Rwanda Journal, Entry 45: Overwhelmed

It's been a struggle to reflect enough to put together a cohesive post in a while.

I'm overwhelmed with the amount to take in, the amount to experience and the amount to get done. I've started several entries only to find that so much had happened before I finished, it didn't seem worth it. After a few days it started to feel pointless even trying to keep up.

Despite interfering with my bloggin' the feeling isn't unpleasant. I've been immersing myself in the day to day frenzy of Rwanda's advertising and publishing industries, have soaking up the landscape and am dabbling in art sales.

All in all, it's time well spent. 

Besides, at the end of the day I am here to help Kigali Unplugged, a promising small business, grow and assert itself in a highly demanding market. I'm learning more than I can easily express now, but I have to submit a report for the Ontario Global Edge program later which will be detailing these things extensively.

I will also be doing some public speaking, where I will present the things I've learned. It would be worthwhile to host an event with food and drinks and a presentation and everything, we'll see though.

Anyway, I'm working on a few posts that will come out soon. In the meantime, I'll keep updates like this coming.

Rwanda Journal, Entry 44: The Amavubi Juniors

Like most countries outside North America, Rwanda is a football (soccer) nation.

The game is bred in the bone of thousands of the country's children. In the way Canadian kids skate and puck-handle, Rwandan kids learn to dribble and shoot.

Some weeks ago I posted pictures of kids and I playing soccer near my house. What the pictures don't really communicate is how much better the children were than me.

For young Rwandans, association football is a national past-time and there is a natural finesse that comes from exposure to the game.

In Rwanda, football is king and the youth are its loyal subjects. 

Without even having to account for differences in age and size, it is safe to say that a match between 11 me's and 11 randomly selected children from around Kigali would end with a score of 22-1 in favour of the children.     

Let me avoid gross generalizations. To say that every 5 and 6 year old Rwandan is naturally amazing at football would be untrue. The younger children struggle to find their targets as much as children anywhere else.

But as the years go by, skills supported by years of practice begin to show.  

On any given day in Kigali, you can find children playing some improvised brand of association football.

The cost of equipment is more than most children in Rwanda can easily afford and they make do with what they can.

Instead of turf, most play on dirt roads. Instead of an inflatable ball, most use crumpled plastic bags bound with nylon cord. Most have no cleats and play in sandals. 

But they worship the game and dedicate at least some of their time to it.For this reason, it is not surprising that Rwanda's national junior team, Amavubi Juniors, would have a large talent pool to draw from.

There are two interesting things to know about the Amavubi Juniors:  they are the first under-17 team to qualify for the junior World Cup in Rwanda’s history; they are also the first team since ’94 whose players have no memory of the genocide.

Anyway, the other night Rwanda squared off against Canada in the U-17 World Cup. In a strange twist of fate it was the first time either team had qualified for the tournament; and they were the ones to knock each other out of contention.

After a 0-0 game, in which both needed a win to advance, the teams were dropped. 

As I watched the game with Heritier, our night guard and gardener, I seriously struggled decide who I liked more. The scoreless game spared me from really have to make a judgment one way or the other.

As I Canadian, I felt some desire to see my country win. At the same time, the Amavubi Juniors played beautifully and with determination. The scoreless game did not diminish the spectacle of watching a team that so vividly embodies the potential of Rwanda’s youth.

In the shadows of a terrifying past, Rwanda’s national junior team has risen higher than any other before it.

In the same way the children around my neighbourhood refine and improve themselves through dedication to sport, the country seeks to refine itself by dedication to moving on.

Rwanda’s junior football team is part of the larger whole but draws from the same pool that shapes the rest of society. 

The youth bear the hopes and ambitions of the country Amavubi Juniors make it easy to understand what that means.

Rwanda Journal, Entry 43: The Mbo has Spoken

My buddy Mbo needs help with something. He's being pretty insistent.Not entirely sure what it is but I'm going to go sort it with him. As a result, the post I said would come today will come tomorrow. Totally his fault, not mine.

Rwanda Journal, Entry 42: The Mob Has Spoken

Dear Readers,

I've been approached by a delegation of concerned citizens. Included in the delegation was my mother, my girlfriend, a man trained in dealing with high explosives, several friends and, quite possibly, a group of disgruntled Canadian postal workers with nothing better to do these days.

The delagation has informed me that if I do not resume blogging again immediately, the consequences will be dire. The consequences ranged from the mild and clear ("a general loss of interest") to the spicy and hard to understand ("Me and my boys'll make a SPECIAL DELIVERY to your house... you understand me?)

Anyway, rather than face the wrath of my loved ones and a well-organized postal union, I've decided to return to my blogging ways.

It was a difficult decision, given how my days have been structured lately. Even so, I have a duty and a committment to my readers that I will continue to honour until the completion of this trip. I intend to deliver another exciting dispatch from Kigali by no later than Sunday, June 26th.

I regret that I've had to be reminded, but thank the delegation for reaching out with thoughtful encouragement and veiled threats.

Sursum corda,

Cam

Rwanda Journal, Entry 41: A Probably Avoidable Delay

I must apologize to anyone that reads the blog regularly and has been annoyed at how irregular my posts have been lately.

I fear that after my last post, people probably think I am in a state of catatonic despair, unable to write or communicate; the truth is I am just disorganized.

I've been working on a markegting proposal for the boys at Kigali Unplugged and it is absorbing most of my creative energies. I am looking to introduce social media marketing to the country and need to get this damned thing done before tomorrow morning.

I'd meant to finish it over the weekend but ended up going to Butare instead. I didn't get very much work done. Still, I had a wild and crazy time there so expect a post about it once I've finished this thing.

Don't worry world back home, I haven't forgotten you.

Rwanda Journal, Entry 40: Scars

Rwanda is a country with deep scars that only willful blindness or callous disregard can obscure.

Behind the beauty of the thousand rolling hills, and the people who walk over them, is a history of pain, hatred and bloodshed.

Many buildings, including the country's parliament, still bear bullet holes from the civil war in 1994. They are a monument to the closeness of the past in a country that has moved so far away from it.

A wall, dotted with bullet holes, in Gikondo district, Kigali.

Soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (now called the Rwandan Defence Forces), who ended the genocide and assumed control of Kigali in 1994, still patrol the streets to maintain security.

Their presence serves as a reminder of the past, but their role is more than symbolic. A series of grenade attacks, carried out by Hutu extremists,  demonstrates that even now hatred and violence linger in the shadows.    

The streets are filled with disabled beggars, many survivors of the civil war, who have lost arms, legs, fingers and hands.

I do not know how this man lost his leg.

When the source of the disability is uncertain, the mind drifts towards a terrifying explanation. If you can spare a few francs they offer sincere thanks and carry on with as much dignity as they can muster.

Like most Rwandans today, the disabled live their lives and try to avoid dwelling on the past. There is a time and place for reflecting on bygone days and it is better to look forward.

The government has made strides in modernizing the Rwandan economy and has presented its people with an ambitious vision of the future.

Vision 2020, a development program that aims to turn Rwanda into a prosperous middle-income country by the year 2020,  has given many Rwandans reason to hope for brighter, more prosperous times ahead.

Too many cannot.

The more than 800,000 Rwandans who were brutally murdered during the genocide, have no future. They can do nothing more than be mourned and remembered.

 

From April to July, Rwanda enters the 100 days of mourning. Millions of purple-clad mourners, many survivors themselves, gather at memorials around the country to grieve the deaths of their loved ones.

At the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, in the Gisozi district of the city, mourners assemble to remember friends, neighbours, colleagues and family members lost in a tsunami of murder and brutality.

Today, Rwandans lay flowers on the concrete slabs that conceal the bodies of 259,000 victims; some weep and tear at their clothes; others stand in silent contemplation of the lives snuffed out like candles.

It is a solemn and inescapably tragic thing to witness.  

From the outside, the memorial centre looks tidy and unexceptional, similar to many compounds owned by Rwanda's upper class.

The grounds are neatly-tended, a small pool and torch sit outside the front entrance.

An intricate series of lattices link the main building to a small garden set aside for reflection and meditation.

It is a still place where not even a bird disturbs the silence.

The peace outside only adds to the painful drama of the interior.

A swirl of emotion greets visitors of the memorial. The history of the Rwandan genocide is well known to anyone with an interest in it; but the poignancy of standing in Kigali, with the bodies of the victims so near, is more than any wikipedia entry could ever capture.  

From the history of Belgium's colonization and the introduction of an arbitrary system of ethnic identification to the creation of the Interahamwe and the atrocities that claimed close to a million lives, the events are recorded for posterity.

Grisly remnants of the genocide are displayed in glass cases: the skulls of children, once living and now dead; femurs, split at the hamstring to prevent victims fleeing; machetes and wooden clubs, still marked and dented; soiled and bloodied clothing; and the best-loved possessions people clung to as they died.

A special section in the memorial is dedicated to the children who were murdered. Plaques below the portraits of a few of them recount their favourite food, their favourite sport, their best friends, their last words.   

"Where can I run to mommy?"

A wall near the exit offers hooks where families have hung photos of the sons and daughters they lost.

These children explain the nature of Rwanda's scars.

For all the country's success at rebuilding and moving forward, an entire generation can never be a part of its future. Rwanda's material growth and success are extraordinary but they can never completely overshadow the pain that comes from being unable share it with the ones that are gone.

Like a parent is maimed by the death of their child, Rwanda will always bear the marks of its past and can never forget what happened.

To forget, would be a crime as vile as the genocide itself.

Rwanda Journal, Entry 39: An Unavoidable Delay

Yesterday I visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, a place where 259,000 people are buried in mass graves.

I will write about the experience soon, but need time to process my emotions before I can explain them properly.

All I can say now is that it was difficult, but I am glad to have seen it.