Skip to content

HDI-Rwanda Update: Week 1

Mwiriwe from Rwanda! Below we will be detailing the highlights of our first week in Kigalia as we prepare to start our project trainings.

We got off the plane in Kigali on Sunday, May 10th, thinking all was well as we arrived in a pleasantly calm and clean airport. While standing in line to purchase visas, an airport employee looked at Connor’s passport from (the semi-exotic land of) Canada and asked to see some form that he was apparently supposed to have. This form was supposed to have been completed 3 days prior to his arrival in Kigali for Canadian citizens. So, despite attempted reasoning with the airport employees, Connor simply couldn’t get into the country. We desperately left him a list of all contacts that could possibly be of help to him, including a Ugandan man Rachel sat next to on the plane, Sarah’s dad, the Rwandan immigration authorities, a French women from the airport and all of her random contacts around east Africa, and the executive director for HDI: Aflodis Kagaba. Upon leaving the airport, we were greeted by two HDI employees: Ronah, a Rwandan trained nurse who works as a facilitator and program assistant, and Amber, an American policy and technical advisor. On our way to a welcome lunch at Kagaba’s house, Amber’s car proceeded to die on us in the middle of a bustling road and we were immediately helped by bystanders shouting in Kinyarwanda as we struggled to push the car to safety. Kagaba came to pick us up and brought us back to the airport for a final attempt to get Connor into Rwanda and for a necessary introduction to “Rwandan time.” “I’ll be back in five minutes,” he said, before we waited in the car for a total of three hours. Still, we were thankful to hear from Kagaba that Connor would be spending a few days in Dubai (rather than returning to the US), as he would apply for a Rwandan visa.

KGL Airport
KGL Airport

Who is Connor Haines? To us, he is mild-mannered, yet cherished, team member. To the HDI employees, he’s probably a name they’re tired of hearing. To the Rwandan visa authority, he’s an annoyance. Whatever he is to you, he’s currently chilling in Dubai. After last seeing him at the airport, we’ve been skyping Connor to stay in contact. He told us that after we left each other in the airport, he asked random people in the terminal if he could use their phones. He ended up having to use his own iPhone to call his mom back in the U.S., racking up an expensive phone bill. They ran through every possible option, and landed on the Dubai plan. Connor had been planning on going to Dubai after Rwanda, but didn’t have the plans yet made so this seemed like a good option. His mom(/hero) found him a hotel, where he slept the night, ate, and napped for an additional 8 hours. We think Dubai is treating him well, despite a hotel worker insisting that “complimentary breakfast” means “available, not free”. As far as activities, he went into the world’s tallest building this week and might have gone dune buggying today. His flight is booked to come in tomorrow (Monday); we are so excited to be reunited.

On the first night in Rwanda, after the rigmarole of Connor getting deported and all of the other crazy events, Kagaba welcomed us into his home for dinner and later drove us to our guesthouse. Our new American housemates, Kaleigh and Julie, rushed out to meet us and promptly welcomed us into their home with great warmth. We were also introduced to our fantastic houseboy, Theó. It turns out Julie went to the same school as Hannah for years, went to UNC, and is now working at HDI as the SHARE (sexual health and reproductive education) program coordinator. Kaleigh is a Lawrence University alum who works on marketing, research, and communications at HDI. Theó is from the Rwandan town of Gisenyi and lives in a small house behind our main living space. He cooks, cleans, and generally takes care of us; he has quickly become one of our best friends in Rwanda. We communicate with him in a mixture of broken French, bits of English, and a constant game of charades, which, combined, generally result in us understanding each other, finishing each conversation with many “merci!”s from both parties. All three of them have been wonderful housemates, making sure we have everything we need and showing us the ropes of living in Kigali. Kaleigh and Julie have shown us several of their favorite spots around town and how to get there, which has been incredibly helpful. We have also had several great late night chats about our experiences here, our families back home, and every other topic imaginable. There is always a great deal of laughter in our house. We also find ourselves singing fairly often. Both of our housemates have worked with Erigs (described later in this post) on his music, and their songs are often stuck in our heads and joked about. Other hits include parodies with Theó’s name subbed in. On top of the laughter and song, though, is the occasional shriek meaning someone saw a cockroach. Rachel has stepped us as our official bug killer and has saved us from near death on more than one occasion. Our water usually cuts out for a few hours every weekend and we have to boil tap water before drinking it, but other than that, this place feels a lot like living with friends at home.

IMG_5395

Our team has had to adapt to Rwanda in a couple of ways that we didn’t necessarily expect. Our diet consists of far more starch and fruit that we are used to, and that—combined with the general strangeness of being in a different place—has left us feeling a bit under the weather over the last week. This has both mental and physical repercussions. The mental aspects can be summed up in a classic Hannah line. She mentioned at one point that she had “grumbles in a spiritual sense” in explanation of how she was feeling. The physical parts have manifested themselves in some stomach issues and another classic Hannah-ism, feeling like a “sad sack of food.”

Luckily, through all of this process, we have had a great support network within our team. We do a lot of end-of-day processing and discussion to make each other aware of what we notice, reflect upon the day, and catch each other up on what we’re thinking and feeling. Spending eighteen hours a day together has forced us to develop a lot of trust and comfort with each other. Rachel mentioned that she often judges how close she is with a person by how comfortable they are together in silence, and we have experienced many enjoyable silences. We definitely miss Connor a lot, and notice his absence often. Our group dynamic is a bit off without him, and we can’t wait to be reunited and restore the balance we grew into throughout spring semester.

Navigating Kigali has been a somewhat difficult process for us, an issue which is amplified by the fact that we don’t speak Kinyarwanda. A good example of this was when we went over to the nearby Classic Hotel, which has free wifi if you buy tea. We had been told to ask for directions to the “veranda” for a quiet place to Skype, so we asked the bartender and other hotel employees about the veranda location. However, just as we were in too deep to escape the whole finding-the-veranda-situation, we realized none of us actually know what a veranda is. Some fun responses we got include: “Veranda? He must be in his room,” and “Yes, you are already in Rwanda!” The miscommunications have not ceased as we continue maneuvering Kigali, like one morning when Rachel came home from buying water to shamefully recall that she had responded with an overenthusiastic good morning (“Muramutse!”), while meaning to say thank you (“Murakoze”). Even worse is when Sarah admitted to repeatedly thanking the driver the night before with good morning. One word we never misinterpret is “umuzungu”, which is a non-offensive word for “foreigner” (but really “white person”) that kids especially love to shout to remind us of our lack of pigment. Children are also very interested in holding our hands and proudly yelling “how are you!?” or “I love you!”. We can now find our way home from locations in our district; this sounds like a small feat, but this small step towards independence continues to evoke pride. We are truly thankful for the help from Theo and our wonderful coworkers who have been guiding us on public transit.

IMG_5406

On Tuesday, we visited the Cyaruzinge community for the first time. HDI’s driver, Pascal, led Ronah, Claude, and us out of the marginally familiar environment of Kigali into rural areas characterized by clay and leafy greens. We made our way into the Ndera sector and to the community of Bwiza, another name for Cyaruzinge (most nouns here have multiple names colloquially and/or officially). We were greeted by small parties of kids squealing, “Umuzungu! Umuzungu!” (Kinyarwanda for “foreigner,” or, more specifically “white person”) Claude, who has been working in depth with the Community of Potters Health and Development (COPHAD, pronounced KOE-fad) Initiative since HDI first became involved in 2008, made introductions with community leaders and led us into the thick cluster of houses to meet more members and see the baskets that the women in the cooperative sell. We felt put on the spot as they tried to sell us their goods, but we tried to politely redirect this attention and inquired about the current avenues through which the cooperative sells these goods in order to get a better understanding of their model and where they hope to sell in the future. We then moved into the Cell office, an open room with benches and a chalkboard. We were sat in chairs at the front of the room facing the space where members of the women’s cooperative filed in: twenty in total, and four nursing babies. Our small greeting party of Cyaruzinge children shuffled into one side as Ronah and Claude stood to give introductions about the knitting project, the interns (us), and what opportunities such a diversification project could provide. At least, we think that’s what they said; the entire introduction and briefing process was conducted entirely in Kinyarwanda, as this is the only language spoken in the community. The women seemed enthusiastic about what Claude and Ronah were saying, and we tried to follow their expressions as we observed with fruitless desire to understand. The women decided that they would prefer to have trainings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8am-noon. We asked them about products and styles they would prefer (in order to educate us in buying materials); they gave some useful preference on products but asked us to pick the colors of yarn because they thought we may have a better eye for what will sell in the market.

Bearing all this in mind, we returned to the HDI office and made a more detailed schedule of trainings for knitting and business. Rachel and Sarah have a fairly cohesive (though adaptable) plan of action for what knitting skills and relevant product designs they will teach; on the business side, things are a bit more ambiguous. Hannah’s been stressing out a bit without Connor here to talk business-speak – we’re still unsure as to what business skills will be both relevant and transferrable in the community, as it does not appear that the women can read or write. A skills assessment will be necessary to get an idea of what will be useful for the cooperative moving forward. We decided to structure our trainings such that the women will be divided into two smaller groups: one will meet with the knitting interns on Monday and business interns on Wednesday while the other group will meet with business interns on Monday and knitting interns on Wednesday. We think this will optimize the time spent in the community and allow us to accomplish our goals by the time we leave (to the best of our ability and circumstance). There may be an issue if both Ronah and Claude aren’t able to make it one day, as we will likely need each of them to translate a separate section. Translator struggles have been a theme of this experience so far, as it is really difficult for us to communicate outside of what little Kinyarwanda and French we know collectively. We’re doing our best, though, and we’re learning more words every day!

On Friday, our team had the opportunity to sit in on a meeting of the Agaseke Business Cooperative Union. This is a group of cooperatives, mostly made up of women, make and sell baskets in Kigali. Each cooperative, including the Dusabane cooperative we will be working with, sends one representative to each meeting to discuss common problems, triumphs, and generally support one another. They welcomed us in warmly, and it was nice to sit among the members instead of in front of the members like we had at Dusabane. The meeting took place entirely in Kinyarwanda, which further emphasized our need to pick up the language faster, but Ronah was able to translate once in a while for us so we had a basic understanding of the discussions. It was great to see this Union tackle difficult issues such as strategies for gaining foot traffic to their store, competitive interactions with independent artisans, people not paying back loans from the Union on time, and working with the local government to stay in business. Almost every person present had a chance to speak, and the discussion seemed very lively and productive as far as we could tell. At the end they put us on the spot a bit by asking whether we had any advice about what they had discussed or further diversifying their skill sets. We had a bit of trouble with this because we hadn’t understood the vast majority of their conversations and didn’t have nearly enough context to provide genuinely helpful advice. In the end, we basically said we would discuss their thoughts with HDI and ask whether further partnerships might be possible. Afterwards, we had a chance to look at some of their products and talk a bit with one member about their manufacturing processes and international clients (mainly a huge order over several years from Japan). We did feel a bit of pressure to buy their goods, but we weren’t sure how to decline politely. We ended up avoiding the topic and moving on with other questions.

So far we’ve spent a lot of time in the HDI office, located close to where we are staying. We couldn’t be more happy with our co-workers, who work in a number of specializations within HDI including Sexual Health and Reproduction (SHARE), LGBTI programs, finance, Community of Potters Health and Development (COPHAD – our section), etc. On our first day we met with Kagaba, the executive director, to talk about our project and logistics surrounding its implementation. Now we spend most of our time in the COPHAD office consulting with Ronah and other co-workers about how we can best prepare for trainings and make sure all is in order for the project; often the success of this is left up to what vehicles and other resources we have access to and the amount of time co-workers can set aside to show us how to best move forward. We’ve also begun teaching knitting skills to some of our co-workers (and team members! i.e. Hannah) – because Ronah will be one of our trainers, we taught her some basic casting on, knitting, and purling skills so that she will have a better idea of what she will be translating when we start trainings on Wednesday. Our only concerns in-office relate directly to a lack of understanding about what is culturally appropriate. For example, it’s often unclear what time we need to be in the office every day and how long we need to stay, as most of the in-office work we need to do can be accomplished fairly quickly and we spend the rest of the time working online and with technology to set up schedules and research best practices for training. The concept of “Rwanda time,” or a general cultural practice of being less stringent on time and punctuality, leaves us unsure of how best to make use of our time. The reason it’s often difficult to address this is due to a culture of indirectness in Rwanda; while this is not something that’s necessarily explicit or universal, many Rwandese people tend to be less straightforward when speaking and can skirt around issues in conversation. We have mostly noticed this when asking questions about office expectations and project expectations: one such situation is detailed below. We’ve been careful to focus on asking open-ended questions rather than leading ones that can pressure people into an outcome they may not have desired out of politeness or tension.

We have been attempting to be conscious of the effect of our Americanness on the interactions of those around us, especially our coworkers. This, combined with subtle cultural differences and language barriers, have caused uncomfortable interactions. For example, HDI provides lunch for the employees that consists of mostly starch, such as rice, pasta, plantains, etc. While we do like the taste of the food, it doesn’t quite get us through the day like protein/vegetable based meals do. We felt somewhat influenced into paying for lunch for the month and had trouble sensitively explaining why we didn’t want the HDI lunch. With Kaleigh’s help, we explained that we instead want to try out restaurants in the area. We still aren’t sure how this message was received and are struggling with gauging when it’s worth it to create potentially uncomfortable situations for personal gain.

On Saturday we woke up bright and early and set off with one of our coworkers, Toussaint, for a hike up Mt. Kigali, the city’s highest peak standing at 6,075 feet. We took a bus from our district in Kigali, Kicukiro, to the Nyamirambo area on the other side of the city. We learned from Toussaint and Erigs, another HDI employee who also happens to be a reggae rapper that we joined at the end of the bus ride, that this area is wildly social at night, much like New York City in the US. As we hiked up the mountain, we enjoyed beautiful views of Kigali, varied local flora and fauna, and great conversation as we got to know our new friends better. At the top, we sat in the most beautiful area for a lunch of pb&j, bananas, and mango. This grove of pine trees, leaving a thick covering of fallen needles on the ground, is a serene place that many local people visit to relax or pray. Erigs told us he makes the trip up the mountain to that spot every Sunday. While we ate, we chatted about how beautiful it all was and listened to some of Erigs’ music, including a song he sang with our wonderful housemate Julie. That song was stuck in our heads for the rest of the day!

On the way down the mountain through a drizzle of warm rain, we stopped at a corral to see some horses. There was also a puppy who absolutely loved Rachel and wouldn’t leave her alone. The rest of the way down was fairly quick, and we proceeded to leave Erigs and catch a bus to the downtown area that everyone just refers to as “in town.” There, we walked around to various landmarks including the tallest building in Kigali, Kigali City Tower. After that, we caught yet another bus to meet Ronah at the Kimironko markets, located in her home district of the city. We browsed through fabric stall after fabric stall until finally deciding on one print each and buying enough for a pair of pants. Toussaint took us to meet a tailor friend of his who could sew the pants, and he proceeded to show us several of his products. Throughout the whole market experience, all of what we saw was beautiful, but again we felt the pressure to buy goods we weren’t necessarily looking for. There is a very fine line between being polite and being taken advantage of, and we have had a hard time navigating this distinction because of our lack of language skills and the situations we are put in due to our Americanness. After final measurements and thank you’s, we departed for home, ate dinner, and realized that we were absolutely exhausted. We felt a lot more like tourists today than we have before, but we were also able to see a lot more of the city, which was really cool. Shoutout to our awesome Rwandan friends for a fantastic day! Rwandem to know how much we appreciate them!

Today (Sunday) we took a bus into town with Theó and accompanied him to his church service. He’d asked us to come with him last night; while Hannah is the only one of the three of us who is religious, we all thought it would be a good way to explore religious culture in Kigali and spend more time with Theó/make Theó happy, because we adore him. The church service lasted for about two and a half hours and included lots of anointing with oil and shouting in French and Kinyarwanda (and very little English). While we were undoubtedly lost, it was still an enriching experience and one we found interesting. After this, we came back and met up with our co-worker Amber to go to an HDI event celebrating the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. HDI does a lot of advocacy work with underserved populations here in Rwanda, including the LGBTI community. The event brought together key populations, LGBTI program heads, and diplomats for an opportunity to network, celebrate the progress that has been made, and reaffirm human rights endeavors toward visibility, respect, and equality for these communities of people. We then had the chance to talk with Amber about her experience as a policy and technical advisor for HDI over the past year. Overall it was a great day and of the type that is becoming characteristic of our time here: busy, nowhere near on-schedule, and undoubtedly rewarding.

Tomorrow, we will finally recover Connor from the hands of the visa authority (fingers crossed) and welcome him into Rwanda! We’ll also be buying knitting supplies and securing all we need to start trainings in Cyaruzinge on Wednesday. Thanks for reading through this perhaps over-exhaustive take on our first week; we’re excited for what’s yet to come!

Looking forward,
HDI Team

One thought on “HDI-Rwanda Update: Week 1

  1. NINO says:

    Sounds like y’all are having a fantastic time so far. Keep learning and building relationships! Glad that Connor finally made it to Rwanda.

     

    -NINO

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *