Media star

Apparently I've just been on Rwandan national television! On Wednesday a few of us went along to the High Court to see Stephen, one of our Rwandese legal consultants, get sworn in as an advocate of the Rwandan Bar (he was a judge for a while before he joined IJM, and so due to Bar rules has to be sworn in again). Rwanda TV was there covering the event and I'm told that the camera panned over me and my fellow mzungus several times. We were purely spectators and in no way important, so I guess this was just because we stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the crowd of Rwandese. Still, my first appearance on TV.*

*Actually, just realised this wasn't my first appearance. I've been in a campaign ad for Michael Nutter, the mayor of Philadelphia. That was for about 1 second though, so my face-time is increasing!

Mairi and Gorillas

The last week but one was been exciting for two reasons. First, Mairi came to visit me in Rwanda for 10 days. Second, we went gorilla trekking together in the Volcanoes National Park in north-west Rwanda.

A comparison of Mairi vs. Gorillas
- I don’t have to stay 5m away from Mairi
- Mairi is quite a bit less hairy
- A female gorilla weighs substantially more than Mairi
- Mairi’s life consists of slightly more than eating, play-fighting and sleeping in the sun (unfortunately, according to her), although she did quite enjoy the gorilla food (bamboo shoots and nettle leaves) which the guide gave us to try
- I don’t particularly want to kiss a gorilla, although the babies look quite cuddly

Anyways, it’s been really great to see Mairi (we’ve been apart since January) and going to see the gorillas together was a phenomenal experience. If you are at all interested in wildlife, it really is an incredible thing to do. We took the bus to Musanze, the main town in northern Rwanda, which was a bit of an experience in and of itself, rattling around the bends and dodging the potholes. We then made our way to Kinigi, at the foothills of the Virunga volcanoes. These are a series of massive, free-standing cones, mostly dormant or extinct, which dominate the border between Uganda, DR Congo and Rwanda. They are also the last refuge of the mountain gorilla, Gorilla berengei, which is one of the most endangered creatures on earth. We stayed in a guesthouse run by ASOFERWA, which is a Rwandan charity that helps support and enable vulnerable women and children. It was basic, but the staff were very friendly, the beds comfortable and the food pretty good. The showers were even hot, if you left it running for a few minutes before getting in (oops, Mairi). We also met two young boys from the surrounding area who were on their way to football practice. I took a team photo for them and sent it by email, and I'm going to send them a football (my parents brought some over).

NB - footballs are extortionately expensive in Rwanda. If anyone has ever thought of 'what can I do' or 'what can I send' that isn't money, footballs would be a good bet. Let me know if you would be interested in sending some over.

We had to get up at 5.40am in order to be at the Park Headquarters for the 7am registration (why does all wildlife stuff have to start so stupidly early in the morning?!). So we turned up somewhat bleary-eyed, to be given a cup of coffee, a briefing about gorillas and behaviour around them, and assignment to our group of trekkers. We were put with the Susa group, which is the largest habituated group of gorillas (around 39 individuals) and also the hardest group to get to on foot. I think we had a huge advantage in being young and also fairly keen hill-walkers, as we found the trek long but fun. Several others in our group really struggled though - it was 3.5 hours to the gorillas, through fairly thick undergrowth.

We finally found the group in a bamboo thicket at 3100m up Mt. Karisimbi. In fact, it felt like we stumbled upon them; suddenly we emerged in this slight clearing and there were black-haired apes everywhere. We were allowed to spend an hour with the gorillas, but the time sped by very fast; they are fascinating to watch and although in theory you are supposed to remain at least 5m away (to avoid transmitting diseases to them or startling them), the gorillas themselves don't know this rule and come up to within two or three feet. There were babies, which were very curious little creatures, a range of females, and a group of playful young males. The three adult male 'silverbacks' (so-called because the hair on their back turns silver when they reach sexual maturity) were massive, the alpha male (or 'Boss 1' as the guide called him) was well over 200kg. He had serious authority too - a couple of young males started fighting in front of him, and one grunt shut them up very quickly.

It was quite strange watching them interact with each other - still clearly animal, but with weirdly human gestures and facial expressions. The gorillas also seem to enjoy watching the humans. They have no whites to their eyes, so you can't see where exactly they are looking, but it seems that they stared at us with a fairly quizzical air. They certainly weren't fazed by our presence at all. Anyway, the hour went by far too quickly, and we trekked back down the volcano. A lovely couple from Berkeley, California, who were on our trekking group, offered us a lift back to Kigali, which we gladly took - a lot more comfortable than the bus! All in all a fascinating trip.

I've been doing a fair bit of travelling this past few weeks - also been to South Africa with family, and just got back from Uganda. Report to follow....

An apology

Hi everyone. I wanted to apologise for two related things:

1. That I haven’t posted anything on this blog for more than a month
2. That you’re about to be bombarded with a whole series of posts at once

The reason for this is that while loads of things have been going on over the past few weeks, which I have very much wanted to tell you about, literally every time I have got around to writing a post the internet has failed, there’s been a power cut, I’ve had some other urgent thing come up that I need to do first, or I've been out of Rwanda with no internet access! It’s crazy. So I had a pile of half-finished blog posts stored on Blogger, which I am finally now completing and posting in a flurry of activity over the next few days. But feel free to read them one by one, as they were supposed to appear. Enjoy...

Swimming in a sea of jargon

A small selection of phrases I have come across in the past week. I'm on a bit of a steep learning curve in terms of getting to grips with programmatic jargon at the moment...

capacity building
sustainability
sector blending
logical framework matrix
detailed implementation plan
faith and community-based organisation (FCBOs)
mobilizing human capital
community ownership
synergy and complementarity
parameters of stakeholder involvement
transformational coordination of resources

I reckon there must be a committee somewhere whose sole task it is to come up with a new buzz-word every few months that must be included in all NGO reports and publications.

Busy, Busy, Busy (and new faces)

I didn't think it was possible, but things are getting even busier here at IJM Rwanda. In the past couple of weeks we have had three new Rwandan lawyers join the team, and have been training them. Yesterday we also had a third intern join us - Natasha, from Canada. And our schedule for the next three weeks includes three sets of visitors, yet another new intern arriving, finalising casework strategy and program documents, and starting case referrals, amongst other things.

And, during all that my parents and brother are coming to visit!

It's all a bit crazy, but very exciting. Things are really getting going and I think we will hopefully have a big impact on the land rights situation here.

Hello Again! (Baboons and Earthquakes)

Sorry for not posting for more than a month. It's been very gratifying to find that lots of people are actually reading my blog though - thanks to all of you who asked what was going on and why I hadn't posted for a while!

Basically, the reasons you haven't heard from me are (in no particular order):
- I was at home over Christmas for two weeks, so there wasn't much Rwanda-based action to report.
- Since I got back at the beginning of January things have been a bit manic. We've had a new Rwandan lawyer join us (Eugene) and a new American intern (Marissa), plus we had visitors from HQ staying for a week, and we've been gearing up for starting casework soon.
- We've had power outages and internet failure almost every day for the past week.

So that's the excuses. However, now back in business and have two exciting tales to relate. First, a close encounter with some baboons. I went to Akagera National Park this weekend with the Achtzehns and three of our HQ visitors. Akagera is a beautiful stretch of land in the east of Rwanda, on the border with Tanzania, which is set aside as a protected game reserve. It's quite unlike the rest of Rwanda - much flatter, savannah-esque geography, with very red soil and lots of acacia trees and dry bushes and grasses. Much more like the kind of scenery that comes to mind when you think of Africa. It was a great weekend. Sadly we only had one night in the park, but we stayed at the Game Lodge, which was really nice and came equipped with swimming pool and a balcony bar where you could sip cold beer or maracuja juice while watching the sun go down over the lake. We got up ridiculously early on Saturday morning (about 5.30am) for a morning game drive, and got pretty close to zebra, giraffe, hippos, buffalo, vervet monkeys, warthog, impala, topi and guinea fowl, amongst other things. Amazing to see these animals in the flesh - they're just as exotic as they appear on film, only you have to keep pinching yourself when you realise they're actually only feet away from you. Definitely would recommend safari. I think the giraffe were my favourite. Such bizarre animals - elegant and clumsy-looking at the same time. It just made me think how fantastic it is that we live in a world where such strange and beautiful things exist!

Anyways, also got a bit too close to a baboon. We came across a troop of them and wound down our windows to take a better picture. Unfortunately, the guide was in the other car, or he would have warned us that this was a very bad idea. An even worse idea was to have food in the back seat. There was a packet of peanuts sitting on the cushion, and it was sealed but somehow the baboons smelled or spotted it. Two of them came up to the car, and we recoiled, thinking they would just jump up and down or bark or otherwise cause a bit of a fuss. Actually, they bypassed all that and just leaped straight through the windows into the car. The largest one landed right in my lap, and then (presumably startled) started bouncing around on the dashboard. The other three occupants of the car had got out quickly, but I wasn't sure what to do since the baboon was right on top of me. Thankfully, I didn't know how dangerous baboons could be, so stayed relatively calm. That is, until it bared it's rather disturbingly large and dirty fangs at me and hissed. At that point I decided to get out pronto, so I managed to wriggle out the driver door while pushing the baboon away with my feet. So...rather unsettling tete-a-tete with a wild monkey, but somehow managed to survive without being bitten, scratched or contracting rabies.

Secondly, to top off an already exciting weekend, I've also survived my very first earthquake. Actually, my experience this time wasn't very dramatic. Kigali wasn't too badly affected - we just had some slight tremors, although the strength of them seemed to depend what area of the city you were in. I was in church in Remera, which is fairly low, at the time and so I thought the tremor was just some annoying person jiggling their leg behind me. On the other hand, up in Nyarutarama, where the house is, the walls shook and the water tank almost collapsed. Last night we were warned there might be further after-shocks between 8pm and midnight, so we stayed outside in the car for a few hours. Uncomfortable, but probably sensible. Nothing much seemed to happen, but better safe than sorry. There's been quite a few people killed in Cyangugu, in the southwest of Rwanda near the Congo border, and a lot of injuries. One of those who died was the stepmother of our housekeeper, which brings it a bit close to home.

On les motos...

A few people have asked whether taking motos in Rwanda is as ridiculously dangerous a pastime as their experience in other countries has been. I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

From what I've heard about boda bodas in Uganda or moto-taxis in South-East Asia, the Rwandan version is very tame in comparison. The government regulates them pretty heavily - they're all required to be registered and regularly serviced, and you have to wear a helmet. Plus, the traffic in Kigali is nowhere near as bad as in Kampala or Bangkok. True, most people drive in the middle of the road, rather than the right (as the law says) or the left (as most cars, since they're imported from Kenya or Uganda mainly, are designed for). And true, most people also drive something like a cross between an irate Italian and a man who's had acid spilled in his lap, only with less style. But the motos seem to avoid the carnage generally, and especially at night (which is usually when I take them) the roads are very quiet.

Plus, it's really the only way to get around. Nothing to worry about :-)

Going home for Christmas...

Things have been so busy in the office over the last couple of weeks that I haven't had the chance to post anything, so here's a quick update on what's been going on...

I’ve been working on all kinds of things – from creating invitations to our office Christmas Party to researching Rwandan inheritance law (not easy - there ain't no LexisNexis or Westlaw here!), and from sorting out the address book to preparing documents for re-registration with the government. Can't complain that I don't have enough to do, or that it isn't varied! IJM Rwanda is gearing up to start actual casework in January (which everyone is excited about) and at the moment we are in the middle of conducting a baseline survey in the area we intend to work in. This will give us a bunch of useful information to help us tailor our casework, and also allow us to evaluate how much of an impact our work is having.

We've also welcomed some more staff members - Modeste, our new driver, and Kalisa, our accountant. Our Rwandan lawyers start in January or February, so we'll have a full team very soon. Everyone's been fantastic so far, working really well together and very committed, so things should really be ready to kick into high gear in January.

Other than work, I’ve explored a lot of Kigali (which is full of areas with tongue-twisting names like Nyarutarama, Mbarabuturo and Kacyiru, as well as a surprising number of nice restaurants), and managed to see a little bit of the rest of Rwanda so far – taking trips to two orphanages and a pottery workshop outside Kigali. I haven’t yet made it to Lake Kivu, which I’m told is incredibly beautiful, or gone gorilla trekking near the Volcanoes National Park, but they’re both on the to-do list. I’ve also found a great church, called New Life Bible Church. It’s largely Rwandese, but has an English service. The only drawback is that it starts at 8am, but then here I’m getting used to early mornings (something I never thought I’d say!). Work starts at 7.45am, so I have to get up around 6.30 every day.

And lastly, I'm heading home for Christmas tomorrow! Very excited - will be so good to see family, friends and especially Mairi. Plus, can't wait for cold weather and a proper Christmas dinner (hot sun, casava and matoke - a kind of banana thing - are all very nice, but don't really feel right for this time of year!). Will miss some good friends I've met here though - most I'll see again in January but a few are leaving Rwanda for good over the Christmas period. I guess that's both one of the best and worst things about expat life - you meet incredible people from all over the world, but then they leave to go back to their home countries just as you're getting to know them. Bit bittersweet really, but I really hope we'll stay in touch.

Hope everything's good where you are. Noheri nziza n'umwaka mushya muhire [Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!]

News from around Rwanda

Before I forget, we got two emails this morning warning us about:

(1) continuing violence in the Eastern DR Congo

(2) an Ebola outbreak over the border in Uganda

Slightly scary. But apparently we're perfectly safe in Kigali. T.I.A.

Christmas in the tropics

It's somewhat bizarre to be in the run-up to Christmas when it's sunny and 28 degrees every day. It should be cold and wet and miserable! On the other hand, it's lovely to be in a country where there's a complete absence of the fevered commercialisation that surrounds Christmas at home. By this stage of Advent the shopping frenzy has been underway for about a month in the UK, but in Rwanda you wouldn't know Christmas was only a few weeks away. Don't get me wrong, I love the food and fun, the presents and parties etc. But it does all get a bit over-the-top. I've been doing my present-buying bit by bit in little craft shops this year, and it's much more pleasant than dealing with the crowds at home.

It's made me see the Christmas story in a new light as well. Even if we do get past the shopping and eating and Santa-Claus-seeing and all the rest of it, and actually remember the real reason for the holiday, we usually imagine a very sanitised version of the Nativity. Yes, there's the manger and stable, but we normally don't think much about what that must have been like - the stench of the cattle, the darkness and the filthy building. We portray Mary as this dignified, saintly figure, whereas in reality she must have been an exhausted teenage mother whose husband was still somewhat suspicious as to how she had got pregnant. We think of the shepherds and wise men visiting and bringing gifts, but forget that shepherds were outcasts and despised, the poorest of the poor, and that the Magi were strange foreigners who presumably didn't speak Mary and Joseph's language and burst in uninvited to their house. We forget that while Jesus was less than two years old, his mother and father had to take him into hiding in Egypt to escape Herod's murderous reprisals, and that they lived there for several years as refugees.

I don't think I ever really thought about what that must have been like, but living in Rwanda - seeing the level of poverty, hearing stories from refugees - brings it home a little more. Yet we celebrate this account of a messy, dirty birth in a grubby little town in Judea, because despite the apparently inauspicious surroundings it was really rather important:

"...to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace..."
Isaiah 9:6

Happy Advent!