Village Life

This post is a bit dated. This past friday refers to last friday. Gotta love wifi. TIA

This past Friday, we went out to the eastern province to visit two villages—the Millennium Village (a village designed to meet the millennium development goals, I think. I need to read up on that more) and a village where survivors of genocide, perpetrators, and returnees (former refugees) now live together.

In the Millennium Village, we first visited a farm that had goats (including a baby!), cows, corn (which everyone calls maize), cassava, little egg plants, avocados, guava, plantains, cabbage, and lemons (which are green here, apparently, like the oranges. I guess we just like to have multicolored fruits in America). We got to taste the cassava too. The farmer dug it up (since it’s a root food), cut the outside off, and gave us each a bite. The inside is a bright white and tastes like jicama, if you’ve had that, only starchier. We got to each take home a few of the crops, which was pretty cool.

Next, we went to go visit a primary school in the village, which was super fun :) I’ll post pictures soon, but basically once the classes let out, we were swarmed by small children who all wanted to shake our hands and tell us good morning :) We saw the kitchen where they cooked lunch for all the kids, and then we saw the computer lab where they had desktop computers donated by different people and organizations and laptops for kids from the government. Apparently the kids get to use them a couple times a week, which was pretty cool.

We then went to the village of survivors, perpetrators, and returnees and were welcomed by a dance troupe of young girls who first showed us their traditional dance and then took each of us by the hand and invited us to dance with them. The girl I danced with was adorable! Her name was Nadie/Nadia, I think. All the kids speak so softly when you talk to them here, it’s hard to hear them sometimes. We then sat down under a traditional tent where people came to sort out their problems and heard testimonies from both a perpetrator and a survivor about who they were, a brief explanation of their experiences during the genocide, and how they came to be in the village they are now. It seems almost impossible that these people could live so well together. All we’ve heard so far was how horrible the genocide was, and yet here was a whole group of people who had moved past that to living together in peace and trust. They can trust each other to take care of their kids, no problem. It seems almost unfathomable. I couldn’t really comprehend how these people could go from the severe mistrust and fear they had of each other to living in harmony as we saw. Apparently, they were all homeless after the genocide because their houses were destroyed, burnt, looted, etc. Two pastors, they said, came up with the idea of a common village based on a common need of housing, and the current residents worked side by side to construct the village. The common need and common work apparently provided common ground on which they could begin to rebuild their confidence in and acceptance of one another. It still blows my mind, but I guess I still have a lot to learn. We finished with a glass of each banana and sorghum beer, traditional drinks in Rwanda, and with a performance of traditional dance by older girls and boys.

We ended our trip with a visit to a women’s weaving co-op back in the millennium village where there were several women sitting on woven mats weaving traditional baskets that were absolutely gorgeous. A few of them invited us to sit down with them and learn how to weave the baskets. They didn’t speak English, and our Kinyarwanda is very limited, but we still managed to communicate a bit. The lady I worked with had five kids (though the farmer we visited had 18!). She let me weave maybe a centimeter’s worth of the basket before taking it away and doing it herself :P Apparently muzungus aren’t terribly good at weaving Rwandan baskets :P Afterward, we were allowed to buy baskets if we wanted—they were all amazing, it was so hard to choose.

Later that night when we got home, my 7 year old sister, Peace, took the liberty of informing me of the existence of three more siblings—Joanna, Shema, and…something. Apparently they board at another school in Kigali. That brings the sibling total to 11. That I know of.

Also, I tried going out with my sister, Zaina, who is my age, but my father wouldn’t let me because it was too late—at 8:30 at night. So we’ll have to work something out :P

Also, I found out a bit more about my family’s experience of the genocide, at least on my mom’s side. Her sister, my aunt, came over the other night, and my mom mentioned that she was her only sister. I asked how many brothers she had, and she said, no, this was her only sibling. The rest, two brothers (the youngest of whom was 8) and another sister, had died in the genocide, and that my oldest siblings, Zaina (21) and Omar (17 or 18) are adopted children of her siblings. This is the case with a lot of families in Rwanda—several deceased members and several adopted children.

This week, we’re in Butare, a city in the Southern province where the national university is, but that’s a whole other post :)