Last night, I found myself in a basement night club called Club VIP in Bukavu, DR Congo, listening to the best DJ I’ve heard in years. The guy across the table showing some friends and me his new cell phone is bragging about the price: $650. As I lean over to make sure I heard him right (not only am I deaf, but trying to understand a foreign language with god-awful Shakira blasting in the background doesn’t help matters), he pulls out an antenna and picks up the local national television station, RTNC, on his cell phone. Two big-men politicians are talking about some development project or other for the benefit of all Congolese citizens or something like that.
This is a country the size of Western Europe with some 80 million inhabitants that counts a total of 500km of paved roads. Poor Toyota four doors bounce and creak over muddy roads with divots the size of conference tables, their mufflers smacking awkwardly against the occasional stones and broken asphalt, remnants of a colonial era I’m tired of hearing about. See, what’s so frustrating for Congolese is that Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, and the center of Eastern Congo, used to have pristinely paved roads, that is before war niqué (fucked up) their country. Many blame colonialism and the Belgians… yeah, ok, but that was 50 years ago. What’s been going on in the past 50 years? You enter Bukavu after sunset, and what do you notice? Nothing. No lights, save for individual candles and bonfires lit amongst wooden shacks and huts.
It’s easy, too, once your Belgian argument is deflated, to blame the big, powerful big-men politicians like the ones I was watching on a 4cm screen. And I’d be your Bergis Meredith ringside in that lipton iced tea commercial. But what’s really brisk, baby, is looking down on your mud covered shoes and caked khakis just from the unpaved walk from the car to the front door and then finding yourself peering into a $650 television screen. Something’s wrong here; there’s more to it.
Ok, it’s not like $650 is going to pave the street, and I’m not saying that it’s this guy’s or Congolese people’s fault the country’s niqué… an argument some have actually made. But do they bear any responsibility?
In asking myself such a question, I found myself also asking another question. What started as: what drives a guy to buy a cell phone for the price of some folks’ annual salary? ended up as a very different question.
See, I don’t know that guy, and I won’t pretend to, but more often than not, I see that trend among people who, were I running their finances, would be keeping that $650 for a far more needed purpose. Thus the revised question: What drives a guy whose car and his stomach are on E, whose rent is barely covered, and who has no real livelihood to buy a cell phone worth his monthly or even 6-month salary?
In fact, I just finished a great book about Congo that has a theory (wow, did that sound like Levar Burton or what…). In making her point, the author (Michella Wrong) invokes an Orwellian observation about the inordinate flagrancies of the poor in spending their money (some would say frittering it away) on extravagancies, rather than necessities, as the only way they are able to deal with their stations. I found this interesting.
See, my shoes were caked with mud last night from the walk into the club, but today, as there was no overnight change in the development of Bukavu’s infrastructure, i.e. as the roads were still shit, I didn’t bother to do more than a cursory maintenance job. I mean, after all, what the hell’s the point if they’re just going to get dirty again? So this morning, as I sat in a meeting with several of my Congolese colleagues, I noticed that they all had spit-shined shoes. Sure they had mud in areas, but it was clearly mud collected from the morning commute. My beat up mud bog shoes stood in stark contrast to their pristine penny loafers. As I walked to lunch afterward, the contrast followed me all the way to the restaurant.
This got me thinking that my logic was pretty flawed this morning. I mean, naturally, things fall apart. Is there then no reason to build them up in the first place? I’m certainly willing to submit that my logic is flawed, but again, there’s more to it.
Bear with me for a second. So a friend of mine was driving me home in his beat up Toyota after the club last night, and I asked him the same question: why does he try to keep his car running on these wasted roads when he doesn’t have a regular income and isn’t saving anything, in short, when there are more needed things he could be providing for? ‘Got to keep up appearances’, he replied.
And that’s where I’m getting to. I applaud walking to work every day through mud puddles and dusty alleys with spit-shined shoes – in fact it shows a level of self-respect I might try emulating. And if blowing your salary on material possessions helps you, for even just one day, to escape the abject poverty in which you find yourself drowning, more power to you. But why does that same prideful desire to improve appearances or that desperate searching for an escape from one’s station not translate, collectively of course, to paved roads or city-wide electricity? The big men are eating away at the organism of the “Democratic” Republic of Congo, but why are so many of the 80 million people unwilling or unable (I won’t pretend to assume one or the other) to pull their hands away from the shoe polish rag or the tv-cell phone charger, grab a shovel, and start filling in the holes?
I say ‘some of’ because you see individual communities on the sides of some of the worst roads in Bukavu filling in the ditches in their own neighborhoods, and while too often they set up road blocks to demand money from the passing vehicles, usually it’s optional, or at least minimal. Not to betray my true colors, but I think Baden Powell would be proud to see these spontaneous community service projects. And if Bukavu ever returns to that lakeside tourist destination the Belgians loved so much, it will be on the backs of these real-life Eagle Scouts.
But to hear the cynical remarks or see the faces of the people stopped in their 4x4s is the core of what’s wrong. As they move aside their expensive cell phones, dig in their designer pants to grab those 100-200 francs (about 20-40 cents), I can’t help but notice their grips tighten on the bills for just a split second longer than necessary as they hand the bill through the window to the shovel carrying, shirt-stained do-gooder knee deep in muck. After all, being associated with the filth of that check point… how would it look?
I’ll tell you how it would look: in a couple of decades, it would look like a lot more paved roads and a lot fewer check points. It might even look like a lot more community service projects and a lot more tourists.
Look, maybe the guy with the tv cell phone is a minister’s son – entirely possible. But what if he’s not? What if he’s an ordinary guy keeping up appearances? Sure, he may work for an NGO doing great work for his country, or organize community volunteer Eagle-Scoutish clean-ups every weekend. Personally, I’m clinging to the optimism that allows me to think like that. But all of those shiny shoes can’t belong to ministers’ sons, and, quite honestly, not everyone has the time to re-polish their shoes every day when they’re juggling a full-time NGO job and a regular community clean-up campaign.
Perhaps that’s cynical, but from my subjective viewpoint, there’s just a little bit more collective importance put on appearances than on paved roads and a bit more personal importance put on shining your loafers than on community service. Call it colonialism; call it government corruption; call it a brief respite from abject poverty. Then call the guy filling in the pot-holes in front of his children’s school on Saturday afternoon, and ask him how much he received in donations this year from passers-by. I bet it’d be less than $650.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Reflection 5… Sooner or later it all comes together…
I’m sitting on my porch, with the chill midnight air sifting through the screen; a light is on; my roommates are sleeping; and I’ve just finished re-reading the 6th Harry Potter Installment. I’m back from Kigali and in Burundi for a few hours, before heading to Nairobi tomorrow morning to, among other work-related things like fundraising, schmoozing and ass kissing, pick up a copy of the seventh and final installment.
It seems fitting as I start my last year in Burundi and my mind wanders why. So here goes number five:
On the way to Kigali from Bujumbura, as the bus crept up, then coasted down steep hillside roads, curling around turns, past villages and coffee fields and farmers, I plowed on in my lecture (reading), pausing every other page to gaze at the hills passing by. My mind began to wander to the lives of the people walking along the road or the thoughts of the young girl sleeping, thumb in mouth, clinging to her mother’s shoulder across the aisle, a plastic squirt gun dangling, then dropping from her limp hand onto the floor below. I thought about Rwanda and Burundi and the misery that these hills have witnessed over the past fifty some years, miseries that, despite any amount of reading, I will most likely never understand… And I hope that that plastic water pistol the little girl’s brother has just sprayed in my face is the only gun he ever holds… that she and he NEVER have to witness the miseries that haunt their neighbors’, perhaps even their parents’, dreams.
Just as I’ve plunged into the book once more, my nose almost pinned to its crease to avoid the smell of milky vomit (the girl has just spit up a half gallon of Rwandan milk all over my backpack and right puma sneaker – luckily the squirt gun took care of most of it…), the bus stops, and we find ourselves in a roadside village for a pit stop. Children are staring, blind men are begging, sellers are selling, and hawks are circling overhead. 10 minutes and a packet of wet-ones later, we’re back on the road, cruising around corners on the downslopes before screeching to a halt behind gasoline trucks chugging up the upslopes. And on one particularly long blank stare out the window, I had a bit of déjà vu (to go with the déjà mangé – already eaten – on my shoe). Without sounding too retarded, for some reason or another I remembered the first time I’d read the sixth Harry Potter book. I was, of all places, on a bus heading from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, taking time out of my busy life to reminisce about the past and my place in relation to it. And logically (or illogically), I found myself comparing here to there.
In fact, picking up the seventh book in a supermarket in Nairobi, and sitting down at the Hotel 680 downtown to devour it over the weekend, I was struck by how important continuity is, particularly when your capital city hopping and border crossing faster than you can say, “Tuesday, it must be Brussels.” So I took the time (after all, how can you ever have the time if you don’t?) to read Harry Potter and his magic wand (or whatever the hell the last book is called) cover to cover, with a few hours of sleep and a failed safari excursion in between – did you know you can’t go on a safari without a car? Yes, idiot, that’s so there’s something between you and that lioness on the other side of the road. But I digress.
So let’s talk about here and there, just because I clearly haven’t gotten there out of my system. Yes, let’s. I seem to have all of life’s great distractions here in Bujumbura – Freedom fries (except they call them frites for short), beer, internet, gmail, e-cards, Smallville, Scrubs, books, digital cameras and other useless gadgets, equipment, crazy people, kind people, even some friends, and people that think I’m insane. But they don’t have my family, 83 North on a cool Friday evening, Yuengling, the Georgetown waterfront, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Ben’s casserole (pasta salad, but it didn’t rhyme), FC Blimey, Pops’ steaks on the barby, and other fine things.
What the hell am I trying to say? I’m trying to say that sooner or later it all comes together. And while waiving some magic wand isn’t going to make a case of Yuengling appear out of thin air, digging a bit deeper, reflecting a bit harder may make connections appear where you least expect them. Or where I least expect them. Heck, it may even help me to realize why I’m here.
I’ve joined a soccer team, and while it’s no waterfront league in Anacostia, (blimey) it’s a great way to get in shape and get to know the people I work with (but never really get to talk to) in a less African // American setting. And Africans are rigoddamndiculously in shape. So this Saturday, I’ll again put on the exponential SPF, strap on my reebok cleats, and punish my body for two grueling 30 minute halves of Burundian-rules football. If you score a goal with your foot – no points; if you score a goal with your head, 2 points; if you hit the post, 1 point; if you hit the cross bar, 5 points. And IF you hit the cross bar with a header, you still get 5 points, but you get to hear everyone on both teams do that Burundian high pitched, yet subtle aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy sound, which pretty much is the equivalent of ssssnnnnnnaaaapppppp, or deeeeaaaaaamn. You get the idea.
And I must say that, for a Mzungu, I’ve done ok: two matches under my belt and already a pair of headers and three post goals – that’s 7 points. And speaking of lucky 7, Tuesday was the 7th, I just finished the seventh Harry Potter book (yep, I’m now back in Burundi), and it’s 7 minutes past 7 o’clock… ok, no it’s seven after six, and you’re distracting me… and those aren’t the similarities I’m talking about, anyway.
I’m talking about sitting down for a beer in a bar with your new teammates for the first time, cracking jokes about playing hung over and being out of shape; having dinner with your roommate when you’re both stressed as hell about the job and life and other usual things; or leaving the office at 7pm for the seventh straight night. Here’s different than there, but it’s really not all that different. And when crossing a border, it’s good to pay tribute to what you’re crossing from, what you’re crossing to, and why… if for no other reason than to keep the road open between them. After all, you just might need to find your way back, or somebody may decide they want to follow you. And sooner or later, those two places come together, whether physically (seriously, peeps, you are ALL welcome in Bujumbura!!!! N E Time) or just in your own, wandering mind.
And sometimes the catalyst can be as neutral as Harry Potter or just that wandering mind.
Like, for example, when you let that mind wander and you happen to have an internet connection… sometimes that Australian former peacekeeper-singer-songwriter you met one day at your office in Washington, DC and struck up an acquaintance / shared a few Guiness’s with has a website. By chance, that song you have in your head that made such an impression is on the site in mp3. So you download it onto i-tunes (yep, there’s i-tunes in Africa… imported) and are listening to it in your office in Bujumbura. And suddenly you’re back in your 4th floor Dupont Circle conference room listening to this Australian guy named Iain Campbell share his songs, documentary and experiences as an unarmed peacekeeper in Bougainville and getting that feeling once more in the pit of your stomach. And just because (maybe just for the purposes of giving this blog entry even an ounce of coherence; or maybe just because you’ve taken the time to explore that feeling), that song about a rebel’s wife brings you back to that dangling squirt gun, makes you think about those Rwandan and Burundian hillsides and their miseries and maybe, just maybe, why you’ve crossed over for one more year.
But then the song’s over, I’m back in my second floor Bujumbura office, and I realize that that’s probably just a coincidence. All the same, it was a great opportunity to think about the why’s and the what’s and the where’s... and think about how, sooner or later, even some of these blog entries come together (in one way or another).
Or if that doesn’t pass your bull shit test, it’s at least an opportunity to download a few of those long lost songs… let’s say a cross-bar header and two post goals worth… aaaaaaaaay!
*Here, for your listening pleasure (and to prove that I at least didn’t make up the last full paragraph of this rant and to plug one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met) is the website where you can download some good songs: http://www.iaincampbellsmith.com/ (I recommend ‘When She Cries’, but the rest are fun as hell). And check him out in DC!
**Oh, and speaking of border crossings (and just for fun and because Jesse Turnbull requested pictures), here’s an un-PC HIV message from your local international health NGO to all those East African truckers (see photo): whatever border you happen to be crossing with Harry Potter, just make sure he covers his magic wand. (Photo taken at the border between Burundi and Rwanda).
It seems fitting as I start my last year in Burundi and my mind wanders why. So here goes number five:
On the way to Kigali from Bujumbura, as the bus crept up, then coasted down steep hillside roads, curling around turns, past villages and coffee fields and farmers, I plowed on in my lecture (reading), pausing every other page to gaze at the hills passing by. My mind began to wander to the lives of the people walking along the road or the thoughts of the young girl sleeping, thumb in mouth, clinging to her mother’s shoulder across the aisle, a plastic squirt gun dangling, then dropping from her limp hand onto the floor below. I thought about Rwanda and Burundi and the misery that these hills have witnessed over the past fifty some years, miseries that, despite any amount of reading, I will most likely never understand… And I hope that that plastic water pistol the little girl’s brother has just sprayed in my face is the only gun he ever holds… that she and he NEVER have to witness the miseries that haunt their neighbors’, perhaps even their parents’, dreams.
Just as I’ve plunged into the book once more, my nose almost pinned to its crease to avoid the smell of milky vomit (the girl has just spit up a half gallon of Rwandan milk all over my backpack and right puma sneaker – luckily the squirt gun took care of most of it…), the bus stops, and we find ourselves in a roadside village for a pit stop. Children are staring, blind men are begging, sellers are selling, and hawks are circling overhead. 10 minutes and a packet of wet-ones later, we’re back on the road, cruising around corners on the downslopes before screeching to a halt behind gasoline trucks chugging up the upslopes. And on one particularly long blank stare out the window, I had a bit of déjà vu (to go with the déjà mangé – already eaten – on my shoe). Without sounding too retarded, for some reason or another I remembered the first time I’d read the sixth Harry Potter book. I was, of all places, on a bus heading from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC, taking time out of my busy life to reminisce about the past and my place in relation to it. And logically (or illogically), I found myself comparing here to there.
In fact, picking up the seventh book in a supermarket in Nairobi, and sitting down at the Hotel 680 downtown to devour it over the weekend, I was struck by how important continuity is, particularly when your capital city hopping and border crossing faster than you can say, “Tuesday, it must be Brussels.” So I took the time (after all, how can you ever have the time if you don’t?) to read Harry Potter and his magic wand (or whatever the hell the last book is called) cover to cover, with a few hours of sleep and a failed safari excursion in between – did you know you can’t go on a safari without a car? Yes, idiot, that’s so there’s something between you and that lioness on the other side of the road. But I digress.
So let’s talk about here and there, just because I clearly haven’t gotten there out of my system. Yes, let’s. I seem to have all of life’s great distractions here in Bujumbura – Freedom fries (except they call them frites for short), beer, internet, gmail, e-cards, Smallville, Scrubs, books, digital cameras and other useless gadgets, equipment, crazy people, kind people, even some friends, and people that think I’m insane. But they don’t have my family, 83 North on a cool Friday evening, Yuengling, the Georgetown waterfront, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Ben’s casserole (pasta salad, but it didn’t rhyme), FC Blimey, Pops’ steaks on the barby, and other fine things.
What the hell am I trying to say? I’m trying to say that sooner or later it all comes together. And while waiving some magic wand isn’t going to make a case of Yuengling appear out of thin air, digging a bit deeper, reflecting a bit harder may make connections appear where you least expect them. Or where I least expect them. Heck, it may even help me to realize why I’m here.
I’ve joined a soccer team, and while it’s no waterfront league in Anacostia, (blimey) it’s a great way to get in shape and get to know the people I work with (but never really get to talk to) in a less African // American setting. And Africans are rigoddamndiculously in shape. So this Saturday, I’ll again put on the exponential SPF, strap on my reebok cleats, and punish my body for two grueling 30 minute halves of Burundian-rules football. If you score a goal with your foot – no points; if you score a goal with your head, 2 points; if you hit the post, 1 point; if you hit the cross bar, 5 points. And IF you hit the cross bar with a header, you still get 5 points, but you get to hear everyone on both teams do that Burundian high pitched, yet subtle aaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy sound, which pretty much is the equivalent of ssssnnnnnnaaaapppppp, or deeeeaaaaaamn. You get the idea.
And I must say that, for a Mzungu, I’ve done ok: two matches under my belt and already a pair of headers and three post goals – that’s 7 points. And speaking of lucky 7, Tuesday was the 7th, I just finished the seventh Harry Potter book (yep, I’m now back in Burundi), and it’s 7 minutes past 7 o’clock… ok, no it’s seven after six, and you’re distracting me… and those aren’t the similarities I’m talking about, anyway.
I’m talking about sitting down for a beer in a bar with your new teammates for the first time, cracking jokes about playing hung over and being out of shape; having dinner with your roommate when you’re both stressed as hell about the job and life and other usual things; or leaving the office at 7pm for the seventh straight night. Here’s different than there, but it’s really not all that different. And when crossing a border, it’s good to pay tribute to what you’re crossing from, what you’re crossing to, and why… if for no other reason than to keep the road open between them. After all, you just might need to find your way back, or somebody may decide they want to follow you. And sooner or later, those two places come together, whether physically (seriously, peeps, you are ALL welcome in Bujumbura!!!! N E Time) or just in your own, wandering mind.
And sometimes the catalyst can be as neutral as Harry Potter or just that wandering mind.
Like, for example, when you let that mind wander and you happen to have an internet connection… sometimes that Australian former peacekeeper-singer-songwriter you met one day at your office in Washington, DC and struck up an acquaintance / shared a few Guiness’s with has a website. By chance, that song you have in your head that made such an impression is on the site in mp3. So you download it onto i-tunes (yep, there’s i-tunes in Africa… imported) and are listening to it in your office in Bujumbura. And suddenly you’re back in your 4th floor Dupont Circle conference room listening to this Australian guy named Iain Campbell share his songs, documentary and experiences as an unarmed peacekeeper in Bougainville and getting that feeling once more in the pit of your stomach. And just because (maybe just for the purposes of giving this blog entry even an ounce of coherence; or maybe just because you’ve taken the time to explore that feeling), that song about a rebel’s wife brings you back to that dangling squirt gun, makes you think about those Rwandan and Burundian hillsides and their miseries and maybe, just maybe, why you’ve crossed over for one more year.
But then the song’s over, I’m back in my second floor Bujumbura office, and I realize that that’s probably just a coincidence. All the same, it was a great opportunity to think about the why’s and the what’s and the where’s... and think about how, sooner or later, even some of these blog entries come together (in one way or another).
Or if that doesn’t pass your bull shit test, it’s at least an opportunity to download a few of those long lost songs… let’s say a cross-bar header and two post goals worth… aaaaaaaaay!
*Here, for your listening pleasure (and to prove that I at least didn’t make up the last full paragraph of this rant and to plug one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met) is the website where you can download some good songs: http://www.iaincampbellsmith.com/ (I recommend ‘When She Cries’, but the rest are fun as hell). And check him out in DC!
**Oh, and speaking of border crossings (and just for fun and because Jesse Turnbull requested pictures), here’s an un-PC HIV message from your local international health NGO to all those East African truckers (see photo): whatever border you happen to be crossing with Harry Potter, just make sure he covers his magic wand. (Photo taken at the border between Burundi and Rwanda).
Monday, August 06, 2007
Reflection 4 – What a difference a year makes…
Ok, 3 reflections in 12 months, that’s f’ing pathetic, so here goes round four, just under the 12-month deadline. So I thought I’d strike a lighter tone and start off number 4 with a riddle:
What has four legs, green scales, is 140 years old, 8 meters long and eats people?
Gustav, the man-eating, last of his kind crocodile.
I’m back in Burundi, and after telling the Gustav, man-eating crocodile story everywhere from a bike trail in Rehoboth beach to the Mexican wolves pen at the DC zoo, all to incredulous stares and doubtful cross-examinations, I think it’s high time I got to the bottom of this African myth of Lock Nessian proportions.
So Gustav is a crocodile; he eats people. And every time he’s back at our end of the lake, the radio stations flash warnings about swimming in certain areas, particularly around dusk. Many of you have heard this story, and most of you don’t believe it, but here it is for those of you who haven’t. And for those craving more, there are a dozen more stories… just like this one. I haven’t seen JAWS, so if this is a blatant rip-off, do let me know.
Sometime in the last 1990s, in the middle of the Burundian crise (civil war), a Belgian diplomat was relaxing on the beach with his wife and daughter. All of a sudden, this mammoth crocodile comes bolting out of the water, chomps down on the daughter’s leg, and drags her screaming into Lake Tanganika. They found the body on the lake bank the next morning… Gustav, as he is known here in Burundi, doesn’t like raw meat (table for one at the Sushi bar). Shortly after the incident, the diplomat’s wife commits suicide, and the diplomat returns to Belgium, his life in ruins. So how was Burundi? Well, my daughter got killed by a (wo)man-eating crocodile and my wife committed suicide, but the weather was great.
Now, why am I telling you this?????? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. But since I’m crap at blogging, I thought I might try story telling. So do YOU believe this story? I’ve verified it seventeen different ways, but without any names (besides Gustav), dates or facts, it’s a bit like Lake Tanganika at dusk, that is to say, a bit murky.
So on a Saturday evening at dusk, much like the one in the story, I’m starting to question some things, things that are, for lack of a better segue… murky. And since I’ve promised several folks that I’d update the blog, perhaps even weekly? (shock, I know), here’s what’s going on:
After a glorious six week trip to the US, touching base with old friends, celebrating my dad’s retirement, my sister's graduation, taking my mom out to dinner, speaking at the UN!, catching up with my awesome sibs, and some good old fashioned DC fun, I’m back in Burundi. And as tomorrow is Kigali, Tuesday’s Bujumbura, Wednesday’s Nairobi, and I feel like I’m about to be whisked along on another whirlwind tour of the Great Lakes, I’d like to pause and reflect. Because that, after all, is what these internet sharing times are all about.
The week in review: landed on my feet last Friday, after two days of flights, almost lost baggage, and a welcome back get together at the local rasta bar. If I love Burundi bumpterstickers could be personified, they’d be a bunch of Burundians, Congolese, French, Belgians and Americans dancing their asses off to Bujumbura’s best singers karaoking on a stage in a palm-tree-filled rasta bar at the edge of town… I finally found where the sidewalk ends.
So I’m feeling a bit in between as it were, and sitting in front of the same laptop in total darkness in Kigali (yep, just changed countries on you!), the second week back is looking to be about as crazy as the first…
Tomorrow starts a three-day evaluation and planning meeting for our regional live youth radio talk show here in Kigali, so my colleague and I are here for the first morning before meeting with some donors in the afternoon. Then it’s back to Burundi on Tuesday, then off to Nairobi for some more donor meetings on Wednesday. It’s been a year since I’ve been back in Kigali, and a lot has happened since that first trip… personally and professionally.
And yet, I feel quite the same. I suppose a bit more mature, maybe even a little smarter, but still the same Graham. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Same, same… but somehow different.
Maybe by next year’s trip I’ll have this Gustav business sorted out.
What has four legs, green scales, is 140 years old, 8 meters long and eats people?
Gustav, the man-eating, last of his kind crocodile.
I’m back in Burundi, and after telling the Gustav, man-eating crocodile story everywhere from a bike trail in Rehoboth beach to the Mexican wolves pen at the DC zoo, all to incredulous stares and doubtful cross-examinations, I think it’s high time I got to the bottom of this African myth of Lock Nessian proportions.
So Gustav is a crocodile; he eats people. And every time he’s back at our end of the lake, the radio stations flash warnings about swimming in certain areas, particularly around dusk. Many of you have heard this story, and most of you don’t believe it, but here it is for those of you who haven’t. And for those craving more, there are a dozen more stories… just like this one. I haven’t seen JAWS, so if this is a blatant rip-off, do let me know.
Sometime in the last 1990s, in the middle of the Burundian crise (civil war), a Belgian diplomat was relaxing on the beach with his wife and daughter. All of a sudden, this mammoth crocodile comes bolting out of the water, chomps down on the daughter’s leg, and drags her screaming into Lake Tanganika. They found the body on the lake bank the next morning… Gustav, as he is known here in Burundi, doesn’t like raw meat (table for one at the Sushi bar). Shortly after the incident, the diplomat’s wife commits suicide, and the diplomat returns to Belgium, his life in ruins. So how was Burundi? Well, my daughter got killed by a (wo)man-eating crocodile and my wife committed suicide, but the weather was great.
Now, why am I telling you this?????? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. But since I’m crap at blogging, I thought I might try story telling. So do YOU believe this story? I’ve verified it seventeen different ways, but without any names (besides Gustav), dates or facts, it’s a bit like Lake Tanganika at dusk, that is to say, a bit murky.
So on a Saturday evening at dusk, much like the one in the story, I’m starting to question some things, things that are, for lack of a better segue… murky. And since I’ve promised several folks that I’d update the blog, perhaps even weekly? (shock, I know), here’s what’s going on:
After a glorious six week trip to the US, touching base with old friends, celebrating my dad’s retirement, my sister's graduation, taking my mom out to dinner, speaking at the UN!, catching up with my awesome sibs, and some good old fashioned DC fun, I’m back in Burundi. And as tomorrow is Kigali, Tuesday’s Bujumbura, Wednesday’s Nairobi, and I feel like I’m about to be whisked along on another whirlwind tour of the Great Lakes, I’d like to pause and reflect. Because that, after all, is what these internet sharing times are all about.
The week in review: landed on my feet last Friday, after two days of flights, almost lost baggage, and a welcome back get together at the local rasta bar. If I love Burundi bumpterstickers could be personified, they’d be a bunch of Burundians, Congolese, French, Belgians and Americans dancing their asses off to Bujumbura’s best singers karaoking on a stage in a palm-tree-filled rasta bar at the edge of town… I finally found where the sidewalk ends.
So I’m feeling a bit in between as it were, and sitting in front of the same laptop in total darkness in Kigali (yep, just changed countries on you!), the second week back is looking to be about as crazy as the first…
Tomorrow starts a three-day evaluation and planning meeting for our regional live youth radio talk show here in Kigali, so my colleague and I are here for the first morning before meeting with some donors in the afternoon. Then it’s back to Burundi on Tuesday, then off to Nairobi for some more donor meetings on Wednesday. It’s been a year since I’ve been back in Kigali, and a lot has happened since that first trip… personally and professionally.
And yet, I feel quite the same. I suppose a bit more mature, maybe even a little smarter, but still the same Graham. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Same, same… but somehow different.
Maybe by next year’s trip I’ll have this Gustav business sorted out.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
I just figured out how to load photos!!!
Resort hotel on the lake, not my backyard. It costs 8 bucks to swim in that pool.
So does Graham live in a hut?
My roommates.
Here are three of the journalists at the local 'rasta' bar after the show.
Here are the radio journalists doing a live talk show on youth's reactions to conflict. It is simulcast in three countries (Rwanda, Burundi, and DR Congo), as well as on the internet (www.isanganiro.org) every Saturday at 7am EST (GMT+2).
This is a nice family I've met here who have been very kind to me. Their related to a colleague of mine who works in another country. This was taken at our housewarming PARTY!
This is me with the closest thing to wild animals I've found here.
Here are the radio journalists doing a live talk show on youth's reactions to conflict. It is simulcast in three countries (Rwanda, Burundi, and DR Congo), as well as on the internet (www.isanganiro.org) every Saturday at 7am EST (GMT+2).
Bend Down Low...
Let me tell you what I know.
I was recently doing some internet research, looking at what other people put in their blogs and how often they update them (incidentally, it’s more than once every three months), and I came across an interesting passage, and I think this is what ‘blogging’ is all about:
“I need writing. I need a space to share my thoughts and beliefs with others, and to converse with others. I need to spill my guts so I can make sense of them. I hate the walls people put up in their lives to keep people out, and I want to try to break down mine, and see if other people will let theirs down too.”
A lot of people have been asking me (don’t you love paragraphs that begin with that phrase?), why don’t you write more? They’re right, and when you’re on Katie Reardon’s Internet favorites, I think you have a certain responsibility to keep it interesting and updated. But I do a butt-load of writing: from reports, updates, proposals, budget narratives, and countless e-mails… I get a little tired of writing. But it’s true that we need writing, and I think it’s probably about time I updated this blog and, perhaps, talked about Burundi for a change. So here’s what I’ve written about Burundi recently:
September 2006:
“In early September, Alice Nzomukunda, Burundi’s second vice-president and a leading member of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, resigned, accusing the current government of both corruption and violations of human rights. Her comments come on the heels of several troubling events that have left many criticizing the current state of human rights in the country and led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to express deep concern. In August, the Burundi intelligence service arrested a group of politicians and soldiers, including former President Domitien Ndayizeye of the FRODEBU party and his former deputy Alphonse Marie Kadege of UPRONA, and reportedly tortured them, on allegations of planning a coup d’état. The government has yet to present any proof of such a plot. That same month, reports emerged of the summary extrajudicial execution of several individuals in police custody. The events have further divided the government and media, leaving many to speculate on the future of freedom of expression in the country. Still, there is positive news to report. After a long period of negotiation, the government signed a cease-fire agreement with the PALIPEHUTU-FNL, Burundi’s last remaining active rebel group. However, it is important to note that many of the recent abuses committed have not involved the armed struggle with the FNL. While the signing of the cease-fire improves the country’s overall security situation, it is human rights that are in the greatest danger in Burundi.”
January 2007:
“The recent crackdowns on members of the political opposition and on the media have called into question the stability of democracy and peace in Burundi. In November, trials convened for the seven people accused of plotting to topple the government, including former President Dominitien Ndayizeye and former Vice President Alphonse Kadege, with the state seeking life sentences for the accused. The testimony of Alain Mugabarabona, a former head of the FNL (National Forces for Liberation) and one of the accused, forms the basis for the government’s case. However, Mugabarabona denies the charges, insisting that his confession and subsequent implication of the other accused were only made after being tortured. Also in November, amid growing tensions between the government and the press, two journalists from Radio Publique Africaine (RPA) and the Director of Radio Isanganiro (Mathias Manirakiza) were arrested and immediately jailed, accused of broadcasting news that jeopardized the public security. The Directors of RPA and Radio Bonesha fled the country amid the crackdowns. While relations have since improved following a series of meetings between President Pierre Nkurunziza and members of the press, as well as the acquittal and release of the jailed journalists in early January, the underlying conflict and threats to freedom of expression in Burundi remain.
Meanwhile, progress in implementing the peace agreement with the FNL, including launching a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process for former combatants and repatriating the group’s leadership, has been slow. On the other hand, the government has taken an important step towards resolving the country’s daunting land crisis. The National Commission on Land and Other Goods (CNTB), has begun meeting with the land owners, returnees and refugees in Tanzania to get a sense of each group's grievances and find a path toward mediation in preparation for the planned return of thousands of refugees in the coming year. Unlike previous land commissions that have addressed this problem with force, the CNTB has been committed to dialogue and mediation.”
If you’re interested in reading the program updates, check out the SFCG website http://www.sfcg.org/, the new ones will be up shortly.
The thing about Burundi that has kept me hung up for a few weeks, and which, if you must know (“We must, we must!”), is why the December installment is coming out at the end of February. And I think it gets to the core of what blogging is all about. More later.
OK, here’s the thing, I’ve been to prisons. My dad works with the prison system, so I’ve visited a few prisons in my day and even been inside one or three. I’ve never actually visited anyone in prison. And I’ve never actually been personally affected by the sort of things I write about in my carefully worded (can’t appear too biased) program update context sections (see http://www.sfcg.org/ !!!!!!). So take a quick re-glance at the January context, if you will (We will, we will!).
I know Mathias Manirakiza, his office is in the same building as mine, his radio station was launched by journalists who used to work for Search and has been supported by Search regularly since it was launched in 2002. So when I had a 20-page annual USAID report to finalize, I was in Mathias’ office, finalizing the section on ‘how has the American government’s support to Radio Isanganiro (via SFCG) yielded positive, peacebuilding results, blah blah blah.’ So you’ll understand the weirdness when this little report writer from DC is driving out of town, rumbling down a dirt road with erosion corridors destroying the rubber tires of a car never meant for off-roading, headed to the Musaga prison for an old-fashioned, visiting Dad at the office, prison visit.
Let me back up.
It’s late November. I’m in my colleague Stéphane’s office, discussing either something important, like the USAID final report, or how many liters of beer we’d consumed the night before (School night!) – probably the latter, and my current record is 5.04 if you’re interested. In walks Mathias, as we’re laughing about how drunk we got in the local bar, with one of those looks that makes you say, ‘Jesus, what’s up with you, you look like death warmed over’. But I don’t know how to say that in French, so I said ‘Evening, Mathias, how’s it going? What’s wrong?” And he hands Stéphane and me a convocation to appear at a judicial hearing the next morning. He’d gone to a similar hearing in September, after Radio Isanganiro, Radio Publique Africaine (RPA – African Public Radio) and Radio Bonesha simultaneously broadcast a message, accusing the government of manufacturing the coup plot for which the former Pres. and Veep and five others were accused of planning. What it boils down to is that the government was allegedly planning to launch a fake coup against itself and blame it on afore-mentioned accused, in order to destabilize the country, bolster the case against them, and, effectively, silence the opposition. Nice!
OK, that’s heavy stuff; or as my great-uncle would’ve said, ‘heady stuff’. I’m not going to take sides ‘cause imagine CNN, Fox News and NBC simultaneously accusing the Bush administration of plotting to overthrow itself in a fake coup plot to destabilize the US (ok, well not Fox News, but you get the idea). Now, imagine, if they only cited ‘credible sources’ and didn’t give any space for an Arie Fleischer counter argument. Shit, I’d throw Brokaw in prison, too, I mean WTF? So this is serious, and although two journalists had already been arrested, Mathias thought he was fine.
So he went, he talked, he answered, and they told him to leave… like what the bartender said to the two neutrons when they asked for the bill… no charge. But as he’s leaving, a group of policemen are waiting for him, and they arrest him. And here I am a week and a half later, driving down a dirt ‘road’ in the sunlight of a Burundi December midday. Stéphane parks the car, we get out, sign in at a card table manned by two policemen in blue uniforms and matching berets, lounging under the shade of a large XX tree (if I knew more about African foliage than palm trees and saw grass, I’d be able to complete that sentence). There is a crowd of about 20 family members waiting amid the palm plants and rainy season heat, staring at the two bearded Muzungus coming to visit the new most famous journalist in Burundi.
So after the cop refused my VA driver’s license as proof of identity, he copied my passport number and we headed up the dirt path to the prison. I gave my cell phone at the front desk, and we enter the place.
This isn’t one of those heartfelt reflections by candlelight, nor is it a cathartic, thank god I got to Angola essay, so I’ve been trying to make sense of it and trying to organize my thoughts into some sort of coherent, hopefully entertaining writing piece. In any event, hopefully it will succeed in breaking down whatever barrier has prevented me from writing this for two months. Bear with me; I think this is going somewhere.
Where was I. Oh, right, so the prison looks like one of those old barns you come across, maybe in Central Pennsylvania, maybe in Central Nebraska, the kind of place where hay and corn was probably stored 50 years ago and maybe, just maybe an animal or two lived there. You can still smell the damp earth and dried shit. The wood is cracking, the metal rusting, the stale air hot against your sunburn face (Ok, Greg, MY sunburn face).
Now picture that same barn complex with two chained metal doors, 10 feet high, leading to a central courtyard. There’s a square whole in the bars about 6 feet up to pass through packages and letters. And hanging on the gate, is a wall of bodies, three thick in one-piece green prison uniforms, arms resting between the bars, necks contorted to get a glimpse out of this prison scene at the waiting visitors. And picture hundreds of others talking and whispering, yelling, laughing and cat-calling, or just lounging behind them. A prison meant for 800 people holds well over 1500. Add a group of about 20 policemen in blue berets, combat boots, rolled up sleeves, and faded blue pants inspecting visitors’ gift baskets, guarding the gate, ushering you inside, and surveying the conjugal visitors.
Stephane and I head to one corner of the room, find one of the prisoners assigned to monitor and manage visiting hours. “We’re here to see Mathias”, and the man is off yelling to the someone in the crowd of faces on the other side of the gate. 10 minutes later, Mathias arrives in the green, prison issue costume and we head to the concrete hallway reserved for all the visiting parties and commence the small talk.
Stéphane asks about the food and if they’re treating him ok; I say something stupid like “Any news on a trial date?” And the conversation continues. We then talk about the upcoming election in December of the next Radio Isanganiro Director. Mathias has been talking a lot with Dominitien Ndayizeye (see update!) about a number of issues and Ndayizeye gives him a piece of political advice that only a former transitional African president could give: “You should run your campaign from prison, people love to vote for prisoners.” And we laugh, except I didn’t understand it, so I laugh 30 minutes later when we take our leave, retrieve our cell phones, and have the scene explained to me in idiot language and hand gestures. Anyway, luckily, it took long enough for Mathias to arrive that we catch the last ten minutes of the visiting period and are allowed to stay through the next visiting period. Sort of like a BOGO sale. Also, we’re not the only ones visiting him: the head of the UN, the Belgian Ambassador and several others were there that very morning.
As the next wave of visitors and visitees arrives, a pregnant woman walks up and smiles at us. She and Mathias share a hallmark moment glance, where neither says anything and they don’t have to, just long enough to make you start to feel a bit invasive, but not too long to make you look away and pretend to be interested in that chipped concrete spot on the opposite wall.
She appears to be like 15 months pregnant and is all smiles, refusing to let either her husband’s seemingly impossible situation or the third trimester prevent her from providing just the kind of cheerful, rock-like support that her husband so desperately needs. In order to further extend the visiting period, she decides to wait for the third visiting session, postponing the Prince’s return to the exiled world of political purgatory for another 15 minutes.
The conversation ends with a brief pow-wow about the current issues at the radio station, including a bureaucratic battle with the government’s regulatory commission for communications over the prospect of installing satellite internet. So, basically, nothing.
After walking out of the prison, we hop in the car, rumble up the path and head back to the office. There’s work to do, after all, a fact made all the more clear from the afternoon’s field trip.
On the drive back, and just when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore in the Twilight Zone that day, Stéphane starts telling me about the road we’re driving on (named 28th November for the country’s independence), his old neighbor Mugabarabona (see update), and a little story about the FNL shelling his neighborhood in 2004 after Mugabarabona broke with them to try to sign a peace accord with the government. The road we’re driving on was as close as they got to the neighborhood. Mugabarabona’s compound was protected by a UN South African contingent. Stéphane put his son in the center of the house, in a room surrounded on all sides and above by stone walls. The kid slept through the whole thing. The next morning, 28th November was covered in the dead bodies of the 10-14 year old FNL soldiers who had attacked the city, on orders from Mugabarabona’s replacement, ready to inflict African vengeance on his precedessor, and any innocent neighbors who happen to live in the vicinity… oh and their innocent young children.
So that was enough to make me sit back in the small Toyota four-door and stare out the window at the Burundian faces who no doubt would have their own horror stories to tell about that day, though certainly not with the benefit of a UN contingent of South Africans armed to the teeth and furiously protecting them.
Except that he went on. The authorities left the bodies there for three or four more days, enough time for the kindly residents of Bujumbura to pay their respects, spitting, stamping, kicking, and sneering at the dead carcases, taunting them for their failed ethnic massacre, probably on a sunny, breezy day, not unlike today, with the calm waves lapping against the lakeshore about a mile to the West, and 80 employees tapping away on laptops a mile to the north at the Search for Common Ground office. And maybe somebody in a four-door Toyota racing along 28 November amid UN and NGO land cruisers on their way to buy groceries and imported scotch at the local expat (expatriate) market paused to reflect that day on the state of the world.
…
As chance would have it, I’m back in Angola, finishing up this third reflection. So why am I telling you all this? I’m not really sure; maybe I shouldn’t, maybe it’s not interesting, maybe it is. But there’s something strange about meeting people that have lived through these stories, have met the people in the BBC, Reuters or IRIN news articles. And it’s even stranger coming away empty-handed when I try to find meaning or reason in these stories or think about how I might have changed having heard them.
Mathias was freed on January 3, along with the other two RPA journalists, with the Director of Bonesha being acquitted in absentia. Before heading back to Angola for three weeks, I found myself in Stéphane’s office for a bit of déjà vu (French keyboard still got it), discussing the unbreakable 5.04 liter record once again, with Mathias walking in. He’s since been re-elected as Director of the station (people love to vote for prisoners) and last week had a drop-in visit from President Nkurunziza (people love to vote for people who visit prisoners), himself. In other news, his baby girl was born the week after he got out, and she apparently weighs more than he does (the punch line of a bad prison food joke I had to laugh at).
And to be honest, I haven’t given this story a second thought since that day in the car. How is it possible not to be completely floored by these things? Let’s be honest, stamping on dead child soldiers is FUBAR, whether you brick wall it out or not.
Maybe that’s another one of those African ways of things for which you throw your hands up, tilt your head back and be glad that you come from a different place.
Or perhaps that indifference is just another wall we put up to prevent the full impact of the experience from knocking us out of our day-to-day lives, or in my case, my African vacation, and to keep others from questioning it. And it’s only through writing these things down that you’re able to start to make some sense of them…
… and share them with others.
…
p.s. My brother is the man.
I was recently doing some internet research, looking at what other people put in their blogs and how often they update them (incidentally, it’s more than once every three months), and I came across an interesting passage, and I think this is what ‘blogging’ is all about:
“I need writing. I need a space to share my thoughts and beliefs with others, and to converse with others. I need to spill my guts so I can make sense of them. I hate the walls people put up in their lives to keep people out, and I want to try to break down mine, and see if other people will let theirs down too.”
A lot of people have been asking me (don’t you love paragraphs that begin with that phrase?), why don’t you write more? They’re right, and when you’re on Katie Reardon’s Internet favorites, I think you have a certain responsibility to keep it interesting and updated. But I do a butt-load of writing: from reports, updates, proposals, budget narratives, and countless e-mails… I get a little tired of writing. But it’s true that we need writing, and I think it’s probably about time I updated this blog and, perhaps, talked about Burundi for a change. So here’s what I’ve written about Burundi recently:
September 2006:
“In early September, Alice Nzomukunda, Burundi’s second vice-president and a leading member of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, resigned, accusing the current government of both corruption and violations of human rights. Her comments come on the heels of several troubling events that have left many criticizing the current state of human rights in the country and led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to express deep concern. In August, the Burundi intelligence service arrested a group of politicians and soldiers, including former President Domitien Ndayizeye of the FRODEBU party and his former deputy Alphonse Marie Kadege of UPRONA, and reportedly tortured them, on allegations of planning a coup d’état. The government has yet to present any proof of such a plot. That same month, reports emerged of the summary extrajudicial execution of several individuals in police custody. The events have further divided the government and media, leaving many to speculate on the future of freedom of expression in the country. Still, there is positive news to report. After a long period of negotiation, the government signed a cease-fire agreement with the PALIPEHUTU-FNL, Burundi’s last remaining active rebel group. However, it is important to note that many of the recent abuses committed have not involved the armed struggle with the FNL. While the signing of the cease-fire improves the country’s overall security situation, it is human rights that are in the greatest danger in Burundi.”
January 2007:
“The recent crackdowns on members of the political opposition and on the media have called into question the stability of democracy and peace in Burundi. In November, trials convened for the seven people accused of plotting to topple the government, including former President Dominitien Ndayizeye and former Vice President Alphonse Kadege, with the state seeking life sentences for the accused. The testimony of Alain Mugabarabona, a former head of the FNL (National Forces for Liberation) and one of the accused, forms the basis for the government’s case. However, Mugabarabona denies the charges, insisting that his confession and subsequent implication of the other accused were only made after being tortured. Also in November, amid growing tensions between the government and the press, two journalists from Radio Publique Africaine (RPA) and the Director of Radio Isanganiro (Mathias Manirakiza) were arrested and immediately jailed, accused of broadcasting news that jeopardized the public security. The Directors of RPA and Radio Bonesha fled the country amid the crackdowns. While relations have since improved following a series of meetings between President Pierre Nkurunziza and members of the press, as well as the acquittal and release of the jailed journalists in early January, the underlying conflict and threats to freedom of expression in Burundi remain.
Meanwhile, progress in implementing the peace agreement with the FNL, including launching a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process for former combatants and repatriating the group’s leadership, has been slow. On the other hand, the government has taken an important step towards resolving the country’s daunting land crisis. The National Commission on Land and Other Goods (CNTB), has begun meeting with the land owners, returnees and refugees in Tanzania to get a sense of each group's grievances and find a path toward mediation in preparation for the planned return of thousands of refugees in the coming year. Unlike previous land commissions that have addressed this problem with force, the CNTB has been committed to dialogue and mediation.”
If you’re interested in reading the program updates, check out the SFCG website http://www.sfcg.org/, the new ones will be up shortly.
The thing about Burundi that has kept me hung up for a few weeks, and which, if you must know (“We must, we must!”), is why the December installment is coming out at the end of February. And I think it gets to the core of what blogging is all about. More later.
OK, here’s the thing, I’ve been to prisons. My dad works with the prison system, so I’ve visited a few prisons in my day and even been inside one or three. I’ve never actually visited anyone in prison. And I’ve never actually been personally affected by the sort of things I write about in my carefully worded (can’t appear too biased) program update context sections (see http://www.sfcg.org/ !!!!!!). So take a quick re-glance at the January context, if you will (We will, we will!).
I know Mathias Manirakiza, his office is in the same building as mine, his radio station was launched by journalists who used to work for Search and has been supported by Search regularly since it was launched in 2002. So when I had a 20-page annual USAID report to finalize, I was in Mathias’ office, finalizing the section on ‘how has the American government’s support to Radio Isanganiro (via SFCG) yielded positive, peacebuilding results, blah blah blah.’ So you’ll understand the weirdness when this little report writer from DC is driving out of town, rumbling down a dirt road with erosion corridors destroying the rubber tires of a car never meant for off-roading, headed to the Musaga prison for an old-fashioned, visiting Dad at the office, prison visit.
Let me back up.
It’s late November. I’m in my colleague Stéphane’s office, discussing either something important, like the USAID final report, or how many liters of beer we’d consumed the night before (School night!) – probably the latter, and my current record is 5.04 if you’re interested. In walks Mathias, as we’re laughing about how drunk we got in the local bar, with one of those looks that makes you say, ‘Jesus, what’s up with you, you look like death warmed over’. But I don’t know how to say that in French, so I said ‘Evening, Mathias, how’s it going? What’s wrong?” And he hands Stéphane and me a convocation to appear at a judicial hearing the next morning. He’d gone to a similar hearing in September, after Radio Isanganiro, Radio Publique Africaine (RPA – African Public Radio) and Radio Bonesha simultaneously broadcast a message, accusing the government of manufacturing the coup plot for which the former Pres. and Veep and five others were accused of planning. What it boils down to is that the government was allegedly planning to launch a fake coup against itself and blame it on afore-mentioned accused, in order to destabilize the country, bolster the case against them, and, effectively, silence the opposition. Nice!
OK, that’s heavy stuff; or as my great-uncle would’ve said, ‘heady stuff’. I’m not going to take sides ‘cause imagine CNN, Fox News and NBC simultaneously accusing the Bush administration of plotting to overthrow itself in a fake coup plot to destabilize the US (ok, well not Fox News, but you get the idea). Now, imagine, if they only cited ‘credible sources’ and didn’t give any space for an Arie Fleischer counter argument. Shit, I’d throw Brokaw in prison, too, I mean WTF? So this is serious, and although two journalists had already been arrested, Mathias thought he was fine.
So he went, he talked, he answered, and they told him to leave… like what the bartender said to the two neutrons when they asked for the bill… no charge. But as he’s leaving, a group of policemen are waiting for him, and they arrest him. And here I am a week and a half later, driving down a dirt ‘road’ in the sunlight of a Burundi December midday. Stéphane parks the car, we get out, sign in at a card table manned by two policemen in blue uniforms and matching berets, lounging under the shade of a large XX tree (if I knew more about African foliage than palm trees and saw grass, I’d be able to complete that sentence). There is a crowd of about 20 family members waiting amid the palm plants and rainy season heat, staring at the two bearded Muzungus coming to visit the new most famous journalist in Burundi.
So after the cop refused my VA driver’s license as proof of identity, he copied my passport number and we headed up the dirt path to the prison. I gave my cell phone at the front desk, and we enter the place.
This isn’t one of those heartfelt reflections by candlelight, nor is it a cathartic, thank god I got to Angola essay, so I’ve been trying to make sense of it and trying to organize my thoughts into some sort of coherent, hopefully entertaining writing piece. In any event, hopefully it will succeed in breaking down whatever barrier has prevented me from writing this for two months. Bear with me; I think this is going somewhere.
Where was I. Oh, right, so the prison looks like one of those old barns you come across, maybe in Central Pennsylvania, maybe in Central Nebraska, the kind of place where hay and corn was probably stored 50 years ago and maybe, just maybe an animal or two lived there. You can still smell the damp earth and dried shit. The wood is cracking, the metal rusting, the stale air hot against your sunburn face (Ok, Greg, MY sunburn face).
Now picture that same barn complex with two chained metal doors, 10 feet high, leading to a central courtyard. There’s a square whole in the bars about 6 feet up to pass through packages and letters. And hanging on the gate, is a wall of bodies, three thick in one-piece green prison uniforms, arms resting between the bars, necks contorted to get a glimpse out of this prison scene at the waiting visitors. And picture hundreds of others talking and whispering, yelling, laughing and cat-calling, or just lounging behind them. A prison meant for 800 people holds well over 1500. Add a group of about 20 policemen in blue berets, combat boots, rolled up sleeves, and faded blue pants inspecting visitors’ gift baskets, guarding the gate, ushering you inside, and surveying the conjugal visitors.
Stephane and I head to one corner of the room, find one of the prisoners assigned to monitor and manage visiting hours. “We’re here to see Mathias”, and the man is off yelling to the someone in the crowd of faces on the other side of the gate. 10 minutes later, Mathias arrives in the green, prison issue costume and we head to the concrete hallway reserved for all the visiting parties and commence the small talk.
Stéphane asks about the food and if they’re treating him ok; I say something stupid like “Any news on a trial date?” And the conversation continues. We then talk about the upcoming election in December of the next Radio Isanganiro Director. Mathias has been talking a lot with Dominitien Ndayizeye (see update!) about a number of issues and Ndayizeye gives him a piece of political advice that only a former transitional African president could give: “You should run your campaign from prison, people love to vote for prisoners.” And we laugh, except I didn’t understand it, so I laugh 30 minutes later when we take our leave, retrieve our cell phones, and have the scene explained to me in idiot language and hand gestures. Anyway, luckily, it took long enough for Mathias to arrive that we catch the last ten minutes of the visiting period and are allowed to stay through the next visiting period. Sort of like a BOGO sale. Also, we’re not the only ones visiting him: the head of the UN, the Belgian Ambassador and several others were there that very morning.
As the next wave of visitors and visitees arrives, a pregnant woman walks up and smiles at us. She and Mathias share a hallmark moment glance, where neither says anything and they don’t have to, just long enough to make you start to feel a bit invasive, but not too long to make you look away and pretend to be interested in that chipped concrete spot on the opposite wall.
She appears to be like 15 months pregnant and is all smiles, refusing to let either her husband’s seemingly impossible situation or the third trimester prevent her from providing just the kind of cheerful, rock-like support that her husband so desperately needs. In order to further extend the visiting period, she decides to wait for the third visiting session, postponing the Prince’s return to the exiled world of political purgatory for another 15 minutes.
The conversation ends with a brief pow-wow about the current issues at the radio station, including a bureaucratic battle with the government’s regulatory commission for communications over the prospect of installing satellite internet. So, basically, nothing.
After walking out of the prison, we hop in the car, rumble up the path and head back to the office. There’s work to do, after all, a fact made all the more clear from the afternoon’s field trip.
On the drive back, and just when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore in the Twilight Zone that day, Stéphane starts telling me about the road we’re driving on (named 28th November for the country’s independence), his old neighbor Mugabarabona (see update), and a little story about the FNL shelling his neighborhood in 2004 after Mugabarabona broke with them to try to sign a peace accord with the government. The road we’re driving on was as close as they got to the neighborhood. Mugabarabona’s compound was protected by a UN South African contingent. Stéphane put his son in the center of the house, in a room surrounded on all sides and above by stone walls. The kid slept through the whole thing. The next morning, 28th November was covered in the dead bodies of the 10-14 year old FNL soldiers who had attacked the city, on orders from Mugabarabona’s replacement, ready to inflict African vengeance on his precedessor, and any innocent neighbors who happen to live in the vicinity… oh and their innocent young children.
So that was enough to make me sit back in the small Toyota four-door and stare out the window at the Burundian faces who no doubt would have their own horror stories to tell about that day, though certainly not with the benefit of a UN contingent of South Africans armed to the teeth and furiously protecting them.
Except that he went on. The authorities left the bodies there for three or four more days, enough time for the kindly residents of Bujumbura to pay their respects, spitting, stamping, kicking, and sneering at the dead carcases, taunting them for their failed ethnic massacre, probably on a sunny, breezy day, not unlike today, with the calm waves lapping against the lakeshore about a mile to the West, and 80 employees tapping away on laptops a mile to the north at the Search for Common Ground office. And maybe somebody in a four-door Toyota racing along 28 November amid UN and NGO land cruisers on their way to buy groceries and imported scotch at the local expat (expatriate) market paused to reflect that day on the state of the world.
…
As chance would have it, I’m back in Angola, finishing up this third reflection. So why am I telling you all this? I’m not really sure; maybe I shouldn’t, maybe it’s not interesting, maybe it is. But there’s something strange about meeting people that have lived through these stories, have met the people in the BBC, Reuters or IRIN news articles. And it’s even stranger coming away empty-handed when I try to find meaning or reason in these stories or think about how I might have changed having heard them.
Mathias was freed on January 3, along with the other two RPA journalists, with the Director of Bonesha being acquitted in absentia. Before heading back to Angola for three weeks, I found myself in Stéphane’s office for a bit of déjà vu (French keyboard still got it), discussing the unbreakable 5.04 liter record once again, with Mathias walking in. He’s since been re-elected as Director of the station (people love to vote for prisoners) and last week had a drop-in visit from President Nkurunziza (people love to vote for people who visit prisoners), himself. In other news, his baby girl was born the week after he got out, and she apparently weighs more than he does (the punch line of a bad prison food joke I had to laugh at).
And to be honest, I haven’t given this story a second thought since that day in the car. How is it possible not to be completely floored by these things? Let’s be honest, stamping on dead child soldiers is FUBAR, whether you brick wall it out or not.
Maybe that’s another one of those African ways of things for which you throw your hands up, tilt your head back and be glad that you come from a different place.
Or perhaps that indifference is just another wall we put up to prevent the full impact of the experience from knocking us out of our day-to-day lives, or in my case, my African vacation, and to keep others from questioning it. And it’s only through writing these things down that you’re able to start to make some sense of them…
… and share them with others.
…
p.s. My brother is the man.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Réflexion Numéro Deux (… 2)
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.
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, 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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