Sunday, July 31, 2011

It has been a while since my last post. I have been very busy, and have alternated between productive activity and total exhaustion. I do take a one hour walk every day which keeps me relatively sane, or at least handles my anxiety.

Academically i have had an amazingly productive time. Here is the list, just in case anyone is interested.
I met with Jules, David Russell, Gabo Wilson, Jude Sezimana (a rwandan sociologist). We are going to run focus groups to investigate how mothers and children deal with the fact that the child was born of rape. The aim is to develop "interventions" to help everyone manage this better. If all goes well we will get some pilot data which we can use to get substantial funding. And this is a real social problem throughout Africa and other conflict areas.

I met with Anastase Shyaka who is the executive secretary of the Rwanda Governance Advisory Council. He and I both are really interested in the connection between trauma and democracy. To summarize a long discussion, we think that functional democracy requires a functional social fabric, and it is the latter that is disrupted by trauma. Shyaka wants to think about this more, write papers, etc. The usual academic stuff. He invited me to a conference they will be holding dealing with issues of governance. This is really the big picture intellectual stuff that interests me.

However, probably my real development and change is coming from the stories I hear and the conversations I hav, as I wander around asking questions while trying to learn kinyarwanda. Here are a few, not too much context, just the idea.

Robert,my driver when eric isn't around, when he was 14 fell in love with a girl. She was from a good family, the daughter of a minister, and went to an exclusive private school where only english was spoken. The school was outside of Kigali, and Robert needed money to visit her. So he sold a belt his mother had given him to get the money. Without a belt he had to put a string around his waist to hold his pants up, but at least he had the money to go see his young love, which he did. Unfortunately he spoke almost no english at that time. So when he got there everyone was speaking good english except him. He came out with some confused sentences which everyone laughed at. His girlfriend was humiliated and told him not to come back. He didn't see her again, although he keeps track of her location.

Another conversation. Eric told me that he gets angry at the people who have been in Rwanda a long time and make no effort to learn Kinyarwanda. This includes american embassy people, americans and europeans who work in NGO's or American run businesses He says that if we Rwandans make an effort to learn their language, why don't they make an effort to learn ours.

On the other hand, before we get too much into an anticolonialist mood there is this story. Sylvia, who did some translation for me says she doesn't like to work in Rwandan businesses because everybody gets paid the same, independent of effort. When pushed they say: why should I work hard, it isn't my father's company. She likes the Ugandan work ethic, where everyone works hard. I didn't say american I said ugandan, although I think Uganda is influenced by globalization more, at this point.

I finally learned to cope with the little boys who follow me around wanting money. Usually they begin by saying hello in english and then start asking me questions. I managed to say "Oya" (no) and then raruchereho (please stop), and they actually stopped. I most have fooled them into thinking i know more than I do.

The best questions asked of me here were by a rwanda sociologist and his boss. they were: what do you have to offer us, and if you cure people of trauma and they don't have jobs or money, won't they do right back to being traumatized. I do have answers of a sort, but they are academic, and I'll note write them down. The point is that these are good questions, good marxist questions. My answer isn't: i will help you organize and liberate yourself however. More to follow