Bahir Dar: Amazing Monasteries and Not-So-Majestic Waterfalls

After a few days in hectic, crowded Addis, we headed for the peace and serenity of Bahir Dar.  Located on the shores of Lake Tana, the 3rd largest lake in Africa, Bahir Dar is the jumping off point to visit the dozens of monasteries in the area, as well as the Blue Nile Falls.  Even though it is the third largest city in Ethiopia, BD still has a sleepy, tropical quality, but also a holy and mystical vibe, thanks to its high density of places of worship in the area. This all seems well and good until 4am, when you are awoken by the chanting of monks (which I, conditioned by my time in Cambodia, mistook for karaoke), or 5:30am, when you are re-awoken by the Muslim call to prayer.

Since we were already awake, we decided to get an early start on the day, knowing that we had a lot to cover in our one day in BD.  After a quick breakfast, we met up with two girls we had met on the plane from Addis the night before, who were also only in town for the day.  Together we negotiated to rent a motorboat for the morning ($25 each) so we could visit some of the local monasteries, which are located on 20 of the lake's 37 islands.  These monasteries, which together constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, date back to the 14th century but are largely still active.  Women can only visit a few of these monasteries however, so we set off for the two most accessible, female-friendly sites.

Although the shores of the lake were the setting of common activities like bathing, laundry, and children's water fights, the lake itself is home to a unique form of transportation: the papyrus boat.  Developed by the Egyptians 6,000 years ago, these boats are made from bundles of papyrus reeds, fashioned into the shape of a canoe or kayak.  These single-seat vessels take approximately two weeks to build and last for up to six months.  Today they are used mainly for fishing and the transportation of goods to and from the islands, a journey that can take three or four hours on Lake Tana.

Using papyrus boats to transport charcoal to the island monasteries

Of course, being in a motorboat, it only took us 45 minutes to reach the first monastery.  When those of us in the US think of "monastery" we tend to think of a giant stone fortress, cold, damp, and colorless.  The Ethiopians have a different concept of "monastery"--extremely simple living quarters next to a small, one-story, circular building with a straw floor and vibrant murals, which serves as the church.  All the ancient monasteries/churches in this region have a similar design inside: three entrances (for men, women, and clergy), and a square structure inside called the Holy of Holies.  On three sides of the Holy of Holies there are doors (through which only priests and monks can pass), and on the fourth a set of three false windows.  The outside the Holy of Holies and the ceiling are covered with colorful paintings depicting various biblical stories and the miracles of local saints.  Inside the Holy of Holies is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, which is said to contain the original stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written. Those who belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (40 million people) believe that the original Ark is kept in the Church of Saint Mary of Zion, located in Axum in northern Ethiopia.  

After walking past the living quarters of the priests and nuns of the Entos Eyesu (left), we arrived at their small church (below left).  Upon entering, I was struck by a few things. First, how colorful the murals the covering the Holy of Holies and the ceiling were.  Second, how much blood was depicted in these graphic paintings.  Third, how small it was, given that services are still performed twice a day. There are no seats and barely enough space for a couple dozen people to stand.  Speaking of standing, at every church in Ethiopia there is a pile of polished sticks, each of which is about four feet tall.  These are called leaning sticks, since they used by monks and priests when they stand for days in prayer.  (Apparently too many elderly monks were falling down during long meditative sessions.) Our guide took some time to explain the biblical stories painted on the outside of the Holy of Holies and took particular pains to describe the story of St. George, the patron saint of Ethiopia.  St. George was a Roman soldier/priest most famous for slaying a dragon and saving a princess; apparently fairy tales like to pull stories from the lives of saints.  We also learned the story of Saint Jerome, who managed to tame all the wild beasts around Bethlehem.  Even though he is often depicted riding a lion, our guide pointed out that "it is hardly possible for a man to ride a lion like a horse," I think out of fear that we farangi (foreigner) women would see a lion and try to jump on it.  Our guide, Riyot, who had a knack for being unintentionally funny, also coined a new term, "wild toilet opportunity," which is an ideal time and setting to go pee in the bushes. 

After leaving Entos Eyesu we rode for another 40 minutes to Zege Peninsula and the Ura Kidane Meret monastery, the oldest and most famous of those on Lake Tana (right).  A twenty minute walk in from the dock, the building is make of bamboo-like sticks and giant wooden doors.  Although most of the frescos date from the 13th and 14th century, there are some new additions, as evidenced by the fact that they contain machine guns. Adjacent to the church was a "museum"--a glorified stall-- with a collection of ancient crowns, illuminated manuscripts, and crosses tipped with ostrich eggs.  The justification for using ostrich eggs has something to do with the fact that if the male parent leaves it, the female will protect it, which is supposed to correlate to the stories of Jesus and Mary, I believe.  It seems that every aspect of the churches in Ethiopia, down to the number of stairs outside, has some numerical significance/relationship to the Bible.  There are the holy trinity, the four gospels, the seven heavens, the twelve apostles, etc. However, it seems you can get too much into this numerology, since, by the end of the trip, whenever we would ask "what is the significance of X number of Y in this building's design?" and our guide would give us a skeptical look and say "nothing."

A monk teaches a young pupil

Following a quick lunch of traditional Ethiopia food back in Bahir Dar, we boarded a bus with our afternoon guide, Tom, and a dozen other travelers to go to the Blue Nile Falls.  Although we were warned by the Lonely Planet that the falls are not as majestic as they once were, thanks to the installation of a new hydroelectric dam, we decided to go anyway.  The 45 minute drive to the town near the head of the falls was glimpse into life in the countryside of Ethiopia.  The land in this region of the country is vast, brown, and arid, with a few stick huts dotting the sides of rugged mountains.  Although 85% of people in Ethiopia depend on agriculture to survive, it is not an easy place to farm.  The land is rocky and dry, the heat punishing, and the rains unpredictable, but somehow people have managed to survive here for thousands of years, a testament to the resilience of its people.

Adding to their challenges, only 13% of people in Ethiopia have access to electricity, which makes the new hydroelectric dam (or "water plantation," according to the locals) a serious blessing.  Short-sighted tourists may complain that the waterfall has been cut back to 5% of its original volume, but thousands of newly-connected families are experiencing a significant improvement in their quality of life.  Of course, the country remains one of the poorest in the world (214th out of 228) and most people still lack access to clean water and proper sanitation.     

Upon arriving at the falls after a short walk and boat ride, we walked around for a while, assisted over the rocks by young, but much more agile, children. Then, exhausted by the scorching heat, we headed into the town for a soda and some shade.  After staring at me for a while, the proprietress of the little shack/cafe asked me, through the guide, if I was "half-caste," by which I think she was asking if was half Ethiopian, half something else.  After explaining that no, my family is from India, she indicated that something in the shape of my face and/or head is typical of Ethiopians.  As it turned out, this was to be the first of many such awkward and bewildering encounters during our trip.  

When we returned to our guest house that evening I was extremely tired.  Sitting in a comfortable A/C office for the past eight months (and before that, the cold of Ann Arbor) has made me less tolerant of the heat and direct sunlight, it seems.  Suffering from heatstroke, I climbed into bed and left it to Camila to sort out our hotel arrangements for our next few stops, lest we should have a repeat of what happened in Addis...

The town near the Blue Nile Falls

Addis Ababa: Bum Rushed by Donkeys

I can just see it now, my obituary in the Brown Alumni Magazine.  "Zara Ahmed, aged 25, was crushed to death by a stampede of donkeys on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 12th.  Why she didn't have the sense to get out of the way is unknown.  In light of this tragedy, Brown is incorporating a session on 'Donkey Dodging' into the freshman orientation curriculum."

Okay, so I'm being melodramatic.  But when you're walking down the street of a major city you don't expect to suddenly face a pack of donkeys running down a hill right towards you.  And we did get out of the way--the donkeys just happened to also turn in that same direction.  

So how did I end up in this situation, you ask? Well, I agreed to go on vacation....

This whole adventure started when my friend Camila (an American living in Kigali) asked me if I wanted to join her on a trip to Ethiopia.  Having not taken a day (or even hour) off of work in more than four months, I said yes.  So one Thursday afternoon we set off on an ambitious five city, ten day tour of Ethiopia.

Our extensive pre-trip planning told us that this wasn't a popular time of year to travel to Ethiopia and that there was really no need for hotel/hostel reservations.  Nevertheless, we tried our damnedest to arrange all our accommodation in advance, but couldn't seem to get through to a place in Addis Ababa (our first stop) that would take reservations.  We decided that we would ask to crash at a the house of a friend of mine from grad school, if nothing else worked out.

This was not a great plan, as it turned out.  Arriving in Addis at 8:30pm Thursday night (and after having the immigration guy tell me he only wants to marry an Indian woman), and still without a hotel reservation, we found that our Rwandan phones, which we had counted on working in Ethiopia (the same network is used in both countries), didn't work, so we couldn't call my friend and beg for a bed for the night.  Without any other options, we took a taxi to the main backpacker area of of town in search of an available room.

Addis, in comparison to Kigali, is a large, sprawling, dirty, polluted, but still charming city of about 4.5 million people, the equivalent to half the total population of Rwanda.  What struck me most during the 20 minute drive was how many people were out walking around at 9pm.  In Kigali, once the sun sets at 6:30pm, the city becomes a ghost town--"nightlife" is an oxymoron in Rwanda.  In Addis, the streets were filled with people young and old, coming and going, and shops were still doing a bustling trade.  The young couples were holding hands, families outwardly affectionate to each other, which was quite in contrast to the more reserved nature of Rwandans.  And there were neon lights and traffic jams- two other things you don't find in Kigali.  Although just a two hour flight away, it felt like we had come to another continent, if not a different world.

We were shaken out of our reverie when we arrived at our intended destination, a backpackers' establishment recommended in the Lonely Planet.  Before we could even open the cab door (or the cab driver could open it for us, since the rickety thing couldn't open from the inside), the guard told us they were full for the night, but recommended we try a place across the street, also a LP recommendation.  It too was full, but the manager recommended a place around the corner.  The cab driver, who had come with me into the second place to inquire, got on his cell phone and (claimed to) call the third hotel, which he said was also full.  (They speak Amharic in Ethiopia so there was no way of verifying his claims.)  However, predictably, he said he knew of another hotel that was sure to have a room available--it was owned by a friend.  At his mercy, we agreed to check out that hotel, which it turned out was another 15 minute drive away.

The shag on the dashboard of our cab, which went all the way across. 

After a few wrong turns, we finally found the hotel down a long dark alley.  Unfortunately, when the driver and I went inside, we found that the manager was in the middle of negotiating the letting of the room to an Asian businessman.  The driver, now feeling guilty and embarrassed, started talking to the driver of the businessman's taxi.  That guy, who actually spoke a little English, asked us if we would be willing to pay $30 for a room for the night.  (All these other places were in the $10-$20 range for a double.)  It was by then 10pm and we would have paid 10 times that for a room, so we of course said yes.  Our cabbie then followed the other a short distance, turning off the main road, past a large, proper hotel, to another guesthouse.  Blessedly, the fifth place turned out to be the charm, and after five minutes of panicked pounding on the gate, we discovered that they had a room was available for $30.  It was basic but clean, and they promised us the shower had hot water.  (I am a baby and hate cold showers.)  Exhausted, all we wanted was a hot shower, a cold drink of water and a good night's sleep.  Unfortunately, the shower turned out to be frigid, I couldn't get my water-sterilizing pen to fit inside my Nalgene without some contortions, and mosquitoes buzzed all night, keeping us awake.

This was not the optimal start to our trip, but we hoped, as Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks put it, that we'd "had our glitch for this mission."

The next morning we woke up happy to not be on the street, but in desperate need of a hot shower.   Because it seemed that the odds of our shower getting fixed were extremely low and we still had another night in Addis, and it was Camila's birthday, we decided to splurge and move to the hotel we had passed on the corner, which looked like it actually had hot water.  And so at 8am we paid our bill and  hauled our stuff down the street to the Axum Hotel, which was probably the best decision we made during the entire trip.  Not only did the room (which was smaller but mosquito-free) have hot water (although we did require assistance from the bellhop to figure out how to get it to work), but the reception staff was able to solve all of our other problems, namely not having a phone that worked.  And by "solve" I mean the receptionist let us rent her SIM card for $7 a day, which was extremely helpful since only Ethiopians can purchase/legally rent a SIM card.  Meanwhile, Abel, another concierge, kindly drew us a map of how to get into town and where to find the Ethiopian Airlines office so we could buy tickets for our travel within the country.  He and the bellhop even put us on the correct minibus (i.e. a packed 14 seater van with a young guy hanging out the side shouting the next destination), after we ate breakfast at a small place around the corner.

During ride to the center of town, we got a better look at Addis.  Even more bustling in the daytime, the city is a densely-packed, colorful mix of the modern and traditional, rural and urban.  Most women, Christian and Muslim alike, keep their heads covered, but wear their white head-scarves over western dress.  Mercedes sedans crowd the road alongside goats, sheep, and yes, donkeys.

Thirty minutes and $0.14 later, the bus "conductor" told us to get out, as we had arrived at Meskal Square, massive intersection in the heart of Addis.  He pointed to the right and gestured that we should walk in that direction--apparently the hotel bellhop had explained our incompetence to him.  And so we started walking, over the broken sidewalks (all sidewalks in Addis are broken) into a more commercial part of town.  And that's when we got bum-rushed by the donkeys- in the middle of a main road, in the middle of the day, with cars whizzing by.  There were about 10 of them, trotting down the hill.  Unfortunately, lost in our wanderings we didn't see them until the last minute, but we did make an effort to get out of the way.  But it seems that donkeys interpret "I'm getting out of your way" to mean "Please, come run directly in this direction."  And so we went to Plan B: stand perfectly still and hope that, even as stupid as they are, the donkeys will try not to knock you over.  Luckily, our donkeys were smart enough not to knock us over, so we continued on our way, now very much awake.

We spent the next two hours at the Ethiopian Airlines office in the swanky Sheraton Hotel, trying to work out our itinerary for the rest of our trip.  It turns out that if you fly EA into the country, all your domestic tickets are 1/3 the regular price, meaning that each of our 20 minute flights came to about $30--including a snack! What value! (US carriers, take note.)

Another problem solved, we continued walking up the hill into town.  Addis located is at over 7,000 feet elevation, so climbing a hill (or even walking on a flat street) can really wind you.  Our next destination was one of the four (according to the Lonely Planet) tourist attractions in Addis: Holy Trinity Cathedral.  In another display of Ethiopian hospitality, a nice young man noticed our confused wanderings and kindly guided us to the church (which you really do need a local to show you to).  The grounds around the cathedral were silent and still, with hundreds of people standing outside in reverent prayer.  Most of the people were women but all were clad in white, with their heads covered.  We felt quite out of place in our street clothes, following our guide through the throng. However, instead of hostile looks, we received only smiles and a warm welcome from the groundskeepers, who invited us to walk around and apologized for the fact that a religious ceremony was going on and we would not be able to go inside the church.  

Holy Trinity Cathedral, the second most important place of worship in Ethiopia.

And so we thanked our guide and walked around, admiring Ethiopia's second most important place of worship and trying not to disturb those in prayer.  After a little while we decided to carry on and head towards King George IV Street and the national museum.  Another 30 minutes of walking uphill in the heat and we were ready for lunch.  This turned out to be good timing, since everything in Addis (and indeed, all of Ethiopia) closes from noon until 2pm.  One giant pizza, $3, and half an hour of eavesdropping on a group of young Euro tourists later, we walked across to the street to the museum. The main draw of the museum is Lucy, the 3.2 million year old fossil of a bipedal hominid; until late last year she was our oldest known ancestor. Admission to the museum is only 5Birr ($0.37) but for that price you can see the throne of Haile Selassie, some artworks by famous Ethiopian artists, and a display of ancient fossils discovered in Ethiopia, as well as Lucy.  Strangely enough, the crown jewel of the museum, Lucy, is kept in the basement, in the very last, cramped, room.  Nevertheless there were two striking things about the display.  First, Lucy is tiny, just over 3 1/2 feet tall.  Second, the area in which Lucy was found is a huge, desolate, barren, scorching desert.  How the paleontologists managed to find Lucy in this vast and harsh environment is beyond my comprehension.  Even a non-scientist like me can appreciate the enormity of their achievement.

After the museum we caught a minibus back to the hotel, where we congratulated ourselves on successfully navigating our way home by taking a nap.  Then it was on to dinner at a cafe across the street. One of the most unexpected things about Ethiopia is, for a country most associated with the word "famine," how cheap food is. Really, you have a try very hard to spend $5 on a meal, and even that seems silly since even the cheapest meal is delicious.

The next day, Saturday, we decided to try our hand at visiting another church, St. George Cathedral in the heart of the city but just our luck, it was another holiday and we could not go inside.   Another plan foiled, we decided to do something I had never done before: drink coffee.  Yes, believe it or not, I survived four years of Brown, three years of grad school, and two years of being a manager at a fair-trade coffee shop without drinking coffee.  But since I'd eaten caterpillars in Cambodia, uncooked sheep liver in South Africa, and bushmeat in Cameroon, I figured that should try coffee in Ethiopia.  Unfortunately, something possessed me to order an espresso.  Only a significant amount of sugar could make it palatable, but I did get it down and vowed to try coffee again, without sugar, before we left the country.

The view of Piazza (the main square) from St. George Cathedral.  That's St. George on horseback.

After our coffee stop we carried on through town, stopping to buy some handicrafts along the way.  Then it was time for a lunch of injera (which is like a spongy roti/bread), and tamarind-y beef--delicious.  We also had some avocado/mango/papaya shakes, which seem to be ubiquitous in Ethiopia.  From there we went back to Meskal Square, having walked the length of the city (or the city as it appears in the Lonely Planet's map), and caught a bus back to our hotel.  Our flight to our next destination wasn't until 8pm, so we killed some time in bookstores, cafes, and internet cafes until heading to the airport at 6pm.  Ours was the only flight of the evening, the small domestic terminal was empty and we passed the time watching children play and enjoying our Kindles (which I now believe to be the savior of every traveler).

As we sat there, gearing up for our next set of misadventures in Bahir Dar, all I could think about was how thankful I was to be indoors...and away from all those donkeys....

Update: Work and Vacation

Again, another long absence from blogging. My apologies. This time my excuse is that my mentor/boss has resigned and I am taking over her duties, on top of my own.  (See, isn't that a legitimate excuse?)  Although I'm excited to be getting more responsibility, I now spend a good portion of my time uttering the following prayer to the public health gods: "Oh global health deities, let me not screw this up."  Clearly, my time is being used in very productive ways.

In anticipation of another absence and the resulting angry email from my parents, let me share some good news: I'm going to Ethiopia!  After not taking an hour off in 3.5 months, I decided it was time for a little vacation.  Because I have to take this vacation before my boss leaves and I become permanently tethered to my desk, I will be gone from Feb 11-22, so don't expect any posts from me then.  However, I promise a flood of posts upon my return, complete with pictures, or at least links to my pictures.  During those 11 days we will be going to the historic cities of Lalibela, Axum, Gondor, and Bahir Dar, as well as Addis Ababa.  If you want to learn more about these places (and to make sure they're safe, which I promise you they are) you can check out Wikitravel.

In case I don't get to post before I go, let me just say that I wish you all could join me on this trip and that its not too late to do so-- just jump on the next plane to Addis Ababa! I'll meet you there!

Christmas in Kigali

A belated happy holidays to you all! I hope you had a relaxing, enjoyable time with family and friends and are ready for new adventures in 2010!

So how did I spend my first holiday season in Kigali, you ask? Well it was a pretty quiet affair, particularly given that I had to work Christmas and New Year's eves-- federal work waits for no (wo)man.

However, I was able to leave early Christmas eve for a lunch at a co-worker's house, which was a very nice, loud, family affair.  I went with some of the drivers from our office, who decided that we should go by minibus.  Most people in Kigali get around town by minibus, which are basically old rickety minivans crammed with twice as many people as the vehicle was designed for.  I've traveled extensively by this means during my other trips, but this was my first experience with the minibuses of Kigali and was memorable for two other reasons.  One, I saw how a gearshift works.  Squashed up front between the minibus driver and a friend from work, the gearshift (which was hot!) was right up against my leg.  The plate/squishy leather that usually covers the base of a gearshift was missing, exposing the inner workings.  I spent the one-hour ride fascinated as the driver maneuvered the gearshift, which was in desperate need of some WD-40.

The other reason the ride was memorable was that I saw my first person with eleven fingers: the bus "conductor".  Apparently there are quite a few people in Kigali with eleven or twelve fingers, but the young man collecting the 180 RWF ($0.31) fare was the first I had met.

The lunch was a festive event, with attendees ranging from only a few months to 80+ years old and coming from a variety of countries.  I made friends with the kids by using my patented "no-shared-language-required-to-find-this-funny" 3 fingered reverse handshake, originally taught to me by street children in Cambodia.  (Its a  difficult handshake to explain but you can ask any of my travel companions for a demonstration.)

Christmas day dinner was spent at another colleague's house, with another couple from work sharing the meal with us, making it 4 real adults, a 6 month old baby and me at the table.  I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be a companion for the baby or for the two married couples, but I felt more comfortable with the baby, so spent most of my time with him.  After dinner I played Wii for the first time.  It turns out that in the "Redneck Jamboree" game I excel at sawing wood but am terrible at dynamite fishing.  Something to work on in 2010.

The rest of the holiday weekend was spent at various brunches and potlucks.  The nice thing about not having family to spend the holidays with is that other people take a lot of pity on you, invite you over, stuff you full of food, and then make you take a week's worth home with you.  Now I wish it could be Christmas every week.

As for New Year's Eve, it turns out a friend of mine from Brown is currently working in Rwanda, out in the boonies. He and a bunch of his colleagues came to town for the weekend so we caught up over dinner and I went to a party at his NGO's house, which is just down the street from mine.  It was a nice change to hang out with people my own age, instead of  people old enough to be my parents.

My birthday was spent eating the food I had collected over the week, which, for those of you who know me well, recognize as the best birthday present I could have asked for.

Although its hard to get into the Christmas spirit when its 80 degrees and sunny out, Kigali does its best to help.  At the supermarket there was a (very scary) animatronic (black) Santa waving out front and a (plastic) Christmas tree was put up in the lobby of my building.  Another thing that doesn't seem to change from one continent to another, that Christmas tree is still up. Let's see if its still there in June-- that would really be a taste of home. :)

FAQ

Before I get to the post, let me apologize for yet another extended absence.  But, funny as it sounds, I have a good excuse: my parents' long-lasting marriage.  See, it was their 30th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, so for the past couple weeks my brother and I have been frantically putting together a e-scrapbook for them with messages and pictures from family and friends.  (Leave it to us to wait until the last minute to finish a project we started in August.) The book turned out to be a great (but time-consuming) success and now that its done I can resume blogging, so let's get to it.  

Over the past two months, in my conversations with you via Skype, email, gchat and other online mediums, there are certain questions which just keep coming up.  For the sake of efficiency (and consistency) I've decided to address them all here, in a "Frequently Asked Questions on Zara's Life in Rwanda" session. 

On Rwanda

• What's the weather like?  
• Kigali may have the world's most consistent, temperate climate.  The city lies just over 1.5 degrees south of the equator, approximately 90 miles (150km).  Under normal circumstances, this would mean that it would be hot as hell year-round, but thanks to Kigali's elevation of over 5,000 ft (1,560 m), the city stays cool, with an average temperature for the year of about 70 F (21 C), and hardly any variations between seasons.  Apparently, since I got here, we have been in one of the two "rainy seasons" for the year; I haven't noticed.  Having spent the past several summers in places with infamous monsoon seasons (Mumbai, Dhaka, Mt. Cameroon), a few short afternoon thunderstorms hardly registers with me.  In sum, its sunny and balmy.  (I should point out that the downside of living near the equator is that the sun rises at exactly 6am and sets at exactly 6pm and after that it is pitch black.  There are no long, late summer evenings here; dawn and dusk each last approximately 7 minutes.)
• What side of the street do people drive on?
• According to the law, the right-hand side.  And in reality, the right-hand side.  I mention both because very rarely in the developing world are those two answers the same. However, there is no standardization regarding which side of the car the steering wheel should be, so all is not in perfect order on the streets of Rwanda.  Adding to the confusion, here left and right turn indicators don't actually mean you are turning left or right.  These signals have taken on new meanings in Rwanda, creating a complicated new semaphore-esque language of flashing lights.  Pass me, don't pass me, I want to pass you, I'm passing you, I'm slowing down, you're going too slow, I'm stopping soon-- all of these sentiments are expressed through turn signals.  Like with any language (or the code of horn beeps in west Africa), it takes a while to pick up and until you do driving can be a bit dicey if you expect your fellow drivers to use their indicators as the engineers designed.
  
• There is not a lot of traffic in Kigali (except for the one roundabout that constitutes "town") but the (very mountainous) roads outside the city are quite dangerous.  Not only do drivers have to contend with trucks barreling downhill at full speed, but they have to dodge the streams of pedestrians alongside the road, since the single-lane roads have no sidewalks or footpaths next to them.  And in an incomprehensible folly of civil engineering, there are 4 foot deep drainage ditches where the shoulder should be.  Driving on these vertiginous roads you look to one side and can vividly imagine plunging to your death 3,000 feet down, then look to the other side and just as vividly imagine a tire slipping into the ditch and the car plowing into the rocky side of the mountain.  This is why I choose to take a nap on such drives.   

• How do you get around? 
• Well, I walk to work, which only takes 20 minutes.  For work-related travel, embassy cars take us.  For personal trips, I call a cab; I have two great drivers on speed dial.  Of course, if I had that Vespa I wouldn't need them....

On work

• What's it like working in an embassy?
• Like working in a fortress guarded by marines.  Actually, its not as bad at our embassy as I imagine it is elsewhere, but getting your car inside is a minor production.  We tend to have a lot of meetings outside the embassy since its a hassle to get visitors access.  
• What do you do all day?
• Go to a lot of meetings, both within the embassy and outside.  We have meetings with our PEPFAR team, meetings with implementing partners, meetings with Government of Rwanda officials, meetings with other donors.  We have giant meetings with a few hundred people and meetings with just one other person.  We call meetings "conferences," "workshops," "joint reviews, "strategy sessions," "forums," and a dozen other things to trick ourselves into thinking we aren't in a meeting.  Actually, I shouldn't sound so bitter; most of these meetings are very productive and informative.  When not at meetings I'm usually at my desk responding to emails (from the parties listed above) or writing pieces for our official reports.  There's isn't a lot of time for Spider Solitaire or the Onion, alas.  
• What's it like working for a science-y organization like CDC? 
• Like being the a mediocre basketball player on a state championship-winning football team.  I consider myself a relatively bright person, but when we have discussions on the efficacy polymerase chain reaction based testing or debate the merits of using dried blood spots versus dried plasma spots, I find myself sitting slack-jawed and silent.  Of course, when I brought up the concept of diminishing marginal cost in a budget meeting, it was the rest of the team with blank looks on their faces.  But having much more seniority, they could just ignore me and move on.  On the plus side, when you say you're with CDC, people automatically assume you are an MD, as evidenced from the conference name tag below. In those situations I feel like Doogie Howser, which is nice.  

On me     

• Are you there alone?
• Yes, I am old enough to fly by myself, after all. 
• Are you lonely?
• I may be alone, but I am definitely not lonely.  The funny thing about being a foreigner is that every other foreigner automatically considers themselves your friend.  Here's an illustration of this phenomenon.  A couple weeks after arriving in Rwanda my office had me call a meeting of several partners (i.e. the organizations we give money to carry out programs).  There were about a dozen people there, all but one of whom were Rwandans in their 30s or 40s.  The one who was not a Rwandan was a Canadian girl in her 20s.  After the meeting she very kindly emailed me, volunteering help if I needed getting acclimated to the country (she's been here a couple years).  We began an email exchange and she invited me to a Halloween dinner.  I went to the dinner and meet a great group of young, expat women.  I asked them how they came to know each other.  The most common answer: "I saw her on the street and I asked her if she wanted to be my friend."  And so it is.
• Have you gotten fat?
• No, I don't think so.  Blessedly, unlike during my previous stints in Africa and Asia, I am not forced to eat three all-carbohydrate meals a day and have no outlet for exercise.  Beef and chicken are readily available, even though they aren't cheap. (Sadly, bacon, my favorite food, is not so easily found.) I cook for myself and thanks to Dama (see below), I have all my vegetables cleaned and chopped for me, which makes "cooking" really more of an exercise in throwing food from Tupperware containers into the stir-fry pan and waiting 5 minutes.  
• What do you eat?  
• Well, as just discussed, I often make a stir-fry, but I also end up eating out a fair amount.  Pretty much every restaurant here, no matter what they claim to serve (Chinese, Mexican, French) serves pizza and pasta, so I end up eating a lot of pizza, albeit creative, fusion pizza.  As for lunch, I eat at the embassy cafeteria, which serves Rwandan food as well as sandwiches, wraps, salads and other standard fare.
• Why are you wasting your 20s in the middle of nowhere?
• If not my 20s, then when? Right now I have the freedom (and energy) to pick a random country and move there, to go off on a weekend jaunt to Zanzibar, or to climb Kilimanjaro, whatever I feel like.  Kigali may not be the most happening city in the world from a social point of view, but in terms of my career, I can hardly thing of a better place to cut my professional teeth. 
• Isn't your life hard there?
• Quite the opposite--your life (for those of you in the US) is hard! Really, I do zero housework and everything is delivered to me.  My apartment gets cleaned twice a week as part of my rental agreement (they even do the dishes and change the sheets and towels), and I have an amazing woman named Scola who comes once a week and for $9 cleans, does the dishes, washes and irons my clothes, and does all my grocery shopping; she even dices all my vegetables for me and makes me a giant green salad and a fruit salad.  Jealous yet?  No? Well I also get an excellent in-home mani/pedi for $12.  Now you have to be jealous.  Sorry.  

This is my balcony, where I blog from.  Rough, isn't it?

A Shameless Request

Hello dear readers!

Thank you for your continued support and patience with my ramblings! Some of you have recently suggested that this blog eventually become a book.  I think that's a great idea but I need your help to do it.  If you enjoy reading this blog (or at least, tolerate it because my mom makes you read it), please become a follower.  (See right.) The more followers I have, the more likely this blog will get noticed by a travel website and eventually a publisher.  I promise to use any money earned from my travel writing to pay off my student loans and set up a savings account, not to buy the mint-green Vespa I so desperately want.  :)

Your faithful, misadventure-finding blogger,
Zara

Back to the Field

Before I arrived, I had heard Rwanda referred to as "The Land of a Thousand Hills."  Now that I've been here a month and spent some time in the countryside, I can definitively say that "thousand" is a serious underestimate and "hills" a misnomer that misrepresents the steepness of the rises.  Because of this rugged landscape, there is hardly a straight, level road in the country (or at least, the western half).  If you have a fear of heights, get carsick, or have recurring dreams about driving off the edge of a muddy cliff and falling a few thousand feet to your death, Rwanda is not for you.

However, I currently have none of those problems, so when my office suggested that I spend a week doing site visits to health centers in the northwest corner of the country, I very happily agreed to do so.  After spending three weeks running around to "H1N1 Emergency Task Force" meetings and updating epi-curves, I was quite excited to get back to the field, meet real people, and get a true understanding of the challenges facing the Rwandan health system.  I spent most of my time in Cameroon doing sites visits (over two dozen of them), often walking (through calf-deep mud) to remote clinics and spending a few days observing the work being done there.  More than three years of graduate school, it was these visits that gave me an understanding of the difficulties of providing health care in extremely resource-poor settings and an appreciation of the dedication and perseverance of the providers who work under the most challenging of conditions. (For more on my experiences researching the Cameroonian health system, check out my posts from summer 2008.  Spoiler: A baby gets named after me.)


The purpose of our four-day excursion was to conduct an assessment at small health centers around the country.  There were a half-dozen three-person teams doing this exercise, each with representatives from the CDC, the Ministry of Health (MOH), and the NGO currently supporting/managing the health center.  Some teams were based in Kigali, but most were out in rural areas in the western half of the country, along Lake Kivu.  My team was based out of Gisenyi, a stunning, what-passes-for-touristy-in-Rwanda town right on the lake and a stone's throw from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (See map at right.)  Gisenyi lies in the shadow of Nyiragongo, a still-active volcano which last erupted in 2002, killing 45 people in the DRC.  It's also 60km from the jumping-off point for gorilla tracking, which is what makes it semi-touristy.

We began our excursion on Tuesday morning.  Although Kigali itself is characterized by its many hills, windy streets, and greenery, the moment you leave town all that becomes much more dramatic.  The mountains are taller, the roads full of hairpin turns, and the land incredibly lush.  There were stunning panoramic views of hundreds of hills, with low-lying early morning fog nestled in deep valleys, and a brilliant pink sky, but what amazed me most was that seemingly every square inch of land was terraced and farmed.  Given that some of these hills appear nearly vertical, this is quite the feat of engineering.  But it also speaks to the scarcity of land here in Africa's most densely populated country, as well as the devotion of people to their land.

Along the four-hour drive there were the standard scenes characteristic of Africa: skinny elderly men in suits riding bicycles, women who look as old as time carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, small children in faded, tattered cast-off American clothes swinging mini-machetes on the way to the field, babies strapped to their mothers' backs, peeking around for a glimpse at their siblings.  In some ways these scenes are reassuring, a reminder of previous time spent in Africa, and from the comfort of an A/C, moving car, its easy to romanticize the life of Rwanda's rural population.  But the moment you step from the car into the blazing, dusty heat of town or the bitter chill of a mountain-top village, or haul a bucket of water up a hill or cook in the dark over a smoky wood fire, you realize that life is extremely difficult for most people in the developing world, regardless of how "simple" it may seem.

But I digress.

Most of the main road between Kigali and Gisenyi is quite good, although given the large number of petroleum-carrying trucks that alternately bring traffic to a grinding halt (uphill) and fly past dangerously close at high speeds (downhill), perhaps it would be better if it wasn't just one lane.   However, the non-paved, dirt/mud tracks out to the health centers are typically crater-laden.  The resulting ride is so bumpy and jarring it makes you wonder if you can get shaken baby syndrome as an adult.

After visiting one health center halfway between Kigali and Gisenyi on Tuesday, we came back to Kigali for the night.  The next day, even earlier, we set off once more. Four hours later we meet up in Ruhengeri (see map) with some team members who had decided to stay out in the field the previous night. Ruhengeri is the last major town before the Ugandan border and, like Gisenyi, is a hub for UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) food distribution.  It was around 9am when our two cars meet up on the main road in Ruhengeri.  Given that the people in the area are very used to the presence of wazungu (white people) in the form of UN workers, what garnered us considerable attention was that a bunch of wazungu poured out of two giant SUVs, ran in circles around them, and then piled back in within a couple minutes. Kind of strange behavior.

For the next few days we drove from one health center to another, with my team covering seven.  I know that doesn't seem like a lot of four days of work, but when it takes 3 hours to drive there and two hours to conduct the assessment (with most of that time spent combing through hard copies of various work plans and performance indicators), it was a fairly productive week. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I could have taken much more, given that I saw my life flash before my eyes numerous times during the week, as our car perched perilously over the edge of cliffs and we stared down into the valley a few thousand feet below.  One slip of the wheel on the mud road, one moment of distraction from our 19-year old driver John, one rickety plank in a makeshift bridge and I wouldn't be here right now.  I spent most of these hours alternately calculating the time it would take for a car to plunge 4,000 vertical feet and trying to calm myself down, arguing that if my three other teammates (who had 8 young kids between them) weren't fearing for their lives, neither should I.  Can't say I succeeded in either venture--neither physics nor self-hypnosis have been strong points of mine.  However, to my great surprise, we reached our sites safely and I was on occasion able to appreciate the stunning vistas, daring to look down from the ridge line at the lush, undulating green blanket that is Rwanda.

Overall our visits went well.  Given that most of it was conducted in Kinyarwanda, my job was mainly to check off certain boxes on the assessment when told to, and to smile and seem less like a scary USG official and more likely a helpful ally in the fight for quality health care.  I think I was more successful at the first task. Even though most of the conversations with the health providers was lost on me (15 minute discussions in Kinyarwanda were translated into "He says yes" or "She says no" summaries), I was able to learn a tremendous amount about the logistical, financial, clinical, and management challenges facing the facilities.  Its always amazing (and inspiring) to me how people who may have had very little education, whose pay is 6 months delayed, who are caring for hundreds of patients a day, who are still keeping their records on paper, are able to provide efficient and affordable health care to so many people.  No, it may not be of the quality we expect in American hospitals, but if these providers were unwilling to fight through these conditions, there would be no health care at all in most of the developing world.  Sometimes I wonder if they can award the Nobel Prize in Medicine to "All the Overworked, Underpaid, Working-with-Insufficient-Equipment-and-Training Health Care Providers in the Developing World."  Schmaltzy I know, but no more ridiculous than Obama getting the Peace Prize after less than 9 months in office (and I voted for him!).

But I digress.

There's no need for me to get into the details here, but here's a quick summary of what I took away from these site visits.  One, many of the problems providers face are created by donors (USG, Global Fund, etc) and their endless reporting requirements.  Yes, we have an obligation to make sure tax dollars are going to good use, but when clinics have to maintain their accounts by hand, quarterly reports become a giant time-suck. Two, the "long-run" isn't something most providers think about.  They don't have time to consider strategic plans or sustainability measures-- they are too busy contending with challenges in the short-term.  There are babies to be born, malaria to be treated, HIV to be diagnosed; developing five year performance targets doesn't rate high on their to-do list, and rightly so.  Three, people here desperately want to gain skills and become more efficient, since they know that one day soon (thanks to the requirements of PEPFAR II), they'll have to do everything on their own.  One clinic asked us to write down all the things we thought they could do better.  Most of our suggestions had to do with management and documentation, since those are areas where providers lack skills.  Being a good clinician isn't enough anymore, in any part of the world; you must also know how to run a facility, but I don't know of a medical program anywhere that teaches that.

So that's the work side of things.  I can't say I did too much fun, personal stuff on this little trip.  By the time we got back in the evenings and my heart rate came down to normal, it was time for dinner and bed.  But on my last night in Gisenyi one of my teammates, who was working for the NGO partner, invited us to his house for the evening.  My wazungu colleagues and I went over to his house around 7pm, when pitch blackness has settled over Rwanda.  (This is the problem with being on the equator- very clearly demarcated hours of sunlight: 6am to 6pm.)  After standing outside near a light and getting attacked by moth-dragonfly hybrid creatures, we went inside, only to be surrounded by hundreds more.  They didn't seem to be bothering the 15 local people there, but we started killing all of them insight with our bare feet-- probably not the most appropriate thing to do, but one of my colleagues had a phobia of bugs.  Following greetings, drinks, and speeches, it was "time for the babies."  I knew my teammate's wife had recently had their second baby.  I didn't realize that "recently" meant one week ago.  The poor infant (who had a surprising amount of hair) was plucked from his crib and passed around, followed by his 14-month old sister.  Although being attacked by bugs, feeling disoriented from having been discourteously woken up, and being forced to pose for pictures with wazungu, the little girl was incredibly adorable and sweet, if just a little grumpy.  Who could blame her.


(My teammate was embarrassed by the closeness in age of his children, since so much of the reproductive health messaging here, with he is a part of, focuses on birth spacing.  Its a complicated campaign, but the logic, in short, is if children are spaced further apart, they are healthier and more likely to survive past age 5.  When I told him that my brother and I are only 16 months apart, he seemed to feel much better about things.)

When we finally completed our last site visit on Friday and started heading home, I was sad to go.  There is so much about public health that is impossible to learn sitting behind a desk (not that I've sat behind mine for more than 5 minutes since I got here).  Being able to put a face to the name and a context to the services is invaluable. Readjusting expectations to coincide with local realities is a part of public health that I think often gets overlooked by policymakers.  I know I now have a much better frame for understanding the Rwandan health system and a deeper appreciation for how far it has come from its devastation 15 years ago.    

You can check out all pictures from my trip to Gisenyi at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144120&id=1012910&l=5e4d1d2b9c.  There are more landscapes, more health centers, more people, and even me pretending to change a flat tire.

Just Dive Right In...

Many of you have pointed out (repeatedly) that I have been delinquent with this blog.  For that I can only claim swine flu.  No, not that I have it, but that it broke the day after I arrived in Rwanda and for the first few weeks I was working almost constantly on the outbreak investigation. It wasn't until my third week here that I finally got a day off (and on that day, I slept, not blogged).  The U.S. government (henceforth known as USG) certainly doesn't make life easy for its low-level flunkies abroad.

Let's start at the beginning. I arrived here on a Thursday afternoon.  Friday morning I went to the office, attended a few meetings, and had a relatively low-key day.  That was to be the last for a while.  Saturday morning I received a text from my supervisor asking if I wouldn't mind being "on call" for H1N1 for the weekend. Not knowing what that meant and wanting to seem eager, enthusiastic and helpful, I said of course.  The next day I found myself at a "Special H1N1 Outbreak Control Task Force" meeting being charged with coordinating and maintaining surveillance of all suspected and confirmed cases.  Now, I am not an epidemiologist or strategic information specialist.  I've never worked on an outbreak investigation.  Infectious disease isn't my forte. Other than the four CDC folks there, I had never met any of the 12 people in the room. Yet for some reason they decided to give me the task of maintaining the line-listing, which is the official record of who is a confirmed case of H1N1 and all their vital statistics.  On that day there were already 7 cases, but maybe they thought that would be all for a while, and that maintaining the list would be not be particularly time-consuming or important.

They were wrong.

Within a few days the outbreak had exploded, with up to a dozen new cases everyday.  Every morning, starting that Monday, I would attend the four-hour daily task force meeting and gather all the data on the new cases from the lab and people involved in contact tracing.* In a country where information doesn't so much as flow as it does come to a screeching halt at the slightest hurdle, filling in just one cell in an spreadsheet can take hours.  Getting a patient's age or date of diagnosis would eat up half my day.  But because this was such a time-consuming process, no one else wanted to do it, which turned me into "The Holder of All Information."  I was, for a few weeks there, the only person in Rwanda with the complete list of all the confirmed and suspected of H1N1 cases in the country-- a very strange position to be in.

Information really turns out be power, so I (or rather, my spreadsheet) became much in demand.  On that first Monday, my second day on the job, we met with the Minister of Health, who was given a copy of my various graphs, charts and lists tracking the outbreak.  Although he was happy with these pieces, he was unhappy about everything else in our (really, the Ministry's) handling of the outbreak and took the meeting as an opportunity to introduce us to the new task force leader.

And so it went for a while-- endless meetings, spreadsheet mania, and an ever-changing person in command.  Each day we would receive news of people been sacked, "resigning," being brought in as yet another "supervisor."  Task force members dropped like flies, only to be instantly replaced by more obliging minions.  Throughout it all our mini-team of five CDC-ers sat by, jaws agape and brains reeling from all the changes.

To say this experience was a crash course in Rwandan politics, CDC bureaucracy, and public health practice would be an understatement.  But by the time I handed over my spreadsheets to the ministry's new surveillance manager in week 3, I could definitively say that I had learned more than I had expected to in my first 6 months of work.  The learning curve was Everest-steep, but I could not have asked for a better introduction to the key players and major problems in the Rwandan public health system.

However, it was a great relief to be relieved of my duties as surveillance manager.  And of course, I was even more relieved to have escaped the experience without having contracted swine flu myself.

*Contact tracing: the systematic identification and diagnosis of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person.

Trivia, Because I Like It

Since we all know I love trivia, here's some facts on Rwanda to throw randomly into conversation*:

• 147th smallest country on Earth, 2nd smallest in Africa (only the Gambia is smaller).
• Slightly smaller than Maryland, but with nearly double the population (10.4 million compared to 5.6 million).
• Most densely populated country in Africa. (However, only the 32nd most densely populated in the world. Asian countries dominate that list.)
• First country in the world to have a majority of women in Parliament, with 56%. (This is also the highest rate of any country currently.)
• Kigali has been named one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa.
• Plastic bags have been banned outright in Rwanda, making it one of the few countries (and the only developing country besides Bangladesh) to do so.
• On January 1, 2002 Rwanda adopted a new flag (see sidebar), coat of arms and national anthem. The colors of the flag represent peace and tranquility (blue), wealth (yellow), and prosperity, work, and productivity (green). The new coat of arms contains the new motto "Unity, Work, Patriotism."
• Known as "the land of a thousand hills" because of its rolling terrain.
• 3/4 of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
• 90% of the working population are farmers.
• Approximately 56% of the population is Catholic, 37% Protestant, 5% Muslim, and the remainder are athesist/agnostic or hold animist beliefs.
• About half the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas live in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, also home to Dian Fossey's research.
• The real GDP growth rate last year was 11.2%.
• 44% of the population is under the age of 16.
• Has an annual population growth rate of 2.78%, making it the 17th fastest growing country in the world.
• Life expectancy is 47.3 years.
• Total fertility rate is 5.43 children per woman.
• 70% of the adult population can read and write.
• Of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Rwanda was ranked 5th on the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' index (so invest here!!).

With that, I wish you success in Trivial Pursuit, trivia nights, and Jeopardy! May there be a category on 'Minutiae of Tiny African Countries.'

*Speaking of random facts sprinkled into conversation, my new favorite, highly-recommended, non-fiction book is "The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World". Plenty of good examples of awkward, trivia-laden conversations.

Rwanda?! Seriously?!?!

In American games of word association, "Nigeria" is to "online banking scams" as "Rwanda" is to "genocide". If you ask people to name countries in east Africa they would probably come up with "Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwandangenocide." Most think that "Hotel Rwanda" is a real place (it's not-- the hotel portrayed in the movie is actually called the Milles Collines). If you ask whether the genocide is ongoing and if the streets still run red with blood, people would likely say "of course." This is what happens when the only things people know about a country are derived from a movie that portrayed events 10 years after the fact.

In sum, there are a lot of misconceptions about Rwanda. To remedy that, here's a brief history of Rwanda (including the genocide) in 5 minutes or less.

In the popular local consciousness Rwandan history is divided into two periods: before and after, with the dividing even being, of course, the genocide. The before time started about 10,000 years ago, when the land was first settled by pygmy (Twa) hunter-gatherers. The origins and order of immigration of the Hutus and Tutsi are not universally agreed upon, but it is generally thought that the Hutus, who were mainly farmers of Bantu descent from the west, joined the Twa approximately 2,000 years ago. Later the Tutsis, cattle-herders of Nilotic or Cushitic origin, migrated to the region from the north.

Eventually the Hutus and Tutsis came to dominate the area, driving the Twa into the forests. Over time the Hutus and Tutsis came to share a language (Kinyarwanda), religion, legal system, and land. They intermarried and lived side by side, and the ethnic distinctions between the groups soon became blurred. Most ethnographers and historians now agree that 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi' do not constitute distinct ethnic groups.

However, the names stuck and became associated with different positions in society, with Tutsis (who constituted the minority of the population) being considered the elite, thanks to their cattle, which was a more valuable asset than any crop produced by the Hutu farmers. Already a fiercely hierarchal society, the stratification accelerated in the 1860s during a military campaign led by a Tutsi king to consolidate the area now known as Rwanda. In the new, even more feudal society, Tutsis were nobility and Hutus vassals, but these categories were by no means binding. Yet each group developed its own culture and sense of identity, largely based on diet and physical characteristics. Eventually European colonizers would come to embrace these categorizations as well.

At the 1885 "Berlin Conference to Divide Africa", Rwanda (and its equal small southern neighbor, Burundi) was designated a province of German East Africa. After WWI, the League of Nations turned the colony over to Belguim as "a spoil of war." The Belgians took a "divide and conquer" approach to the population, who despite their differences had an unusual level of national cohesion, sharing "one language, one faith, one law." (Really, how many countries can claim that?) The Belgians, upon setting foot in the country, started running around measuring cranial capacities, protuberance of noses, forehead width, anything they could use to prove that a substantial distinction existed in the stature, intelligence and moral character of Hutus and Tutsis. Naturally, the found what they wanted to find-- that Tutsis were the "nobler" group (read: having physical characteristics that more closely resembled their own). In 1933 they used this "information" to issue ethnic identity cards, labeling 85% of Rwandans as Hutus, 14% as Tutsis, and 1% as Twa. No longer were the lines between groups porous.

In the new apartheid system, Tutsis enjoyed educational, political, economic and social perks, while Hutus fell even further into poverty. In 1957, fed up with being marginalized in the ethnically bipolar state, a group of nine Hutu intellectuals published the "Hutu Manifesto," which spurred a violent uprising by Hutus, and subsequent retaliation by Tutsis. Desperate to be relieved of the burden of managing a colony in chaos, in 1960 the Belgians announced they were splitting Rwanda and Burundi into to countries and would administer democratic elections in each, as preparation for independence. On July 1, 1962, independence was finally granted and Gregoire Kayibanda, one of the authors of the Hutu Manifesto, was inaugurated as the first President of Rwanda.

Over the next 30 years Rwanda's progress was hindered not only by its own Hutu (French-supported) dictatorship, but by violent events in next door Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. And to the north, in Uganda, young, disenfranchised Tutsi men were joining the Uganda military in droves in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986, Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi who was formerly the head of military intelligence for the Ugandan army (and who had also received military training in the US), co-founded the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel guerrilla group. After years of intensive training, the RPF launched an invasion into Rwanda in 1990, which led to three years of civil war. The war ended in 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Accords and the establishment of a power-sharing government, and for a short while there was relative peace.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, that peace was shattered. The plane carrying the (Hutu) presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. The assassins are unknown, although rumors abound. Some think it was members of the RPF seeking revenge, while others believe it was Hutu extremists who were either a) frustrated with the president for negotiating with the Tutsis or b) looking for an excuse to unleash extreme violence on Tutsis.

That April night members of the Rwandan presidential guard and the Interahamwe (a Hutu youth extremist paramilitary group) began killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the capital. The violence quickly spread, as the military, in preparation for such violence, had installed 30,000 militia representatives around the country, or one militia member for every ten families. Some had AK-47 and others grenades, but the majority had only machetes, and most of the killing was conducted in a low-tech, brutal manner. The radio was filled night and day with songs and speeches urging the young Hutu men of the country to violence, a call they heeded.

In addition to angry young men, priests, politicians, teachers, doctors and community elders were all responsible for killing, some murdering with their own hands and some more deceitfully, as in the cases of priests who promised Tutsis refuge in their churches, only to lead the militias to them for slaughtering.

In 100 days, from early April to mid July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed. Between 10% and 20% of those slaughtered were moderate Hutus. Official government documents put the figure at 1,174,000, which amounts to 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, or 7 every minute. In just over 3 months nearly 20% of the country's population was wiped out, leaving only 300,000 Tutsis to survive the genocide. Over 400,000 children were made orphans and thousands of widows were raped by HIV+ men.

Throughout the genocide the international community stood by silently. Rwanda, by coincidence, was at the time a member of the UN Security Council, which hampered efforts to send in peacekeeping troops, although there was never a strong desire among the major international powers to do so. The US refused to send troops, and when the African Union offered to intervene as long as the US provided the armored personnel carriers, the US army charged them $6.5 million for transportation, which severely delayed deployment. The UN security force in Rwanda, UNAMIR, was cut down to just 260 men after 10 Belgian officers were killed in early April. Finally, in late June the UN sent a humanitarian mission to Goma, Zaire, on the western border of Rwanda to set up a refugee camp.

The genocide came to an end in July when the RPF, which had been engaged in intense fighting in Kigali and the north of the country for months, was able to overthrow the Hutu regime and seize power. This small force brought a halt to the violence will almost no help from the world's military powers.

In the aftermath of the genocide more than 2 million Rwandan Hutus, many of them perpetrators of violence fearing Tutsi retribution, fled the country, largely taking up shelter in the UN refugee camps of Zaire. Simultaneously, more than 1 million Tutsis in exile returned to the country and set about reestablishing their life in Rwanda.

Okay, so that was Rwanda in the "before" time. Now on to the "after" time, a much more cheery era.

In most countries, intense violence begets intense violence, but strong leadership prevented such a fate in Rwanda. (Violence continued in eastern Zaire, but that's a story for a different post.) A coalition government of "national unity" was established in 1994 by the RPF. Political organizing and "Hutu Power" political parties were banned, but so was any discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, or religion, a policy strictly enforced. Discussion of Hutu or Tutsi identity was discouraged. In 1998 President Clinton visited the country and formally apologized for the US's complacency during the genocide.

In 2000, Paul Kagame, former leader of the RPF and vice-president, ascended to the presidency. In 2003 he won the first fully democratic elections since the genocide. He remains in power today, and although is considered by many to be a (benevolent) dictator, he has instituted a huge number of reforms to improve the economic and social conditions in Rwanda. One year ago he decreed that the nation's school system (and the entire government administration) was shifting from French to English in a move to become a member of the East African Community. The policy also represents a break from Rwanda's colonial past and a desire to be a part of the global economy. Next month the country will be hooked into a high-speed, fibre-optic network so it can better compete in high-tech service industries.

Today Kigali, and Rwanda in general, shows few signs of its past trauma. Yet, no matter how hard it tries, it cannot escape its negative image in the West as a land of violence, chaos, and barbarianism. I can only hope that this mini-course in Rwandan history (and future posts on my life here) will give you a more complete picture of the complex, complicated country Rwanda is, and how it is so much more than what happened for 3 months in 1994.

If you want to learn more about Rwanda and/or the genocide, here is some recommended reading:

"We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda", Philip Gourevitch-- An outstanding, well-researched book on the genocide and how the country coped in the first few years that followed.

"A thousand hills: Rwanda's rebirth and the man who dreamed it", Stephen Kinzer-- Excellent book on Kagame, his ambitions for Rwanda, and the spirit of a country trying to get back on its feet.

"Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda", Romeo Dallaire and Samantha Power-- The man left to lead UNAMIR examines his experiences with help from Power, a prominent academic and member of the National Security Council

"Land of a thousand hills: My life in Rwanda", Rosamond Halsey Carr-- Story of an American woman who lived in Rwanda from the 1940 through the post-genocide period. Great long-term perspective on things.