At 140km/hour who needs shoes?

So I'm back again from Western Kenya. I have to say first that traveling by bus is exhausting. After 7 hours getting to Kisumu I got into a matatu to go to the ARO center, about an hour's drive. The person that met me at the bus station helped me find the right one and told the conductor where I wanted to go...he even wrote the stop on his hand. Obviously that wasn't enough because they drove right past and I had to bang on the roof to get his attention so he'd get the driver to stop and let me off. We hadn't gone to far and he joked that he was just making sure I got my exercise. It would've been totally fine except that in getting out of the back seat of the matatu, my sandal broke! I guess Old Navy sells them at $4 for a reason. So there I am, walking down the highway with one sandal on, my back pack and bag...I got a few funny looks, the ladies selling vegetables at the turn off to the center had a good laugh. One of the guys from the center met me just down the road though and put my bags on his bike while we walked back so it wasn't too much trouble. I ended up borrowing a pair of sandals until the friday evening when one of the ladies presented my fixed sandals.

Otherwise it was a fairly uneventful trip. On Thursday I was with a group from the Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN that was visiting some project sites and then hung out at the center for some meetings on Friday. On Saturday I decided that 140km/hour is never safe. We made the drive from ARO to Kisumu in record time...which only meant I had to wait longer at the bus station. There are speed limits here but they don't apply to private vehicles...they should!

Cinnamon scrambled eggs?

After the excitement of my two weeks of travelling there hasn't been to much to write home about. Our auditors came at the beginning of last week to start our year end audit of last year so the time between my travelling and then has been mostly running around trying to get ready for them to come, and then fixing the things they want us to fix. Now that that is over I've started working on stories for our newletter which I need to finish before I leave. I know that seems like a long ways away but tomorrow I'm travelling until Saturday, I'm home for 3 days and then away for a week and then its April already! I'm planning on taking some time of to travel for a week or so to the coast so that doesn't leave much time.

Otherwise I've just been spending time with friends, and watching football (soccer). Its a big deal in our house. Elizabeth's daughters support different teams, Chelsea and Man U, so there are a few heated debates. Saturdays and Sundays have been my breakfast making days. I made crepes one Saturday which tasted sooooo good, almost as good as at home. A week or so ago I made french toast for breakfast since I had come into the kitchen just as the puddle of oil was about to be poured into the frying pan and said I'd make my own breakfast. None of them wanted to try any, thinking it looked a little strange. I know think I know part of why they thought it was a little strange. I had mixed cinnamon in with the eggs before dipping the bread in, normal for making french toast. Then this Saturday I walked into the kitchen to find Elizabeth mixing cinnamon into my eggs only instead of then dipping bread into it to make french toast she proceed as usual to fry the eggs in a puddle of oil!!! I kept myself from laughing but I had been thinking that my eggs had been tasting a little different all week and now I knew the reason why! So the egg saga continues.

Kabobs and hungry hippos

So now continues my trip in Burundi, with only six days to go. We’ve now reached the 25th of February. It was a Sunday so went to a nice long service in Kirundi. It was translated into French for Bridget and I, English for Gunhild, Erik and Johannes which was nice but tiring because you have to be constantly concentrating and you lose something in the translation I think. Being Bujumbura it was also really hot and the guy translating would kind of lean in to be heard while trying not to talk to loudly which just made the heat worse. Being close to too many people is the last thing you want when its that hot out.

Anyway, we left church to eat and check out of our hotel before being picked up and taken 2 hours east into the hills to Gitega where we would be staying for the rest of the trip. One of the main purposes of the trip was the ‘Strategic Peacebuilding Seminar’ we were having in Gitega for our main country partners, Rwanda, Burundi, and North and South Kivu in DR Congo. We had Erik Cleven come from Norway to facilitate the three day seminar. We were being hosted by MiParec (Ministry and Reconciliation under the Cross?) one of our two partners in Burundi. They started around 1998 out of a group that had formed a peace committee in a nearby community. During the height of the crisis in 1995, MCC had a peace presence team in that community and out of it formed a peace committee that eventually became MiParec. On Monday we went to Mutaho to visit this first peace committee to hear more about what they’ve been doing and because Erik works in the post-conflict situations in the Balkans and was interested in how things were progressing in Burundi. They’ve actually become quite a model of peacebuilding in the country. With their success in mediating and reconciling different segments of the population in Burundi, demobilized, internally displaced, refugees, returnees and ex-prisoners, people in neighboring communities are now coming to them for help with their own issues. After meeting with members of the peace committee we got some lunch in the village, if you look closely at the picture you can take a guess at what we ate!

Tuesday was the start of the seminar and that’s basically what we did for the next 3 days. It was basically on how to develop a strategic plan for your vision and within the mandate you’ve chosen and then how to measure your success. Nothing too exciting happened other than near torrential rains a couple of the days which puts things on hold when you’ve got corrugated aluminium (I think) roofs and it becomes so loud you can’t hear the person talking next to you. It was also the first time I’ve felt cold since leaving home…I know that isn’t saying much and none of you feel the least bit sorry for me…to the point where I was wearing pants and a sweater most of the day.

The only thing notable about Friday, the day we left Burundi was the speed at which we got from Gitega to Bujumbura. The number of people travelling with us grew to the point where the vehicle we were supposed to use wasn’t big enough and in organizing for a second vehicle we were a little late leaving. Not late for our flight but late for Dieudonne who had to catch the bus to Kigali from a town half way between Gitega and Burundi. I won’t say how fast we were going, only that for that first hour I played a ridiculous game on my phone and sent a couple text messages to distract myself. The second hour was much more relaxed and we all made it safely.

After a 45 minute stop over in Kigali we got to Nairobi late in the afternoon. After two weeks of travelling it felt good to be back home, my African home that is. But my feeling of home only lasted for the night and by 8:00 the next morning I was in the back of a safari van headed to Lake Nakuru National Park with Erik and his son Johannes (14 years old…sorry for those of you who may have had other ideas) for the weekend. About two hours from Nairobi it’s one of a few salt water lakes in the country, formed (I think) when an earthquake millions of years ago tried to rip Africa in two and created the Rift Valley, part of the scar you can see running from Ethiopia to Mozambique. It was a nice and relaxing day and a half. We went on a game drive in the afternoon/evening and again the next morning before starting to head back. On the way we stopped at Lake Naivasha, a fresh water lake, where we took a one hour boat ‘safari’ to see some hippos. There’s also a small island with a bunch of animals that they used to film part of the movie ‘Out of Africa’. Being at eye level with the animals is quite the experience, especially when you get between a hippo and the open water he’d like to swim in. You’d think hippos are slow given how huge they are, but believe me they can move!

We got back to Nairobi in time to eat dinner at Carnivore with Bridget and her roommate Tina who organized the safari for us before Erik and Johannes had to catch their plane. Mmmm ostrich meatballs!

Here ends the excitement, now I need to sleep.

Cow brides and banana beer

So now for the second instalment (if you did read the last post scroll down and read it first), our next stop was Goma, DRCongo. Its about an hour long bus ride from Ruhengeri which we took on a bus with no suspension and we were sitting in the back seat. Needless to say it was a bumpy ride. Once we arrived in Gisenyi, the town on the Rwandan side of the border we got on the back of motorbike taxis for five minutes until we reached the border. Border crossings here require forms to leave the country you’re in, walk across aThe next stop on our journey (if you haven’t read the last post scroll down and read it first) was Goma, DR Congo. It was about an hour bus ride from Ruhengeri in Rwanda on a bus with zero suspension and we were sitting in the back so it was a bit of a sort of ‘no man’s land, and then to get in to Congo you have to get a permission to travel form and pay $40 to get in. Travelling here costs a lot of money. Rwandan visas are $60 and officially Canadians need one but unofficially they stamp your passport and let you through. Once in Congo one of the project coordinators, Levi, took us to the program coordinator Papa Jeremy’s house where we had something to drink before heading to our guest house. It was really a guest house for priests in transit or escaping the conflict farther north but Bridget stays there all the time when she’s in Goma. You quickly discover some differences between the Catholics and the Quakers we are working with. In most of Africa, tea is the drink of choice after dinner though I think its more like sweetened milk with a little tea, but instead the priests eating dinner in the room offered us banana beer! I don’t quite know how they make it but I think they cook bananas until they’re like liquid and then let the stuff ferment. However they do it, its got a serious alcohol content and the after taste was as if I had eaten a whole lot of bread dough and the yeast was now rising in my stomach.

The next day was much like our first day in Kigali with Bridget working on accounting and Gunhild and I visiting project coordinators and also the women’s workshop in town where 20 women at a time are taught tailoring and receive teaching on conflict reconciliation. In the afternoon Bridget headed back to Kigali to finish up some work there while Gunhild and I were taken up to see the lava flows just above the city. In 2002 the volcano, which is still active, erupted cover a large portion of the city. The eruption was unexpected and didn’t come from the mouth of the volcano but from underground right on the edge of the city. The lava moved slow enough that people were able to escape but it destroyed many homes. Instead of reasoning that living in the shadow of an active volcano that will most certainly erupt again, people have rebuilt their homes right back where they think they were before. Their houses are made of wood but their yards and ‘fences’ are made of hardened rocks of lava. It makes for an interesting landscape.


Gunhild and I got back on the bus the to Kigali the next morning, arriving at lunch time. We spent the afternoon visiting two churches that were sites of massacres during the genocide in Nyamitaba. It was a bit of an out of body experience. I found it hard to connect what I was seeing with my eyes with any feeling. Being in a place where people have committed such unexplainable acts of violence in some cases against their friendsThe next day Gunhild and I got on a bus back to Kigali in the and neighbours. Even more unbelievable to me was that our guides in both places were from the area and at one of the churches was a survivor of the very events they were explaining.

The next day was Friday and we got on a plane for our 30 minute flight to Bujumbura, Burundi. We were picked up from the airport by friends of Bridget and went back to their house for lunch before heading to hotel to get ready to go to a dowry ceremony Bridget had been invited to. The idea of dowry doesn’t quite exist at home but it is very important here and is a bit of a curious thing. The bride is hidden away in some room in the house while the father’s make speeches. First the bride’s father asks why the groom’s family has travelled all this way and asks whether they plan on stealing their cows since they come from a tribe that’s know for that activity. The groom’s father responds saying no they aren’t here to steal but to buy a cow, a very special cow. But we have many cows the brides father will say and will get a response something like but this cow is a specific and very special one. The bride’s father will ask how much they are willing to pay for this special cow, the groom’s father will make an offer, the bride’s family will discuss it and then if they agree out comes the bride! I don’t think I know any bride to be who wants do be discussed as livestock! The dowry given used to be cows of food, but more often now is a monetary amount. After all this has taken place, about 2 hours later, we all get to eat and then go home to sleep because they had five wedding ceremonies the next day. First a civil ceremony, then a parade type thing through town to a reception. Then there is a lifting of the veil ceremony and finally a dinner for just the family and maybe a few friends. Bridget was invited to all that but Gunhild and I decided we’d pass. Erik and his son who were arriving from Norway to do the seminar the next week arrived around lunch time that day and while Bridget sat in the multiple wedding ceremonies we went to the beach.

Bujumbura is the hottest place I’ve been so far. You feel like you’re sweating after 5 minutes of standing outside. The city has a couple resort type hotels with pools right on the beach. It was the most relaxing afternoon we’d had in a week. It did however feel like you’d been transported out of Africa though. It’s a place for tourists, expats and UN and other officials or NGO workers moving in and out of the country. On the other hand it was the most ‘normal’ we’d felt in over a week. No longer being the only white people and away from the staring and calls of “mzungu” I didn’t feel so much like a foreigner anymore. I had the thought that some of the places I feel most normal are also the places the people of the country I’m in will most likely never experience.

I hope this is still interesting, one more week of travelling to go!

Land of a thousand hills

So after travelling around for two weeks I’ve been back in Nairobi for a few days and it feels really good to be in a familiar place again. It feels a bit like coming home…but not. Consider this the first instalment since none of you would read the whole thing at once even if you wanted to but mostly because it was a really busy trip and there is a lot to write about. We started in Rwanda, ‘we’ referring to myself, Bridget and Gunhild who came from the office in Norway, landing in Kigali on Sunday afternoon. With Sunday being Gacaca day (I’ll explain that later) and Gunhild having taken the overnight flight from Oslo after sitting in a board meeting all day we spent the rest of the day relaxing at the house we were staying at. The house belongs to a Rwanda pastor and his wife. Rachel, the wife, works with us part time and their family built the house as a transit house for people like Bridget who come and go almost every month to 6 weeks. Rwanda is a tiny country with 9 million people. They say it might be the most densely populated country in Africa and it shows. It is also a country built on hills and instead of being organized into villages, or neighbourhoods, people here organize themselves based on which hill they come from and every hill has people either in the city or with small farming plots all over the countryside. Open space with nothing happening on it is hard to come by.

The next day we went up the hill to Friends Peace House, our partner organization in Rwanda. Gunhild and I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon interviewing project coordinators since we’re both in the process of writing newsletters. For the rest of the afternoon we went into downtown Kigali to buy our plane tickets to Bujumbura later in the week and then we went to the Genocide Memorial Museum. It reminded me of the Apartheid Museum in South Africa but smaller. Still, it is a pretty powerful place. It takes you through the history of Rwanda from colonial times to the events leading up to the genocide and then the genocide and its aftermath. The upstairs has one section dedicated to children who were killed, stolen futures I think it was called. Each room has stories and pictures of children who were killed with small plaques telling you their name and then a combination of different things about them like their favourite food, best friend or last words and also how they died.

Tuesday morning we went west from Kigali to visit one of the peace committees that Friends Peace House supports in the region of Ruhengeri. We went with the program coordinator of FPH, Sizeli, to see what initiatives they’ve been trying to implement and also just to see how they work. Ruhengeri is a district that is about an hours drive from the Congolese border and it’s the area where many say the planners and instigators of the genocide came from. It was really interesting to see. We predictably caused a big disturbance when we arrived since the place we were meeting was right beside a primary school, especially when Gunhild got the video camera out. What was really impressive about this peace committee is that they seem to be taking initiative on their own, not waiting for funding or help from the outside. They’ve begun a couple income generation projects on their own. One is an orchard I guess where they’re growing something called ‘punes de japon’ which literally translated means Japanese prunes, however they aren’t like any prune that I’ve ever seen. They’ve also been distributing sheep in the community. They started out with the members of the peace committee each contributing 500 Rwandan Francs per month for 18 months when they bought 12 sheep. Through raising and breeding these 12 sheep there are now over 60 families in the community to have received sheep. By the time we finished there is was time for lunch so we went into Ruhengeri town. Gunhild and I ordered rice, chips (fries) and chicken. It all came out looking the way it should and the piece of chicken was a decent size. The problem however was that it was truly the toughest piece of chicken, or any other kind of meat for that matter, that I’ve ever tried to each in my whole life. It was as if someone had cook this chicken for a few hours and left it out to dry until the time when two unsuspecting customers ordered chicken and they threw it back on the fire. Trying to eat with a fork and knife was completely impossible and after about 5 minutes Sizeli got our waiter to bring by a bucket of water so we could wash our hands and leave the cutlery behind. It seemed like a good idea but I thought I was going to lose a tooth in the process. The only other conclusion I could come to was that we were the unfortunate recipients of a starved chicken that consisted of bones and tendons with no meat to speak of. The chicken stayed on the plate and we said a small apology to this chicken that lost its life for no good reason. I also think we provided a good deal of entertainment for all the Rwandese in the restaurant watching to white girls try to eat chicken.

Our next journey was an hour on a bus to Goma in Eastern Congo but you’ll have to wait until next time. Besides I’m sure you need a break now too.