MONDAY, August 15, 2011

A long time since my last post. I have been so busy and so exhausted and so flooded that I've done what I have had to do during the day, and then just collapsed at night.
So just to update everybody:

I've settled in Butare in a very nice room at the Hotel Credo, and have made some contact with the university, particularly the student organization, who are starving for connection with the outside world. I've agreed to do a trauma training for them: one week at the end of the semester, another week at the beginning of the new semester. I have also asked my students to correspond with them, which they also very much appreciate. But none of this quite captures who they are and what they need. So two brief vignettes

I talked about a two week training after the semester is over. It wouldn't work because they have to go back home to their villages. If they stay at the university they would have to pay for their food, which they can't afford. It costs them 100 rwandan francs a day to eat. That is about $1.80. What Sheila and I spend on a meal would feed them for a week.

Another anecdote. I met with them in a group to discuss our plans. They don't run groups the way we do. In American groups everybody vociferously asserts their position on the issue under discussion. Here they listen to what each other says, and deliberately add to it. Language such as: I would add to what you say that ...., or in case of disgreement... "Let me answer you." I get a sense of what a communcal culture is like and how it functions.

The work on disclosure with Foundation Rwanda is underway, not quickly - nothing happens quickly - but Jules and Jonathan are committed to raising money for it, and the students here are eager to participate.

I'm slowly learning kindyarwanda. Slowly doesn't capture the difficulty. People will tell me words and I just can't remember them for 5 minutes. The grammar is different also - nouns and verbs pack a lot of information into them that we would put separately, and there are 16 noun cases. But I don't have to write poetry in kinyaranda, only manage to say a few things. I speak to everyone in my kinyarwanda such as it is, and they correct me. I think it changes the power dynamic a bit.

Sheila is here now. We have come back to Kigali so she can see the city, and will move to Butare at the end of the week. It is good to have her here; it it feels like home, although i sometimes am aware that she will leave.

we're going to the genocide museum today. that should be .. an experience.