Ishyamba

Our plan was today to take advantage of Kigali.  Kara and Lama and I all wanted to go to Serena and buy a pass for the weight room and pool to get some exercise.  But when I woke up in the morning, I didn’t feel so well.  I had a headache and I felt weak.  Plus I had a lot of errands I wanted to do, so I passed on the exercise, as much as I wanted it.  I just knew it wouldn’t make me feel better, but I would risk feeling worse.  I needed to return the microphone I rented from Martin, I needed to buy a PCI firewire card for the PC’s back at UNATEK, and I wanted to buy and mail some postcards.  Freddy said he would take me to the computer store because he knew where it was, I was just supposed to call him when I wanted to go.

So I called Martin first.  No answer.  I left a text.  I called Freddy.  No answer.  So my getting my errands done became resting in my hotel room.  I talked to Kara and Lama and the plan was to just meet them at Serena and do some work out in the beautiful garden/pool/patio/bar area.  We did that for awhile, I ordered some apple pie, and after thirty minutes was told there was no apple pie.  I laughed.  However, this time I wasn’t shut down entirely, they had pumpkin pie instead, and I was thrilled about that.  It was delicious.

Freddy joined us at Serena and had a cold drink and then we all left together.  We went to the computer store, and we picked up the firewire card.  It was $50 so we only bought one for now.  Hopefully somehow we can get money to get more.  From there, Kara went to a ForEx and I went to a postcard store.  The postcard selection was brutal.  I ended up buying cards but they didn’t have envelopes.  Kara wanted to go hang out at Bourbon, and we were meeting with Edward there at 4 pm and Taylor at 5 pm.  I had texted Taylor and asked if he had any sweet Friday night ideas, and he wrote back “Night time hike up mount Kigali” and I thought that was an awesome idea.  So it made sense to kill the afternoon at Bourbon, surf the web, enjoy the patio etc. and wait for our meetings.  I was also going to spend 5-10 minutes at the post office mailing my stuff.

More like an HOUR and 10 minutes.  What’s most shocking is how I am still shocked when things go so slowly.  I should just learn by now.  But something as simple as mailing a few letters can become an ordeal.  First off, I had no idea what was going on at the post office.  There were lines and windows open but they all looked different.  Eventually after waiting in one long enough to get to the teller, I learned they don’t have envelopes.  So I walked outside and asked the security guard where I could get envelopes, but we didn’t use words.  We used charades, my language of choice in Rwanda.  Eventually he turned to another passerby, and asked him, and the guy just took off running.  I guess he was going to get some?  So I didn’t feel like a high speed chase, but I did slowly start walking behind him.

While I was waiting for him, I got swarmed by people begging for money.  I couldn’t say no, especially when he returned and was handing me all my change.  I said just give it to them, I don’t want it back.  Exchanging money in front of them was just heart wrenching, and there was no way I was putting that money in my pocket and walking away.  I sat down on a ledge to write the addresses on the envelopes, and was again swarmed, made some friends, talked to some ex-pats, saw a pack of maybe 50 germans that all yelled muzungu and pointed at me, so I waved.  It was the highest density of white people I’ve seen in months, and it was actually strange.  I went back into the post office and through my fluency in charades bought some stamps, applied them and stuffed my mail into a box I hope will get the letters to their destination.

When I finally got back to Bourbon, Lama texted us and said the meeting was no longer going to be at Bourbon with Edward, it was at Iris.  So Kara took off to go to that meeting, and I was waiting at Bourbon for Taylor.  While I was waiting, Sheila Hall called and we discussed how things are going.  It’s funny how I’m never really thinking about how I am feeling about everything until I need to articulate it.  It’s like if someone asks me if I’m doing good, and the question makes me think about it for the first time, and my answer is, “….Yes…. I do feel good.  Thanks for asking!”  That’s how I felt after our conversation.  Good.  About everything.

So Taylor arrived and I told him the change of plans, and we decided to walk around and enjoy the dusk until Lama and Kara made it back to the hotel.  We were planning on hiking up during sunset, watching the sunset, and coming down in the dark, so we needed to bring flashlights, and we were already behind schedule.  Kara and Lama actually made good time, and we were all at the hotel shortly.  Kara and Lama wanted to change before the hike, and that meant Lama moto-ing to Freddy’s to get to his clothes.  So the three of us sat down to have a drink.  A drink turned into a snack.  A snack turned into dinner.  The daylight turned to night.  We discussed the fate of our hike, did we still want to do it?  Taylor and I were 100% in, Kara was reluctant but in, and Lama bailed altogether, and I find it funny because we waited the longest for him to change.  Oh well.

So Taylor, Kara and I flagged down motos and had the most beautiful night time ride up through Nyamirambo to a pub called Panorama that’s at the bottom of the hill.  From there, we started walking uphill, staying on the road.  Eventually the street lights ended, followed by the street itself.  We were at this really dark spot at the foot of the forest, and the hill got quite steep from there on out.  We decided to just go for it.  While we were standing there though, someone called out from the darkness, and it was so startling.  We couldn’t see anything, but we heard voices, and suddenly this guy stepped out of the dark and he was carrying something thin and long against his leg.  Taylor raised his hands and said “Woah” and backed up as this guy came toward us.  I thought he had a machete, and apparently Taylor did too, and my fear was cued more by his surprise in the situation than the situation itself.  Taylor knows what’s up here, so if he reacts, that is my cue to react.  It turned out he was only carrying a stick, and he was only coming over to say hi.  But for a brief moment, my heart and mind started racing.  It definitely got our blood pumping.  I feel bad that my mind leapt to the worst but I couldn’t help it.  And now, for those of you readers who have never been to Rwanda, I need to stress that I feel safer in this country than I do in Canada, and going for a hike at night does not feel like, nor is it, a bad idea.  It is unbelievable how friendly and nice EVERYONE is, and I’m not being naïve about it.  It really is that safe.  Where it is easy for your mind to leap to wild conclusions, as my own did in this situation, you have to be here to understand what it is actually like.

We started up the hill with our flashlights, and it was quite a hike.  It must have been at least a 45 degree angle incline.  It was quite a thrill too, hiking through the forest at night, especially after the false alarm scare that took my body right into fight or flight.  The adrenaline never really stopped.  Taylor has done this hike before in the day, but this was the first foray into night hiking.  Kigali is a beautiful city at night, and so our train of thought was the view would be even better after dark, with all the lights dotting the hills.  Eventually we reached a road that wasn’t as steep as the side of the hill, so we opted to just walk up that and catch our breath.  We were chatting and having fun, and then the road stopped and we were kind of in this marshy area on top.  We were just coming up on the view when we heard another voice calling out to us from behind.  We turned and saw a flashlight.  It was a soldier.  Then two.  They were saying that we weren’t allowed to be here and we tried to explain we just wanted to see the view.  We tried to say come with us and see, it will be pretty, and they said no, we need to wait here.  They had to call their commander.

Taylor was doing an amazing job dealing with them and keeping the situation really light hearted, making a lot of jokes and keeping the soldiers laughing.  When the one started calling his commander, Taylor was looking at his cell phone at it read “calling: Africa” and Taylor joked “Oh, you’re just calling the continent?  You have Africa’s number?” and it was actually really funny.  Eventually the soldiers took us back to two more soldiers, and we were told to wait until the commander came.  We were talking with the soldiers, being friendly and doing our best to keep the air light.  Within maybe 10 minutes, the commander, who’s name actually was Africa, arrived.  He wasn’t in fatigues like the rest of them, and he did speak English.

He explained to us that we weren’t allowed to be in the forest at night, but we had figured that much out pretty quick.  He said it was dangerous at night and he couldn’t be sure we’d be safe.  There might be thieves and if something happened, it would look really bad, even though something bad could happen anywhere at night, anywhere in the world, and we agreed.  He said we needed to come with him and spend the night in the barracks so that we could travel in the morning when it was light and safe.  We explained no, we were just going to go home, we had learned our lesson.  He said no, it was too dangerous, something could happen.  We thanked him for his concern and reassured him we’d be fine.  This argument went back and forth for awhile, and I wasn’t sure if we were going to get out of there before morning.  Finally, Africa seemed satisfied that this had been a learning experience for us.  He and my favorite soldier in the bunch, Jean Baptist, escorted us down the hill.  The military escort down the hill was fun.

We stopped in at Panorama to look at the amazing view one more time, and figure out what we wanted to do.  We decided on H2O, and maybe we’d start off the night by hanging out and dancing there, then moving somewhere like Cadillac.  It took us quite a while to flag down three motos, so a lot of it was Kara on a moto driving slowly beside us on the one we found by Panorama, while Taylor and I ran down the streets until we got to a main road to find more.  The night time drive in the warm air was glorious and my moto driver was by far the funniest one I’d ever had.  There was minutes of solid laughter between the two of us.

H2O was DEAD, there was practically no one there.  So we decided to have one drink since we were there.  After that though we took off.  I didn’t feel much like dancing anymore, I was more in a relaxing/talking mood, so this time we chose to go the rooftop patio at Mille Collines.  It sounded like the perfect plan to me.  We just walked from H2O.  There is a club part of Mille Collines that was super loud and packed, and then quite a beautiful roof top patio.  We ended up just hanging over the banister and looking over the grounds and city, talking.  There is such a bizarre tension between what you see and the connotations behind it.  Just knowing what was happening here 14 years ago, specifically at Mille Collines, just makes it feel like some kind of holy ground.  Things that are so simple, so normal in Canada, carry a heavy weight here in Rwanda.  Like a swimming pool.  Or a beer tap.  Or a machete.

Kara was beat, Taylor was tired and had an early morning, so we decided to just leave and not get anything there.  And we decided to walk back to the hotel since it was so close.  The night had been great, although it had a strong degree of surrealism in it.  It was a strange combination of good times and deep thoughts that left me feeling confused as we trudged back to our hotel and went to bed.

Matt Danger

Yesterday Lama had called CITT/KIST and set up a spur of the moment trip to Gashora to do data collection about the water situation.  He has some geologist/water specialist friends from Australia coming in September or October to assist in the building and development of clean water sources in Gashora, so we needed to get statistics, photo-documentation and other forms of data for them in preparation.  The plan that was arranged was we would meet with Matthew Hatari and get a vehicle, and together drive there and spend the day gathering what we needed.  I was going to bring my camera and film more parts of Gashora and anything else I found interesting.  We were going to spend the one night in Kigali and then come back tomorrow, it was just a quick day trip.

So what all that meant was that we were on the 6 am Ontracom to Kigali.  I didn’t get much sleep again, and ironically enough, Lama was busting my chops saying I got plenty of sleep, and then he slept the whole bus ride and I stayed awake.  I figure I can sleep as much as I want when I get back to Canada, but the day is going to come when I will miss these sunrises and this countryside like a loved one, so I couldn’t bring myself to look away or close my eyes, despite how much they burned from a lack of sleep.

When we arrived in Kigali we went straight to Isimbi to check in, except it was full.  So we decided to try the Dream Inn Motel based on a recommendation from Joanna, whom we met at a conference once.  It is about equidistant to Bourbon from Dream Inn as Isimbi, just in the other direction.  They had vacancy, except not until noon, so we stored our luggage with them and went to Bourbon for breakfast.  Bourbon was funny today.  As we went in, I said I couldn’t wait for my coffee, I was hurting and I needed it.  I don’t know what I did to deserve the service I got, but it must have been something.  Lama, our regular server there (not our Lama), brought out coffee and cups for Kara and Lama, and not me.  I waited patiently.  He brought Kara and Lama their food.  I still didn’t have my cup or coffee.  When Kara and Lama were done eating for the most part, I got my cup, but not my breakfast.  By the way, I had ordered a bowl of fruit and a cinnamon roll.  Eventually the fruit bowl came but not the cinnamon roll.  But the bill came.  So I said I ordered a cinnamon roll, is it coming?  No, we don’t have any cinnamon rolls today.  What was I thinking!?  Anyway.  Lama and Kara’s service was bang on the whole time, and I couldn’t catch a break.

While we were sitting there too, things weren’t looking so good for our trip to Gashora.  We had talked to Matt and he couldn’t get a hold of Etienne or the vehicle yet.  We couldn’t get a hold of Etienne either.  We had made a Plan B just in case of something like this, and had talked to Freddy.  Freddy was going to see if he could give us a ride there, or get a driver for us.  We got the call from Freddy saying Plan B was a no go either.  We moved onto developing Plan C, which was cramming with all of our gear into the bus to Nyamata, and then trying to figure out from there how we’d finish the trip to Gashora, hopefully by moto or another bus.  These set backs were not too welcome to us, coming fresh from yesterday’s shafting of our movie night.  Luckily though, before we left Bourbon, Matt called back and said he heard back about the vehicle, and it was going to happen.  He was going to come pick us up from Dream Inn.

Matt, and the driver, Frank, didn’t pick us up until after 1 pm, and we were hoping to be back to Kigali by 4 pm, but that wasn’t looking likely now.  The drive was fine and the difference between Frank’s 4×4 truck driving on the bumpy roads, and the truck I drove that had no shocks or wheel suspension was night and day.  Frank was doing probably 30+ km/h, flying down the road, and if I did 5 km we were hitting our heads on the roof of the truck.  Basically, we made good time.

At Gashora, Evanitie was there but not the rest of the weavers.  Kara did show her the design(s) she’s been making for them, and Evanitie seemed very pleased.  From there though, it was business about water.  Lama and Matt were taking notes, photos, and interviewing people.  I was filming.  Every kid in the umudugudu (village) was staring at as.  The muzungu show was on in full swing.  It took a couple hours to see all the wells and locations for potential wells and we went all over the umudugudu.  By the way, umudugudu is my favorite word by far here.  I want to use it to mean whatever I want.  It sounds like oo-moo-doo-goo-doo.  Just say it.  Exactly, it’s fun.  At one point I had to stop filming because they were holding Gacacas nearby and it was sensitive.  Gacaca means “justice on the grass” and is a traditional Rwandan practice of community courts with emphasis on healing.  We went down to a new lake too, and it was so beautiful.  There was a resort being built that has so much potential to be spectacular, although it needs a road.  Right now, it’s pretty inaccessible unless you already live in Gashora, yet I doubt the locals will be the ones staying there.

Finally we had all we needed and it was time to go.  Again we had worked through lunch and again we were very hungry.  Frank wanted to stop to get some food.  I absolutely didn’t want to.  For one, I knew all I’d be getting was goat brochette and I didn’t want that.  Secondly, I knew it would take forever and we’d be better off driving straight through to Kigali and getting something good.  I lost.  So we stopped in Nyamata, at our favorite restaurant there that has never done a good job once.  We also hadn’t been drinking any fluid and were out in the hot sun all day, so we were as thirsty as we were hungry when we sat down.  I’m done with beer for this trip, I get a bad headache every time I drink it and I think it’s from mixing with the mefloquine, but Lama and Kara were begging for Mutzig.  Which is good, because this restaurant is plastered with Mutzig posters, umbrellas, table cloths etc.  You’d think they had some Mutzig.  But they don’t.  They don’t have much, this restaurant in Nyamata.  So we are about to leave and they say no no, we can get you some Mutzig, stay here.  Frank, Matt and I order Fanta Citrons though.  Two of them come and they go to Matt and Frank.  I say I ordered a Fanta Citron too.  She says sorry those were the last two.  So I order what I should have learned by now to order every time I go somewhere, and that is “whatever it is you do have”.  So I got a coke, and I was fine with it.  We also order the only food on the menu, goat.  Matt orders this special type of goat meat, the intestines, that the waitress claims they have.  I tell Matt they’re out.  He says “No, she said there’s two left”, and I say trust me.

After a long period of no food arriving or no Mutzig, we started to investigate the whereabouts of our food and drinks.  Soon coming was the answer.  Things are always soon coming, except soon is a relative term.  Soon compared to Haley’s comet coming, for example.  Not soon in measurement of minutes or hours.  At one point our waiter came and said, “You can have Mutzig, but it will be 1000 francs” and we say screw it.  No.  It’s taking too long and now you’re overcharging us ridiculous amounts, so no.  She leaves.  15 minutes later she comes back and says, “Ok, you can have Mutzig, but it will be 1200”.  This is hilarious to me.  We refuse to pay 1000, so the price goes up?  At this point, through the hunger and exhaustion, we are just laughing so hard.  The service is unbelievably bad here.  And they have nothing.  I feel like saying I told you so but I don’t.  Finally, well over an hour after we order our food, it arrives.  A plate of goat brochettes.  None of Matt’s goat stomach though.  I say, “Oh, where’s yours?” “She said they were out”.  Surprise surprise.  So we eat our food as fast as we can so we can get the hell out of Nyamata.  Matt and Frank tell us how people call Kigali Rwanda, and everything else isn’t.  So you say “Let’s go back to Rwanda” when you’re going to Kigali, and that’s exactly what we wanted.

I had a really great day in Gashora, all things considered.  Matt is a super funny guy, and Kara and I had a blast joking and talking with him.  His last name, Hatari, means danger, so we called him DJ Matt Danger.  We also made up elaborate scenarios of how he could be a character on 24.  I realize that everyone from Rwanda who speaks English well is amazing.  Freddy, Sigfried, Regina, Matt, all these people are incredibly interesting and I love talking with them.  What that leads me to believe is that people in Rwanda are incredibly interesting, and it makes me wish I knew the language.  Everyone I do connect with is wonderful, so how many wonderful people am I missing out on through our lack of a shared language?

We were dropped off at the hotel and it was probably around 8.  We had called Freddy and he wanted to meet up, and were thinking maybe we’d try to order tiramisu again at Papyrus, just dessert and coffee since we ended up eating dinner already.  But by the time Freddy arrived, Lama and I were done for.  It was a long, long, hot, long, and hot day, and we had been up early.  I wanted to see Freddy but I had very little left to give.  So we decided to just hang out in the restaurant downstairs, that way, I didn’t have to go very far to make it to my bed afterwards.

Again, service was fine except for me.  I ordered an African Tea and it took so long I had to ask if it was actually still coming.  We joke about where things come from when you order them.  For example, in Nyamata, we ordered goat, but it still had to be born.  The mother was giving birth, they raised the goat, slaughtered it and then they started cooking it.  That’s why it took so long.  Well, I guess they had to grow and harvest the ginger for my African tea since they were out, because that is the only rational explanation I can come up with to why it took so long to arrive.  But it tasted good when it did, so no hard feelings.  We told Freddy all about our great day and he just laughed and laughed about it.  I love telling Freddy about our experiences because even though he’s from Rwanda, he relates way more to us muzungus than he does the local people here, so to him it’s comic gold.  I think around 11 Lama and I agreed it was time to call it a night, so I trudged upstairs, and it was lights out fast.

Red Tape

All tallied, I got about 3 hours of sleep last night.  It wasn’t a really big deal, because all we were doing today was:
-busing to Kazo with the students
-filming all day long
-busing back
-going straight to our movie screening and community conversation that followed, hoping to lead a stimulating discussion

Who needs energy for that?  Not me.  To be honest though, I did feel decent considering it was an awful night.  Again it was boring breakfast of bread and coffee, and by 9 am we were downtown waiting for the bus.  People said the bus should be coming soon, but it could take up to an hour.  So we started arranging moto rides to Kazo and just as we had 5 motos ready the bus arrived and we took it instead.  The road out to Kazo is maybe a 15 minute drive and insanely bumpy.  All I could think is how much fun it would have been to moto!

We stopped in at the district office to say hello and from there walked maybe 15 minutes to the school.  I found it hilarious that as we were walking, we somehow ended up fanned out into a straight line, spanning across the entire road.  We rolled into town, and there was old houses and people looking at us walking into town in this posse, and I turned to Kara and said, “It feels like we’re in the wild west!” and we laughed because it honestly did look like a scene of out a western.  So I ran ahead and snapped a photo of the gang:

the posse rolling into Kazo

The school at Kazo, and everyone we met there, were great.  The kids were awesome, the staff was awesome, the grounds themselves were very pleasant.  The UNATEK students helped to do all the shooting.  Sometimes I would tell them what I wanted and how I wanted it done, and they would set it up.  Other times I would ask them what they thought, and they always had good ideas.  Their framing was excellent most of the time, although they loved framing objects dead center, but I was interested in getting a lot of negative space so we’ll have room for text.  Regardless, they were doing a really good job.

There was a lot to get, interviews to shoot and locations to cover, and we shot right through lunch.  Eventually after we were done shooting with others and it was just pick up shots, I took the camera myself and went to get everything I could think that we might need.  Everyone was hungry and tired so I just wanted to move as quick as possible.  When I came back from my lone shooting, we were all packed up and ready to go, except that the cover for the boom pole was missing.  We didn’t move it around to too many locations and we back tracked and double checked but it was nowhere to be seen.  I couldn’t imagine anyone would take it, it is a very slim, small, essentially useless device EXCEPT for carrying a pole inside.  The handle isn’t even that good.  And I wouldn’t have cared at all, really, if it was mine.  But it was Martin’s.  I did not want to have to buy him a replacement, or for that matter even explain I lost his boom pole cover.  After maybe 30+ minutes of scouring, I was ready to give up.  Camille, one of the students, promised it’d turn up.  Kara and I scoffed and said “You promise?  What are the chances of it coming back?  You can’t promise when the odds aren’t good!” and he said that the odds were good.  I said that I’d call the odds a snowball’s chance in hell.

What made things even better, was at the EXACT same time we found out we couldn’t find the boom cover, we also found out Casimir had canceled our movie night.  He said we didn’t go through the proper protocol to hold an event and so it was being canceled.  Protocol?  We did everything they ever asked of us, including(!!) holding an event that we would introduce ourselves to the community with.  We were ASKED to do this BY Casimir.  Yet somehow, at every possible junction, it feels like he was doing everything to stop us, short of saying out loud, “I don’t want you to screen that movie”.  And that’s why it is extra frustrating.  Every time we meet him, face to face, he’s all smiles and buddy buddy with us, saying he wants to work together, and then every time we hit a bump in the road, it is directly Casimir’s doing, like he’s trying to thwart us.  The level of resistance we are encountering because we are trying to screen a movie and have a dialog with students is absolutely jaw dropping.  The amount of time and energy spent, and now wasted, was ridiculous in comparison to how simple the intended outcome was.  We jump through stupid hoop after pointless hoop after worthless hoop, just so we make sure we’re doing it right and play by the rules.  And still, LAST MINUTE, it gets canceled.  Maybe I don’t have all the information.  Maybe I don’t understand the way things work here.  Maybe I’m dead wrong.  But to me, this is how I see it.

So Casimir managed to stop us (so far) from screening our movie.  And I don’t know what we’re going to do yet.  But I know I don’t want to roll over and take this.  If we just sit quiet and appease Casimir and his ego, what is ever going to change?  On one hand, it’s just a movie and it’s not a big deal and we have a lot better ways we can spend our time, money and energy.  But on the other hand, it’s the principle!  If we give up on this, on something as simple as the right to screen a movie, then the terrorists have really won.  Whoops, I mean the bureaucratic ego maniacs have won.  What I really mean is it is unbelievably stupid there is such a big deal over screening a movie.

Everything I just spewed out in those last two paragraphs, those thoughts and feelings, had come flooding over me when Lama told me about the screening being canceled.  We were now walking back toward the main road of Kazo to catch the bus back, and it felt like defeat.  But we had a huge boost in spirits when down the road, we saw one of the Kazo teachers on the back of a pedal bike taxi holding up the boom pole bag!  He had found it!  I actually felt AMAZING seeing that thing come back.  I couldn’t believe he found it.  Apparently, some kid had seen it and thought it was cool and took it, hoping to maybe store pens in it (haha?).  Providence, the principal had said she knew someone took and and she knew the students knew who it was, so they better fess up or they’d be in trouble, and sure enough they told and it was recovered.  Losing the screening was a blow but this was an equal boost in the other direction.  At least the day wasn’t all wrong.

So we were extremely hungry and thirsty at this point, and we went back to our house since we didn’t have the screening to worry about.  We invited Canisius and Camille back to our house, and Kara and I had told Camille that if we did recover the boom pole case, we’d buy him 2 mutzigs on us.  So they came for lunch and we made good on our promise, since Camille had made good on his.  After lunch we looked through all the photographs that had been taken that day and talked, but eventually everyone slipped in silence.  I decided that was my cue to take a siesta, because I was tres exhausted.

I woke up a couple hours later, and my head felt like bricks and my face felt stupid and I was basically a cave man.  I was up at 5:30 so we could walk to school and hang out around where we WERE going to hold the movie, so we could at least talk to students who planned on coming and maybe even salvage the discussion part.  After waiting well past the start time and seeing no one, we threw in the towel and went home.  At the house Regina came by and ate with us, and we all talked until about 9 pm when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.  Since we were getting up at 5 to bus to Kigali tomorrow, I knew I needed the sleep, so I went to bed.  The day had a lot of ups and downs, I probably hit a new level of frustration I’ve yet to experience here, but overall I felt good still.  None of it got me down, it just makes me want to work that much harder.  Tomorrow is another day.

Lies and preparations

Breakfast has been pretty plain lately waiting for market day tomorrow.  We just had bread to eat and coffee to drink.  At least we had picked up some peanut butter in Kigali.

Our rescheduled movie night is coming up on Wednesday and we wanted to go to UNATEK and finalize and print the new, corrected posters and get them up around the campus.  I was also going to start installing some editing software at the computer lab to make sure it was going to be up and running by the time we needed it.  If there were going to be issues, I wanted to know about them now and not two weeks down the road when I wanted to be teaching editing.  The three of us went there together but we parted ways once we got there, myself to the computer lab and the other two to print.

The software installed without a hitch and I got it up and running, there were no issues.  Unfortunately, there are hardware issues.  NONE of the computers at UNATAEK have a firewire port, so there is no way to connect a camera/deck to transfer video to the computer to be edited.  That is a pretty, pretty, pretty….pretty important part of the editing process.  I am not interested in just doing this one job here and taking off.  I have to figure this out.  I really want to leave something behind for these students.  If I just give them footage, use my camera, my computer, etc., when I leave and take all that with me, what did I really do?  Show the students a couple neat tricks they’ll never use again?  So Kara and I started talking and we need to figure out a way to fundraise some money and get them at least ONE camera and ONE firewire card so they have the capabilities to produce a video project on their own.  There has to be film schools in Canada getting rid of bottom of the line SD cameras.  Firewire cards aren’t that much money, I found some online for $18.  We think that perhaps at our art show in Kigali coming up would be a good opportunity to raise some money to buy these things for these kids and get them up and running.  They have all the ingredients – they are creative and motivated, so all they need is to get the tools to let that out.

We all met up on campus and Lama had more meetings to do, so again we separated, this time Kara and I walking around and eventually heading home.  Magnifique (Ndambe) arrived just after lunch because he was visiting relatives nearby and wanted to say goodbye to us.  We hung out and it was really fun.  We discussed and debated the concept of lying here.  I find it so funny how lying is part of the culture.  How my waiter can let me order tiramisu, and then thirty minutes later return to say there is none, and not only is there no tiramisu there is no dessert whatsoever.  This was an upscale restaurant, he HAD to have known they had no dessert when I ordered.  And I would understand if he took my order and then sent someone to go get some tiramisu and serve it to me, the lie works and makes sense.  He buys time to pull it off.  But in this scenario, and so many I am encountering here, there is no function to the lie.  It’s hilarious.  Even Lama and Magnifique agree, and they do their best to explain but I’ll never understand it.  Every perspective on it is funny and we laugh while we talk about it.  The thing that doesn’t make sense, is how does it not bother the people here!  I know I am coming from another culture, but does it not frustrate the local people too to be lied to?  Another common lie regards distances.  If you ask someone how far something is, you might as well not.  They’ll say 5-15 minutes no matter what.  Even if it is over an hour.  Lama says it is so you don’t get discouraged, they want to let you think you can walk it.  What?!  Let me make that choice for myself!  How come no one questions that when they’ve been walking for hours and they’re still not there, that maybe the truth would have been nice?  To me, what makes sense is even if people lie, that the person on the receiving end of the lie would realize it didn’t benefit them, and not in turn lie to someone else.  But I guess not.  It is just a cultural difference I can’t enter into, and therefore it’s so funny and so bizarre.  I would love to make a documentary about lying and cultural differences if I had the time, but not this trip.

Magnifique and Kara left us to go out for a drive, and Lama and I went to UNATEK to run final checks on setting up for our movie night.  We checked out the hall, troubleshot how we’d set up the screen, and worked out the logistics of seating and talking.  It would work.  From there, we went to the computer lab to see Clement and test the projector with Kara’s laptop running the DVD.  It worked.  Then we went to meet Prosper and do a sound check.  They had three speakers, a receiver and the cables and we set it all up.  It worked.  So it seemed like everything was going to work tomorrow night for our screening.

After successfully testing everything we were standing around talking to the students.  Lama and I decided to inquire about getting some students to translate interviews into English.  Prosper thought he knew someone who might, and about a second later, goes, “Oh there he is walking by” and called him over.  So we met with him, his English was excellent and I think we’re going to work something out.  It will save my life, or at least the project, and I am happy to employ these students and pay for such a developed skill as translation.

Lama and I walked home, and Kara and Magnifique were back.  We all hung out for a while, I burned Magnifique a ton of music to a DVD, and then we said goodbye.  He’s going back to Texas on Friday so this was the last time we’d see him.  He’s a super rad dude and I’m really glad we got to meet him and hang out with him while we were here.  Once he was gone, the three of us ate dinner.  Once dinner was over, I went to lie in my bed and watch High Fidelity, which I was LOVING until the file was corrupted and it wouldn’t finish.  I’ve seen it before, but man it’s so good.  I was choked.  So I watched PS I Love You, and for the most part, hated it.

A rat and a class

Awake.
Good morning world!  Good morning suitcase!  Good morning rat hiding behind my suitcase in the corner!  That’s how I started my day.  I went out to have breakfast and I told Kara and Lama about my new friend and we discussed its fate.  I refuse to kill it and opted to corner it in a box and take it far away from the house and let it go (how far away do you have to take a rat so it doesn’t come back?)  By the time I went back into my room to investigate, it was nowhere to be seen.  It’s still M.I.A. so hopefully it was smart enough to over hear Kara and Lama’s plot to kill it and leave for greener, more tolerant pastures.

Right after breakfast, Lama and I got to work translating, and after a few hours we had translated 5 minutes of footage.  My goodness it is going to take forever and I think I’m going to need to hire some students to help or something.  We’ll never make it otherwise.  That or Lama and I collectively agree to quit sleeping for a month.  I would prefer the former.  We put it on hold to have lunch, and after that Lama and Kara went back to the expo so they could actually see it during the day and talk to people, where last night was more of a party.  I stayed at the house to keep working.

In the afternoon, the students were scheduled to come by the house and I was going to run a camera workshop.  Since we’re planning to begin our collective documentary project on Wednesday, I needed to show them more than just the camera.  We had said 2 pm, and only 2 students out of 7 had showed up, so we waited until 3 pm before we started.  Well 2 was all that made it out, and it wasn’t necessarily so bad because it allowed me to give them a much higher quality lesson.  I explained the camera and all the features and functions and controls, which when you’ve never done ANY photography, is a daunting task.  There are a lot of complicated concepts and it is a lot to dive into all at once.  So I let them just take the camera and go shoot something.  They came back in 15 minutes and they had shot some sweet footage and got used to controlling the image.  After that, I tried my best to explain audio and microphones.  Once that lesson was over, I had them set up a documentary interview in the backyard, and since Alice had joined in on the lesson making three, everyone got a turn to interview, be interviewed, and work the camera and headphones.  I don’t know what they interviewed each other about but they were laughing a lot.  I heard Mutzig a couple of times though.

I am not sure how to gauge the success of the workshop.  They got their hands on the camera, they saw how it works, and they shot a bit.  We’re going out into the field Wednesday so they’ll have another opportunity to try it all out and just get practice.  I really hope by the end I can encourage them to just try and experiment and figure things out, and realize they don’t need me to teach them.  I’m still optimistic we can make something together.

The workshop ended in the evening and we worked on other projects until it was dinner time.  Lama had to take off for a meeting with Bernard and skipped dinner altogether.  Regina showed up to discuss business with us, and since she is one of the students in my “class” I said we might as well do the workshop again since I can go much faster as she speaks English and it was her alone.  She also might be the keenest to learn, plus she volunteers at a radio station as a journalist.  She’s got the media bug.  And she hauled the camera’s ass too.  She was guessing what I would explain next and basically saying “get out of my way and let me do it”, and I couldn’t have liked her attitude more.  She interviewed Kara and set it all up and seemed to have a really solid understanding of the concepts, not just saying she did.  So I’m glad she got to try out the camera too, and she will be coming out on Wednesday and she’ll be a huge help on the shoot I’m sure.

Regina took off later and somehow again I was wiped out. What is in the air in Kibungo?  I did a bit of reading and writing in my bed for awhile but that was the end of my day.
Asleep.

Mindsets and set backs

This morning we had some final shopping to do, we were checking out of the hotel, and then busing back to Kibungo in the afternoon because we were screening Born into Brothels in the evening.  I know that that is the simplest chain of events, but nothing goes as planned in Rwanda.  You just have to count on the fact that you can’t count on anything.  So I needed to withdraw some money since my ten day bender broke me.  Not that I spent extravagantly though.

It wasn’t a holiday, but it might as well have been.  Everything was closed.  Except the churches.  Even the shiny new Bank De Kigali wasn’t open on Sunday.  So I didn’t know how to get money out.  I was told there is a 7 days a week bank inside Novotel.  Freddy had come by with Lama, and Lama and Kara were going to go back to the market to exchange some clothes, so Freddy offered to take me to Novotel.  We split up.

Freddy drove me to Novotel and we found out that that particular bank only accepts Mastercard.  Not Visa nor American Expresss (the two credit cards I do have).  Apparently the airport has a branch of Bank De Kigali that is open and will accept Visa, so there the two of us go.  We get there and find they are open and will take Visa.  Great.  Do you have your passport?  Not so great.  I have to go back to Isimbi, get my passport and then come back to the airport.  I tell Freddy to just leave me at this point, I can moto around from here on out, but he refuses and we stick together.  To be honest, I’m not too upset I forgot my passport because it means I get to spend even more time with Freddy.  Riding in the car, just the two of us, is the first time I’ve had a really personal conversation with anybody from Rwanda.  The two results of our several hours together is that I realize what has happened and is happening in Rwanda is something I will never understand.  I am physically incapable of it, I can’t enter the mindset of what the people who live here have been through and felt.  I also learn that Freddy is quite possibly the most amazing human I’ve ever met.

After going back to the airport and withdrawing money, Freddy drops me off at the edge of town because he is heading out to the country to see his father.  I hop on a moto and go to exchange the american currency I have and then meet Lama and Kara.  I eventually find one Forex that is open, and walk to La Galett, the grocery store that they’re at.

By the time I get there we are running out of time before we need to catch our bus to Kibungo.  I haven’t eaten a single thing yet today so I am very hungry and I order food.  Despite the staff’s assurances it won’t take long, it takes much longer and we’re late for the bus.  I also learn that Kara and Lama had an equally stressful, drawn out time at the market.  They were given the run around, had to go here to here, this guy wasn’t there, they had to call him and wait etc.  The other mindset I just can’t get into is the carefree attitude towards time.  I try, I really do try, to not care and let time be elastic, but I can’t let go of the entire concept of it like people can here.

Lama takes off before my food even arrives so he can negotiate our tickets for the 3 o clock bus instead of the 2 we bought them for.  We go to the hotel, get our hundreds of pounds of luggage and cab the 5 blocks to the bus station.  Our luggage takes up the entire back seat of the bus, and I sit in the row in front of it.  I make a Rwanda playlist for the whole drive so I can listen while I stare out at the setting sun.  It is without a doubt the happiest I’ve ever been in a vehicle.

We get to Kibungo with enough time to eat and go straight to the screening at the district building.  When we arrive, we learn that no one is coming to the screening.  There is an expo happening on the outskirts of Kibungo.  We can’t believe that no one, despite our repeated questioning if we were scheduling on a conflicting night, would not mention that this HUGE event is taking place on the same night.  We meet with a few students and Sigfried in front of the building and decide to postpone until Wednesday.  Even when you plan and plan and plan, something isn’t certain until it happens.  C’est la Rwandan Vie.  Again, another cultural mindset we don’t understand.  As much as Lama has to interpret words, he has to interpret the culture for us too.  Kara and I never care, we’re never upset, it’s just kind of stunning.  It’s a totally different way to think and operate.  We cut our losses by just going to the expo with everyone else.

The expo had tons of local people setting up booths and selling things.  There was also music and dancing and every single person in the surrounding towns.  It was PACKED.  It wasn’t too exciting to me, but then again neither is Kibungo and it was something to do.  Maybe I wasn’t in the right state of mind.  We checked it out for a while but in the end we were really tired and it had been a long day so we decided to walk home.  I did a bit of work but couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I fell asleep by 10 pm.

It was a good ten days

Today was our last day in Kigali after our amazing ten day stretch here, as we’re busing back to Kibungo tomorrow.  The last saturday of every month is also called Umuganda, it’s like a community development day.  Everything is closed until noon (enforced by law) so that people can work on cleaning things up, gardening, some kind of productive work.  It’s something like a holiday.  All that it meant for me was I was sleeping in, which was fine with me since I had been up until 5 am.  I still got up around 10:30, and at 12 Kara and I went to Bourbon.

After breakfast Kara was getting done up for the wedding and I was just hanging out.  I decided to nap until it was time to leave because I was still really tired and I had nothing better to do.  We made our way there around 3:30 even though it was supposed to start at 2.  Even then, I think it took at least another hour to begin.

The wedding was pretty cool.  Fortunately for us, it wasn’t a typical Rwandan ceremony.  The woman getting married was Elizabeth, who is a board member for BBR back in Vancouver.  She met a Canadian man named Paul and they were married already in Canada.  So the ceremony we were at wasn’t the official wedding.  But, it included the introduction, which is essentially the engagement that normally doesn’t take place at the wedding itself.  How it works is that the groom will send a delegate, usually a very eloquent speaker from the community, to go on his behalf to the bride’s house and negotiate the marriage.  They will bring a gift, and they exchange witty banter and goof around trying to agree on a settlement and extend it so that they can drink together and have a lot of fun.  It’s obviously very funny, because everyone who understood Kinyarwanda was laughing a great deal.  Lama would translate it when he could and I could see how it was enjoyable.  Apparently I was getting made fun of by the bride’s side (I was sitting on the groom’s), because when we were first seated we had great seats in the middle front row, but then we were moved and I was put RIGHT behind this bush so I couldn’t see a thing.  The bride’s speaker was making fun that I was being hidden behind the bush because I was Canadian and can’t be trusted.

The bartering for the marriage lasted over an hour for sure, and finally everyone cheered when the deal was made and the marriage would go through.  Phew.  Even though I couldn’t understand what was going on, I could really feel the suspense and was worried the wedding wouldn’t happen, regardless of if they were already married or not.  I had asked Freddy one time about the process here and if a delegate ever was turned down and a marriage didn’t go through.  He said it was extremely rare, and it only happened if the groom-to-be was a giant asshole and everyone knew it.  Paul seemed really nice.

There was a really awesome procession including traditional dress and dance, but I don’t think there was much of a ceremony to speak of.  The wedding party just sat inside this hut while there was singing and dancing.  Then everyone ate together and that was the end of the wedding.  It was neat but I wish I spoke Kinyarwanda because the bulk of it was speaking.  So in my case daydreaming.  We have at least two more weddings to go to while we’re here too, so it will give me time to brush up on my Kinyarwanda.  One sweet product of the wedding was that I was dressed up in the clothes I bought at the market yesterday, and people kept complimenting me on them all day.  Rwandan guys would give me thumbs up and point to my clothes and say nice.  The clerk at the hotel asked me if I bought the shirt.  When I said yes he said, “It is amazing.  It is an amazing shirt.”  Haha.  The look on his face was so sincere like we were talking about something so much more profound than a shirt.  Either way, I’m really glad he liked it.

After the wedding was over, we walked back to our hotel.  Lama and Kara were beat but I still had energy.  They decided they were calling it a night so I talked to Taylor and we agreed to meet at a restaurant since he was hungry and I was craving coffee and dessert.  The restaurant we met at was called Papyrus and it was super nice yet still in my league.  It was cozy and casual.  There was a fantastic deck with candles on the tables and white lights strung all over the roof.  It was a warm Kigali evening so it was just wonderful to be out on the patio.

I had a typical Rwandan hang up of ordering dessert, and then thirty minutes later having my waiter return to say there was no Tiramisu.  So I said I’ll just have ice cream.  Nope.  I’ll take whatever you have.  We have no desserts.  Well then.  Taylor said he’d be right back, he was going to check it out, and he came back with two little sweet cake/loaf things from a bakery next door.  So I had coffee and cake and Taylor had dinner.  Our conversation was interesting because we don’t know each other that well, but the more and more we talked the more and more uncanny it was becoming in how similar we are.  We took turns telling stories from our lives or ideas we had or experiences we’ve been through and the other would have had an identical one to match.  To me, Taylor seemed to be a future version of myself, or at least a version I would hope to be.  Every story from his college days are exactly what I am thinking and experiencing now, and the projects he is working on post college are the exact type I would love to see myself engaged in.  I wouldn’t describe the connection I felt scary, because it was far from it, but it was also too many coincidences to be a coincidence.  It was just remarkable, that’s all, and the entire night I had a really great time.

At around midnight we decided it would be a good time to call it a night.  I told him I would drop him a line when we come back to Kigali in a month for another weekend stay.  I really hope to see him again before I leave Rwanda.  After our farewell there was nothing left to do except moto through the warm evening air back to my hotel.

Those Kigali Nights…

A week ago was the best day in Rwanda because I went out, went dancing, and had a blast.  Wednesday over took it when I met Taylor and hung out all night.  Tonight grabs the Rwanda Top Spot, and part of it is because I went dancing with Taylor until the early morning.  To be fair, I don’t think any day is better than any other, it’s just easy to feel that one is the best while it’s still fresh in my memory.  Each day gets a turn and really they’re all the best in their own right.  So I guess I could just go without reporting that from now on.  Every day is the best.  It will stay that way until further notice.

Like all (great) days here, we had breakfast at Bourbon.  We also had another morning favorite of ours: an early meeting.  Now, I’m not going to write who we had a meeting with, because I actually want to take a moment to rant about it instead.  We have met with this person before, and we were hoping to collaborate and bring this person into our projects so that everyone benefits.  We were told to take our ideas to paper form and propose them, that way this person could show their boss and the plan could move forward.  We (Kara and Lama, but I’m sure I was around while it happened) wrote it out.  We sent it to this person.  They told us they got it and read it.  We scheduled this second meeting to talk about what we’d written and the next steps to take.

When we get there, this person begins by saying they didn’t actually read our proposal.  That pretty much derails any hope this meeting had right off the bat, because how can we even discuss the project if this person hasn’t taken the time to read our two page proposal and see where we stand?  And what good exactly, did lying to our faces do about reading it?  We still found out this person didn’t read it, nothing was hidden.  But now we also get to find out they’re a liar too.  I guess that’s what that changed.  We would ask this person straight forward questions that as far as I could tell had very straight forward answers, and they would ignore them and just keep jabbering on and on.  We would get stupid run around answers that avoided the question and then eventually, after so much worthless posturing we learned this person didn’t know the answer.  Why not tell us “I don’t know”?  I understand lying for gain, even though I don’t support it, I can comprehend it.  I do not understand lying when there is no benefit in doing so.  I don’t think I opened my mouth once during the meeting, because if I did it would have been to scream profanities.

And that’s the most interesting part I find.  The stupid social niceties I act out despite feeling the complete opposite.  I have to smile and shake hands and pretend like I’m so grateful to this person for meeting with us, this person in turn does the same pretending they give a shit about us or what we’re doing.  Our behavior toward each other is just hilariously absurd to me.  Nobody’s telling the truth.  We’re just actors, and obviously neither of us are doing a convincing job of it.  What a waste of our time.

After we left that worthless meeting, I guess worthwhile only in the revelation of a person’s true colors, we went to Novotel since I had told Martin to bring the microphone to the conference so I could get it from him since Saturday wouldn’t be possible.  Lama also wanted to speak to Jobb.  We also all were hungry, so even though we didn’t do a single participatory thing toward the conference today, we joined in the giant buffet and ate really well.  We also met with Louise, a nice girl we’d met at the very first conference we attended back in June, so Kara and I hung out with her and we all ate together.  As soon as we finished eating we left.  I know there was no bill, but we literally dined and dashed.

We went downtown so that we could meet up with Cynthia (Freddy’s sister, not Regina’s daughter) and Josian, Freddy’s wife.  They were going to take Kara out shopping for the wedding we’re going to tomorrow.  Lama and I were going shopping ourselves for the same reasons.  We went to this market that was…… One word isn’t enough!  It was amawesomely-crinsane.  The first thing you see when you walk in is a pile of clothes as tall as a person, with people just lying in it.  I guess you can dig through it and find a nice shirt?  It’s like the discount bin taken to a whole new level.  If there must be a deal on a DVD in the bottom of the bin, there MUST be a sweet shirt in the bottom of Clothes Mountain.  The aisles are less than 2 feet wide, so even when you and another person turn sideways to pass each other you get to touch them.  There are booths of clothes and stuff everywhere, and people are above them, hiding underneath them, it’s just the perfect frantic foreign market you dream you’ll go to when you go to an exotic country.  Some of the clothes were awesome too.

Lama and I were having a really good time shopping together, but I must admit, the experience got even better when Lama left for moment, aka abandoned me.  He said he’d be right back and to wait by this pile of belts, and I said sure.  After about 15 minutes of standing still and kindly refusing the 100 people who came up to me with a shirt saying “This is a good shirt”, I decided I might as well go shopping on my own.  One hilarious thing that happened though while I was waiting, was this guy came up to me and said, “Do you like the good shit?  Because we have all the good shit right here” and he pointed to his little booth that looked like all the other booths.  The reason it was so exceptionally funny, is because I don’t think he knows what the word shit means.  He was using it so matter-of-factly, like it was the same as saying t-shirts or something.

Just like I am getting the hang of cabbing in Kigali, I’m getting the hang of haggling and bartering and knowing when to walk away at the absurd price.  So I don’t think I got ripped off on one thing.  I made some friends while shopping too, this friendly guy named Vincent, and this cool young guy named John who was wearing an american flag shirt.  He said if I come back to look for him, I can ask for “teacher” because that’s what people call him.  Also, when I told him I was Canadian, he told me he was dating a Canadian girl, for which I gave him a high five.

I ended up leaving with a dress shirt and dress pants, a plain white tee and a black button up t-shirt thing.  Lama left with like 5 bags of clothes and bought a pair of shoes on the way out.  I had such a good time shopping at the market and I can’t wait to go back another time and take Kara.

We all rendezvoused at Bourbon because it’s so central, and then from there went our separate ways.  Kara and I went back to the hotel and after spending time alone in our rooms met up downstairs for dinner.  I was also in text communication with Taylor and Kara was with Magnifique (Ndambe) and we were talking about meeting up later.  We had just finished dinner and went back to our rooms for a second and Taylor had arrived, so I told Kara and I went downstairs, she said she’d be right down.  Taylor wanted to check out another restaurant so we stood in the foyer and talked waiting for Kara.  Somehow we started talking about dreams and I’ve never met a person who was so into dreams as I was, until Taylor.  At least half an hour of dream talk later, we decided to go up and see what the hold up was with Kara.  We banged on her door and there was nothing.  So Taylor texted her and we learned she had fallen asleep.  I don’t know how the phone woke her up and the pounding didn’t.  The three of us went out walking but by this time it was too late for Taylor to get food, even though he was hungry, and so instead we got in a cab.

We were going to B-club.  Taylor had promised a woman named Mary that he would go out dancing with her, and Kara and I had agreed to come along.  She works with survivors, and even though we were all going dancing, the night was business based.  B-club is hilariously tres modern.  It’s futuristic.  At 11:30 when we arrived, it was also deserted.  Mary was there with some of her childhood friends, Rose and Christine.  We had drinks and talked and danced once in awhile.  To describe how modern this bar was, the gin and tonic I told Kara I would buy her cost $14 dollars.  I hope it tasted good.  The music was fine, but none of it was really that dancey.  Kara knew all the songs because they were from her high school days but Taylor and I knew none of them.  I did get up to dance to Cruel Summer, and made the bet I would dance until I didn’t recognize a song, and suffice to say I was sitting back down next track.

We did really feel like dancing though and were not satisfied with the current crop of music.  Kara and I decided to take matters into our own hands and since we’ve both been craving Sexy Back, I requested it and the DJ agreed to play it.  It was getting much later in the night at this point, and Magnifique had texted Kara and was coming to pick her up and I was going to stay with Taylor.  She took off when he arrived, and she must have been out the door less than five minutes and Sexy Back came on.  I hit the dance floor so hard and from that point on the DJ was playing bangers.  The club was really starting to fill up too, so unfortunately as soon as Kara left everything got awesome.

We also ran into Eric Kabera at the club, the director of the documentary 100 Days.  He and Mary go way back and he knows Taylor as well so he joined us for some drinks and conversation.  He gave me his card and told me to give him a call some time.  We were all sitting around talking when “Walk of Life” by the Dire Straits came on and Taylor and I bolted to the dance floor, and again we were out there for maybe 10 songs in a row.  This time we went really hard and I was drenched in sweat by the end of it.  When we sat down after that it was late and Mary was leaving, so we decided to go too.  We walked for quite a while before a cab finally picked us up.  I rolled up to the hotel at around 4:30, JUST as Magnifique and Kara were coming back too.  So we chatted and laughed in the lobby for awhile before I went to bed and passed out.  From exhaustion, not booze.

Pasadena

The reason we were staying so long in Kigali is to check out the Fields of Knowledge conference about the genocide.  It started on Tuesday, but we decided we had more important things to do instead so we skipped the start of the conference, it was just drinks and registration anyway.  We checked the schedule and Wednesday also seemed to have nothing that pertained to us, so we skipped that one too, and Thursday and Friday were the days we really wanted to see.  Two of our friends were presenting today, Jobb Arnold from University of Manitoba and Josias Sebujanja from Montreal, so today was actually the first day we went to the conference.  We even skipped breakfast at Bourbon to get there at 9.

The conference was really interesting, probably the most interesting one we’ve been to yet, but I am just done with conferences I think.  Maybe it was because I didn’t have a coffee.  Some of the talks were excellent, but I found that if they weren’t incredibly gripping I was practically nodding off.  Just so so so so much talking.  I was so relieved when it was coffee break, I was practically dying.  We had other meetings and things to plan, so we stuck around long enough for Jobb’s presentation in the morning and then we had to take off at the afternoon break.  We were going to meet with Candace, a contact we made through Josh, who works for the Rwanda Community Works.  She’s the one who’s working with the things closely related to our work with COVAGA, with making a brand and establishing markets and developing products to then export.

Before we left though, I ran into Martin the microphone guy.  He’s filming the conference we’re at.  So I talked to him for a while and it sounds like we’re going to figure out some way for me to work for the mic.  He says he wants to train some new guys to hire, and he wants to know if I can hold some workshops and teach them.  I told him I most likely would and that would be a great trade.  I just don’t have that much money and I can’t afford to be renting a mic for the rest of the trip.  So if we can swing this exchange of services I would be very happy.  I also ran into Yves for the first time, the mystery of a man who put me in touch with Martin in the first place.  It turns out they are partners together and they have started their video business from the ground up.  The dream is to save enough money to go to Canada and go to film school.

We held the meeting at with Candace at our office, I mean Bourbon, and she and her friend Margaret arrived at 5.  The meeting was great, they’re awesome girls in the same train of thought as Josh as far as quality and support of the local community.  Unfortunately they leave on Saturday but it was great to touch base with them and possibly open a route for the COVAGA women.  If we can develop a product with them, RCW might be interested in picking them up and the market and distribution would already be in place for them.  It feels like we’ve got a shot at something now, but we’ll have to see how it unfolds.  Still, a very promising meeting.

Candace and Margaret also said they might want me to shoot something for them, just footage of their weavers working and making their products to show to their designer back in the states.  Apparently they’re hooked up with some famous designer who has ties to the show the Hills, but I have no idea about any of that.  Although Kara said I’m not allowed to pass on that gig.  Normally she would support me saying we’re too busy, but I guess this designer is too famous and Kara won’t let me say no.  Oh well.

So Ndambe showed up at Bourbon to meet us after the girls took off, and him and Kara wanted to go get some dinner.  I was still doing some uploading that I couldn’t walk away from so I passed and Lama took off to do his own thing.  About 10 minutes after Kara and Ndambe left the internet crashed and I lost all my progress anyway, so I retreated to the hotel by myself for some dinner.  I ordered room service and since I had the first free evening I’ve ever had, I decided to call some friends.  Some people were busy and others didn’t answer but I got a hold of Claire and she invited me out with her.  I met her at a place called Pasadena, a salsa dancing joint.  It was pretty sweet.  This one girl was absolutely cutting up the dance floor.  Everyone would clap after every dance, but it was just for her.  I never danced, because a) I can’t salsa dance, b) I don’t want to dance too much, I only like it once in a while and c) I could not stop thinking about that scene in Along Came Polly where Ben Stiller salsa dances like a freak.  I didn’t want to look like him and I couldn’t imagine my salsa dancing looking any other way.  Claire’s roommates and friends were there, including Kevin from H20 and we all hung out for a while.  I didn’t want to stay out too late, and Claire had an assignment due tomorrow she hadn’t started.  So around 11:30 I walked with them back to their house and then took a moto back to the hotel around 12.  Overall, a pretty solid day.

Heaven

I stayed up until 5 am working last night for pretty much no reason.  I was capturing and logging footage, writing, editing, etc.  At one point, I fell asleep waiting for a tape to capture so I decided it was time to get into bed and sleep.  We got up and rendezvoused at Bourbon because we had a meeting there with Emily and Tom from Rock Solid designs in the day.  Originally we were going to meet in the morning but they bumped it back into the afternoon.  I had brought my hard drive and everything I needed so I just set up shop and used Bourbon as an office.

Interestingly enough, Kara and I are eating breakfast, and almost instantly I feel that I am going to be sick.  I realize I absolutely cannot puke inside Bourbon Coffee and excuse myself.  I ran to the bathroom just in time to throw up everything from last night and anything I’d already eaten.  As soon I am done throwing up, like the second it’s all out of my mouth, I feel perfectly fine again.  I return to the table and finish my breakfast like nothing happened.

Emily and Tom are amazing.  They’re from the UK originally and have been here in Kigali for about a year now.  Emily is an editor at Rock Solid for the magazine they publish, and Tom is a photographer, both freelance and for said magazine.  He has a background as a fine artist as well , so we had lots to share.  The reason we were getting together today is because when we met Emily the first time we talked about possibly doing an art show together of some sort.  Today we were trying to plan the logistics.  The show is intended to exhibit work that is being produced around our project with COVAGA.  Tom is willing and excited to photograph the women and their work, so the show will feature his shots, as well as photographs of Kara’s and perhaps some of the video I put together.  We hope to sell some of the COVAGA products as well.  It is one thing to bring the work we do back to Canada and speak about it, but we all agree it would be so much better to do that here too, before we go.

Emily and Tom recommended the Kandt museum as a possible venue, as well as ways of potentially gathering funding and sponsorship for the event.  After we finished divvying up the work involved in arranging the show, Emily and Tom had to run and Kara and Lama decided to go check out the Kandt.  I had a lot of editing to do so I stayed at Bourbon to work.  They reported later that the venue is absolutely amazing and if we do manage to get it it will be perfect.  By the time I left Bourbon, it was quarter after 6 in the evening.  I had been there since 10 am, and I had only left my chair to pee twice and throw up once.  I basically sat there for 8 hours straight.

I had just enough time to get back to the hotel and drop off all my stuff so that we could go to Heaven for dinner.  Heaven is a really fancy restaurant owned by Josh Ruxin’s wife, and we had been in touch with him and would hopefully be meeting him there tonight.  He is from New York and involved with public health and is responsible for the Millenium Village.  Kara and I cabbed to get there, and for the first time in Rwanda we knew how much the ride should cost, so we told one cabbie to beat it with his high muzungu price.  Even the second cab driver we talked down 1000 francs.  We’re getting the hang of things.

Lama was way behind schedule so Kara and I took a seat at the bar and had a drink and an appetizer.  While we were sitting there, we were blown away by the music we kept hearing over the speakers.  They even played Elliott Smith.  I never expected to hear that in Kigali.  Josh showed up and we sat and talked with him for a while until Lama and Freddy arrived.  It was interesting to meet with him because he is doing a lot of work that coincides with what we’re hoping to do.  They are developing the Bugesera district, specifically Gashora, and are aiming to have the whole region to a middle level income by 2012.  They already have a 1.5 million dollar health center going up, they have plans to build an eco lodge, and are planning to invest 35 million in the next 5 years.  Pretty amazing.  They also are working with co-operatives there in development of a product line of baskets, jewelry and beads and are building a market and distribution in the US.  They’re even establishing a brand to maintain a level of distinct quality.  Josh is all about upscaling Rwanda to world standards of quality while doing so from within Rwanda.  It’s apparent in the mandate of Heaven: they employ people of “vulnerable backgrounds”, they give them professional customer service training, they give them competitive wages and health benefits by first world standards, and everything is built and provided locally in Rwanda all with an emphasis on top of the line quality.  I really admire the work that he and his wife are doing.

Heaven is really nice, and I respect its aims and goals, but it’s not my scene.  I know where I belong and it’s not in really classy restaurants dining with the extremely elite.  I like wearing t-shirts and jeans and comfy skate shoes.  I don’t like cutting my hair.  I hate shaving.  I have awful posture and love slouching.  I clearly don’t belong in Heaven.  My discomfort aside, I had a good time and I was so happy Freddy made it out.  We laughed a lot and obviously the food was tasty.  It was unfortunate I had stayed up way too late the night before and I became quiet by the end of the night.  I was just looking forward to sleeping, which I did as soon as Freddy dropped us off at the hotel.