Day
11
We meet Rogers and William at the Gashora
Health Center around 9:30AM to help them work on a kitchen garden. When we get
there, they have already cleared an area for the garden but the rest of the
field is full of weeds, dead corn stalks, and patches of grass.
The aroma of mint fills our nostril
with sweetness as we hack at the dirt with hoes. Children line up on the outside
of the fence screeching “Muzungu” repeatedly as we work. In no time, there are
several knee-high piles of weeds and the area is mostly clear, while our faces
are red and our upper-lips are soaked with sweat. We pull all of the weeds into
one pile, which takes a lot of effort, and then begin to help with the garden.
As mentioned in a previous post,
the kitchen garden is a tiered structure that allows for a trickling affect
with water. Plants with longer roots (like carrots, karoti) go on the top tier, and plants with lower roots (like
spinach, epinari). Many Rwandans from
the village come to help with the garden. Rogers and William, who are the force
behind the kitchen gardens, hope that Rwandans will take up the old tradition
of helping each other build gardens, and that they will take on the form of
kitchen gardens, which can provide more types of nutrients.
The Rwandans at the Health Center bring
us to a tree which can be cut back. The branches tumble to the ground and
crack. They use machetes to cut the leaves off of branches and we haul the
branches to the garden site where they are cut into appropriate sizes and
chipped into sharp stakes.
Some people break-up soil in one
area so that we can use it in the garden. Sticks are hammered into the ground
in a circular fashion using a “Rwandan Hammer” (as Rogers calls it) which is a
large rock. This makes the outline of the first tier. We line the sticks with
plastic-like bags to hold in the soil. Using large buckets, and other bags
which two people carry to the garden, we fill the tier with soil and move on to
the next tier.
This process continues until we
have to go into town for lunch and teaching English at Covaga. We wash dirt off
our hands, arms, feet, necks, chests, backs, legs, and faces, and change into
business casual clothing. Baby wipes, which we used to be extra clean, form a
pile of brown on the bench. Wilson, the IT tech at the Health Center, is happy
to see us change into more appropriate clothing since we will be returning to
teach his staff English later in the day. He says that we are role models for
the youth in Gashora, and that when young westerners come dressed
inappropriately, it upsets the elders in the village, because the young
Rwandans attempt to dress similarly.
Rogers, William, and some locals
stay behind to work on the fourth and last tier of the garden. In town, at Yvone’s we eat.so.much.food.
After a review lesson at Covaga, we
head to the Health Center to teach English for the first time. Steve
Vanderstaay put together a great lesson and has worked very hard on all of the
English lessons during the trip. We really appreciate all of his hard work, all
the times he leaves dinner quickly so he can work, or the time he didn’t join
us in Kigali. At the Health Center, the students are very educated and
motivated to learn English. We nestle in between the students, tap our toes on
the slick, white tiled floor, and watch Steve’s energy radiate through the
room.
We begin by teaching them some
basic verb conjugations for present tense, explaining that all of the
conjugations are the same except for in the case of he/she. For example: I
read; You read; She/He reads; You all read; We read. The students pick up on
this very quickly and are soon translating sentences from Kinyarwanda.
Today marks the beginning of a lot
of long days with multiple English lessons and a lot of gardening.
Day
12
Today, it’s back to the Medical
Center in the morning to work on gardens. This time, we’re creating a spiral
garden. First, men chop grass into small piece with a machete and place it in a
pile. Then, soil is piled on top of the grass until the grass is no longer
visible. While a few people pile the soil on, some people begin searching the
grounds for large rocks which will be spiraled up the mound, to prevent erosion
of soil.
We are having trouble finding rocks
when Rogers appears with a stack of bricks. He brings us to the old Health
Center, a dreary building where a room is full of old bricks. Thin, black wasps
hang from the ceiling in pieces of hives. We quickly pile up with bricks and
hustle back to the garden.
We bring way too many bricks. More
for next time.
During lunch time, Steve brings up
the topic of an island in lake Kivu called Iwawa,
where orphans or street boys and girls were sent after the genocide for a sort
of rehabilitation. The way in which the government took the boys and girls,
which was without their permission, was scrutinized by Human Rights Watch. However,
the children were brought to the island, educated, taught life skills, and
given the opportunity for government loans when they went back into society.
Rogers becomes very passionate
about the discussion, speaking in a preach, using his hands, as the veins in
his neck protrude. I don’t have an exact quote, but he said something to the
extent of: “Where was the Human Rights Watch during the genocide? They are so
quick to criticize Rwanda from a distance, but they don’t come here and see the
way things really are. The kids, they go to Iwawa
as nothing and they come back with a life.”
Rogers also mentions how, after
graduating high school, Rwandans are required to go to a month long service in
which they all work together and eradicate any ideas about ethnic division.
There are no Hutus or Tutsis, only Rwandans.
After lunch, we don’t go to Covage
because it’s the 4th of July, which in Rwanda, signifies liberation
from genocide. The women weavers are home, relishing in the security of Rwanda.
We go to the Health Center again to teach English. On the way to the hotel, we
see Lama pull up in a van. Tim told us that he would be coming to Gashora with
a group of “middle-schoolers.” Apparently,
there was some miscommunication. About ten middle-aged Canadian Muzungus pile
out of the van. We look at each other, confused. These are not middle school
students. It’s just another example of a language barrier.
Day
13
In the morning, a few of us, me,
Tim, Carrie, Jon, and Filimon take bike taxis to a house in Gashora where
Rogers and William are working on another kitchen garden. This time, the garden
is for a genocide survivor named Doritea, a 76 year old woman living by herself
in Gashora. From her house which is on Lake Milayi, we have a view of the huge
Gashora Girls Academy compound.
A couple of women and their babies
rest on a straw mat in front of the house, but Doritea is not home yet. We get
right to work. Filimon takes a machete and sharpens branches for the structural
support of the garden. Carrie and I help place bags and hammer sticks.
Whenever a stick needs to be
hammered, Rogers shouts, “Rwandan Hammer!”
When Carrie hammers the sticks, Tim
says “Powerful woman technician!”
To fill the tiers, the men lift a
wheel barrel full of soil and pour it in to the compartments lined with bags.
Dust from the soil puffs toward our faces. Doritea arrives and when we’re
almost done, we get a chance to sit with her and ask her questions about her
experience with genocide.
She tells us that all three of her
sons died, and that she was hidden with her sister by a local Hutu family who
had power, though her sister later died. Though her face is wrinkled with pain,
when she smiles, it’s like a flower reaching for the sun.
We ask her if she sees improvement
happening in Gashora, and she says, yes, very much. When we ask if things are
better now than they were before the genocide, she says things are way better.
She also loves Paul Kagame, wishes he could be president forever and thinks
that reconciliation is working very well in Rwanda.
She thanks us for helping her with
the kitchen garden, since previously, her only way to get food is through other
members of the community and her granddaughters who visit her. During the
conversation, a baby boy crawls over, his bum naked, and hands Doritea a small
chunk of maize. She picks each kernel out of the cob and throws them on the
ground, as if to feed a chicken. The baby plops down, puts a kernel in his
mouth, and stares at us.
He proceeds to throw the empty
maize cob at us as though it’s a ball. In the middle of an intense conversation
about genocide, we have a child, the future of Rwanda, doing what he can with his
resources. This is the Rwandan way.
When we go to leave, Doritea walks
us a little ways down the road and says goodbye, thanking us again, and
clasping her hands around ours.
We join the rest of the group at
Yvone’s for lunch where the middle-aged tour group from Canada eats with us.
Then, it’s off to Covaga for a cultural exchange. The Canadians will join us
and allow the Covaga weavers to practice their English.
When the Canadians enter, the women
converse with them in English, “Hello,” “My name is…” “Nice to meet you,”
“Would you like to see our baskets,” “Thank you,” “We have baskets, tray, hot
pads, and bags.” We squeal! Our students do so well with their English and are
incredibly bold about approaching the tourists and speaking to them. We give
them high-fives and hugs, so happy to see them using what they’ve learned.
Then we all sit down, the women pat
their straw mats, inviting us to sit with them and resting their hands on our
thighs. These women, we’ve grown to love them. We appreciate our relationship
with them, how they teach us Kinyarwanda and open up to us to learn English. We
are surprised when they tell us their age because they all seem so young and
full of life, surprised when they tell us they have six kids at home and walk
10 kilometers just to reach Covaga.
These women are amazing. They
smile, happy to weave us into their lives.
Please look back to day 5 to read a
great description of recreation in Gashora, written by our very own Jon Kaimmer :)
No comments:
Post a Comment