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!

On being a mzungu...

Something that I'm constantly aware of here is that I really stand out as a white person (or 'mzungu'). There are actually loads of expat mzungus here in Kigali, but you get pointed at everywhere regardless, and kids especially delight in saying 'hello mzungu' or 'bonjour mzungu'. It's a bit bizarre. Marc, our driver, asked me whether kids get excited when they see a black person in the UK. I told him not really, though that might be something to do with British reserve being instilled at a young age :-). Usefully, I've recently discovered the Kinyarwanda word for 'black person' (umwirabura). When you respond 'hello umwirabura' it inevitably gets a laugh, even from the adults, so I think that's going to be my tactic from now on...

A little info about IJM and what I'm doing

I realise I haven't yet actually put much information about what I'm doing in Rwanda. This is partly sheer incompetence on my part, and partly due to the fact I have to be careful about publishing information about IJM and its work publicly (lawyer-client confidentiality). But, here goes...

I can't really think of anything to write about IJM generally that's any more informative than the website, so go take a look at www.ijm.org. The IJM team here in Rwanda are great, and have been really welcoming. The director, Dieter, is from South Africa. I'm staying with him and his family while I'm here, and they've been incredibly kind to me and really helped me settle in. There's also Tineke (from the Netherlands) and Chantal, Jean-Pierre, Gabriel, Benoni and Marc (all Rwandese). I've got lots to do already - the office is still very new and so there's plenty of work to go around! We're in the process of hiring Rwandan lawyers, accountants and paralegals at the moment.

We're also setting up the land rights programme. Rwanda is an incredibly crowded place (though you don't get that impression in Kigali, which is surprisingly quiet). There are almost 9 million people crammed into an area half the size of Scotland (or about the size of Maryland) and the population is growing at some 3% a year, so land availability is under huge pressure. The state of the law and its implementation are messy, which leads to countless disputes and a lot of tension and injustice. The government is embarking on a very ambitious plan of land reform and registration, however, and we're going to be helping with that in Gasabo District, which is just outside Kigali. The programme has various elements - advocacy, training and education, help with will-writing - but the aim is essentially to make sure the process of land reform works smoothly and doesn't disadvantage those already vulnerable in Rwandan society (e.g. widows, orphans, the disabled, genocide survivors etc.)

So that's what I'm working on.

Books...

I mentioned that I'd read a few accounts of the genocide and recent Rwandan history. Here's a list, for anyone who's interested:

'Shake Hands With the Devil' by Romeo Dallaire
-This is an incredibly detailed account of the genocide from the perspective of the UN commander in Rwanda at the time. Very heavy-going, but probably the most exhaustive account of the events. Also a damning indictment of the international community's complete failure to act.

'A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali' by Gil Courtemanche
- Fictional, but based closely on reality, this is extremely graphic in its depictions of the violence. Mixes incredibly deep and dark cynicism with a kind of hope towards the end. 'Interesting' or 'provocative' are probably the best words to describe it.

'We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families' by Philip Gourevitch
'Season of Blood' by Fergal Keane

Both journalistic account of the genocide, by renowned correspondents (Keane of the BBC, Gourevitch of the New Yorker). Both excellent. Keane's book is more personal, Gourevitch's has stories from lots of different people. I think I found Gourevitch's to be the best of the lot, and it describes in some detail the chaos after the 100 days of genocide in 1994 - I hadn't realised how much the resulting refugee crisis destabilised the whole Great Lakes region of Africa. Also utterly scathing about the international response to the genocide. I hadn't realised before this that not only did the UN and the West ignore Rwanda's plight completely, but they then sprung into action to house and support the fleeing genocidaires in giant refugee camps in Zaire (now DR Congo, a transition Rwanda played a large role in) and Tanzania. The genocidaires continued to launch attacks against Tutsis from these camps for some years afterwards, and the UN and aid agencies did almost nothing to stop them. What a mess.

Kigali then and now

The picture to the left is of one of the streets in Kigali town centre. I snapped it quickly on Saturday. I spent the weekend sight-seeing (of a sort). The major sight in Kigali is the Gisozi Genocide memorial and museum. I actually went to see this on my first day in the country, last Monday, which was a bit of a sudden way to come face to face with Rwanda's recent past, but probably a good idea in retrospect. Rwanda since 1994 has by and large been a real success story, and walking or driving around Kigali you definitely get the impression that this is an up-and-coming place, with building work everywhere (see left of photo), signs of businesses beginning to flourish, and representatives from NGOs of every stripe bustling around. Yet everything here is still deeply affected by the genocide and the aftermath of the killings, and it was really important to confront that legacy as soon as possible. The memorial is very tastefully done and remarkably restrained. In fact, the exhibits were almost entirely factual and historical, to the extent that I could almost detach myself from the faces in the pictures and the stories. There was one exhibit that really conveyed the horror of the events, though. It was very simple - just a series of profiles of children killed in the genocide with their name, age, a couple of poignant details about them, and how they were killed displayed beneath a photograph. Utterly devastating to read. The past week has been so busy and hectic as I settle in here in Kigali that I still haven't really processed it yet, or sorted out my reaction to the various accounts of the genocide I've read. I'll post some thoughts in the coming weeks on this though.

Anyway, back to this weekend. Frances, an old school friend who is working as an ODI fellow in Rwanda for the next two years, (small world, huh?) showed me round Kigali on Saturday. Actually, to be honest, she took me with her while she shopped for stuff for her new flat (!) but it was great to get driven around Kigali and get a bit more of a feel for where everything is. It's remarkably small for a capital city (around 700,000); very clean and fairly quiet. Despite the small scale of the centre, it's actually quite difficult to get around, though. The city is spread out over a series of hills, with little connections between each hilltop, so walking is difficult and tiring. There's no public transport as such, but there are minibus taxis and 'les motos' (motorbikes that you hop on the back of). It's a bit confusing to get the hang of, but I'm going to have to work it out if I'm going to get around on my own. Haven't quite decided whether I'm going to try the motos yet. I've had very conflicting advice from other expats. One said 'they're a great way to get about', the other 'there's no way I'd let my family anywhere near one of those thing's. Go figure.

First few days in Kigali

I really should have started this blog before I left the UK, as it would have been good to post a little intro to IJM, a few things about what on earth I'm supposed to be doing in Rwanda, and some general thoughts. Would also have been useful to compare my expectations before arriving in Kigali with my experience of it in reality. But...I wasn't nearly organised enough to do that. Instead, hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend to post some general info. In the meantime, here's some first impressions of Africa, Rwanda and Kigali:

Flight here was pretty rough. Well, actually, the flights themselves were fine, but I had to wait for about 6 hours at Nairobi airport for my connection to Kigali. Nairobi airport is not a fun place. Dingy, nothing to do, miserable (especially when you've only had an hour and a half's sleep). Kenyan Airways did provide a free breakfast buffet though, which was nice. The most memorable thing from the flight was the complete lack of light as we flew over Africa. I think it was a fairly cloudy night, but the contrast between flying over Europe, where spots of light peeked out almost anywhere there was a gap in the clouds, and East Africa (at least south of the Nile delta), where the view out the window was just pitch-black, was startling. I remember looking at one of those 'world by night' maps and being slightly disbelieving about the lack of electric light across swathes of Africa, but it turns out to be accurate. The 'Dark Continent', literally.

On the other hand, flying from Nairobi to Rwanda on Sunday afternoon was a different experience. This is a truly beautiful country - haven't seen much of the countryside yet obviously, having only arrived on Sunday, but even Kigali is incredibly lush and green, sprawling over a set of rolling hills, and apparently the west and north of the country are much more impressive. I can see why it's called "le pays des milles collines" [the land of a thousand hills].

Kigali is remarkably clean and safe - a few expats have told me it is in many ways 'Africa lite' since there's very little of the chaos and squalor that characterises so many African cities. The weather's also lovely (although I know most of you in the UK and US don't want to hear this!) - hovers between 23-29 degrees pretty much all the time, quite pleasant temperatures even in the midday sun. It's the rainy season, so it rains fairly torrentially at least once a day, but usually clears up.

I'll post some more details soon....