New Blog

I will no longer be posting here. My new blog is timsinafrica.blogspot.com. Follow me there- I'll be posting about my new travels and adventures in Rwanda and East Africa. See you there!

Rwanda, Round 2

As of October 1st, I will be a bona-fide employee of World Vision. I'll be returning to Rwanda sometime in the next couple weeks, where I will spend 11 months doing pretty much the same things that I did this summer. My responsibilities will include working on the Micro program and various donor projects, such as hosting donors and groups that may visit.

I'll be sure to keep you all updated, via this blog or perhaps a new one with a simpler url.

Cowboy Obama

The upcoming constitutional referendum in Kenya is commanding a lot of attention, thanks to all the various groups who have a stake. The 'Yes' side is made up of a lot of the government, the Muslim groups, and the 'No's' are mainly the country's Christian population (+80% of the populace). This is because the proposed constitution allows for Sharia courts to govern the Muslims, and allows for them to set up mosques all over the country, not just in their historic coastal areas. It also allows for abortion in some cases, in a vaguely worded clause that the Christians worry will become a slippery slope towards abortion on demand.

It also contains provisions to counter Kenya's rampant corruption, so the 'Nos' are branded as obstructionists who are opposed to all reform, despite the issues they have brought up.

So the Obama administration, via his ambassador here and Joe Biden, has been interfering in a sovereign country's internal politics- in favor of the new constitution. Of course, getting involved all over the world is a proud American tradition going back many years, so I can't fault him too strongly for that. However, given the Obama administration's support for promoting abortion all over the world, and attempts to make Muslims like us more, this interference strikes me less as 'supporting the process,' and more using US taxpayer money to influence the outcome of the referendum.

Interestingly enough, this all came out when Patrick Kennedy (w/ Keith Ellison) began to request hearings into right-wing Christian support for the 'No' campaign. Of course, this money came from churches and NGOs; all of the taxpayer money involved has gone to the 'Yes' campaign. Kenyan 'No' supporters have called for Ambassador Ranneberger to be recalled, and many are angry at the way Obama is meddling in their internal affairs.

For much of the last eight years, we've heard how Bush was a COWBOY, swaggering around the world with a gun on his hip, offending our allies and alienating the rest. But now it seems that in Kenya, the land of his ancestors, his hope and change has come to another group of people who are no longer captivated by him. If the new constitution is confirmed, it may be partly because Biden hinted that Obama would visit if it passes, or because Obama himself says:

"…this is a singular opportunity to put Kenyan governance on a more solid footing that can move beyond ethnic violence; can move beyond corruption; can move the country towards a path of economic prosperity. And so, I hope that everybody participates, everybody takes advantage of this moment, and those who would try to undermine this process, I think, are making a big mistake."

But if it fails, Nairobi can be mentioned alongside Copenhagen and Washington as places where Obama's bloom is off the rose.


BACK TO THE BLOG:
-My camera was stolen out of my hotel room, so no pictures of Kenya. The hotel's security officer is on the case, so I may yet get it back before the weekend. I'm not holding my breath. My knife is also gone, but that fell out of my pocket in a cab after two weeks in Kigali.
-I've learned more about Kenyan politics in three days than I learned about Rwandan politics in three months.
-Talking to one of my colleagues about Obama's tendency to take on huge, ambitious, unpopular projects, she described him as 'Lone Ranger' and explained, "He's a lowlander."
-Work has been going great. Everyone is very professional, and I've had no problems getting time to meet with people or in conveying the purpose of the Micro journals.
-I need ideas for what to do this weekend. Basically anything cheap and not too far from Nairobi. I don't have to be at the airport until 8:00 Sunday night, so I'll need to occupy myself in between the hotel and the airport.
-Looking forward to being home. Some of the parks here have terrain that would be perfect for frisbee golfing, so I'm looking forward to that. Also, pizza and Chipotle.

Nairobi

As I told someone today, Kigali is to Nairobi as Colorado Springs is to Chicago. Kigali is hilly, dusty, and comparatively quiet; Nairobi is flat, sprawling, and has terrible roads.

I arrived Sunday afternoon, and checked into the Red Court hotel. Tried to change money, but francs might as well be denarii here. I'll have to hold on to it until I can make my way back to Rwanda, or settle for a terrible exchange rate when I get to an international airport. Which sucks, since I have about $150 tied up in Rwandan currency. Yes, I should have changed it in Kigali, but the last couple days there were pretty hectic.

I think everything at VFC is as good as it's going to be; not as much changed during my stay as I hoped, but I think they have all the right processes and training in place now. They just need to apply the proper resources to it- time will tell if anything changes.

The MFI in Nairobi, however, is quite a bit more advanced than VFC, and they have none of the problems with connectivity and translation (everything's in English!) that Rwanda has. So the week here will be more than sufficient, thanks to the three month training boot camp I went through in Kigali and the fact that we're working through things at the beginning, not five months after implementation.

So I'm expecting this week to be a good wind-down to end my time in Africa before returning home next Sunday. Maybe I'll get to go to a safari park over the weekend, and make sure that I don't return home without pictures of elephants.

Akagera National Park

Sunday we went to Akagera National Park, which rests on Rwanda's Eastern border with Tanzania. The elevation is lower, being part of the Great Rift Valley, and is filled with swamps and lakes that attract the wildlife.

It was once quite a bit bigger (it's a third of its original size) and had a higher population of elephants and lions, but in the chaos following the genocide in 1994, there was no protection for the animals. As a result, farmers with cows like these:
would poison the carcasses of cows killed by lions, greatly reducing the lion population here. (Our guide, Samuel, has worked at Akagera since 1997, and has only encountered lions three times.) Other game was driven out by poachers and settlers. After the genocide, the government gave the Western portion of the park to refugees to return to and settle. So this is a park that is struggling, but could potentially be among the great game reserves of Africa; it contains a wide variety of terrains that allows animals to stay year-round, instead of migrating to distant water sources. It's relatively unknown; we only saw a couple other cars the whole time we were there. And it's home to several varieties of antelope- we saw impalas, waterbuck, Cape buffaloes, topi, and giant eland.

Topi (can run 55 mph)

Cape Buffalo- by himself. He had a broken leg.

Baboon family

L-R- Antonina, her husband Dmitri, guide Samuel, driver Gervais

Giraffe, obviously

We also saw zebras, hippos, warthogs, baboons, various birds, and (my favorite encounter) a 4-5 ft cobra that slithered across the road in front of us. (UPDATE: based on my extensive Googling, I think it was likely some variety of spitting cobra. The black-necked spitting cobra [naja nigricollis] is most common, so it was probably that. They can 'spit' venom accurately up to 10 feet or 3 m.) It was a pretty cool trip, I'll have to return some day during the rainy season when more animals are around.

2nd Trip to Gikongoro

Last week, I went south again to meet with the Loan Officers at the Gikongoro branch for a brief meeting. We were implementing some new processes and going over some questions they had, but that only took about an hour. The rest of the time, I took advantage of my translator/co-worker/Micro counter-part Gilbert who went to National University of Rwandain this part of the country. He showed me around the National Museum (pretty small, no pictures allowed) and the Royal Palace (the dwelling place of the monarchs until the 1950s. They charged to take pictures, so no pictures). We also visited Gilbert's old campus:

which was very beautiful, and also had MONKEYS:
which were exciting to see. Fortunately , they completely ignored us, so I have no stories of poop-flinging or attack. The photo at the top was taken on the NUR campus, near where the monkey troop (herd? school?) lived.

We also visited the Murambi Genocide Memorial near Butare, which is one of the largest and most famous of the memorials in Rwanda. It is built on the campus of what was originally a technical school. During the genocide, about 50,000 Tutsis fled there, and their Hutu attackers cut off the water supply to the compound and killed them all a few days later. They buried the bodies in several mass graves, which were later exhumed (in 1995). They found that a lot of the bodies had been deprived of oxygen in the grave and hadn't decomposed, so they preserved over 800 of these bodies and keep them in rooms for visitors to view. It's shocking, and sobering, especially when entering the rooms that contain the remains of children who were slaughtered. They keep these bodies uncovered so that no one in future years can deny that the genocide occured.

There are also plaques around that mark where mass graves were found, and where the French flag flew during 'Operation Turquoise,' where French soldiers moved in towards the last days of the genocide to protect Hutu genocidaires from the avenging RPF. Rwandans are still waiting for an official apology from the French- for this, and for supplying the Hutu militias with arms in hopes of supporting the existing power structure, and defending the Hutu refugees as they continued to attack from the DRC. The decision to switch from French to English has deep-rooted social/political causes behind the peripheral business causes.

P.S.- We also visited a craft co-op in Butare where I got some sweet souvenirs and gifts. If anybody wants anything specific, let me know and I can get it for you (wood carvings? baskets? jewelry? knives? toys?) when I go back down in a couple weeks.

Pics

Genocide Memorial near Butare

Street food vendor near Ruhengeri

School children in Kigali