In addition to about 6 kilograms of body mass (about one eleventh of a Graham), my aversion to cold showers, and my reticence to learn to drive a stick shift, I’ve lost the ability to type the number sign.
I’ve been working quite a bit and if I thought writing reports and proposals was hard in English, writing them in French is even more of a challenge. Of some consolation is the fact that thanks to Bill Gates, I can configure my computer to interpret the American keyboard as a French one. Granted I have to memorize the keys, and while not actually translating the documents for me, it at least helps me type them without clicking on ‘Insert – Symbol’ and finding the accent aigue or grave or circonflexe every third word.
And the positive news is that I’m climbing the WPM (words per minute) chart by the day, mastering the wonder that is the AZERTY keyboard. Try doing this on your keyboard Americano: éèçàù§£µ. Thatés whqt I thought youùd sqy. So in addition to learning that q is a and m is ; and 4 is ‘ and 5 is ( and w is z, I’m slowly getting my head around the idea that nothing here is ever what it seems. And most of the time, things don’t work out the way you want them to… but sometimes things do... and you have to trust that it will all be ok in either case. And whatever challenge comes along, I'll just have to face it without the use of the number sign, which I can't find anywhere on this darn keyboard. Let me try to make some sense of this:
My life here has normalized and, for the past month, I’ve been Burundi bound, getting settled and whatnot. I feel it wise to ‘faire un état de lieu’ a short assessment of where I am, particularly given the last line of reflection numéro uno (yeah froggy keyboard!).
There’s no longer a kid living in my tool shed; in fact, I no longer even have a tool shed. I now have two roommates: a gay Parisian with a mustache and French girl from Saint-Etienne, which as coincidence would have it, happens to be from the former mining has been town where I was lucky enough to spend 10 months ‘teaching’ (speaking) English. I have my own 4x4 Toyota Land Cruiser, which has been parked at all hours of the night in all corners of this city, as I soak up Burundian youth covering Marvin Gaye and James Brown; Nepalese UN peacekeepers built like brick shit houses trying to get up the courage to talk to my roommate, then telling her that speaking French is like wiping your ass with silk (why can’t I come up with those lines?); doing the twist in some local bar outside of town at 4am after some drunk as hell prostitute steals my beer and breathes the stench of the dorm toilets on Saturday morning when all 9 stalls are overfoaming with vomit and cigarettes in my face; teaching my colleague Diego’s 3 year old kid to kill flying bugs the size of my thumb while watching Didier Drogba beat up on the current UEFA champions Barcelona via satellite on a green and orange screen (Ronaldinho player of the year my ass); showing some American colleagues the beach and looking across the lake to the mountains of Eastern Congo, while sipping lemon Fanta from a glass bottle that’s been regularly reused since probably the mid-eighties… waste not want not… And, in the midst of almost getting my ass kicked by two 7 ft. local guys who crashed my first house party at 3am, I remembered it was time to write down my thoughts.
That was two weeks ago.
So here we are two and a half months abroad, and I’m sitting in a hotel room in Pretoria, South Africa, watching WWF Smackdown and eating McDonalds for the third straight night and feeling a bit of culture shock from my return to America… or at least something similar.
I’m ‘stuck’ in South Africa until the Angolan Embassy here approves my visa, at which point I’m going to have to manufacture an open seat on a plane to Luanda. But I’ll worry about that once I get that nice pretty sticker on page whatever it is in my beaten up passport. Went for a walk downtown yesterday, which actually reminded me of Pittsburgh, or actually any other city in America where I’m the minority (the whiteness is going to be a running theme through these, so if you’re offended… uh, just think about me in the hot sun, and you’ll see that the issue is pretty much unavoidable).
There’s a lot to live up to after the first installment, the feedback from which included a marriage proposal, many compliments, and a request to write more. Let me start with a couple of recent events and move on from there.
So I’ve grown a beard… which according to my delightful roommate, makes me look “moins blanc” less white. Great. I also got a wicked sunburn, so I look something between a karaf of kool aid and a (Graham)Scott-ish highlander. I’m still trying to decide if it’s staying. Day 17 is looking a little rough.
Ok, I guess that satisfies for background.
Today, boys and girls, we’re going to talk about Trust. I flew from Bujumbura to South Africa on a Rwandair flight, trusting that there would be an Angolan visa waiting for me in Pretoria and trusting that I would be able to get from Johannesburg to Pretoria somehow. Ok, I arrived in Johannesburg, got a ride arranged by the hotel, failed at trying to get internet access, bought a phone card where an Afrikaans guy told me not to be out at night, and I negotiated a ride to Pretoria with a taximan who was going there anyway… HALF PRICE. Again, I trusted that there would be no problem.
The next day we headed out, 6am, straight drive 45 minutes to the capital… small problem, I didn’t know where the Angolan embassy was. No problem, trust factor. So Phineas (the driver) and I head to Pretoria, and stop by the DMV… he has to renew his licence.
Time out.
Do you remember that awful TV show “Sliders”, where the characters would ‘slide’ between different dimensions… each the same world, with the exact same people, but something was different… in one all men were enslaved by women and the “sliders” get caught because one of them leaves the seat up… in another, hell, I don’t remember… I think that was the first and last episode I saw...
So I find myself waiting in line at a DMV, so Phineas can renew his passport. I might as well have been in suburban Arlington. After deciding that waiting in line wasn’t going to work, we headed downtown to find the embassy… After asking five different people, including the front desk person at the Irish Embassy where the Angolan embassy was (you know ‘cause Angola used to be an Irish colony… sarcasm), I was exchanging my drivers license for a visitors pass and being told that the immigration folks in Angola were a ‘bunch of liars’ for telling me I could get my visa in South Africa. Uh oh. Negotiations ensued, and I was told to reapply; I insisted on talking to the guy’s boss later in the day. So we head back to the DMV, but first, I need to get a SIM Card, so I can 1. stop using Phineas’ phone and 2. be within reach of my coworkers to diffuse any ‘urgent’ conflicts. He drops me off at the cell phone store, I hesitate for a second before jumping out to buy the SIM Card. My laptop, baggage and bacon Pringles are in the car, and Phineas could just drive off. (parallel universe --- they have Fanta and Pringles, but they’re in weird flavors like bacon and pineapple, respectfully (sic)).
But I jump out anyway, buy the SIM card for the equivalent of two bucks. Imagine that… 2 bucks and I have my own phone number… Trust. Jump back in the car and we’re off to the DMV. At the DMV I’m waiting in line, Phineas needs some medical form filled out, so he says, “Can you hold my spot, I have to run to the doctor’s.” So I hold his spot in line, while he jumps into his car and drives off with my laptop, pig-flavored Pringles, and fruit of the looms. So I’m sitting there, and that’s when it hits me… I’m either a complete moron or a very trusting individual. The only real difference is whether or not Phinny decides to take those crappy Dell adds seriously – Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell from that gullible American schmuck! – or whether he decides to come back to get his driver’s licence.
When the red car rolls back into the parking lot 20 minutes later, it hits me. It’s not really about trusting people, though trust is important in this world, it’s about reading people, and about knowing their needs and interests. I don’t know Phineas from Gideon or Jacob or Adam, but I know that the only reason he’s going to Pretoria is to get his licence, and the only reason he’s kept me around is that I’m going to pay him 22.50 $$ to drop me at a hotel in town. Sure, I trust him, but if he leaves with my shit, I’m high and dry in a strip mall 5 miles outside of the capital of a country I’ve only been in for about 19 hours. Hell, I’m still green enough to be wowed by bacon Pringles. It’s not so much trusting people as trusting yourself to make the right decisions. And being able to understand where people are coming from. And you can’t understand people until you get out of your shell and put yourself in a position to be surprised, shocked, laughed at, robbed, loved, betrayed, fucked. And maybe that’s really what trust is… not trusting that things will work out, ‘cause they won’t…. or sometimes they won’t… it’s trusting that when they don’t that you made the right decision and are in a position to deal with whatever dimension the world decides to show you. Likewise, it’s not about trusting a person to be good, it’s about trusting that there are good people in this world… and having the courage to put yourself in a position to find them. Or maybe it’s as simple as trusting that things often don’t work out, but that you’ve got to trust that things eventually will.
Phineas dropped me at a hotel, gave me his last black pen (after five minutes of fierce negotiation) and a receipt for the 160 Rand. The next day, the woman at the Embassy was about as helpful as her underling, but I reapplied, and I’ll have a 30 day visa on Friday… I hope… or should I say… I trust.
La suite…
Ok, end of chapter. I got my visa four days later (spent eating McDonalds and typing report and budget after report and budget), rushed to the airport to catch the last flight of the week to Luanda that I had no hope of catching. Naturally, I missed it, so I set about finding another option. TAAG (Angolan airline) – booked through next week, South African Airways – booked through next week, Air Namibia (Air Namibia?!) – flight in one week, through Namibia of course. Shit.
Laisse-moi t’expliquer un tout petit peu… I arrived in South Africa on Sunday, hoping, trusting, that I would have a visa waiting for me, and trusting that once I had said visa, I would be able to get a flight to Angola. I have no reason to be in South Africa, other than for this crummy visa, and now I am going to have to spend another week eating Mickey D’s twice a day and bouffing all of my Rands in the same internet café, speaking French with a guy from Bukavu, Eastern Congo named Elvis who plays classical piano and listens to a mix of Congolese dance music and Christian worship music from the USA, baby. Lord, I lift your name on high…
In fact, Elvis hooked me up with a cheap ride to the airport… I guess I earned it, since I’ve spent the equivalent of about 30 bucks in his internet café this week. Actually, no, that doesn’t balance out. I saved like 40 bucks on this ride… oh, just you wait.
Meanwhile, back at Jo-burg Int’l (which apparently isn’t called Jo-burg international, but it is in this story), it occurs to me… I have a flight back to Bujumbura on Rwandair in two weeks. I look at my ticket and realize that it’s a weekly flight, and this week’s flight leaves in 1.5 hours… did someone say ticket change… giddyup.
So I run to the Rwandair “counter” (woman selling tickets out of a suitcase at a borrowed South African Airways counter with the SA sticker covered up, but whatever), where I am informed that I can’t change my ticket there. No, I say, I have all of my baggage and can leave immediately (you’ll see in a moment that that wasn’t quite right). Ok, she says, but we don’t accept cash. Not even Rand? Credit card? Bribe? Backsheesh? Shirt off my back? Plasma? First born? GET ME THE HELL OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA!!!!!! You have to make a deposit in our bank account. Lady, the flight leaves in an hour. Sir, the bank is downstairs, and the gate closes in 30 minutes… rush rush rush…
$2 cell phone rings… it’s Elvis’ friend who drove me to the airport. Allo, oui, t’es ou? Merde, le vol décolle dans une heure… Let me paraphrase – my luggage is still in the trunk of the car that dropped me off, as it was also going to drive me back to Pretoria (that is before I was going back to Bujumbura)… I’m not after all going to spend a week in the airport. The driver (friend of Elvis’) calls to say that he’s been arrested and is leaving the police station in Johannesburg… in addition to trying to drive backwards off an onramp on the way in (that particular maneuver got us pulled over by airport police), he illegally parked the car after he dropped me off (in front of the same squad car, I might add)… lovely. That got him a free trip to the police station an hour away.
I’m not coming back to the airport. Dude, you’re coming back to the airport. Désolé mon gars (sorry dude).
Ok, quick mental inventory of what’s in the bag… electric razor, malaria pills, clothing, backpack, toiletries, Portuguese language CDs… unopened… of course… Ok, fuck it, I’m out. I either go back to Pretoria for a week of MacDO, bacon Pringles, pineapple Fanta, franco-african internet cafés and sunburn OR I head the hell back to Bujumbura for a Primus (local beer) and some “fun”. I AM OUT. You’re not supposed to take those malaria poison pills for a year anyway (why has graham lost 15 pounds? – slight hyperbole).
10 minutes later I find a phone booth place to call internationally. Call Washington for approval to fly back to Bujumbura (essentially a loss of about 400 bucks). No, there are no more flights… yes, yes, tried that. No, can’t do that. Yes, I’m a little bit ready to get out of here. Right, ha ha ha,,, yes, it’ll be a great story. Riiiiiight.
Small price to pay for home sweet home… So now I have 15 minutes to deposit the money… rush rush rush, THERE’S A LINE. Okay, okay. 15-14-13… phone rings, it’s Elvis… ca va? Non, ca va PAS!!!!!! (Are you fine? NO I’M NOT FINE !!!!) While you’ve been dancin’ to the jail house rock, I’ve been running around like an idiot trying to fucking emmigrate. I’ve got your bag and am driving to the airport. Okay, flight leaves in 1 hour…
Security guard kicks me out of the bank for talking on my cell phone.
Back in line… 9-8-7-6…. come on come on -5-4-3-2-1- -1, -2, -3… you get the point. So I finally pay the 390 Rand and run back up to get back to sweet Buja and cold, cheap beer….
Oh, yeah, the Rwandair “counter” has now transformed back to a South African Airways booth and the carpet bag lady is halfway to Kigali.
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Guess who’s staying in Pretoria?
So I begin working the phones, calling Burundi and DRC colleagues… and spending even MORE money… I can get to Kinshasa on Monday, then get my office there to buy me a ticket to then fly to Angola on Tuesday. Problem being that I’d have to come back Luanda to Kinshasa to Johannesburg to Bujumbura… all on different tickets. Or I could drop the Jo-burg – Buja leg and just get a UN flight from Kinshasa to Bukavu coming back and then get a ride from Bukavu to Bujumbura. Who cares, let’s focus on getting to Angola. Other option, fly back to Bujumbura on Sunday, then fly from Bujumbura to Kenya to South Africa to Luanda via Kenyan Airways, connection with South African Airways (this according to my colleague / travel guru in Burundi).
Hang on a second. I thought there were no flights to Angola from Jo-burg.
Graham’s colleague Guru Travel Agent Dude: “Says here that there are.”
South African Arways; “Sir, there are no spaces on any flights for the rest of the month to Angola”. But Kenya Airways said… “Sir, there are no spaces on ANY flights for the rest of the month to Angola.”
Kenya Airways, “No, sir, we can’t put you on a flight to Luanda.” But your Bujumbura office said… Blank stare. Great.
So I drive back with Elvis, pay his gas, and go back to the hotel. I don’t care what South African Airways says, I’m calling their central reservations office. “No, sir, no room tomorrow, nor the next day… I could put you on a flight next Saturday.”
321 123 why is Africa bothering me.
M’am, are you SURE that there are no spots tomorrow… it’s very VERY V E R Y important that I get to Luanda.
PAUSE
“Oh, yes, it appears there is one free spot. How is tomorrow morning?”
And most of the time, things don’t work out the way you want them to… but sometimes things do... and you have to trust that it will all be ok in either case.
Or maybe that’s just Africa, and I got lucky. I’ll be positive for a change.
Just in case, I think I’ll put the seat down… you never know what dimension you’re in... hell, this one doesn’t even have number signs.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Reflection #1
Sometime in early September, 2006…
Friends, Family, aFrica-Files,
I’d meant to wait a month before writing my first mass-e-mail, but I’ve got quite a bit to say, and have a few minutes to put my thoughts to paper, or to liquid-crystal display, as it were. I’m sitting at the table of my living room/dining room/sitting room, eating by candle light, as the electricity has been cut off (I had electricity last night, so naturally I wouldn’t have it two days in a row). Where to start? Let me try with my itinerary and go from there:
I spent the first five days in Abidjan Ivory Coast, where I was mostly stuck in the office, reading books, working, and watching the first two episodes of Smallville. Most people go to Africa to experience the culture, I bring four seasons of a WB teen drama series. But it’s about Superman, so we’ll forgive the cultural insensitivity. Anyway, Abidjan was fine, and the most exciting thing was an ATM, countless shell stations, and dinner on the lagoon with a guy I met last time I was in Ivory Coast and who used to be our studio coordinator, watching fisherman fish in canoes made of tree logs. It was midnight… perfect time to get the fish, and they whispered softly, as they pushed off the shore into the calm midnight waters. Now, before you think I’m in the middle of nowhere, the background of these peasant fisherman at midnight on a calm lagoon is the most advanced city I’ve seen in Africa, with sky scrapers, neon lights, highways, cab drivers just across the water, not to mention a full-screen dvd screening of Beyonce live in London. Here’s a restaurant with a thatched roof, on the edge of a calm lagoon, showing Beyonce Knowles’ luscious legs on a life-size screen. Not that I’m complaining, but did somebody say cultural dichotomy?
Then I mosied over to Burundi, with stopovers in Ghana and Nairobi. Only eventful happening was befriending three South Africans who work for a security consulting company and tried to convince me they were lingerie salesman. For my part, I tried to convince them I wasn’t CIA. So I arrived in Burundi, and promptly stayed at our Ivory Coast Country Director’s house. She’s Burundian and was there on holidays (vacation for you amurrrrricans). So I dropped my shit off, changed, and headed to the office to meet the team. I spent the next four days looking for a place to live, meeting Spes’ 11 brothers and sisters and brothers and sisters in law and nieces and nephews, all of whom wanted me to live in Spes house. Good deal: white guy = muzungu = $$. A common formula, as you will come to see. In any event, I began working on helping the Burundian staff prepare a couple of project proposals to the Open Society Institute and the Canadian government, as well as helped organize their financial systems (for those of you who don’t know what I actually DO and think I work for the CIA, hopefully this will shed some light). If you still persist in your thinking, know that you (and the South Africans) are not alone. Long story short, I picked up where I left off in Washington, with a similar job, only now the communication is in French (though most of the writing is still in the Queen’s Anglais), the malaria threat is higher, and everywhere you go people yell “Muzungu, muzungu”, pretty much the equivalent of “Fucking Cracker!” Which reminds me of this kid I used to wash dishes with at the retirement home named Joey, the kid’s name, not the retirement home. Every day, I’d come into work, and he’d yell, “Hey, Graham Cracker, get it, Cracker!” Yeah, I got it.
Anyway, back to Burundi. But honestly, moved from West Africa to East Africa (thematically), and the reality of my job is that I could really do it from anywhere, even on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean, assuming I had a V-Sat hookup and constant internet access. I just happen to be plugged in at an NGO headquarters/radio production studio in Bujumbura Burundi, where I spent the next five days not finding a house, drinking beer, working, and not really feeling culture shock.
Five days after arriving, I jetted over to Eastern Congo for a 24-hour orientation/meet-and-greet to meet my boss, who was arriving in Bukavu from Kinahasa (the capital – we have offices in both). She had been delayed because of a security situation in Kinshasa following the elections. (Don’t worry mom, it’s 1000 miles away, literally). So I spent the night in Eastern Congo, then met the staff the next day, before turning around and driving the 3 hours back to Bujumbura, crossing the border between DRC and Rwanda, then driving an hour through Rwanda, before crossing back into Burundi for the hour+ drive back to the Capital, passing kids on bicycles transporting hay and sticks, and rice, and anything else they could strap to their bicycles, shepherds hearding large groups of long-horned cattle, right across the road (which presents a problem when your 4x4 is driving at 60 mph. But we slowed down to miss the cattle, barely avoiding (unfortunately) a small group of children screaming Cracker (get it, Graham Cracker?!). But I returned to the Capital, where I spent four more lovely days, including a party at my country directors house with the whole 35 person staff, complete with kebobs, patio furniture, cell phone conversation, and a bathtub filled with ice water and beer.
Let me get to the point, as this is boring.
I’m sitting here by candlelight, looking over the bill the kid gave me for the 8 bucks I gave him this morning to buy food from the market to make lunch and dinner. It turns out that he’s been hired (by Spes) to cook, clean, do laundry, and guard the house during the day. Also turns out he lives in what I thought was a tool shed behind the house, a brick, open awning-covered structure, picture slave quarters on a plantation, and you’re actually right on. Nonetheless, this offends every inch of my morals and judgements on human equality. When I got home from my 9 day trip to Kigali, Rwanda and Bukavu, Congo (DRC) last night, I had other things to worry about. You’ll see.
So I took a 6 hours chartered bus with our media coordinator in Congo and three journalists that work for us in Burundi (hosting round table discussion programs, news programs, and other live and pre-recorded radio programs). We drove through some of the most beautiful mountain landcapes I’ve ever seen, with small villages and groupings of huts and mud-brick houses butting up against the roadway every few kilometers (a kilometer is one fifth of a high school cross-country race for those of you math wizzes doing the conversion at home). Anyway, I was crammed in the back seat next to a farmer from Rwanda (who couldn’t read and write, so I filled out his exit card to cross the border – he looked like he was 15, but he was born in 1980 – no date, just the year… that has really stuck with me, particularly given all the importance we put on birthdays – I for one celebrate mine for two weeks – those of you who love me will remember a certain wine party where we all had a bit too much to drink) and a group of three Burundian women (who also couldn’t fill out their Rwandan exit card, through lack of caring more than lack of schooling). At the border crossing, I ran into Spes’ brother, who again asked me if I was taking the house, though by that time I had already decided no to. We chatted away, before getting back on the bus for the last two hours of the mountain trip back to Burundi.
On arriving, I walked to the office, attempted a phone conversation with my parents using Skype, in which I think they heard about 58% of the consonants and 3 of the five vowels. I then grabbed a cab and headed back to Spes’ house (my house for the month of September), after being dropped off, I realized that, as I hadn’t been there in nine days, no one actually knew I would be coming, so to my unpleasant surprise, I found a pad lock on the gate: the day watchman, cleaner, cook, shed-hut dweller, Kirundi-teacher had left for the day. So here I am at 5:30 pm on a Sunday facing a ten foot stone wall with shards of class and metal spikes on the top to prevent intruders (and inhabitants) from scaling the fence. I would have jumped it, but I had a 2000 laptop over my shoulder. So I launched my backback over the wall, called Spes’s sister, who said the night watchman would be there in 30 minutes, and promptly stared at the dirt. 30 minutes, middle of some random Burundian neighborhood without anywhere to go. So I walked around the corner to a small market run by an Indian family. You have to imagine the irony of speaking English at a the equivalent of a convenience store in Burundi. So that killed five minutes, and here I am in front of the gate, contemplating my existence and pain threshold (have YOU ever scaled a ten foot wall covered in metal and glass shards? – that’s what I fucking thought). By this time a small group of four children had gathered and began giggling at me from about 20 meters away (again, a meter is 1/5000 of a cross country race or roughly the height of an annoying, ethnically insensitive Burundian child). So after they began laughing and yelling Muzungu, muzungu, a group of neighbors at the other end of the “street” – sandway, I might call it – took up the relay baton, only their discussions included horrific attempts at English. So I start laughing because the whole damn thing was quite funny, and let’s face it, getting locked out of your own compound is pretty quintessentially Muzungu. Then I look across from me, and there’s a girl staring at me. She invites me in to sit until the damn kid gets back. THANK GOD!.
Which really leads me to the main point here. Here I am a total stranger being openly mocked for being white (well, ok, REALLY white), and this wonderful person invites me into the most personal space in Burundi, the home. So I sit down with her and her sister, and it turns out they’re both at the local university and management school. After they ask me if I want a beer and force feed me a banana, So I begin to try to engage them in conversation: the cute one is the younger sister (who doesn’t have a fiancée – good news, sorry mom) and she’s studying English. The older one is studying management. However, instead of practicing her English, the two of them decide to quiz me on my Kirundi. Yeah, uh, don’t know about most of you, but I sort of slept through Introductory Kirundi in college, it was one of those 8am classes that met every day – hell for a full-time hybernator like myself. But I digress. So we get to chatting, mother owns a flower shop in the center of town, father died during the massacres of 1994, you know typical chit-chat. And they invite me to a mass they’re having in honor of their father, a mass they have every year on the anniversary of his death 9/13. Now let me paint the picture, as my English skills are clearly awful. I go from outsider stuck on some random street in some random capital on some random continent with some random job to sitting down in a beautiful living room with two of the kindest individuals I’ve ever met, who are teaching me Kirundi, serving me bananas, offering me beer, asking me about my job, and inviting me to a special mass in honor of their father, who died in a crisis I was (and a lot of others were) too busy listening to the soundtrack of Woodstock ’94 to give a shit about. I’m sharing their food, discussing the importation of artificial flowers from Tanzania, and agreeing to come to the mass, as well as the reception afterwards chez-elles / at their house.
Well, Spes’ sister finally arrives with her daughter, and I apologize profusely, invite them in, serve them warm fanta and a warm coke, and we sit out on the stoop, facing the inside of the wall, much better and begin to discuss the current situation in the country. Without going into too much detail, it’s safe, but it’s sad. The government is consolidating it’s majority and electoral victory last year, and beginning to clamp down on freedom of expression. My organization’s been here for eleven years, using radio to prevent the exact kind of eventuality that killed 800,000 Rwandans and my neighbor’s father in 1994. And after ten years and an election, there’s still so much to be done.
Flash to Rwanda for a second, where I spent the last five days. My second night there, we finish up a planning workshop for a regional youth radio program that we’re launching, which will be live and simulcast in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo on four radio stations via internet streaming and FM rediffusion. (picture African infrastructure, now reread that last sentence). It’s an amazing project and is aimed at addressing how youth in the region view and deal with conflict. The ultimate aim is to help prevent mass-violence and promote peaceful conflict transformation. Picture Woodstock (’69) meets proactive initiative. Any event, I head up to my hotel room and one of the participants (a local DJ and radio producer) asks me if I’m coming. Where, I ask. Mille Collines, she says. Before I have time to hide the incredulity on my face, I find myself at a happy hour, listening to another participant named Cassanova singing Bob Marley on stage, while I drink a half-price beer. Yep, you guessed it: Happy Hour at Hotel Rwanda. Not even kidding.
So they used radio to promote hatred and ethnic genocide; we use it to promote the exact opposite.
You want to know what I do. Nothing as exciting as that last statement; however, I work to make sure that the amazing people that do this work have the salary and funding to keep going. That’s why I’ve been working my ass off since I moved to DC two years ago. I’m not going to make this a sappy e-mail, but I’m 25 and sitting in complete darkness, typing on a laptop, while some 19 year old kid is sleeping in a shed made of mud bricks in the back yard, making a dollar a day to wash my clothing, make me lunch and dinner, and help water the lawn, and a family across the street is mourning for their father, who was killed 12 years ago because either his ancestors came from a certain part of the continent or because Belgium decided the most effective way to control a country would be to use ethnicity as a tool for manipulation and control.
So it turns out, the kid doesn’t eat if I don’t eat. And I was gone for nine days. Think about that for a second. Not really clear, as I don’t speak Kirundi and the kid doesn’t speak French, but he didn’t eat for about 2 or 3days while I was gone. Yeah, I know, jesus. Spes’ sister finally found out, and made sure he knew that he could eat at her place when I’m traveling. Fucking ridiculous. Now I’m responsible for some kid’s nutrition, who lives in a servants quarters in my backyard
I don’t even know where I am.
-Graham
Friends, Family, aFrica-Files,
I’d meant to wait a month before writing my first mass-e-mail, but I’ve got quite a bit to say, and have a few minutes to put my thoughts to paper, or to liquid-crystal display, as it were. I’m sitting at the table of my living room/dining room/sitting room, eating by candle light, as the electricity has been cut off (I had electricity last night, so naturally I wouldn’t have it two days in a row). Where to start? Let me try with my itinerary and go from there:
I spent the first five days in Abidjan Ivory Coast, where I was mostly stuck in the office, reading books, working, and watching the first two episodes of Smallville. Most people go to Africa to experience the culture, I bring four seasons of a WB teen drama series. But it’s about Superman, so we’ll forgive the cultural insensitivity. Anyway, Abidjan was fine, and the most exciting thing was an ATM, countless shell stations, and dinner on the lagoon with a guy I met last time I was in Ivory Coast and who used to be our studio coordinator, watching fisherman fish in canoes made of tree logs. It was midnight… perfect time to get the fish, and they whispered softly, as they pushed off the shore into the calm midnight waters. Now, before you think I’m in the middle of nowhere, the background of these peasant fisherman at midnight on a calm lagoon is the most advanced city I’ve seen in Africa, with sky scrapers, neon lights, highways, cab drivers just across the water, not to mention a full-screen dvd screening of Beyonce live in London. Here’s a restaurant with a thatched roof, on the edge of a calm lagoon, showing Beyonce Knowles’ luscious legs on a life-size screen. Not that I’m complaining, but did somebody say cultural dichotomy?
Then I mosied over to Burundi, with stopovers in Ghana and Nairobi. Only eventful happening was befriending three South Africans who work for a security consulting company and tried to convince me they were lingerie salesman. For my part, I tried to convince them I wasn’t CIA. So I arrived in Burundi, and promptly stayed at our Ivory Coast Country Director’s house. She’s Burundian and was there on holidays (vacation for you amurrrrricans). So I dropped my shit off, changed, and headed to the office to meet the team. I spent the next four days looking for a place to live, meeting Spes’ 11 brothers and sisters and brothers and sisters in law and nieces and nephews, all of whom wanted me to live in Spes house. Good deal: white guy = muzungu = $$. A common formula, as you will come to see. In any event, I began working on helping the Burundian staff prepare a couple of project proposals to the Open Society Institute and the Canadian government, as well as helped organize their financial systems (for those of you who don’t know what I actually DO and think I work for the CIA, hopefully this will shed some light). If you still persist in your thinking, know that you (and the South Africans) are not alone. Long story short, I picked up where I left off in Washington, with a similar job, only now the communication is in French (though most of the writing is still in the Queen’s Anglais), the malaria threat is higher, and everywhere you go people yell “Muzungu, muzungu”, pretty much the equivalent of “Fucking Cracker!” Which reminds me of this kid I used to wash dishes with at the retirement home named Joey, the kid’s name, not the retirement home. Every day, I’d come into work, and he’d yell, “Hey, Graham Cracker, get it, Cracker!” Yeah, I got it.
Anyway, back to Burundi. But honestly, moved from West Africa to East Africa (thematically), and the reality of my job is that I could really do it from anywhere, even on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean, assuming I had a V-Sat hookup and constant internet access. I just happen to be plugged in at an NGO headquarters/radio production studio in Bujumbura Burundi, where I spent the next five days not finding a house, drinking beer, working, and not really feeling culture shock.
Five days after arriving, I jetted over to Eastern Congo for a 24-hour orientation/meet-and-greet to meet my boss, who was arriving in Bukavu from Kinahasa (the capital – we have offices in both). She had been delayed because of a security situation in Kinshasa following the elections. (Don’t worry mom, it’s 1000 miles away, literally). So I spent the night in Eastern Congo, then met the staff the next day, before turning around and driving the 3 hours back to Bujumbura, crossing the border between DRC and Rwanda, then driving an hour through Rwanda, before crossing back into Burundi for the hour+ drive back to the Capital, passing kids on bicycles transporting hay and sticks, and rice, and anything else they could strap to their bicycles, shepherds hearding large groups of long-horned cattle, right across the road (which presents a problem when your 4x4 is driving at 60 mph. But we slowed down to miss the cattle, barely avoiding (unfortunately) a small group of children screaming Cracker (get it, Graham Cracker?!). But I returned to the Capital, where I spent four more lovely days, including a party at my country directors house with the whole 35 person staff, complete with kebobs, patio furniture, cell phone conversation, and a bathtub filled with ice water and beer.
Let me get to the point, as this is boring.
I’m sitting here by candlelight, looking over the bill the kid gave me for the 8 bucks I gave him this morning to buy food from the market to make lunch and dinner. It turns out that he’s been hired (by Spes) to cook, clean, do laundry, and guard the house during the day. Also turns out he lives in what I thought was a tool shed behind the house, a brick, open awning-covered structure, picture slave quarters on a plantation, and you’re actually right on. Nonetheless, this offends every inch of my morals and judgements on human equality. When I got home from my 9 day trip to Kigali, Rwanda and Bukavu, Congo (DRC) last night, I had other things to worry about. You’ll see.
So I took a 6 hours chartered bus with our media coordinator in Congo and three journalists that work for us in Burundi (hosting round table discussion programs, news programs, and other live and pre-recorded radio programs). We drove through some of the most beautiful mountain landcapes I’ve ever seen, with small villages and groupings of huts and mud-brick houses butting up against the roadway every few kilometers (a kilometer is one fifth of a high school cross-country race for those of you math wizzes doing the conversion at home). Anyway, I was crammed in the back seat next to a farmer from Rwanda (who couldn’t read and write, so I filled out his exit card to cross the border – he looked like he was 15, but he was born in 1980 – no date, just the year… that has really stuck with me, particularly given all the importance we put on birthdays – I for one celebrate mine for two weeks – those of you who love me will remember a certain wine party where we all had a bit too much to drink) and a group of three Burundian women (who also couldn’t fill out their Rwandan exit card, through lack of caring more than lack of schooling). At the border crossing, I ran into Spes’ brother, who again asked me if I was taking the house, though by that time I had already decided no to. We chatted away, before getting back on the bus for the last two hours of the mountain trip back to Burundi.
On arriving, I walked to the office, attempted a phone conversation with my parents using Skype, in which I think they heard about 58% of the consonants and 3 of the five vowels. I then grabbed a cab and headed back to Spes’ house (my house for the month of September), after being dropped off, I realized that, as I hadn’t been there in nine days, no one actually knew I would be coming, so to my unpleasant surprise, I found a pad lock on the gate: the day watchman, cleaner, cook, shed-hut dweller, Kirundi-teacher had left for the day. So here I am at 5:30 pm on a Sunday facing a ten foot stone wall with shards of class and metal spikes on the top to prevent intruders (and inhabitants) from scaling the fence. I would have jumped it, but I had a 2000 laptop over my shoulder. So I launched my backback over the wall, called Spes’s sister, who said the night watchman would be there in 30 minutes, and promptly stared at the dirt. 30 minutes, middle of some random Burundian neighborhood without anywhere to go. So I walked around the corner to a small market run by an Indian family. You have to imagine the irony of speaking English at a the equivalent of a convenience store in Burundi. So that killed five minutes, and here I am in front of the gate, contemplating my existence and pain threshold (have YOU ever scaled a ten foot wall covered in metal and glass shards? – that’s what I fucking thought). By this time a small group of four children had gathered and began giggling at me from about 20 meters away (again, a meter is 1/5000 of a cross country race or roughly the height of an annoying, ethnically insensitive Burundian child). So after they began laughing and yelling Muzungu, muzungu, a group of neighbors at the other end of the “street” – sandway, I might call it – took up the relay baton, only their discussions included horrific attempts at English. So I start laughing because the whole damn thing was quite funny, and let’s face it, getting locked out of your own compound is pretty quintessentially Muzungu. Then I look across from me, and there’s a girl staring at me. She invites me in to sit until the damn kid gets back. THANK GOD!.
Which really leads me to the main point here. Here I am a total stranger being openly mocked for being white (well, ok, REALLY white), and this wonderful person invites me into the most personal space in Burundi, the home. So I sit down with her and her sister, and it turns out they’re both at the local university and management school. After they ask me if I want a beer and force feed me a banana, So I begin to try to engage them in conversation: the cute one is the younger sister (who doesn’t have a fiancée – good news, sorry mom) and she’s studying English. The older one is studying management. However, instead of practicing her English, the two of them decide to quiz me on my Kirundi. Yeah, uh, don’t know about most of you, but I sort of slept through Introductory Kirundi in college, it was one of those 8am classes that met every day – hell for a full-time hybernator like myself. But I digress. So we get to chatting, mother owns a flower shop in the center of town, father died during the massacres of 1994, you know typical chit-chat. And they invite me to a mass they’re having in honor of their father, a mass they have every year on the anniversary of his death 9/13. Now let me paint the picture, as my English skills are clearly awful. I go from outsider stuck on some random street in some random capital on some random continent with some random job to sitting down in a beautiful living room with two of the kindest individuals I’ve ever met, who are teaching me Kirundi, serving me bananas, offering me beer, asking me about my job, and inviting me to a special mass in honor of their father, who died in a crisis I was (and a lot of others were) too busy listening to the soundtrack of Woodstock ’94 to give a shit about. I’m sharing their food, discussing the importation of artificial flowers from Tanzania, and agreeing to come to the mass, as well as the reception afterwards chez-elles / at their house.
Well, Spes’ sister finally arrives with her daughter, and I apologize profusely, invite them in, serve them warm fanta and a warm coke, and we sit out on the stoop, facing the inside of the wall, much better and begin to discuss the current situation in the country. Without going into too much detail, it’s safe, but it’s sad. The government is consolidating it’s majority and electoral victory last year, and beginning to clamp down on freedom of expression. My organization’s been here for eleven years, using radio to prevent the exact kind of eventuality that killed 800,000 Rwandans and my neighbor’s father in 1994. And after ten years and an election, there’s still so much to be done.
Flash to Rwanda for a second, where I spent the last five days. My second night there, we finish up a planning workshop for a regional youth radio program that we’re launching, which will be live and simulcast in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo on four radio stations via internet streaming and FM rediffusion. (picture African infrastructure, now reread that last sentence). It’s an amazing project and is aimed at addressing how youth in the region view and deal with conflict. The ultimate aim is to help prevent mass-violence and promote peaceful conflict transformation. Picture Woodstock (’69) meets proactive initiative. Any event, I head up to my hotel room and one of the participants (a local DJ and radio producer) asks me if I’m coming. Where, I ask. Mille Collines, she says. Before I have time to hide the incredulity on my face, I find myself at a happy hour, listening to another participant named Cassanova singing Bob Marley on stage, while I drink a half-price beer. Yep, you guessed it: Happy Hour at Hotel Rwanda. Not even kidding.
So they used radio to promote hatred and ethnic genocide; we use it to promote the exact opposite.
You want to know what I do. Nothing as exciting as that last statement; however, I work to make sure that the amazing people that do this work have the salary and funding to keep going. That’s why I’ve been working my ass off since I moved to DC two years ago. I’m not going to make this a sappy e-mail, but I’m 25 and sitting in complete darkness, typing on a laptop, while some 19 year old kid is sleeping in a shed made of mud bricks in the back yard, making a dollar a day to wash my clothing, make me lunch and dinner, and help water the lawn, and a family across the street is mourning for their father, who was killed 12 years ago because either his ancestors came from a certain part of the continent or because Belgium decided the most effective way to control a country would be to use ethnicity as a tool for manipulation and control.
So it turns out, the kid doesn’t eat if I don’t eat. And I was gone for nine days. Think about that for a second. Not really clear, as I don’t speak Kirundi and the kid doesn’t speak French, but he didn’t eat for about 2 or 3days while I was gone. Yeah, I know, jesus. Spes’ sister finally found out, and made sure he knew that he could eat at her place when I’m traveling. Fucking ridiculous. Now I’m responsible for some kid’s nutrition, who lives in a servants quarters in my backyard
I don’t even know where I am.
-Graham
Skype
I was talking to my uncle on Skype tonight, and we were discussing the problems with the static you hear...
When I hear static,
I can hear all the miles, all the other people talking... the signal going through the equator bouncing off luxembourg plunging through 4,000 miles of ocean bandwidth through the naval yards of phillidelphia past Lititz, PA and Amish Country, crossing the bridges of pittsburgh, plunging into the Ohio river valley and then all the way across to california; or maybe it's going the other way across Asia, or maybe half is going one way and half is going the other way. Or maybe it's a third, a third, and the other third is bouncing off a satellite orbiting over San Francisco. And maybe every one of these signals is crystal clear, but they deflect one another as they all arrive in your living room phone receiver,
that's why you can only hear every third word
When I hear static,
I can hear all the miles, all the other people talking... the signal going through the equator bouncing off luxembourg plunging through 4,000 miles of ocean bandwidth through the naval yards of phillidelphia past Lititz, PA and Amish Country, crossing the bridges of pittsburgh, plunging into the Ohio river valley and then all the way across to california; or maybe it's going the other way across Asia, or maybe half is going one way and half is going the other way. Or maybe it's a third, a third, and the other third is bouncing off a satellite orbiting over San Francisco. And maybe every one of these signals is crystal clear, but they deflect one another as they all arrive in your living room phone receiver,
that's why you can only hear every third word
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