July 23, 2011

I've been in Kigali a week now. I would say it seems like yesterday but actually it seems like forever, or better, that I am in a different time zone and/or life altogether. The only thing that reminds me of my previous reality is email and phone calls with Sheila.

As I say, a lot has happened. Academically and Professionally things are going well. I had a very good meeting with a british/african group who wants to set up a facility for a target group of Rwandan University Students. These are Rwanda men and women who are in college and have no families because everyone was killed during the genocide. When other students go home they have nowhere to go and are likely to be depressed, anxious, all the usual stuff but particularly important in a family oriented culture. they are at risk for poor performance, dropping out, and marginalization. I've been asked to run a focus group for them which I'll do on monday, and update everyone.

Also academically I had a good meeting with Anastase Shyaka who is the executive secretary of the Rwandan Governance advisory council. I met him through Sam Totten and earler through Dennis Sandole. We talked, naturally about good governance in Rwanda, and how collective trauma affects this. We formulated an idea that: functional democratic government is dependent on a functional social fabric, and the social fabric was severely damaged by the genocide and still is, year later. He invited me to a conference and asked me if I would write a paper for a journal the RGAC publishes. I said yes, of course, being an academic. I hope it happens.

In fact, I hope all of these promised things happen. I have learned to trust god but tie my camel.

Personally, I alternate between being excited that I'm here and wishing I had never come. Sometimes within a ten minute period, and often triggered by something. As a negative trigger, a Rwandan women approached me during my walk, spoked to me in what I regarded as a forward fashion, sometimes in English and sometimes in my minimal kinyarwanda. "Hello, my name is Betty." she said, and loudly, forcefully. "Where are you staying?" I've learned Rwandan tricks so I said in a hotel. "Which hotel" I told here "the hotel down the road" and fortunately there are several. I didn't want her showing up at the hotel. My first thought was that she was a prostitute but I learned that there is a Rwandan practice called detoothing where college girls get an older sugar daddy which may or may not involve sex, but certainly involves exchanging the presence of an attractive young woman for money and favors. In any event, I walked away and she didn't follow me. That left me very shaken.

On the other hand, a Rwandan man carrying a hammer, a laborer, walked by me and said "Amakuru (how are things going)" When I replied nimeza (good) he gave me a thumbs up. I do have to say, however, that I get nervous when I see men carrying agricultural implements.

I've met lots of people here: Several missionaries, Mormon and Salvation army; Indian businessmen invited by the ministry of finance; Contract military people training the Rwandan army, a Rwandan mental health counselor, and probably others I don't remember. There's not one Rwandan culture, I think, but lots of them, existing side by side and occasionally bumping into each other. The sociologist Ulf Harrmez calls it "habitats of meaning," a term which I just read which seems to fit.

I do this by just walking up to people and asking who they are, risking humiliation to acquire knowledge. The only real humiliation I had with this was walking to the table of german conference attendees who told me who they were, very reluctantly asked me who I was, and signalled nonverbally that I should go away, which I did. It also helps with some hotel people waiters, etc, that I am learning kinywrwanda, which I am although very very slowly.