playing catch-up

Habari za masiku jamani.
It's been a long freakin time, huh?!

I am finally back in Misungwi, and this time for good - I have about 4 months left of work before I head home, and I don't plan on doing any travelling between now and then. Time to hunker down and finish up projects, hang out with friends, and contemplate how I'm going to leave this wonderful place and return home where things have been going on without me - and quite a bit faster than they've gone on here - for the last 2 years.

I'll play some quick catch-up with my last bout of travels, again nothing too detailed but the general specs and my impressions, and from here on out I hope to get back to writing about the little things that make my life both exciting and boring and a bit more understandable. By the way, thanks for the encouragement from my Uncle for confirming that the blog fairly well conveyed what he saw on the video my dad took of Misungwi, and from my Aunt for confirming that my blog entries about poop are pretty darn entertaining. Unfortunately I don't have anything new on the poop front to discuss, but I doubt little that something will come up at least once before I leave :-)

So after my fantastic extended vacation to the Serengetti, Ngorongoro Crater, Zanzibar, Morogoro [all that with my parents] then Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Udzungwa Mountains, Ifakara, Bagamoyo [by myself and with fellow vols], I started an even MORE fantastic journey, which was one by plane, with my great friend Meena, to return back to Mwanza. Hard to compare a 30+ hour busride that involves midnight dinner break and 3am border stop to a 1 hour flight where you are provided a cheese roll, free beer [I had 3 cans], and AC.

I stopped back into Misungwi just to check that everything was in order, and sure enough my house was just as I left it, with the exception that my banana tree has produced fruit! So I will gladly be eating bananas and papayas that I planted. However, my friendly but SNEAKY neighbor girls came over and cleaned out all of the passion fruit that had accumulated on the vine I planted, so will have to wait and see if any more come from that.

Everyone was THRILLED to see me back, and it felt really good to be welcomed and missed so much. Of course I had to tell them that the next day I would be leaving again for a week, but they didn't ask too many questions and we just had fun catching up on what had been going on, what was new [not much, go figure].

On Sunday, I headed into Mwanza to start my long-ish journey to meet up with some friends in Uganda for vacation. I say long-ish because it may seem long to some, but it actually was pretty tolerable for me, since I managed to break it up nicely into legs. The first leg was an overnight boat from Mwanza to Bukoba.

When I was on the boat, I started talking to some young men who work for the ferry company. They seem to be working their asses off, and they say they make pretty good money since they get paid for all hours they are on the boat, which is pretty much all the time, even when they are off-shift. I said this was a good thing - they are making money, and there aren't all the tempations of Mwanza town to spend it all on, so it's a good opportunity to save up money and prevent dangerous habits.

Or so I thought. Turns out these young guys all have their own cabins on the boat where they sleep. Well I also happen to know that there is a whole room full of 3rd class passengers on the boat [I usually go 2nd class, which is a bunk in a sleeping room of 6], and the 3rd class passengers have no bunks and a pretty uncomfortable overnight ride. Also turns out that a lot of them are young women or girls.

I think you all might see where this is going - these girls are uncomfortable, naive, have no future goals or plans, and just want a nice place to sleep for the night. These young guys are young, they're, well, guys, and they're stuck on a boat all the time. The only positive thing that came out of this whole discussion is to learn that the ferry company provides these guys free condoms. Too bad they don't use them too much because they tend to know most of the women they sleep with [frequent passengers] and thus trust that they don't need to use them. Everywhere I turn I run into circumstances like this, life is tough here and just constantly seems to be throwing Tanzanians into dangerous situations.

But I slept well and got into Bukoba safely, and had a great day [though it was drizzling] with a fellow volunteer there. We ate simply, which was great because I had just come off a vacation of all kinds of exotic cuisines and needed a nice simple meal for a change. The next morning, I got on a bus and headed to Kampala, Uganda.

Crossing borders from one East African country to another is kind of an interesting thing. When you get near the border, everyone has to get off the bus and go 'check-out' of the country he/she is in. Then we all WALK across the border, which can be anywhere from a 2 to 10 minute walk, and then 'check-in' to the next country. Luckily, I was sitting next to a nice young man on the bus who was a student in Dar, and he helped reassure me where to go and what to do. Something I'm sure I could've done on my own, but nice to have confirmation. And after the Ugandan border customs guy tried to charge me twice what it should be for a visa, I was glad to have a little support [I did finally get it for the right price, but not without a little sweettalking].

I got into Kampala and made it to the backpacker place we were staying, and met up with my two friends M and J. First of all, I've decided I don't like backpacker places. I guess you meet some nice people [though M and I tried to meet cool people one night and failed miserably - we decided to just sit and 'let the cool people come to us'. there must not have been any cool people there that evening]. But sleeping in dorm beds sucks, and the general atmosphere is a little bizarre, in that it's PACKED with tourists who have varying levels of interest in the local culture, language, etc.

KAMPALA
Is an amazing city!! It is packed with people, restaurants, clubs, malls, stores - and most of it still has a very African flare to it. The city is set up in a series of hills, so it's kind of hard to get your bearings, but we had a fantastic time exploring. There are cars and motorcycle taxis everywhere [which I most certainly did not ride, as PCVs are not allowed to do so]. We were 'culinary' tourists, i.e. most of our time in the city seemed to revolve around eating. We did go to see an ENORMOUS, no wait, GI-NORMOUS mosque, but other than that we mostly just walked around town and got a feeling for life there. The main market street is even more swarmed with people than the one in Dar!

I would have to say that my favorite part of all of this was that, at all the nice restaurants and stores and places we went, we were almost always surrounded by UGANDANS. In Dar it's mostly just expats. Probably has something to do with TAnzania's socialist background, but it felt nice to not feel like such an outsider eating at a nice Chinese restaurant. It was a bit frustrating though that Ugandans don't speak much Kiswahili, and thus we had no way to prove that we were seasoned East African veterans and not chump tourists. Though the few Swahili conversations I did manage to have, as always, got us invited many places and quite a positive response from our fellow conversees.

While in Kampala, we stayed up late one night and got the opportunity to see live one of Ugandas most famous musicians [rapper-ish], Chameleon. He was pretty good though he only sang a few songs. It was just nice to chill out in reasonably cool weather, have a beer [though Ugandan beers aren't so nice], and listen to some live music.

After a few days in Kampala, we headed to a nearby town of Jinja which is on Lake Victoria and is the source of the River NILE! Why would someone go to a place like this? Why, to whitewater raft of course! And we did, for a whole day, and it was a blast. I hope to have a few pictures up later, but it was just a nice relaxing day with good food, good company, WARM water [so much nicer than the Colorado!], and some wicked rapids.

We spent the next day in Jinja, a town that seriously looks like it could be in northern Wisconsin [there is a 'main street' with a boulevard of nicely landscaped flowers and trees down the middle!].

KIGALI
Following Kampala, we got on an early morning bus and headed south to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. See above for interesting border crossing procedures, other than that it was a pretty uneventful ride. Though the scenery was beautiful, because it is really just rolling mountain-ish hills everywhere you look, with amazingly terraced farm fields all the way up the hills.

We got into Kigali in the afternoon and walked around trying to orient ourselves.
Highlights of the next few days included:

Hot chocolate on the gorgeous rooftop restaurant of the Hotel de Mille Collines [the one in Hotel Rwanda]

Great Ethiopian food, and great Rwandan food at a restaurant down the street from our hotel that serves by the 2somes or 4somes enormous plates of rice, peas, and chicken.

I almost got a part in a movie about the book listed in the link to the side of this entry! well, not a part in the movie, but a part as a stand-in for a day. but hey, it would have paid 150 bucks, so I was excited! Turns out the guy they brought along with me to show the director was better suited because I wasn't 'pale enough' - I guess I took that as a compliment, huh?!! I mean, for 2 years I've tried my hardest not to be a white guy, maybe it's finally paying off?!

Chocolate croissants!! And eclairs! and wonderful breads! Colonialism sucks, but that doesn't mean that French/Belgian pastries aren't nice.

Of course, one of the main purposes of our visit to Rwanda was to learn more about the genocide. We spent one morning visiting the very powerful Kigali Genocide Memorial, which had amazingly well-done exhibitions on the history and aftermath of the genocide, including some impressive pieces of artwork and galleries showing photos of victims. It was one of the nicest museums I've ever been in, just really superbly done. I tried to find the website for it, but had difficulties. Here is the webiste of the organization that helped fund the museum: http://www.aegistrust.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=68

and here is a quote that struck me as particularly powerful, by a survivor of the 1994 genocide:

"There will be no humanity without forgiveness
There will be no forgiveness without justice
But justice will be impossible without humanity"
-Yolande Makagasana

Talking about the genocide on this site is too difficult, as it is such a complex issue. One of the hardest issues to grasp for me actually had nothing to do with how human beings could do this to one another, or how the international community could ignore it, but rather how a country MOVES ON after something like this happens?! How do people who were killing each other on a massive scale stop and start living together again?

One day we went to some memorial sites south of Kigali, in a village called Nyamata. In that and in a nearby village, thousands of Tutsi men women and children were murdered in their churches in one day. We visited the churches, saw skulls and bones and clothes and blood on the wall, and I still couldn't quite comperehend.

We were so fortunate to meet some young men on the car ride down to this town, who were from the town, and who agreed to escort us to the sites to translate into Kiswahili [the guide only knew Kinyarwanda and French]. They also gave us small insights into their experiences - one man had a very striking appearance associated with Tutsis [light skinned, long face, skinny, very tall] and the other was half Tutsi half Hutu. Both were lucky to survive, and helped answer some of our questions about how life moves on from something like this. The answer? It just moves on, but very very slowly.

I met up later that evening with one of the young men in Kigali to have a drink and just chat. I think he was excited to try Kiswahili, since he is working in Nairobi. We talked about all kinds of things, from sports to farming to AIDS to life to education, etc. He told me a bit more about his family - his father was Hutu, his mother Tutsi, so him and his brothers were half and half. His father was told that he should kill his wife and children. He refused. This man, of about 30 of his immediate and extended family, is one of 3 to survive. None of his parents or siblings did. He was 10 years old when the genocide occured, and is now around my age.

All this stuff about Rwanda and the genocide isn't coming out the way I had wanted to here, but I guess that's kind of how it was there. Just a flood of emotions and thoughts and questions, and nothing seems to make much sense.

One of my travel companions felt a bit awkward visiting some of these sites, being a 'tourist' in such a way that opens painful wounds not yet healed. I had mixed feelings. I thought it was important to let Rwandans give outsiders their perspective on what happened, since noone really listened while it was all happening. At the same time, we did our best to also appreciate Rwanda as a nation and people to be viewed beyond just the genocide, thus the amazing pastries.

But at one point I asked one of these two young men we met, I asked 'is there ever a day when you don't think, at some point, about the genocide? you just don't remember it at all?'

He said no.

After Kigali, I split with my travel buddies and headed back towards Tanzania. The scenery was even more beautiful than the day before, and the roads were superb. It helped that I had taken QUITE a few crossaints with me for the journey. After two days of various buses and taxis, I got back to my house. It felt great.

HOME
I got back to find that my cat had given birth to 3 little kittens, fantastic.

But things are good, I've already gotten back into the swing of work and was invited to teach about HIV/AIDS to a group of 40 young men who drive bicycle taxis around town, and whom once again life has put in a difficult position. These guys drive people around on their bicycles to make a living, and work damn hard.

Well, sometimes young women hire them to drive them pretty far into the villages to go home. Sometimes these trips can take 2 hours. And sometimes these young women, an hour and a half into the trip, confess to the young bike driver that they don't have any money, but maybe they can work out 'other arrangements.' They stop and have sex in the bush, since there's not much these young men could do to get the money that have earned. Life, it seems, just can't get any easier.

So I had a great seminar with them, and now I'm in Mwanza town, and...

WHEW. I'm caught-up. Now it's back to short, boring blogs about small, boring things, and that's the way I like it.