Remember that time I told you that I had FORTY STUDENTS?

Well, turns out I now have sixty.

Yes. SIXTY. STUDENTS.

Screening "Pursuit of Happyness"

It’s pretty incredible. I can hardly believe it myself. But I did find out why last week. On Friday, the LC director interrupted my class and took 10 students out into the hallway. It turns out the other English teacher had zero students and all her students were in my class! No wonder – I couldn’t figure out how it was possible for me to have new students trickling in everyday…

Anyway, that’s why I’ve been sort of M.I.A. with my blogging. The past two weeks have been draining on many levels – one of them being lesson-planning, grading, and teaching – but, of course, teaching is still very rewarding. I love all of my students dearly, and I am so thrilled to see them every morning. However, aside from completely veering from my original curriculum and developing new lesson plans on interview questions, job applications, and business letters; I have also started to stay after class to offer support to students pursuing project ideas and seeking advice on finding jobs. I’m far from being an expert on starting new businesses, but I listen and advise them where I can. I am careful not to make promises, but I always assure them that I will do what I can to help them.

This afternoon, three of my brightest students visited me at my house. I finished class at noon, met with the Statistics specialist at MINEDUC, visited the 2010 Expo in Gicondo, and arrived at Kimihurura at 5 PM with time to spare when one of my students, Emmy, called to let me know they had arrived.

I invited them in, served them some light refreshments, and asked them what they had been up to since noon. They looked at each other, confused. I tried to rephrase my question: “What did you do after class?”

Ezechias raised his eyebrows. “Teacher, we started walking,” he said.

My jaw dropped.

Eric, Emmy, and Ezechias (yes, my three brightest students have names beginning with E) do not even have 100 RWF to spend on a minibus, so they walked nearly four hours to visit me. 100 RWF is less than 20 cents USD. In addition, I learned that all three wake up every morning at 6 AM to walk to class by 8:30 AM, and make the long trek back home after class finishes. “It is not good for the shoes,” jokes Eric, laughing as he gestures at his worn dust-covered sneakers.

I wake up at 8 AM every day and I pay 400 RWF for a taxi-moto to take me to the LC by 8:30 AM.

Not only that, I also discovered that many of my students only eat one meal a day. And not a large meal at that. For Friday’s test, I assigned the following composition question: “If you could have any three wishes granted, what would you wish for? Why?”

In his composition, Ezechias’ first wish was “not to see a genocide again, because a genocide is very bad, kills everybody according his race.” Then, he wrote the following: “Secondly, I would not be hungry, because when I am hungry nothing I can do. So that my vision can be ended.”

I didn’t understand the second sentence at first, but after talking with him, I think he meant something more along the lines of “If I cannot do anything when I am hungry, my vision for the future becomes impossible.”

My students are hungry. Not just hungry for sustenance – they are also hungry for knowledge. Hungry enough that they physically push themselves to walk two hours to school every day to sit through class with growling stomachs, and still, they force themselves to learn the material.

I can’t grasp it. And I really can’t process that I only have two weeks left.

Sometimes when I think about these things, I get a strange hollowness in my chest and I suddenly feel tired and old. I’m not sure why. I can’t identify the feeling, nor can I pinpoint its cause. Sometimes I get it when I remember that many of my students are my age but the problems we face in life are vastly different. I get it when I realize I cannot do more to help them, and that I do not know what their future holds. Other times it comes when I see Jacqueline’s missing ear and Cecile’s missing arm, or when I read compositions such as Theophile’s that discusses what “adversity creates opportunity” means to him – in 1994, the priest of church denied sanctuary to him and his mom; that very same day, everybody in the church was massacred.

What is the meaning and purpose of all of this? Why am I here?

I really don’t know and I don’t expect to know until I get back. But until then, I’ll be making the most of my time here. Enjoying, breathing, hungrily savoring every last minute I have left in Kigali.

Wash over me, Rwanda, wash over me.

Immerse me in your people, your culture, your history, your politics, your DJs and bakers, your wealth and technology, your hunger and poverty, bananas, passion fruit, music and art.

Wash over me, Rwanda, wash over me.

And as you immerse me in my final days here, I will do my best to digest the experiences in the hopes of preserving them for the day I return.

I will return.

I am sitting at the National Curriculum Development Center waiting for the Inspectorate General. My appointment was at 2:00 PM. I got here at 1:00 PM. It is now 3:00 PM. I have a class to teach at 4:00 PM.

Am I disappointed? Yes, very much so. Am I surprised? No, not particularly.

This is only one more instance out of a series of failed attempts to obtain information about primary education from the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC). As I mentioned at the beginning of the summer, I hoped to research primary education in Rwanda to examine the ways in which the government has implemented policies to reach its goal of universal primary education. I started researching in June but quickly discovered that: 1) there is almost no published information about primary education in Rwanda, 2) the MINEDUC website does not work and I have no one to contact for more information.

Fail.

So clearly, I could not begin my research until I arrived in Rwanda.

Fast forward to my first week in Rwanda. I meet with an adviser to President Kagame who has several important contacts in the government. He places me in touch with someone in MINEDUC and assures me that she will be able to answer all my questions about primary education. So far, so good. I call the contact and tell her about my project. She tells me to schedule an appointment for the next week. Okay, done.

Second week in Rwanda. First appointment at MINEDUC. I meet the contact and, after reminding her about my project, she tells me that she cannot help me. What? I learn that there is currently no one in charge of primary education at MINEDUC. Instead of providing me information, she gives me a list of more people to contact and shows me the door.

Okay. So not what I expected, but surely one of these people will be able to give me a list of the public primary schools in Rwanda. How difficult could that be?

Very difficult, apparently.

Ministry of Education (MINEDUC)

First person to call: the Permanent Secretary of MINEDUC. If she does not have the information, she will at least know for certain who I need to contact. I dial the number and reach her secretary.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Lydia,” I say, “I’m a student from the United States and I would like to research primary education. Would it be possible to schedule –”

The line clicks.

I look at my phone. Did she hang up? Must have been a glitch.

I dial the number again and wait. The secretary does not pick up. I try again. No result. I decide that something must have happened at MINEDUC and I will call tomorrow.

I call the next day.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Lydia and I called yesterday. I’m a student from the United States and I was wondering –”

Click.

I glance at my phone. She hung up? That’s when the suspicion starts setting in. I call three more times and no one picks up.

For the next week, I call every day, and every time the same thing happens. I introduce myself and before I even say the words “schedule an appointment,” the woman hangs up.

Well, at least I have other contacts. I call the other two – one at the National Curriculum Development Center, and the other in charge of statistics at MINEDUC – and schedule appointments. Unfortunately, they cannot schedule appointments until two weeks later. Sigh. Nothing I can do about that.

In the meantime, I stay busy with lesson-planning, teaching, and grading. I attend FESPAD, campaign rallies, the elections. I meet the members of the Cinema Centre, visit the construction site for the new movie theatre, and connect them to Africana. One of the teachers at the LC tells me about a school run by her friend. I visit the school (more about Hirondelles later) and interview the director.

Visited one school in Kigali. Check.

Which brings me to week four. Only three and a half more weeks left before I head back to Evanston, and I still don’t even have a list of the primary schools in Kigali. And now, my first appointment has also failed.

How did this happen?

Yesterday, I spoke to another American about my research woes. She has plenty of experience under her belt as a former volunteer and employee for the Rwandan government; now, she works for an NGO. After patiently listening to my long list of grievances against MINEDUC, she tells me to be careful not to extend my negative experience over an entire population. Yes, what happened was extremely frustrating, but it is a special case, not the rule. I bring up “African time” and my frustration with Rwandans who come two hours after they say they will meet you, and when they finally show up, they shrug and say, “Sorry, it’s African time.”

How is this acceptable? I ask. How is it okay to recognize a negative stereotype and reinforce it?

She tells me that if I look more closely, I will see that punctuality is also an issue in the U.S., just maybe in different areas and situations. In Rwanda, it is true that people are often two hours late to social appointments, but the buses always run precisely on the dot and teachers show up to class on time. Do the buses run on time at Northwestern? she asks me. I immediately think of the Intercampus shuttle and the excruciatingly cold half hour that would tick by in December with still no bus in sight. No, I answer.

She’s right. I had taken my frustration with several members of MINEDUC and applied it to the population of an entire country. I was ashamed. So this is how stereotypes start.

At this point, I am fairly certain that my research project has failed and I will be unable to visit all the schools and conduct all the interviews as I had hoped. But, in at least one respect, this failure has turned out to be a success. I have realized my own unconscious inclination to typecast people and take individual failures and apply them to a whole group. I am glad that through these trials, I have been able to learn a lesson that is well worth the failure. To have continued in my thinking without that additional perspective would have been a failure indeed – and a larger one, at that!

August 30, 2010 – UPDATES:

I received an apology from the Inspectorate General and have rescheduled a meeting for tomorrow morning. I also paid MINEDUC another visit and preempted a second failed appointment by giving the Statistics specialist a call in the morning and half an hour before the appointment. He still showed up one hour late – but at least he showed up! It’s so interesting how things work here – the information about primary education is unpublished, but if you track the right people down, they can hand you all the information on a USB. So now, I have all the stats on primary, secondary, and higher education in Rwanda on an Excel spreadsheet. It wasn’t easy to track the specialist down, but I couldn’t believe how easy it was to attain the official information. Also, I paid the Permanent Secretary’s secretary a visit, and introduced myself, “Hi, I’m Lydia. You might remember me – I called every day last week to schedule an appointment?” Yep. Have an appointment scheduled at 11 AM tomorrow. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this…only two weeks left, but we’ll see what I can do 🙂

I’ve received so many queries about Rwandan cuisine that I figured I should dedicate an entire post to food. Enjoy!

First off, Rwandans LOVE meat. ALL MEAT. I’ve only come across one Rwandan vegetarian and he went to school in the States (so maybe he doesn’t count?). The most affordable meats are goat and then beef – so the steak is amazing here, and you most commonly encounter meat as brochettes (on a stick). Chicken is on the menu at nicer restaurants but it is tough, dry, and more expensive. Rwanda only recently allowed the importation of chickens, so this might change in the upcoming years. Fish is also fairly cheap because of Lake Kivu.

In terms of vegetables, at the local level, you see a lot of maize, beans, cassava, and dishes made with the large green bananas that are cooked (there are 6 different kinds of bananas). Potatoes are comparatively expensive to maize, so fries accompany almost every nice dish at restaurants. I’ve also seen a lot of peas, carrots, tomatoes, and avocados. My cook likes to use eggplant, broccoli, and cauliflower, but I’m not sure if that’s because those are local vegetables or she’s just trying to please us umuzungus.

Goat meat (bottom left), and brochettes (center)

There’s certainly a great deal of Belgian influence in the cuisine. This is most evident in the bakeries which sell many cheeses, yogurts, breads, and cakes (lemon, banana, and occasionally mango and zucchini, too). The big cakes are almost always vanilla, and for the most part, pastries and cookies are dry and sugary – not like soft, gooey American cookies and cupcakes. I’ve attempted to bake here but it’s difficult because vanilla extract, brown sugar, sour cream, and chocolate chips are impossible to find in Rwanda. I think I’m going to try oatmeal raisin cookies, though – I’ll let you know if they turn out well (no need to report a failure).

One more thing, the fruit juices here are phenomenal: mango, pineapple, papaya, and especially the passion fruit juice. SO AMAZING. I’m going to bring some back to the States, so if you want some, you better stop by my apartment quick before it’s all gone!

I just returned from a small farewell party organized by the Institute Film Family at Sundowner (a bar/club just down the street from my house). A woman named Maggie Williams provided free film classes to the Cinema Centre for a month, and the members of the Cinema Centre invited me to meet her at the thank you event for her efforts. There, I reconnected with Joseph and Apollo, and I also met Eric Kabera, the producer of “100 Days,” the first film from Rwanda after the Genocide. A note on Eric – he has produced several films, three of which focus on the Genocide, but he is now moving toward other genres, such as comedy, to break out of the Genocide mold and demonstrate that there is more to Rwanda than the events of 1994. He will be at a Toronto film festival later this year to promote a new film that he has just produced about three Rwandan men who go to the World Cup.

At the event, Apollo handed me a poem he had written after our first meeting at Bourbon. He told me that he spoke very little at the event because there were so many thoughts running through his mind which he was only able to express later through poetry. I’ve never had a poem dedicated to me before, much less by a Rwandan writer, so it was a great honor. I’ve included it below. Enjoy!

The Hang Out

By Apollo Ndungutse

(A poem dedicated to Lydia Hsu)

It instead turns into a hang up

To me but not anybody else

And no one knows how I am feeling

Because I can see them smiling and requesting for business cards!

Was this the intended purpose of the promise?

An invitation for some good time out turning into a business deal!

Another hurtful is, I didn’t know her mind when she read my short message sent.

She is at the spot 70 minutes before and yet my brothers are playing me around Dallas mall

As if I am there little one when I am the First born of nine and my Mama may add the tenth

It instead turns into a Hang up

She pays for herself and if that is not enough

We are posing with watery glasses while hers is dry

Doing much of the talking and yet I am the speechless MC

Pray is power! It brings Kayi Turner and by surprise they begin discussing N Y C

Meditation strikes and my soul is running to the problem of the promise and purposeful prophecy in it.

The rope has disappeared and Noveltel story forgotten. I wanted to hang myself. This poem is dedicated to you. I will send it by email. My brothers have betrayed me and you’ve saved me. It begs pardon, I am not a designer I would have designed it for you.

Right now, it looks like a grass clearing sectioned off with brick walls, but next year, this will be Rwanda’s first movie theater.

Foundation for the first movie theatre in Rwanda!

Joseph Njata navigates me through a maze of rudimentary structures, gesturing with large hand motions the grand scope of the Rwanda Cinema Centre project. Even though there are random wooden beams jutting out of the ground, broken boards protruding through the windows of the “lobby,” you can tell that Joseph sees something very different, something marvelous and monumental. The way that he bounds up the stairs to the lobby, the way he lovingly touches the handrails to the small movie store on the side, you can sense his feverish excitement for the future of Rwandan film.

Established in 2003 by Eric Kabera, the producer of the 2001 film “100 Days” about the 1994 Genocide, the Rwanda Cinema Centre aims to train young film-makers and create a film industry in Rwanda. In 2005, Kabera hosted Rwanda’s first traveling film festival, called “Hillywood” (aptly named after Rwanda’s reputation as the “country of one thousand hills”) with half a dozen films shown each day for seven days. This year, the theme of the film festival was “Africa Celebrated” and the festival took place July 11 through 23.

So, you must be wondering – what exactly does this have to do with me?

Good question.

I found myself asking the same thing when my rendezvous with Rwandan writer, Apollo Ndungutse, was suddenly interrupted by a scrambling of chairs and the addition of four members from the Rwanda Cinema Centre. I had contacted Apollo to discuss the availability of English literature published by Rwandan writers pertaining to the genocide (see, I told you I was working on my other projects! :)). He is a member of the Rwandan Writers Association, and even though he hasn’t yet published any works, he is in the process of finishing a novel. Apparently, after learning of my interest in literature and my broader interest in artistic expression as a whole, Apollo contacted the Rwanda Cinema Centre to see if there were any possibilities of forging connections in the States.

Entrance to the Rwanda Cinema Centre

(Attempting to) join the leagues of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood

While the Rwanda Cinema Centre has produced several films, it only has a couple copies of each because it has neither the funds nor the right to produce the films en masse.

Cue in the umuzungu from Northwestern University – the university that is home to the largest separate collection of Africana material in the world.

Over several Fanta citrons and a couple glasses of iced African tea, I listened to Pierre Kayitana, the coordinator of the Rwanda Film Festival; Christian Dakombe, a film director and producer; Joseph Njata, the Administrative Assistant; and Apollo, a film writer and actor, as they talked to me about the history of the Cinema Centre and poured out their desires and dreams for the establishment of a film industry in Rwanda. We talked about how so much of Rwanda’s history is told from the perspective of outsiders, and how, even the election of President Kagame generated more media outside than inside the country. “We want people to know about Rwanda now,” said Christian, “We don’t want people to always associate Rwanda with the Genocide.”

The foundations of the new Rwanda Cinema Centre

(As aforementioned, there are those that are not so keen to let Her speak, but I’ll save a more thorough discussion of “freedom of expression” for later).

I listened to these men for over three hours as they poured out their heartfelt beliefs in expression and the importance of establishing a film industry in Rwanda.

I agreed to help.

Over the next couple days, I emailed David Easterbrook, the curator of the Africana Library, to confirm the Library’s support in purchasing the films that have already been produced, and set up a collaboration between the Library and the Rwanda Cinema Centre. There are so few copies of the films that Joseph decided to first give me the computer files to preview while the Centre finds a way to put the films on DVDs. (Can you imagine? I have the files of the first few Rwandan films on my netbook?!) It’s just a small step, but every copy that is produced and distributed is a step toward the creation of a film industry in Rwanda.

Who knows? Maybe by this time next year, the Rwanda Cinema Centre will be up and running. Maybe if I find myself back in Rwanda next summer, I will be able to sit inside the theatre of Joseph’s dreams and take in the splendor of red cushions and towering pillars, the hushed anticipation of an eager audience. Maybe I will be able to sit back to watch a Rwandan film and smile at the memory of the grassy lot beneath my feet.

Or maybe not. Maybe nothing will change. Who knows?

“Life is never easy for those who dream,” said Robert James Waller.

We may not know what the future holds, but as it is, we continue to dream because it is only by reaching for the impossible that we can attain the unthinkable.

On my way home from work today, I saw a young girl passed out next to the sidewalk, her long legs sprawled in the grass and stick-thin arms encircled around an emaciated body. I was with one of my students who immediately crouched down and started to rouse the girl and ask her questions in Kinyarwanda. Slowly, as a small crowd began to develop around the scene, I learned that the girl was an orphan. She was the first child of her family and had to provide for two younger sisters. A couple weeks ago, she was hospitalized for an arm fracture and issues pertaining to her stomach, but she did not like her doctor so she ran away. She fainted by the road because she had not eaten for days.

Kigali Memorial Centre

A woman quickly appeared on the scene with a large bottle of water, a container of milk, and a packaged lunch of local Rwandan food. Two people helped the girl to sit up and relocate to an area of shade. After helping the girl to eat a couple bites of food and drink the water, my student and several others began deliberating what to do. They finally decided to help the girl find her younger sisters, so two of them pulled her up and supported her toward the buses.

All of this happened just a hundred feet from Novotel, where wealthy businessmen and Western tourists sauntered in and out in their flowing sundresses, polished heels and suits, eating chocolate croissants and sipping on strawberry daiquiris. You knew immediately who they were because they were the ones who saw the scene on the sidewalk, stopped for a moment, then took a large detour around the commotion.

Why is it that so often the Good Samaritans of the world are the ones with the fewest resources to help, but still give out of their poverty? Why are the people with money the ones who are least inclined to let go of it to help others?

Life is precious in Rwanda. Given the 1994 genocide in which nearly everybody lost a family member or a friend, people recognize the tenuousness of life and value it highly. As I’ve mentioned before, there is such a strong sense of community here and people welcome strangers into their own homes because they know that they would’ve wanted others to do the same for their children and relatives. I am sometimes overwhelmed by the hospitality and the lengths to which people go to show you their country, their families, and their culture.

Just last week, I mentioned offhandedly to a new acquaintance that one of the things I missed most about home was my piano. In addition to my Bible, the only other two things that I bring everywhere with me are Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 and Liszt’s “Un Sospiro.” I thought perhaps that I would be able to find a piano in a hotel to practice, but even though I visited the nicest hotels in Kigali, I couldn’t find a single piano anywhere. Well, this new acquaintance called me last week to tell me that he wanted to introduce me to a friend that he “loved, but did not know.” Intrigued and curious, I agreed. We had dinner and then he took me to his “friend’s home,” which looked oddly like an abandoned church – and there, sitting in a dusty corner, was a worn but still functional upright piano. I must have played for nearly three hours after going into ecstasies upon seeing it. Apparently, this acquaintance had spent an entire day searching and contacting people to locate a piano, and finally, he heard of a piano that had been imported years ago by a Westerner who loved piano but would only play a couple times a month when he was in Kigali for business. Can you believe it? I was so blown away by his kindness and thoughtfulness.

The beautiful walkway alongside the graves of those who were killed in the Genocide.

I visited the Genocide Memorial last week and walked away feeling more confused about the events of 1994 than when I walked in. Even though I have spent the past three years studying the history of Rwanda and learning about the events that culminated in the genocide, I still can’t comprehend how an entire population was motivated and mobilized to murder over one million people. The stories are chilling – but it’s one thing to read about how people hacked their neighbors to death with machetes, how women were brutally raped by men known to have HIV, and how parents were forced to kill their own children or pay to save their loved ones from more painful deaths – it’s another to know friends who survived the genocide and to recognize the people giving testimonials in the documentaries. No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to understand the experience of so many of my students and the traumatic horrors they witnessed as children. I cannot comprehend the nauseating dread of approaching each check-point and seeing leering machetes covered with the blood of people in the previous car. I don’t understand how a five-year-old can think that each minute might be his last. I cannot grasp the pain of seeing friends and family members mutilated and killed in the most painful ways possible, and then having to return to the sites of their deaths after the genocide to wash their bones to prepare for burial. But even more than this, I do not understand how – after seeing hundreds of thousands of skulls, bones, and graves – people can pick up the remains of their lives along with the remains of their loved ones, forgive the perpetrators of violence, and continue to live. It is within the context of this history, this shared experience of an entire population, that Rwanda’s remarkable advances become all the more extraordinary.

It is impossible to escape the overwhelming sense of death of just sixteen years ago, but that has not stopped people from living, learning, and loving.