took were excellent.
After that Evanitie took us down to the lake where they get water and where the water hyacinth are. I got a lot of great footage and Lama interviewed her and some locals about the water situation. One guy described their problem: the people can’t afford water, so they have to drink what they can get for free. The problem of that is, is where the clean water is there are crocodiles and it’s too dangerous to get water from there. So they’re forced to drink the dirty water, knowing full well it will make them sick but they just don’t have any other choices. It’s a bad situation.
We were heading back to Kigali to meet with Ndambe, a friend we made at the Rwanda Science and Research Council conference last week. We stopped in Nyamata to check out the hotel (the closest to COVAGA) and investigate possibly staying there for a few nights while I get all the footage I’ll need for the COVAGA aspect of the documentary. It seems like a nice enough town, and we left so that we could be on time to meet Ndambe. Even though we were in a hurry, the scenery of the landscape was too beautiful for me not to film, so I had us pull over and I got the camera out, slowing us down even more. It was worth it. The farmers were burning something in the fields and it was making the entire sky smokey like a fog, and the sun was setting behind the hills shining right through it. I just had to film it, and since it’s Africa, it’s cool if we’re late.
We were about an hour late meeting with Ndambe, and thankfully he was with a friend, Comfort, so he wasn’t waiting alone. We had a great meal and time together. Ndambe is a PHD student at Texas A & M so it was fun to talk about his experiences at a big college like that, living in Texas and life in the States. I was dead tired by the end of our meal though and I really wonder why I am so tired here all the time. In Vancouver I stay up all night every night, sleep for a few hours and then have really long days. I average like 5 hours of sleep, and that’s the way I like it. Here, I can’t stay up past 9 pm for the life of me, I just become useless. Anyway, I was glad when everyone decided we’d leave, and Ndambe was nice enough to drive us back to our hotel.
