Meet the ARC Rwanda IGP Team!

Yesterday in Kigali the ARC Rwanda IGP team made a presentation about our work to the ARC Camp Managers, the Country Director and the Director of Finance and Administration. We had a wonderful time and of course concluded with a group photo.



In the front row you see Jean-Luc, Letitia, Madina, Devotte and Anon.

With me in the back row are Leah, Yaya, Bernard, Top, Anita, Kebe, Louise and Jennifer.

Thanks to all for your hard work and dedication. You are the best.

Family Photos.

Here are some family photos from Kiziba Refugee Camp, Rwanda. Thousands of families like this one live in the camp—and have lived here for years--unable to return to their homes in Congo because it is not safe to do so.

Thanks to the work of the American Refugee Committee, the United Nations and other organizations these families live in relative safety in the camp, with access to health care, clean water, sanitary facilities, schools and income generating activities. But what they really want is to return home—to their country, their villages, their land—and to raise their families in peace.

Take a look at the pictures and see what is familiar. A dad with his children, a mother with her baby, the whole family together in what for them is the front yard.





Now take another look and see what may not be so familiar. The way in which the family is dressed, the color of their skin, the green Rwandan hills, the laundry hung out to dry, the roofs of the refugee houses in the background.

Put these family photos next to some of your own and ask yourself, what is it, really, that makes us the same and what makes us different? Which matters more? Could this be my family? And if it were, what would we do? Where would we go? What is our future? Would anyone help us?

Kiziba Classroom.

To those of you who have seen my photos from previous trips to Rwanda, the classroom in Kiziba Camp may look familiar. In fact, much about it does remain the same--the wooden benches, the colorful clothing, the posters on the walls.

But there is also something that has changed, more difficult to see if you are not here yet very evident to me. The IGP groups that are attending our trainings are more confident, more engaged and more enthusiastic than ever. Their eyes are brighter, they look healthier and better groomed, and they are eager to talk about all of the ways in which the Income Generation Program has helped them, their families and their community.

Here are some photos from our workshop today—their first time playing the Marketing Mix Game. Anitha, our IGP Coordinator, led the class, assisted by Titia, one of our Refugee Assistants. Leah and I observed, listened and enjoyed. It was wonderful.

Bittersweet.

The news in the camps is often sad.

Today in Kiziba Camp there was a funeral for one of the members of our Income Generation Program and as we drove out of the camp we passed a nearly endless stream of mourners returning from the cemetery.

How sad to die without being able to return to one’s homeland, and yet, how affirming to see that even in this relatively isolated place where life is so difficult people still take the time to mourn those whom they have lost.

But sometimes the news is good.

Today I learned that my friend Dancille along with her whole family has been resettled to Australia. They left Kiziba Camp in December. Many, many refugees apply for such “reinstallations” as they are called but very few are given the opportunity to go. The lucky ones are often chosen based on their ability to contribute in their new home countries, by virtue of education, skills, leadership and language ability.

Dancille has all of those things. Some of you may remember her from these photos, taken in 2004, when we first met. I told you her story then, the wife of a high school principal in Congo, gracious and intelligent and warm, who fled with her family after the death of her own parents and raised six children in the camp. She also became a leader in the camp community and a great advocate and example for our program.




Dancille, I will miss you, but I am overjoyed to hear of your safe departure for a better life. May you find peace and happiness and some measure of recompense for all that you lost back in Congo.

Bon voyage.

Training of Trainers.

This is a technical term that does not begin to describe what takes place in our workshop when I hand the pen to our IGP Coordinators—Anitha, Theophile and Louise—and have them become the teachers instead of the students.

The room comes to life, chairs are gathered round, there is discussion and intensity and laughter.

Here are some photos of our group, teaching, learning, thinking, collaborating.

I am so proud of all of them and so privileged to be their colleague.

Bonne arrivée!

This is the greeting that I have heard over again today, my first day of work here in the Kigali office of the American Refugee Committee. The greeting is always accompanied by the warm smiles and embraces that I have come to love in this part of the world.

Arriving back in Rwanda feels to me very much like coming home and it is wonderful to be here. Kigali continues to modernize and improve and looks really nothing like what most people might imagine in an African country so recently at war. The streets are well tended, there are many new sidewalks, and the boulevards are filled with green grass and flowering trees. Thanks in part to a new law prohibiting the use of plastic shopping bags there is no litter to speak of, and the monthly community cleanup days have kept the whole population engaged in improving the appearance of their city.

I have started my work with a five-day workshop in Kigali with my wonderful ARC Rwanda IGP team. I also have the great good fortune of having a full-time assistant, a young American woman named Leah Elliott. She has already added a lot of energy to our work and seems excited about being part of the Income Generation Program.

No photos as yet, but will try to post some while I have a relatively speedy internet connection here in Kigali. I’ll be off to Kibuye on the shores of beautiful Lake Kivu next week.

Louise

Why I Do This.

“Sometime during my second visit,” Seamus said, “ I realized I’d mislaid something of myself here during my first visit, and I had to return for it. Instead of retrieving it and leaving immediately, I’ve stayed. It’s possible that some of us cannot help losing ourselves in the sorrow of other people’s stories.” ---Nuruddin Farah, “Links”.

These words from a contemporary Somali novelist leapt from the page when I read them, and to me they explain a great deal about why I keep going back to Rwanda. The faces that you see here tell more compelling stories than I could ever write.

Thanks to Linda Cullen for her incredible photographic work.

Dear Joy

Our dearest Joy, we will miss you so much. You took such good care of me in Kigali with your food, laughter, trips to Musa's salon, insights into the latest Africa Magic melodrama. We are sad that you had to leave us so soon and wish you great peace and happiness in your new home. May you find comfort and your own "joy" in the heart of a very good man.

Love,

Louise

Time to go...

Come awake, come alive
Common sense we survive
Then hey, hey, down the road we go
You might learn something
You never know
But anyway you’ve got to go.

--Paul Simon, “Look At That”


It’s almost time to go, but not without saying thanks…



…to Dr. Ann Kao for this wonderful photo of the ARC Rwanda team taken after a celebratory lunch at the Car Wash Restaurant in Kigali.

… to Barry Wheeler, ARC Rwanda Country Director, for his patience, kindness, mentoring and friendship.

…to the Camp Managers who received me so graciously in their homes and supported our work in their camps.

…to Christine Tchenah for taking time away from her business, home and family to teach invaluable new skills to our refugee clients.

…to the IGP Coordinators—Anitha, Louise and Theophile—for their hard work and dedication to improving the most vulnerable of lives.

…to the rest of ARC Rwanda staff for all that they do every day to make our work here possible.

…to my family and friends for encouraging me to be here.

…and to everyone who has contributed to this work with their thoughts, prayers, time and money. You truly are making a difference.

Looking Smart.

When our new groups at Kiziba Camp arrived at the office this week to receive their first grants, I noticed that many of them were exceptionally well dressed.

This could be surprising, since the clients for our Income Generation Program are among the poorest and most vulnerable of the camp population.

But Anitha explained to me that in Congolese culture it is very important to “look smart” for an occasion such as this, to show as well as to command respect. It is so important in fact that one might borrow or even rent suitable clothing.

Although these refugees came to the office to collect money, I think you will agree that the looks on their faces as they were leaving were priceless.

Good Company.

My son Steven arrived in Rwanda last Thursday for a ten-day visit, and as you can imagine this has lifted my spirits tremendously.

We spent the Genocide Memorial Weekend visiting sites in Kigali and elsewhere so that he could get a feel for the country and what has happened to its people.

Today we will head to the field. Two days in Nyabiheke Camp followed by two days in Gihembe, and back to Kigali on Friday.

These will also be my final visits to these camps for this trip, just a quick check in to know that things are running smoothly with our little program and to give Steven a look at all of the work that we have been doing.

I’m leaving the laptop behind on this field trip, so will be in touch when we return to Kigali. See you soon.

Why Are These Women Laughing?

At the end of today’s marketing workshop for the groups involved in making these colorful bags out of nylon thread, I asked the women whether some of them would be willing to participate in a role playing exercise to practice their selling skills.

Someone had told me that in this culture this technique would not work.

As you can see, they were wrong.

The Cruelest Month.

It is April.

This is Rwanda.

T.S. Eliot wrote “The Wasteland” in 1922.

How could he have known?

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust…

“Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock…

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain…”

Goodbye, Gihembe Camp.

When I asked my colleague Theophile about the training schedule for my final morning at Gihembe Camp, he told me that the refugees had requested some time to be able to say thank you and farewell.

I knew from other such occasions that this would be in some ways the most difficult part of my stay in the camp, saying goodbye to people about whom I have come to care a great deal and whom I may never see again. And this time was more emotional than most because of the unexpected arrival of Devote, who had made the three-hour trip from Butare by taxi bus to see me, Bernard and Theophile, and to wish me a safe journey.

Struggling to span three languages at once, I tried to explain to the refugees how much more they do for me than I could ever possibly do for them, and the many lessons that I have learned by being with them for even this short time.

But in the end, I think that the words on the handmade drawing that they presented to me say it best:

“What you have done for me shows that you love me.”

Thank you, refugees of Gihembe Camp. À la prochaine.

Rainy Season.

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

--William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”









The big rainy season seems to have arrived in Rwanda. Even here in Kigali where it is so often hot and sunny, I have awakened today to the kind of rainy Saturday morning that tempts you to do nothing more ambitious than make coffee, grab a newspaper and go back to bed.

But the rain is badly needed in this country and especially in its capitol city, where a shortage of water during the dry season can mean that even those who live in modern houses with plumbing and electricity that work most of the time must carry their water home in jerry cans just like the refugees in the camps.

I’m sure it is raining this morning in Byumba as well, watering the thousands of tree and vegetable seedlings that our IGP group is cultivating in the nursery at Gihembe Camp. This activity was started by a group of elderly refugees, who when asked what they were capable of doing said, “We can tend the land.” After all, this is what they have done for most of their lives in Congo, where both land and rainfall are plentiful.

They used the money from their grant to build the nursery that you see here and to purchase seeds and other supplies. Within a very short time the activity has expanded to the point where they are hiring other refugees to help them with their work.

So as I sit inside on this damp and dreary Saturday, I think of all of them on the hillside, tending their land, appreciating the rain and the mercy that it shows.

Devote.

Some of you who have seen my photos from last summer may remember this young woman whose name is Devote. She is now 20 years old and grew up in Gihembe Camp from the age of 11. She was an excellent student in the school in the camp and the head of the girls’ organization.

For two years Devote has worked as a Refugee Assistant in the Income Generation Program, but she has told me that her ambition is to continue her education at the University and to study to become a doctor.

She may get her wish. When I arrived at Gihembe last week I was told that Devote had just left for Butare, the home of the National University of Rwanda. She is among a handful of refugee students to be awarded university scholarships by the United Nations. I was sad not to be able to say goodbye and wish her well, but very proud and thrilled for her and for the opportunity that she has earned.

Bon travail, Devote, et bonne route.

Sunday in Nyamirambo.

Nyamirambo was one of the first parts of Kigali to be settled, and now it is a bustling commercial district typically African and far different from the sedate and heavily fortified expatriate neighborhood that adjoins it. This afternoon I had a chance to spend a few hours in Nyamirambo as a local, and while this isn’t a story of the refugee camps I thought that you might be interested in how at least a few women passed a Sunday afternoon in Kigali.

The smiling woman in the red t-shirt is named Joy. She is the housekeeper for Barry Wheeler, ARC Country Director and my frequent weekend host. I had told Joy that I would like to get a pedicure this weekend—actually, I was in desperate need of one having walked through the camps in my Teva sandals for the past two months. So we agreed that this afternoon she would take me to Musa’s salon in Nyamirambo, nearby where she lives.

Musa’s salon is clearly among the popular in the quartier. Musa himself is a handsome, bearded Ugandan man who obviously enjoys being surrounded by the somewhat vain and appearance conscious women who fill his shop. Needless to say, I was the only one with white skin and for that reason was a major attraction during the two and a half hours that I sat there having not only my feet but also my hands massaged, smoothed and polished.

Two of Joy’s friends and fellow ARC staff, Miriam and Christine, stopped by and I was able to get a photo of them before I had to put my camera away. But there were at least a dozen other women who came to sit, talk, and spend time together in the typical African way.

A leisurely walk home was the perfect end to a few hours that lifted the small cloud of homesickness that I was feeling when I woke up this morning and replaced it with the warmth and companionship of an unscripted African afternoon.

Women Who Work.

When one of my African friends describes the philosophy behind our program, he is fond of saying that we encounter a person who can barely raise her load as far as her knees and help her so that she is able to lift it onto her head. From there she must carry it the rest of the way herself.

Of course the person carrying the load is usually a woman. In one of the photos that you see here, the woman is Riziki, a Refugee Assistant in the Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp. I took this photo one day after we had all finished work, when Riziki passed by the office on her way to her second job selling vegetables in the market.

The woman weighing potatoes had just carried more than 20 kilograms (see scale) of potatoes on her head from the town market uphill to the Gihembe Camp, where she will sell them as part of a trading group.

And the barefoot woman with the rake was in the middle of tending a vegetable terrace where she and her colleagues have established an amazing nursery and garden on the hill below Gihembe Camp.

To be fair to the men, they were working, too, but the largest things that you will see most of them carrying on their heads are their hats, which are de rigueur especially for the older ones. The man you see here is a friend from my last visit, who dressed in his Sunday best and came to find me when he heard that I was in the camp.

If you want to have a glimpse of what it is like to be here, just spend a moment studying the faces of these refugees and try to imagine yourself in their place.

Helping to make the load easier to carry is the least we can do.



P.S. I apologize if the photos are out of order—I haven’t yet figured out how to control that function in the blog template—but I hope that from the descriptions I’ve given you will understand what you are seeing.

In Case You Were Wondering...

Yes, I am enjoying this work, immensely. And the people you see here are some of the reasons why.

This picture was taken after one of our training sessions for new IGP clients at Gihembe Camp. The man on my left is Bernard, himself a refugee and a teacher in our program, and the women are clients.

During the past three days at Gihembe I have learned and photographed enough for several blog postings. Now I just need to write the accompanying notes. So stay tuned, and enjoy!

"You Are Welcome."

This is what my Rwandese friends and colleagues always say to me when I arrive at their homes, at the office, or at the camp. They say it whether I have been gone for an hour or for a month. And I truly believe that they mean it.

So now here I am, back in Rwanda after a very lovely break in London, and feeling welcomed by one and all.

The next few weeks will be filled with homecomings and farewells, a blend of emotions that I already know will cast a different light on the work that I am doing here and the urgency that I feel to do it as well and as completely as possible before I step back on the plane to Minnesota at the end of April.

I’ll be moving around a lot in the coming weeks, so will update as often as I am able. It has been an incredible journey so far and it is great having you along.