Education appreciate week Mass/Ceremony/Parade of Students in the Rwaza Valley...the social event of the season! Some local kiddos staring at the muzungu.

Forbidden Fruit

During the first week of the second vacation from school, I headed up to Kampala, Uganda with two other volunteers. On the way up it was a pleasant, 10 hour bus ride passing first through the Northern Province’s misty, tea-filled valleys, and then through the Ugandan countryside. The landscape of Southern Uganda is similar to that of Rwanda, but the hills and valleys are flatter and there are more cows and fewer goats. But the most noticeable difference once crossing the border is the food. I had the same impression when I went to Tanzania during the first vacation. At first you can’t quite put your finger on what’s so different. You think, maybe the people are friendlier here. Or maybe it’s because people are speaking in English. But, while these may be somewhat true, it’s really all about the food.

In Rwanda, you never show food in public. There are a few small exceptions. At a market or inside a store, it can be visible. In a restaurant you can be seen eating food, but preferably with curtains covering all the windows. On a bus, you may eat peanuts or crackers sold by young boys through the windows. But this is only when you are on the bus, never while you are outside of the bus waiting to get on. You may also have gum on the bus, but it is impolite to have some without also buying some for your neighbors. When you go to the store, you must put your purchases in a purse or in a brown paper bag (plastic bags are illegal here). If you eat or drink anything, it will be done at a table, inside your house or at a restaurant. Even drinking water or having a water bottle in public is faux pas. After bringing a water bottle to the teacher’s room one day, I decided not to do it again because everyone either asked why I had it or asked to drink some of it. I once visited a fellow teacher and she gave me a giant squash to bring back with me to cook. I thanked her for it and cradled it in my arm, ready to bring back with me, but she protested. “You must have a bag!!” she insisted. “People will see you!” So I waited for her to hunt through her kitchen to find a paper bag big enough for it and then watched as she carefully stuffed it in, trying not to rip the bag.

At the Health Center, down the road, there is a small shop which sells Fanta. But there is no inside seating area and the returnable glass bottles are valuable, so you have to bring your own replacement bottle if you want to take one away. It would be unthinkable to stand by the shop and drink it outside. I have an agreement with the store owner that I will bring the empty bottle back within two days if I buy a Fanta. This is a special exception made for me because I’m muzungu. One Friday, I was planning a dinner of fries and pop to eat while I watched a movie, but forgot to bring a bag with me when I went to the shop. I had to carry the Fanta orange back home, bare to the world, while I tried to hide it in the crook of my arm. Never will I do that again. I got a few looks from some passing teachers and some serious harassment from some local teenage girls (that is another story altogether).

I’ve found the social food codes to be one of the most frustrating cultural things I’ve had to deal with, especially during long social events. After sitting through 5 hours of speeches and singing, its hard not to sneak a bite of a cracker from a purse, or to stuff a glucose tablet in my mouth. But even this would be inappropriate unless I can somehow sneak off to a bathroom. On a teacher field trip we left at about 4:30 in the morning. We were given a piece of bread at 10am and then couldn’t eat lunch until 3:30 because we had to go to a specific place where we could all eat inside. During the long wait for food one of the teachers looked at me and shaking his head said “Oh, oh, oh, I am very hungry. They need to let us eat. It is a crime!”

In Uganda, as in Tanzania, I found attitudes towards food to be completely different. Street vendors were everywhere selling cookies, watermelon, roasted corn, fried bananas, juice, soda, chapatti, boiled eggs, and meat on a stick. In the city, after it gets dark, rickety tables and benches are set out where you can sit and get a plate of hot rice, meat and veggies. You can order tea or buy a drink from one of the glass faced refrigerators in front of a store. But by far, the best thing to get in Uganda is a Rolex. A vendor selling Rolexes will stand behind a table with a large, machete-like knife. First he will chop garlic. Then cabbage and tomatoes and onions. With one quick motion, he will crack an egg with his knife into a plastic cup. Then another. After that, he will add the veggies and salt. A used plastic water bottle will be on the table, filled with oil and a small hole cut into the lid. He’ll pour some of this onto the hot metal plate sitting on top of the charcoal fire behind him. Onto this goes the egg mixture. After the omelet has cooked, a chapatti is slapped on top. When the whole thing is warmed through, it is removed from the fire and with a flick of the wrist, rolled up and slipped into a bag. It takes about 5 minutes to make and costs about 50 cents.

Tanzania has its own equivalent of this: The Zanzibar Pizza. It is dough with egg, onions, cheese, cabbage, tomatoes, and sometimes peppers or garlic inside. It is also made on a grill, street-side. But Rwanda has no local equivalent. Even though all of these ingredients are available just about anywhere in Rwanda (even up on the mountain I can get eggs), no one I’ve seen has ever gotten creative enough to combine them into something that tastes delicious. If you want eggs at a restaurant, you usually have to go to a hotel and pay a pretty penny. The most exotic Rwandan restaurant I’ve been to is unique because they cook their beans and carrots together instead of separately.

My teacher neighbors cook food out in their kitchen when they stay at the school. I’ve stopped asking what they’re making because they always say “Ah, rice and beans, always rice and beans. It is the Rwandan way.” My theory is that the shame about public food stifles creative cooking. It’s hard to appreciate food for being anything other than strictly nourishment if the only time you are allowed to see it is in the privacy of your own home. In Uganda, the air was filled with the smells of barbequed meat and sweet roasted corn. People were shouting food requests on the streets and talking with others while they waited for their rolexes. Wherever you go, eating and drinking with people is a kind of communion, it creates a bond. While people do eat together in Rwanda, I can’t help but feel like something is missing when it happens with such restrictions. What I really don’t understand is why tiny Rwanda (and possibly the equally tiny Burundi) are the only places in all of East Africa where there is this mentality about food.

I will say though that the lack of food floating around Kigali keeps it incredibly clean. The streets of Kampala were full of trash. One night when we were there, we were crouched on a bench on the sidewalk eating Rolexes and talking with a man passing through on his way to Sudan. He was telling about how Kigali was known all over Africa for its cleanliness. “Here, it is not clean. It is good you did not come during the rainy season. You have to hold your nose when you go outside!”

Update

Well, I have a couple posts in the works, but I just wanted to give a quick update. We just started the third term, it will be 10 weeks long, two of those being exam weeks. I am hoping to finish up the national curriculum in the next couple of weeks so that I can use the last few to fill in some holes and do some fun math lessons...Fibonacci, data analysis, logic puzzles...anyone have any good critical thinking lesson ideas?

There is construction going on at the school, they are redoing the kitchen I had a chat with the overseer in French the other day and determined that it has something to do with making it more efficient. The only construction term I understood was "combustion." I gather it has something to do with the huge boilers they use to cook the rice and beans in.

They are also making a new science lab. This one actually has lab tables for the students to stand at. The previous one has only one table so the students have to stand and watch the teacher do the experiment. I'm hoping they'll get more lab equipement to go along with the new room. Right now I'm teaching a physics unit on heat and am bringing in a thermos of hot water, coffee mugs and my digital body temp. thermometer to do experiments with! Also among my teaching aids are a winch made from a pringles can, string, and a compass, and a triangular prism made from a taped up Toblerone box.

In the works is an English club. Also, I'm still collecting graphing calculators if anyone has any they aren't using and want to send my way. I've gotten a few and hopefully in the next few weeks I can give a few lessons to the teachers on how to use them and integrate them into their teaching.

Sorry this isn't a very exciting post, but coming soon: The non-existant Rwandan food culture!!!
Also, here's a little something: I was getting another lesson from the students on Kinyarwanda the other day. Here's what I learned:
umusatsi=hair, umusasi=crazy, umutetsi=cook, umusizi=poet...try saying crazy haired cook five times fast in Kinyarwanda!

Phone Thief

Try as I might to avoid it, a pessimistic attitude towards strangers has crept over me in the last month or so. After being asked by people I don't know for everything from money and pens to shoes and the clothes off my back, I've gotten a bit cynical about engaging in conversation with people on the street. Often it is the same conversation every time, sometimes in Kinyarwanda, sometimes in English, sometimes in French:

Stranger:"Good Morning." (Even at 4pm).

Me: "Good Afternoon, Mwiriwe."

Stranger: "How are you?"

Me: "I am fine, how are you?"

Stranger: "Fine thank you. Where are you coming from?"

Me: "I am coming from Rwaza."

Stranger: "You are going where?"

Me: "I am going to Musanze. Where are you going?"

Stranger: "Me, I am going to Musanze also…You are coming from where?"

Me: "I am coming from Rwaza."

Stranger: "No, no, no, what country?"

Me: "I am from the United States."

Stranger: "The ewnited tates?"

Me: "America."

Stranger: "Ah, America…"

3 minutes of silence

Stranger: "How can you help me?"

Me: "How can I help you?"

Stranger: "Yes, how can you help me?"

Me: "I don't know how I can help you."

Stranger: "But I want to speak English very, very well and I want to go to America. What can you do?"

Sometimes I can change the subject and talk about school, but most of the time I have to walk awkwardly with the petitioner walking in step next to me in silence, sometimes trying again to get something from me. Almost always they ask for my phone number. At first I thought it would be good to stay in contact with one or two people and try and make friends with them. But befriending at random turned out to be a mistake. I still get an occasional phone call at 4:30 in the morning from someone I gave my number to in January and haven't talked to since.

After 7 months of going through this same conversation, or a slight variation of it, several times whenever I leave the school, my inclination towards politeness has diminished. It's easiest to give one word responses, avoid eye contact, and walk faster. But with the rising of my irritation at these encounters, I've also realized that in some ways, you can't blame people for trying. Usually it's only the less educated people who ask me for English lessons, or money. And, really they're just trying to help themselves. So, when I started out for town last Sunday morning, I prepared myself to be patient and engage with people who tried to talk with me.

The walk was a long one (two hours) and by the end, the sun and exercise had me sweaty and tired out. By the time I made it to the main road, I had chatted with a few kids and one or two adults. But at the main road, I picked up a follower. When he saw me coming, he left his position of leaning against a building and started walking the same way I was, walking faster when I met up with him so our strides would match. At first everything was fine. I found out that he was an electrician and was taking some classes somewhere about something and that he had been taking them for some amount of time. But then he started asking me for things. When he asked for my phone number it took a bit of resisting to get him to drop the issue.

As soon as this man gave up and parted from me, another one pushing a bike came to take his place. The conversation was almost identical. Eventually he turned off the road to go to his friend's house, but within 5 minutes, someone else had matched paces with me to try to chat me up for some favors. This pattern continued, me getting less and less patient with every new encounter. Eventually I made it to town, had some breakfast and then went to church. The service was in English and many of the people there were used to interacting with foreigners, so I wasn't a big novelty there. I left in a good mood and newly motivated to be friendly to whatever other co-walkers might be passing my way that day.

After lunch, I made my way to Caritas, an artist co-op which teaches crafting skills to street kids and helps pay for their school fees. I was going to buy some cards to write some letters. On my way there, a young boy started chatting with me. After asking for money and a pen with a negative response, he started answering my questions about what he was doing and how old he was and where he went to school. He was very talkative and cheerful and told me that his name was Dieudonne ("God gives" in French). A teenage girl had joined us, listening to the conversation, and I started to enjoy the company. When I turned off to go to the co-op they waved goodbye and smiled. After buying my cards I turned towards the street. I was going to go to the hotel across the street and use the internet before heading back up the mountain. As I exited through the gate, Dieudonne bounded up to me and pointed across the street to the hotel. "You are going over there?" he asked. "Yes," I replied. And the next thing I knew he had taken off in the other direction.

"That's odd," I thought. "I wonder why he asked me that and also why he didn't keep walking when I went in to Caritas." But I didn't think much of it. About 40 minutes later, as I was packing up my computer at the hotel, I reached in my bag for my cellphone. It wasn't in the pocket where I usually keep it, so I pulled out everything from my bag to figure out where I had absent-mindedly put it. But it wasn't there. It didn't take long for me to realize that it had been stolen. I had a friend call it and found that the number was unavailable. Now Dieudonne's strange comment made sense. He had been turning my attention to the hotel so that the girl could grab my phone from my bag.

I was furious. All day I had been battling with myself to show some respect to people. I had been really nice to Dieudonne. I spoke with him in Kinyarwanda. I told him about my job and America and had asked him about his school and what subjects he enjoyed. I had done everything I could to convey to him that I was a Muzungu living a (semi) Rwandan life among Rwandan people, not a rich tourist coming to take photos of the poor hungry African kids and the gorillas. I was even dressed like a Rwandan woman on Sunday (button-up shirt and dressy skirt). I didn't even really care about the phone. It cost me less than $20 and I had another one with all of my numbers on it (one for town, and one for the mountain).

I was wishing I could meet up with Dieudonne and give him a tongue lashing. I imagined it in my head. Something about having respect for yourself and others, maybe another bit about how if you don't want people to treat you like a beggar and thief, then you shouldn't act like one. I remembered the time a few weeks before, when a taxi driver in Kigali refused to give us the correct change. My friend Mitesh had very solemnly told him he should be ashamed of himself and that he should perform his job with integrity and honor. It was brilliant. Pure act of WWJD if you ask me. Got us our money back too. I saw myself having a conversation like this with Dieudonne. After which he would hang his head and give me my phone back. Then I would give it back to him under the condition that he never steal again. And thus I would have saved a child from a life of thievery and crime. But unfortunately, I probably will never see Dieudonne again. Also he probably is not exactly destined for a life of crime, just an occasional pick-pocketing when it's an easy job.

On the moto ride back home, I remembered something from when I was a kid, when I would get in a fight with my brother or sister. "MOOOOMMM!!!!" we'd scream as we ran down the stairs to stand before Mom's judgment. Usually she'd just say: "I don't want to hear it. Go sit on the bench."

"The Bench" was a wooden bench in the entryway which held winter hats and gloves and scarves in the seat. We knew the drill. We had to sit on it with our current enemy and either talk about the fight or sit in silence until we got to the point where we could give each other a hug. It didn't matter who was in the wrong. Every plea of "But Mom, it's not fair, she started it!!" was met with the response "Life's not fair, figure it out."

I thought about Dieudonne. It's hard to tell from the way he looked, but probably at least one of his family members has died in his lifetime. It's also possible that he won't ever get a full education. Maybe there are some days he doesn't get enough to eat. Dieudonne probably already knows that life isn't fair. And like everyone else, he's just trying to figure it out.