At least people will know why they're diving for cover on the road.

Although I technically work at the District Pharmacy in Burera, we spend a lot of time at the District Hospital, which is supported by the very famous health organization Partners in Health.  They have enough staff working here to justify putting in their own cell tower to supply "high speed" internet to the area immediately surrounding the hospital.

Every time I walk through the parking lot, I can't help but smile at the ambulance parked there.  At first glance, it looks like a regular ambulance/EMS vehicle.  But if you pause long enough to read what's written on the side, my guess is you'll end up chuckling as well.

That's 19 letters, my friend, in case you didn't count already. Imbangukiragutabara.  It apparently translates as "someone who responds quickly to a call for help."  I really love the fact that they didn't just slap "Ambulance" on the side, but instead took the time to make sure the vehicle would make sense to people.  Although, as fast as it must travel down the road, I'm not sure bystanders have a chance of actually reading to the end of word before the car is already long gone.

No c**k jokes here.

I am currently "in the field" in Burera.  This morning as I was minding my own business, ironing my shirt for the day, one of my roommates loudly proclaimed, "Ariko, weh!", which sort of translates as "But REALLY!"  As I looked up to see what the fuss was about, a chicken uninterestedly sauntered through the living room and back out the front door.  I asked him to make sure to wipe his feet the next time, but I don't think he heard me.

"So, what do you do here?"

Ah, that comforting phrase.  The ice-breaker, the silence-filler, the guide to first impressions and social stratification in the expatriate community.  As bartender on-the-side in Washington, D.C., I usually started conversations with customers by asking about their favorite local restaurants, the neighborhood in which they lived, or their opinion of H Street Northeast - an up-and-coming area of the city and where our cocktail bar was located.  Asking about work, especially when many people were actually unemployed, was something I usually avoided unless the customer mentioned it.

In Kigali, though, it seems that 95% of conversations between expatriates - whether at a restaurant, in someone's living room, or even at a bar on Friday night - begins with an inquiry into what you "do".  My sassy side wants to respond that I am training for the Kigali Marathon next year, taking an online course in microeconomics, enjoy visiting the market to buy my produce, and am studying for the GMAT.  Call me a cynic, but the NGO social scene in Kigali seems frequently akin to high school.  

Burera District within Rwanda

Do you work for a big nonprofit or a small start-up?  Are there famous people attached to your organization?  How famous?  Are you in health, education, economic development, or maybe genocide reconciliation?  Maybe you don't even work for an NGO - you're here to export coffee.  Perhaps you're faith based?  Yet again, maybe you work for the U.S. embassy.  Micro-finance?  Or no, journalism.  Newspapers or radio?  Are you on a fellowship?  Analyst?  Program director?  Country director?  Or possibly you're at the bottom of the totem pole - a lowly intern who is here for "the summer" even though the only seasons in Rwanda are "wet" and "dry".  Did I mention that the longer you've been here, the more street cred you have?  A year is a somewhat respectable amount of time to have been "in-country", but three years is better.  I make sure to mention that this is my fifth time to Rwanda, lest someone think I'm a pitiable newbie who's just arrived.

Of course, not every inquiry about work is an attempt to pinpoint your standing in a complex hierarchy of good works and development.  "I just like to hear about what other people are accomplishing," said a fellow Global Health Corps colleague over dinner last weekend.  There is, of course a lot of interesting and important work going on in Rwanda.  I just don't like to be wholly defined by mine.  With that being said, and in the spirit of my friend who just likes to hear what other people are accomplishing, here's what I "do".

Rwanda is divided into thirty districts and each district is furthermore divided into sectors.  These districts provide the organizational structure for local government as well as the health system.  Within the health system, each district is required to have a district hospital, a district pharmacy, and at least one health center per sector (sometimes more, depending on the population within the sector).  My work will be primarily with the district pharmacy in Burera, one of the northern districts that border Uganda.  The district pharmacy is responsible for the timely and accurate ordering of medicines and supplies for all the health facilities within the district, as well as monitoring the supply chain and stock activities in those facilities.

Throughout this year, I will be providing technical assistance to the district pharmacy as it works to improve ordering, monitoring, supervising, and collecting data from the health facilities within the district.  The different projects will each be interesting within their own right, so I'll write in more detail as the real work gets underway and there is interesting information to convey.

Moto Polo - the best drunk idea that actually got implemented.

The experience of living as a long-term expatriate seems to bring out about some interesting ideas.  Those of us who are here in the relatively short term tend think about things like how to manage to get some dark chocolate or the best place for fast internet in Kigali.  Others, though, people who have been here for three, four, seven years seem to spend less time trying worrying about what can't be done/found/bought here, and more time coming up with ways to enjoy themselves in the long run. 

The Kigali sensation of "moto polo", started two years ago by a few friends of mine, seems to be just that.  Clearly born of a drunken "Hey wouldn't it be awesome if we..." conversation, it's polo played on the backs of the ubiquitous motobike taxis with plenty of beer and socializing thrown in for good measure.  An immensely good time.  This game ended up tied 8-8.

A view from the Clinton Foundation offices at sunset.

The Clinton Foundation is based in the capital of Kigali, even though our team members frequently work in other parts of the country.  I know it's hard to get a sense of a what a foreign country is like without really seeing it, so here's a quick video I took from our office's balcony at sunset.

Our office is in the Kacyiru (ka-chee-ru) neighborhood of Kigali, a quiet area where many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are also based.  Many of the offices are located in buildings actually designed to be residences.  We work in the former Mayor's old house.  Which is, interestingly enough, not as fancy as you might think.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reading for this rant.

Please, please excuse me if I come off as snobby, elitist, or condescending in this short post.  It's truly not my intention.  I just really get annoyed when people use the term "Africa" to refer to a specific place within the continent.  Since I'm a part of a program where almost 20 Americans are headed off into different parts of the continent, my Facebook is filled with "have fun in Africa!" messages from everyone's friends and family.  Perhaps I'm being a little sensitive, but I thought this map might be helpful in trying to illustrate my point.


Look how HUGE Africa is!  I saw this map for the first time in one of my African studies courses in undergrad and it was really mind-opening for me.  I'll say it again - Africa is HUGE!  Larger than most of the largest landmasses in the world combined!  So when someone says, "Hey, how's Africa?", my snarky instinct is to say something like, "Oh, I'm not really sure.  Rwanda, though, is fine."


(On an unrelated side note, after pondering the map at left for a bit while writing this post, I thought to myself that it's no wonder Africa struggles with governmental issues.  Think about combining the dysfunctionality of the governments of China, the States, Europe, and India.  Hell, Western Europe battled for thousands of years to establish the order we see today and it's a pipsqueak compared to Africa!)

Of course, if you've never had the opportunity to travel to the continent, or study it, or learn about the mind-boggling spectrum of language and culture, perhaps it's not such a crime to think of the entire continent as a unit.  After all, we don't teach much that's different in school.  On the other hand, I've never had someone ask me about Mexico when they really meant the United States, even though both countries are within the same continent.

For the record, here's how Rwanda looks in the context of the continent as a whole.  You get the point.

The Western Media's Crappy Reporting on Rwanda's Election

On Monday, August 9, Rwanda held their second democratic presidential elections since the genocide of 1994. Rwanda's sitting president, Paul Kagame, won with about 93% of the popular vote. This huge majority, along with a campaign season marred by some unfortunate events, has many people in western media pretty pissy - here, here, and here. If you have the time and the inclination, the short articles are worth reading, primarily because they illustrate just how wrong I think the western media has gotten the coverage of the election.

Now, you may be asking yourself why you should care about the details of a presidential election in Rwanda. Simply put, the country's stable government and economic growth has lead it to become a bit of a "development darling" and people are paying close attention to see if Rwanda can "make it". If it does, it will serve as a model for the development of other African countries. Much of the success Rwanda has seen over the past decade is due in large part to President Kagame's bold and unrelenting vision. In short, he has truly led the country to remarkable development, especially given the horrific reality on the ground in Rwanda on sixteen years ago.  Below, I discuss a few of the major criticisms of Kagame in these news stories, and why I think almost all of them are misguided.

Did Kagame borrow Obama's media people?

Criticism 1:  Kagame has downplayed the issue of ethnicity in Rwanda, even making it illegal to publicly discuss one's ethnic heritage.

My opinion: Given that 800,000 people were brutally hacked to death in 1994 based on whether their identify card said they were Hutu or Tutsi, I think this is the very weakest argument of these articles.  Perhaps discussion of ethnicity has it's place in quiet, private reconciliation groups, but after seeing row upon row of machete-punctured skulls at a genocide memorial, it seems that re-introducing the idea of ethnicity is an idea for further down the road.

Criticism 2:  Some opposition leaders were jailed and not allowed to run election campaigns.

My opinion: Opposition leaders who were jailed were done so on charges of perpetrating genocidal ideology.  Westerners should support Kagame's no-tolerance policy on anything even close to genocidal remarks as well as associating with groups outside Rwanda still hell bent on continuing the massacres of 1994.

Criticism 3: Anonymous government employees report being forced to vote for President Kagame.

Why this is dumb: I'm not sure exactly how many people work for the government in Rwanda, but I'm fairly certain it's a tiny fraction of the over five million people who calmly reported to their polling stations (many before dawn) to vote.  You may be able to coerce some people into voting, but you cannot force over 97% of those registered to show up and vote.  The vast, vast majority of people eligible to vote in the country DID so - of their own accord.

Criticism 4: General crankiness among the writers of these articles regarding the "freedom of the press" and civil rights in the lead up to the election.

Why this is dumb: This argument, that Kagame is suppressing the press and thus, general civil rights, comes from, in my eyes, an overly western-centric point of view.  To put it succinctly, Rwanda is not the United States.  Rwanda will never be the United States.  To demand that basic parts of the democratic process - freedom of speech, freedom of the press - measure up to the same standards as the United States, sixteen years after a horrific genocide is preposterous and insensitive.  Have these writers forgotten that newspapers and radio stations were the major mediums through which genocidal ideology was perpetrated in 1994?  For a REALLY interesting side note on the role of media propaganda in both igniting and sustaining the genocide, see the bottom of this post.

Of course, I've summarized a lot here (but would ramble if you let me).  Of course, the realities are more complicated, more nuanced, more complex.  If, in 20 years, Paul Kagame has not stepped down (according to the constitution, he's not eligible to run again), if opposition leaders and papers and radio are still silenced, certainly I will be troubled.  Certainly my opinions will be different.  But given how far Rwanda has come, I think the man has earned another 7 years to carry out his vision.

________

Side note continued: A 2009 paper found that during the genocide, the presence of radio propaganda increased civilian violence by 65 percent and organized violence by 77 percent.  I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but I bet it's completely fascinating.

The First Three Things You Must Do Upon Arriving in Kigali

1. Learn how much it a moto taxi should cost you from most places in the city to your house. Learn how to say each of these numbers in Kinyarwanda.

2. The first time you go to your new house, make a note of every single landmark on the way. Dusty unmarked streets look surprisingly similar, especially after dark (6pm). Trust me.

3. Save the phone number of every Rwandan you meet. You never know when you'll need to call someone at 9pm to have them explain to your taxi driver how to get to your house, since clearly you will be incapable of doing so if you get lost.

For the record, my way to get home goes something like this: drive to Kimihurura neighborhood, up to Papyrus restaurant, go two turns past, turn at the road with the TARPO sign, travel all the way down the road, past the big white building with the black diamonds, past the big-ass trucks marked "water trucks" and when you've gotten to the house with the fortress gate made out of huge rocks with white paint in between, you're home!

Five Reasons Phones are Better Here

1. Their batteries last forever. I haven't charged mine in two days and it's still at 80%.

2. They come with a built in flashlight. Very handy for dark, dusty roads.

3. You can drop them a hundred times and they won't break.

4. They're simple to use. Even my mom could figure it out (sorry mom).

5. They make determining socioeconomic status really easy. Here, there are two types of lines - pre-paid and post-paid. The vast majority of people have pre-paid phones that require you to buy a scratch-off card. The chosen few (of which I am apparently one, these days) have a number that begins with 078830 and whose bill is paid at the end of the month. So ladies, if you meet a guy in a bar, and he gives you an "8830" number, you know you've got a winner.