Happenings

Friday was the tour of the Millennium Village Project. As most of you know, I've been heavily involved in the project at UNC and had so many questions of experts on the projects, hoping to talk about the strengths of weaknesses, long term plans, etc. The interventions we saw were incredibly excitingl - the tour showing it to us was absolutely awful. We left Kigali early and drove about 45 minutes, listening to facts about MVP that were dead wrong. Absolutely nothing was explained well- people in my group were justified to ask me later what MVP was!!!!!!!

The interventions I saw though were very exciting. The World Food Programme had been in the village for a long time, so the school-feeding program was not implemented by MVP. MVP had donated computers and electricity to teach basic computer skills, and every 6th to 8th grader could work on the computers for 2 hours each week. MVP also provided equipment to install an irrigation system, with villagers running the whole process and benefitting enormously the agricultural sector. We walked through the health clinic, which was packed and quite awkward, but that was the tour and my curiosity got the best of me. We later talked to farmers who had learned better techniques and found better crops to produce with the help of MVP, and finally went to a woman's cooperative making baskets. I was excited about seeing this, and while it was interesting, I was completely disheartened by the fact that all of their sales come from tours like ours because that's not sustainable or scalable.

To continue the horrible tour, we stopped at a "reconciliation village" that is home to perpetrators who have changed and survivors who have forgiven. When our group arrived, the entire community gathered in a well-practiced ritual of cultural dancing (they of course made us dance), food that was disgusting- we were able to give it away and make all of us happy- and banana beer that was good but sooo sweet I couldn't finish a glass. We heard from a perpetrator, who said he was sorry but blamed it on bad parents and bad government, saying that he changed his views because Tutsis didn't kill him when he was arrested. The survivor told her story of running through the woods for three days straight, hiding in the bowl of a toilet, and losing all of her friends and family. I kept trying to put myself in the situation, thinking about losing people around me, and I kept coming back to "but I would still have (person)", which wasn't the case for her. Amazingly she danced with the first man and now lives in peace.

Saturday we woke up early and headed to the resort town of Gisenyi. We were afraid that we would be crammed into a mini-bus, but actually the bus was very nice, stopping along the way, and showing us some of the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. The extremely steep hills have been turned into farmland, with bushes planted between rectangular fields providing an incredible checkerboard pattern as far as you can see. Farmland would be interrupted periodically only by waterfalls or soccer fields, which I found incredible (and of course understandable) that they would give up the potential income. There was also a lot of construction, with the occasional tractor but tons of manual labor.

We got to Gisenyi and our "hostel" told us that curfew was at 10:00 and that they had our reservation, but the room wasn't available. I wasn't quite sure what good our reservation was, but we just left and went across the street. It was an experience, as instead of separating guys and girls, they insisted that girls could not share a room with other girls- there must be a guy present, total opposite of the first guesthouse that separated us. We ended up staying there for $7.50, and it was fine. We rode around the run down town for awhile, chilled on the picturesque beach and played frisbee for a long time. We ate dinner at a really nice but deserted restaurant and were so tired we were back by 9:45, before the curfew we found so outrageous.

Ben and I moved in with Jean, a 33-year-old engaged guy, on Sunday for our homestay week. 

We've discussed authoritarianism in Rwanda, freedom of the press, Darfur, democracy, microfinance and development, conflict in the DRC, Premiership soccer (I'm definitely going to follow it full-time when I get back, its really a way to connect with people around the world and so fun to watch), family (Jean's Congolese mother and Rwandan father separated because of the 1996 and subsequent wars), getting lost (he slept in the streets of Niger when he couldn't remember the name of his hotel)! Its a lot of fun and a good adventure, as the bathroom is a hole in the ground!! We come in, sit down in the same seats, and watch BBC World and MTV every night, realizing how much more informed the rest of the world is than we are. It's fantastic and we actually may meet up with him when I'm in London in July!!

Yesterday we left from class to go to the talent show the secondary school was hosting for us!! We felt really bad because they spent lots of time and money on us. We were served dinner- goat intestine and stomach (a little fatty, but not bad- especially when its served to you as the guest of honor)- drinks (lots of fanta and a flavor not in the U.S.- citron), and treated to a night of Rwandan culture mixed with us making a fool of ourselves (I beat-boxed in front of 500 kids). We were each given certificates of friendship, and I got almost 15 cards from these high school students who wanted to stay in touch and say how much they appreciated me teaching economics (elasticity and today price fluctuations in agricultural commodities) and trigonometry. I don't think they understood too much of it, but the school really appreciated it because the economics teacher couldn't be there in the morning! Todays our last day in Kigali, and tomorrow we leave for Butare!!