End of thinking capacity: Education’s lobotomizing potential.

Every Friday afternoon at my school, the last period is reserved for a Careers and Life Skills (CALS) lesson. Each homeroom teacher is expected to lead a discussion about important topics related to a student’s life inside and outside of school. As a homeroom teacher for Grade 12 students I have great diversity of topics from which to choose, and I enjoy speaking very candidly with the young adults in my charge. Last week we discussed AIDS, concurrency patterns, and sexual health (H/T Evan Davies). This week we talked about academic dishonesty and its implications.

I was spurred to talk about academic dishonesty for several reasons. First, I have had persistent problems with cheating and plagiarism since first teaching in Nyagatare last year. Second, my seventh grade students have (for years, it appears) been rewarded with marks for simply copying answers directly from texts instead of rewriting ideas in their own words. I have waged a vicious battle against this habit for two months now. Third, two seventh grade students were just suspended for cheating on a test. It was not the first time either student had been caught cheating. And fourth, during a recent G12 history lesson my brightest student enlightened me about etc.’s true meaning. I was at the board soliciting examples of cultural change during European colonization of Africa, and after several suggestions the student said “E-T-C.” I was confused so I asked, “What does E-T-C mean?” “End of thinking capacity” was his response. How clever.

So I spoke with my students about academic dishonesty and its practical and ethical consequences. Using “End of thinking capacity” as a starting point, I explained how an inability to think critically and independently encourages an unhealthy reliance on others. Next we agreed that “End of thinking capacity” becomes a crutch which predisposes students to cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty, which then becomes a crutch itself. Finally, after much prodding, we also reached a consensus that academic dishonesty is a negative habit to develop because it may encourage other more nefarious moral transgressions later in life.

At that point I read an excerpt from a short newspaper editorial written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was a student at Morehouse. I have reproduced the section below.

The function of education…is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

A strand of conventional wisdom about Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide is that a morally bankrupt educated elite corrupted and manipulated a large population of undereducated and brainwashed peasants. This explanation has some credence and for many just feels like a logical conclusion.* For many of the students, some of them old enough to be survivors, the implication of Dr. King’s argument was clear. The genocide understandably pervades everything.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore some other important questions. For example, I wanted us to consider the entire Rwandan values system. How the genocide might have altered morality in Rwanda particularly interested me. I would have begun at, “Morality is relative up to a certain point,” and continued on to Rwandan society’s view of copying or appropriating another’s work, whether material or intellectual. African societies are often stereotyped as communally oriented, so perhaps what one culture sees as cheating is seen as sharing here. A big difference, no?

Another interest was less philosophical. I see more and more a web of connections forming amongst dependency theory, rote memorization, and poor education standards. When a teacher does not demand the highest quality of work produced in an honest way, and rather accepts work copied from another source, independent thought is stunted and rote memorization is rewarded. In time, the student becomes dependent on what another has produced. He or she can only recycle others’ formulations and repeat others’ declarations. Eventually, the student may reach a point where original thought is entirely foreign.

This web’s implications in Rwanda are troubling. President Kagame’s remarkably ambitious plans for remaking the country as a middle-income state driven by a technological service industry may be hogwash without creative problem solvers. With some basic pedagogical changes, Rwanda can redirect to a brighter course and cultivate more of those students. However, the ship is big, unwieldy, and still recovering from 1994’s cataclysm.

I suspect many teachers in Rwanda know this. They understand at some level that rote memorization is disastrous for young people. Yet, change among faculty and administrators is not easy. There is a Rwandan proverb which says, “A young tree is easier to bend than an old one.” Therefore, students may have to lead the charge in breaking free from the crippling system now imposed upon them. They must raise their own consciousness about these important issues. They must own their own education and demand nothing but the best. If they don’t know, they should investigate. Of course, most everything about Rwandan education militates against a student’s proclivity to do so, but if railing about academic dishonesty gets us just one step closer to that realization then I will persist. What choice do we have?

*Sadly it may also encourage an unsatisfying brand of insincere exculpatory excuses for horrific crimes, and there are other very important angles of examination, but that was not my focus during the lesson.

Revisiting Nyamata.

It is April again, and the rains have returned. They are accompanied by reflection and sorrow across Rwanda, a time when communities come together to discuss genocide and demagoguery and publicly mourn the murdered. It has been seventeen torturous Aprils since the most horrific mass murder in human history, but I think the pain and anguish, so expertly veiled at other times, wells up in the weeks surrounding Genocide memorial week. At the last moment I decided to forgo the large ceremony at the national stadium two Thursdays ago, the beginning of Memorial Week, and instead sat at home quietly contemplating my role here. I had decided beforehand to share thoughts I had already put to paper, so I spent my day making final revisions, listening to the rain softly patter on my blue tin roof.

The following remarks are adapted from an open letter I began drafting shortly after visiting a Genocide memorial with other WorldTeach volunteers in early January 2010. The impulse to write the letter was intense disgust, but it became a familiar crutch to revisit during my service last year – a reminder of Rwanda’s extraordinary context. I wrote and rewrote the letter for most of last year before submitting it to WorldTeach administrators, returning every few weeks to reassess my feelings. I’m sharing my thoughts here not because I think they are particularly unique or insightful, but because my perspective now isn’t part of any ‘Rwanda’ discussion I ever had. I also hope the letter will be included in future orientation sessions should WorldTeach return to Rwanda.

The Catholic church at Nyamata is located on an unpaved side road about a mile from the bus stop in Nyamata’s town center, off the main road running south from Kigali towards Kirundo and the Burundian border. At the time of our visit, the dusty dirt road wound past homes, a sleepy police station, an expanding school with half-built buildings, and seemingly vacant Caritas offices. At a crossroads, the church appeared ringed with high metal fences painted a brilliant bright white. The grounds, as at the Kigali Memorial Center, were immaculately kept with precisely trimmed green grass, neat rows of bright perennials, and showy palm trees.

Two Rwandese men greeted us at the entrance and led two groups through the church in broken but understandable English. It quickly became clear that both men were survivors of local massacres fifteen years ago. In 1994, thousands of mostly Tutsi crowded into the church and the immediate surroundings, hoping the church would bring protection. Nearly every single man, woman, and child was murdered.

The church itself is chilling. Inside it is filled with old wooden pews heaped with the muddy clothes of the victims. During our visit, an odd atmospheric light filtered in through the back of the church, and a heavy, humid, still air hung over everything. The interior was silent save for the guide’s hushed voice and insects buzzing and birds chirping noisily overhead. The tin roof and concrete floor are clearly pockmarked with grenade blasts. Oxidized blood stains are still visible on the ceiling and walls. In one section of the church, children’s clothes are piled onto the floor where children under four were mercilessly slaughtered. At the altar, one survivor recounted the brutal mutilation and murder of a Hutu woman and her Tutsi husband. A vault for a mass grave sits underneath the church, and large mass grave chambers are located outside behind the church where coffins and bones are stacked meters deep. Cracked and crushed skulls, reconstructed after exhumation, and tattered identity cards are irrefutable evidence of the overwhelming cruelty that characterized the killings.

The scale of death at Nyamata is paralyzing and truly terrifying. I could not finish the tour. Being confronted with Nyamata, the need to seriously reassess how to think about the Rwandan genocide became clear. Sitting outside the church as I waited for the rest of the volunteers to conclude the tour, I struggled to justify visiting the church. I felt ashamed, sad, and regretful that I had traveled to the memorial site. To be perfectly frank, visiting Nyamata was not enlightening. The church is a crime scene and a grave, not a museum. I realized, too late, what a naïve and macabre farce it is to need to see a crime scene or grave to believe mass murders should be prevented.

What’s more, attempting to pay homage to those who died there seemed to me empty and trite. Nyamata holds no connections; I neither knew any of the victims, nor understand the pain of the survivors. In reality, I felt as an interlocutor, a voyeur, an atrocity tourist invading the memory of Nyamata and its residents for no good reason. The church is their memorial, a place to teach their children, a place to remember their dead.

Visiting Nyamata only reinforced the distance and detachment I have to the crimes of 1994 and genocide. Platitudes about genocide’s debasement of humanity hide an ugly truth: genocide has always terrorized particular men, women, and children, who, forgotten by the world, each die a very personal death or suffer some other terrible trauma. I fear genocide’s victims are not only dehumanized by its perpetrators, but also necessarily dehumanized by passive bystanders. Either way, genocide does not affirm humanity, it unequivocally denies it. Accordingly, calling genocide an affront to all of humanity seems to me a cruel joke perpetrated by people untouched by such depraved violence – who can rightly own genocide without paying a terrible price? And that price cannot be paid by traveling to far-flung memorials to the dead, regardless of the country or crime. I know this will not inherently strengthen my resolve to help prevent future crimes. If such resolve is to be genuine and actionable, I believe it must be an intrinsic and unshakable moral imperative, not developed through some emotive learning exercise. After all, Nyamata is a searing condemnation of humanity’s collective inaction and refusal to “learn.”

Today, the Rwanda of 1994 seems both distant and immediate. Kigali bustles with orderly energy and has a friendly vibe. Business does well, crime is low, education and technology are priorities, and people are outwardly eager to improve their lives and better themselves. But in the evening, as traffic quiets and all that remains are the twittering birds, the buzzing insects, and the soft rustle of a moist cool breeze, I must resist feeling transported to 1994. I must resist the impactful images from Nyamata which gnaw at my consciousness, and I must resist grasping at comprehension, as the mind tries to distill the fear and blood of seventeen years ago. I must resist trying to purposefully identify with the victims and the perpetrators. It’s not easy. As distinctly social creatures, I believe we seek out experiences which help us identify with others, but I’ve learned to be very wary of such feelings.

Reflective speculation is a poor substitute for action and responsibility. “Never again” was never so empty as in Rwanda. Most Rwandans know this and will suffer the consequences of the world’s inaction for generations. I understand that Rwandans’ relationship with the genocide is complex, and the appalling absence of intervention by the rest of the world in 1994 compounded existing mistrust of western governments and foreigners. These feelings are neither uniform nor universal, and are seldom publicly shown, but I have learned to expect them. I must accept them as a subtext of teaching and be cautious not to project my own biases onto them. I must also understand that there is more to being an outsider than nationality, skin tone, and language. Some experiences are not transferable, and perhaps they are best left that way.

Cocktails and Chinese Chicken.

I often receive compositions dotted with awkward phrases produced by cultural ignorance. That the sophistication of students’ written work reflects their limited personal experiences is unsurprising because we use what we perceive and cache in our memory. However, it can detract from the overall quality of their writing.

A very fluent student recently wrote an excellent composition about a man and a woman sharing an intimate dinner at a fancy restaurant. The setting was sumptuous, and each image fit very well with its companions, except for one glaring exception: when the meal arrived, the couple was having cocktails and fried Chinese chicken. There was no previous indication the restaurant was Chinese, and I can’t ever remember imbibing martinis while enjoying General Tsao’s chicken. It was enough to upset the balanced picture the student had so carefully crafted. At first it was hilarious, but it quickly became sobering.

This condition is directly connected to my students’ media consumption habits, reading in particular. Because Rwanda does not have a reading culture, students miss invaluable opportunities to expand their vocabularies and develop greater cultural nuance in their writing. The result is a worldview defined by too much television and too little literature, too many Youtube clips and too few bedtime stories, too many Victoria Beckhams and too few V.S. Naipuls, and this really concerns me.

The act of reading is a crucial part of child and adolescent development. Reading sustains our ability to think, and thus write, coherently. It teaches us to be careful consumers of information. It opens young minds to language’s creative possibilities. Without a culture of reading, my students are robbed of important opportunities to mature into thoughtful well-rounded adults, and instead they assault themselves with raunchy hip-hop music videos, banal reality television, and seizure-inducing advertising. For this reason I am contemplating issuing an open letter to parents next school year encouraging them to make reading an important part of students’ home life. Moral of the story: Read a book for everyone’s sake!

news bits...

The world has certainly taken an inauspicious turn in the past month. I apologize for the long absence. Work, news, and writer's block occupied my time.

The Middle East and North Africa continues to smolder and ignite piecemeal. So much to follow, so little time! Military intervention (always incredibly risky business) against Libya, violent crackdowns in the Persian gulf region, and a referendum in Egypt. Honestly, just stay tuned to Al Jazeera.

Japan’s devastation is shocking and tragic, and my thoughts have been with the many Japanese volunteers I’ve met here in Rwanda and their families back home. However, please be mindful about who you give to should you choose to support the relief efforts. The reality is Japan has among the best, if not the best, disaster response systems and personnel in the world. Also, keep in mind that Japan is not the only crisis in the world today. Many others, from Pakistan and Ethiopia to New Zealand and Haiti, are facing the terrible consequences of natural disasters.

In Africa, Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country, is preparing for presidential elections this year. AllAfrica has a nice webpage with lots of content. Nigeria’s immense resources, regional and continental influence, and history of conflict probably make these elections among the most important in the world this year. They certainly are up there with DRC’s election scheduled for the fall.

Concerning Rwanda, Think Africa Press has an incredibly interesting article on the Gacaca traditional courts handling the vast majority of genocide crimes. The interview is with a well-known professor at SOAS whose research on Gacaca (pronounced Ga-Cha-Cha) and general take on Rwanda seem very balanced and fair to me. Lots of progress, just as many problems, and no easy solutions.

Meanwhile, MTN continues to make life easier for tech savvy Rwandans and foreign residents, this time to keep that cash power topped up.

A New Times editorial whines about Libya, predictably. Everything's going well until that last little bit, where Gaddafi’s forty-year dictatorship is described cursorily as “a legitimate government which should enjoy the fruits of sovereignty.” No doubt the military intervention is problematic and cynical, but it’s a bit rich coming from the NT. I wasn’t aware that legitimacy was conferred by totalitarianism and graft.

In entertainment news, Pinetop Perkins, Boogie Woogie master, died yesterday at 96. He will be missed but forever a cherished part of my iTunes library.

Generalizing about generalizations.

Continuing the discussion about students’ writing, I had a revelation recently. I noticed a peculiar speaking habit among Rwandese that might help explain some of the difficulties I have with students’ writing. During a field trip with seventh graders to the Rwandan Information Office’s (ORINFOR) printing facilities and print newsroom, speakers repeatedly answered categorical or broad questions with rather specific examples. They often elaborated on these examples, straying further from the original idea the student probed.

I don’t know why it had never occurred to me, but this seems a common practice among Rwandese. No generalization is made, rather examples are proffered. I wondered if this trait was due to inability, unwillingness, or reasoned conscious decision and whether making generalizations or not, either initially or from an example, was indicative of education.

Admittedly making generalizations often requires inductive reasoning. We move from examples to generalizations because it’s practical. I am right now using inductive reasoning to make my own generalization about Rwandese from a vault of personal anecdotes. Although inductive reasoning is not perfect because it is technically impossible to justify, it’s often our only means of categorizing or distilling large amounts of information.

It seems sensible that the speakers at ORINFOR would use their examples to form generalizations, but why not think about the example and respond with a generalization? Perhaps the generalization didn’t occur to them, or maybe they expected students to make the connections themselves. Regardless, general answers to general questions were few and far between. In the ORINFOR scenario, I didn’t find it particularly troubling or inappropriate, but in other instances this habit can be problematic. It will certainly hamper my students on their IGCSE exams.

I suspect this habit has deep cultural and linguistic roots in the ways Rwandese communicate, but what those roots are remain a mystery to me. However, education must play some role. I often find myself politely badgering students with barrages of interconnected questions, trying to develop their ability to form generalizations themselves. If we have three examples of a character’s actions, what generalizations can we make about his or her personality? If we have seven textual details about a landscape, what generalizations can we make about the climate and geography imagined by the author? The Socratic dialogue often annoys students, but I believe it’s constructive. It’s precisely this type of method which was so tough in Nyagatare last year.

Jumping to more elaborate conclusions, what are the important cognitive implications of this ill-supported observation? Moving in this direction always risks political incorrectness. Who am I to question the autonomy and cognition of Rwandese? What right or standing do I have to judge? Images of condescending white colonialists pontificating about black Africans’ intelligence should spring to mind.

Obviously I have no proof, from a social science perspective, of any of my generalizations. Not of the trait, nor of its origins. But I can’t help escape the persistent alarm bells ringing in my head. My observations are in fact neither novel nor particularly defamatory. The Rwandan government itself has identified the population’s passivity, deference to authority (bleh), and historically poor education as sources of past conflict and barriers to future economic growth and socio-political stability. Rwandese’s characteristic passivity could account for many of the challenges I face using the Socratic method in the classroom. For the time being, I will be left wondering why some Rwandese have such difficulty engaging in lively discussions and transcending narrow perspectives often defined by exceptional or irrelevant examples, and others do not.

Channeling Orwell in my classroom.

In my new teaching position, I am preparing tenth grade students for an international exam set and marked by a division of Cambridge University. The exam demands clarity, precision, and deliberation from students, and as a teacher, this requires an intense amount of critical thought and focus inside and outside of the classroom. The more vague, disorganized, and lackluster the work I receive, the more strident the comments I make. I dissect and revise each composition’s cancerous organs while extolling the virtues of George Orwell’s seminal article Politics and the English Language, which remains a refreshingly intelligent and honest critique of abstraction and staleness in modern English.

As an upshot, I identify in Orwell’s words many bad habits in my own writing, and I hone the edge of this new awareness on the whetstone of my students’ work. In the classroom I ask, “Why?” or “What does that actually mean?” at every opportunity, and these mental calisthenics benefit my own writing. However, I do secretly fear I am developing a screechy tick about economy of language, and unfortunately many students shrink from my zeal.

Orwell believed insincere language was corroding modern English because political language, which can only be understood as conscious attempts to muddle the truth or worse, was infectious and self-perpetuating. This decay springs from jargon, which destroys clarity and precision, and euphemism, which numbs visceral reactions to concrete actualities. Dead and maimed children become ‘collateral damage,’ torture becomes ‘enhanced interrogation,’ kidnapping becomes ‘rendition,’ arbitrary arrests and persecution become ‘enhanced security,’ human beings become ‘cockroaches.’ In Orwellian terms, modern English is a dangerous sham.

Rwanda is no stranger to jargon. Colonialism, imperialism, and the state post-independence have all relied on jargon. Violent and repressive policies require jargon because, as Orwell notes, precise language evokes graphically disturbing mental images. When imperialists, for example, spoke honestly, the effect of their words is chilling to contemporary ears. In the introduction to his book When Victims Become Killers, Mahmood Mamdani excerpts a passage from the German military publication Der Kämpf describing the violent suppression of the Herero population in German Southwest Africa at the hands of General Lothar von Trotha:

No efforts, no hardships were spared in order to deprive the enemy of his last reserves of resistance; like a half-dead animal he was hunted from water-hole to water-hole until he became a lethargic victim of the nature of his own country. The waterless Omaheke was to complete the work of the German arms: the annihilation of the Herero people.

Before Southwest Africa, Trotha had experience crushing resistance in German East Africa, including Rwanda. The excerpt’s brutal imagery of the Herero’s extermination is shocking to today’s reader, but it still relies on a common trick of political language. The Herero population was sub-human, described as a “half-dead animal” which was hunted by the German military, as if the Schutztruppe were on safari.

Today colonialism’s residue still fouls Africa. The stench now wafts from development aid, international financial instruments, propped-up autocrats, and unfair trade conditions. Even a cursory reading of reports from some of these foreign organizations reveals an unsettling reliance on meaningless pretense. For a pointed satire of this problem, see here. This affected language is designed to bolster an organization’s authority, but I think it makes them sound ridiculous. Basic materials, stuff in other words, become ‘modalities,’ do or enact becomes ‘operationlize,’ detail becomes ‘granularity,’ and so on. The important peculiarities of everyday work in Rwanda and other African states become obscured by this fluffy self-important jargon, while African solutions to African problems remain undervalued and dependency persists. Old urges have simply been rebranded in technocratic gobbledygook.

In my classroom, the Cambridge exams give students the opportunity to sharpen their mental defenses against such nonsense. I can only continue working with students to emphasize the necessity of quality writing, and more importantly, honest thought.

news bits...

Although I have been following many different stories from the African continent this week, none has been more exciting and compelling than Egypt's radical transformation. We ought to remind ourselves that freedom and liberty are not reserved for certain individuals and societies. I'm also closely following events in Iran (you should too!).

Some other news from around Africa I'm following in addition to protests in the Middle East and North Africa:

Ugandans go to the polls shortly amidst unrest to the north. The Independent (UG) has a helpful article on the politics involved.

Within the aid and development blogging community, there has been a small firestorm over World Vision's partnership with the NFL to ship shirts to developing countries, including Zambia. The whole concept underpinning the move by World Vision is stupid, wasteful, and ineffective.

Opposition leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo do not seem ready to unite under one candidate. This means President Kabila's recent electoral "reforms" could pay off.


Rwanda has established a new authority titled The Rwanda Geology and Mines Authority (OGMR) whose purpose is to reduce trade in illegal (i.e. "conflict") minerals originating from the DRC (and exported as Rwandan?). President Kabila's imposed ban on trade in Congolese minerals has also had adverse effects on the market. Still, I doubt tracing initiatives will do anything to staunch violence, instability, and poverty in the DRC. See here and here for some helpful articulation. UN guidelines can be found here.

Maggie has a brief collection of links about the Southern Sudanese referendum conclusion. Some accounts cite 99% approval for secession.

Meanwhile, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir proves he's got gumption. He ought to -- he's a head of state and an indicted war criminal.

African leaders, including South African President Jacob Zuma, are heading to Cote d'Ivoire for talks on the continuing political deadlock there. The South African government has taken a neutral stance on the situation.

Lastly, now former Rwandan Minister of Culture and Sports Joseph Habineza resigned this week citing personal reasons. Apparently inappropriate snaps were circulated on the internet, prompting his resignation. I have not seen the pictures, nor do I care to. Keep those flies zipped and trousers on.

Current quarters in morning’s light.

Before work in the still quiet of our house, as I busy myself for the coming day, solitude heightens sensory experience. Tranquility crystallizes sounds and smells and tactile sensations in the conspicuous absence of other human agency.

My alarm’s jarring tone wakes me with a start always louder and harsher than I care to anticipate. Rising I grope to part the gauzy net before flicking the wall switch. Dim light drips down creamy apricot walls to the cool, smooth, rich rust red floor chipped and peeling at the bedroom door. I stand and survey the bed whose faded ochre floral paisley bedding and fuzzy fleece throw sit disturbed and rumpled from a fitful night’s sleep. The mattress is a sunken, concave impression caving pitifully inwards at its middle.

Doors and stiff limbs creak and groan as I shuffle bleary-eyed about my early morning rituals. Together we are mechanical motion on tired hinges. I absentmindedly wonder if slumbering roommates wake to cracking toes and necks and backs.

In the bathroom I run a shower. The white plastic stall basin slowly begins to fill, its drain clogged by unseen foulness down pipe. Feet of all but the speediest bathers prune in the filmy lukewarm water. Sometimes in the mornings a fetid reek from a dark un(want-to)knowable void outside the window mysteriously suffuses the tight space with the putrid odor of sweaty troll feet stomping rotten eggs. While toweling off I shudder at the thought of seeping raw sewage.

After washing up, I iron an outfit for the day. The open living room sits forlornly half furnished and undecorated. Shadows thrown are few and indistinct. Against one wall a simple frame couch and twin arm chairs border a wide unoccupied gulf stretching between opposing desks. Outside, pale dawn light begins to give shape to trees and shrubs and brick walls bristling with bottle green broken glass barbs. A brushed aluminum hemisphere encasing a harsh fluorescent light bulb hangs suspended above the towel-draped ironing board. The UFO hovers silently over the day’s wrinkled shirt and pants, bathing the room in an unearthly milky glow. The fixture coolly observes as the iron’s dry heat erases even the worst creases with intense determination.

Breakfast is an afterthought this early in the mornings. Tongues and esophagi and stomachs balk at consumption, so cold stale corn flakes and carton milk is the mind’s modest negotiation with an obstinate digestive system. Then it’s brush, brush, rinse, floss, dress. Now I’m ready for the day. The front door issues shrieks of metal scraping metal as I engage the wobbly handle and throw the deadbolt, ensuring that if my roommates were not yet awake, they soon would soon be stirring. I close the gate’s Judas door, pausing again to double throw another deadbolt, and at five fifty-five march to the bus stop.

news bits...

Stories I’m following in Africa at the moment:

Protests and violence continuing in Egypt. Duh. Aren't you?

Preparations (or adequate lack thereof) are underway for upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Reports have surfaced on the internet of coordinated preparation for potential joint military action in eastern Congo by the militaries of Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC.

The Economist has a piece on sexual violence in warfare, with some attention paid to the DRC.

Four prominent Rwandans in exile (variously in South Africa, Europe, and reportedly the DRC) who recently formed an opposition political group (with ties to armed militias?) have been convicted in absentia of serious offenses against the Rwandan state (*yawn*).

Low level violence in central Nigeria continues, as it has for some time, in and around Jos.

The Southern Sudanese referendum is over and all reports indicate independence, although official results have not been released (coverage provided by an incredibly talented former colleague who went freelance in Juba, Southern Sudan's ostensible new capital).

An arrest has been made in the murder investigation of David Kato, a prominent and outspoken LGBT rights activist in Uganda who was publicly outed by an incredibly intolerant and unscrupulous magazine last year. He was recently brutally beaten to death with (according to reports) a claw hammer in his home. Any sort of causal inference is of course impossible from my position, but Kato's murder, the incredibly vulnerable position of LGBT persons in Uganda, and this kind of intolerance cloaked in the righteousness of religious pseudo-therapy peddled to a population characterized by both widespread religiosity and virulent (and violent) anti-homosexuality is troubling. Until people can truly be accepted as who they are, gay or otherwise, no exceptions, statements like this reek of nervous hand-washing, even if they were written with sincerity. Corrective ‘rehabilitation’ assumes a basic premise that ignores scientific evidence and clinical advice from major medical organizations. More importantly, it helps perpetuates negative stereotypes about individuals which underpin abusive, intolerant, and illegal laws (Uganda, after all, is a party to several international and regional agreements prohibiting the very specimen of absurd law proposed in 2009 in Uganda's parliament). Kato may have been killed in a random robbery; it's entirely possible, Kampala can be a rough place. However, he was still had a huge target on his back.

And lastly, Rwandan authorities are taking population control seriously in this, Africa's most densely populated country.

Giggles Galore.

Work slowly picked up pace two weeks ago, as I added some new teaching responsibilities at the secondary school with which my language center is affiliated. Work has now consumed my waking hours, generating small mountains of mildly disorganized compositions heaped upon an improvised work station in the cluttered school book room. The towering stacks of orderly shelved books bring a welcome sense of peaceful order and calm.

At the secondary school I have responsibility for two different courses. The first is two sections of tenth grade English language for English First Language students. Both classes are collectively unimpressive and disruptive, but there are some remarkable students hidden amongst the rabble rousers – students who do genuinely posses native fluency and the requisite motivation to put it to good use. These students are taking the Cambridge International IGCSE exams in May (and they are unprepared for English language).

Thursday afternoons I have a public speaking and drama class composed entirely of eighth grade girls, many of whom are close friends. Due to a scheduling conflict, the teacher assigned to teach drama was lifted to take over a literature course, and I was dropped into the co-curricular slot on Thursday afternoon. The heading of the course was changed (unbeknownst to the students, as I found out) to Public Speaking. My challenge now is to promote some decent public speaking practice, have the girls perform regularly, and contain the persistent din of giggles and chatter that swirl around me. Our first exercise two weeks ago turned out to be hilarious: I drafted a series of scenarios in which one is expected to give a toast. The girls drew randomly from a bag for their individual scenario. Here are a few examples I plucked randomly from the list:

1. Your sister, who you love very much, is getting married, and you really want to give a special toast at her wedding. Unfortunately, you think her fiancé is rude and don’t like spending time with him.

2. Your girlfriend’s roommate is hosting a dinner party. Your girlfriend cannot attend, but her friend has insisted you attend. You want to repay her hospitality by giving a toast after the meal.

3. A neighbor who you don’t know very well has won an important award in a very obscure science. You know almost nothing about the award or his job, but decide to give a toast at his party anyway.

4. You are at a business dinner celebrating the promotion of a colleague. You are happy for your colleague, but believe the promotion should have gone to you instead.

The girls, initially surprised by my appearance and plan for the afternoon, warmed a bit to the task at hand. To my great relief and surprise, some (not all) of the girls were really great. They grasped the exercise and even did their best to fill the roles they randomly selected from a bag. Others did less well for a variety of reasons, but overall the experience was both satisfying and very amusing. They seem gossipy (what girl isn’t at that age says the conventional wisdom) but good-natured.
Yesterday, during our third meeting, the girls excitedly worked on a similar exercise. I placed them randomly into four groups and assigned each a skit scenario for which they needed to write a script, practice their comedy (they were all supposed to be funny), and then perform for the entire group. Here are the scenarios for context:

1. You and a friend are at a party hosted by a school mate. The boy you like is also there, but you have competition. Another girl who likes the same boy, your rival, has just arrived to the party. You decide to confront her.

2. Four different people, not acquainted with each other, find themselves sitting together at a very boring dinner party. Through a twist of fate, the four find each other’s company great medicine for the dreadful party.

3. Four women are working together in an office. They all gossip about the others behind each others’ backs, but now they are at a company holiday party. They have no choice but to interact.

4. Two men and two women are on a double blind date at a very fancy restaurant. At first, the four seem awkward, but conversation gradually begins to thaw the chilly atmosphere. Things are improving when one of the women abruptly stands up, bumping a passing waiter, who spills a tray laden with food onto the other couple.

The fourth group was particularly funny, but each scenario proved quite well conceived (if less well executed). Group four, for example, managed to incorporate an obsessively perky Chinese waitress, brilliantly acted projectile vomiting, and the surprising introduction of homosexuality into a five minute skit. We’ll see how things progress.

...and back again.

Hot sticky air clings to my face and arms as I squint through the tarmac’s hazy early afternoon glare. The heat feels good, washing over me, reheating my dry, tired limbs stiffened by holiday chills. Striding to the tiny terminal as the plane disgorges its human cargo, I momentarily reach down, gently brushing the tips of my anxious fingertips to the hot shimmering asphalt, giddy with the promise and trepidation of returning to Rwanda. It’s been almost two months, and I have been secretly dreaming of this moment since departing in a fog of uncertainty and melancholy in November. These first tentative steps onto familiar foreign ground seem right.

Overhead clouds gather in anticipation of releasing their burdens by the sweltering afternoon’s end. The sun, intense as ever, pours through in sultry streams. In the distance, sounds of traffic, honking, the scuffle of a million bodies going about business on an early January Saturday afternoon. I glide through customs, making small talk in Kinyarwanda with the border guards. They seem amused, or bemused, but show only cursory interest in my well-pronounced but shallow Kinyarwanda. I retreat down the steps to baggage claim before I am exposed.

Outside we are greeted by cordial taxi drivers who, in my opinion, are some of the toughest buggers to bargain with in all of Rwanda. A fellow former volunteer, Meghan, and her visitor friend split the cab fare with me into the city. We speed through (more) new road rehabilitation and lumbering buses spewing choking diesel fumes, climbing the hill into town. After a brief detour to St. Paul’s, where Meghan has booked a room, I awkwardly sling my oversize duffel onto my back and hike towards the main road. A motorcycle taxi driver navigates the annoying traffic congregating in the city roundabout, accelerating past UTC and Simba, up the hill to Bank de Kigali, along Ecole Belge de Kigali, then finally down to Sky Hotel. The smells of Kigali bloom under the cheap plastic helmet shield, invading my senses – thick smog, earthy dust, the sharp scent of half-burnt petrol, the faintest hint of sweaty musk from the driver, wafting cooking grease from Blues Café. I feel exhilarated and exhausted, satisfied with the smooth trip, eager to explore and discover and learn and teach and live. It feels like...home.

The next morning, I roll over and stretch for my phone. Damn, 11:00am. I slept like the dead and the midday sun is coursing through my curtains. Dehydration and time change have imparted a sharp headache and stuffy nose. The taste of stale recycled airplane air lingers on my tongue and in my nostrils. By the end of the day it will be a full-blown head cold. I wobble slightly out of bed, stumble to the bathroom, and go in search of water. There is humid warmth emanating from outside, but the house remains cool and comfortable, the smooth concrete floors refreshing to my bare feet.

The house keeper has cleaned and is moving on to church. I catch a glimpse of her shuffling up the drive to the gate in her Sunday best as I walk to the kitchen. I’m glad she’s around because cleaning a house this size ourselves would be really tiresome, a real chore. The kitchen is neat and boiled water sits by the gas stove. Laundry hangs dripping on the line out back. The stoop is swept clear and garbage has been dumped in the pit out back. A couple heads of fresh lettuce heads sit next to the sink, gifts from the guard from the garden. Before long I collect myself and go out to run a few errands, lightened by the fact that I will not constantly have to contend with work and keeping order at home. I hop a bus to Kimironko for a bit of shopping at the market, relishing the opportunity to get out for a bit and clear my head of its cobwebs.

*After trying to construct a blog to my liking to replace this space, I have, for the time being, decided to continue to use this blog to record my observations and anecdotes from Kigali and elsewhere. I hope friends and family continue to read and enjoy my posts. Feel free to share with anyone you might think would be interested.

I’ve only been gone a year so don’t sell the car and kick the renter out of my room.

Wow, where to begin. It is difficult to accept that a year in Nyagatare is nearly elapsed. It is certainly, almost painfully, bittersweet. There are many things I will and won’t miss about Nyagatare, but every bit of it has been enlightening, even at the lowest points. What’s more, this past year has shown me how much there is to learn about the world, myself, and the incredible complexities inherent in simply trying to help other human beings. I’m also very fortunate to have caught the travel bug early, and I think central Africa will call to me for the rest of my life.

In repose now considering a year’s worth of work and travel, I thought I’d offer a brief roundup of some things I’ve done or accomplished in no particular order:

I’ve been to six different African countries, although I’ve only got an actual visa for five of them. Five of the countries have suffered some form of serious civil conflict and social upheaval in the past twenty-five years, and may be at risk of conflict again in the near future.

I’ve met teachers and students, engineers and mathematicians, professors, peasants and politicians, bus drivers and traffic police, business owners and servants, not to mention former rebel soldiers.

I’ve seen deep calming lakes ringed by stupendous mountains and tranquil beaches cradling a picturesque turquoise ocean.

I’ve rafted the Nile, peered over the misty edge of Victoria Falls, and snorkeled with whale sharks.

I’ve helped dislodge a bus mired in mud.

I’ve eaten Lebanese food in Pretoria, Indian food in Kigali, Persian food in Kampala, southern-fried chicken in Botswana, and pizza in Tofo, Mozambique.

I’ve travelled by overnight train in Zimbabwe without derailment due to collision with an elephant.

I’ve nursed debilitating stomach aches and incredible hangovers and tended to malaria-stricken children.

I’ve learned to accept cold showers, overcrowded public transport, and uncomfortable levels of platonic body contact with perfect strangers.

I’ve survived scores of motorcycle rides on bumpy dirt roads (knock on wood!).

I’ve seen firsthand the terrible, ravaging effects HIV has on a person’s body.

I’ve coaxed shy students into finally beating me at Scrabble.

I’ve somehow consumed gelatinous rice and watery stewed beans nearly every weekday for eleven months.

I’ve learned I’m frankly a crappy teacher, but I am an expert at complaining about students.

I’ve endured serious mismanagement and unprofessionalism such that I hope to never see the likes of it again…but I know I will.

I’ve been ashamed, amused, frustrated, embarrassed, overjoyed, terrified, triumphant, dumbfounded, tired, sick (but not too often), hot and cold, occasionally bored but never for long, mostly dry, and worm-free (to my knowledge, although this will be confirmed by actual medical tests).

And, above all, I feel like a more complete person who strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) has so much unfinished business (if that’s not too cheesy).

Fortunately, I could continue on almost indefinitely. A stream of memories flooded me as a drafted this blog. So much so I was surprised by how much I had seen and experienced. I hope to share these experiences and more in person when I get back, so more on that briefly. I return to the U.S. on November 22nd. I will spend a day in Atlanta, then go north to spend time with family for the Thanksgiving holiday. However, the entire month of December will be spent in Atlanta (and maybe a day or two in Athens...in the library). I intend to fly back to Rwanda shortly after New Years to start a new job. I would love to see friends, family, and neighbors to catch up on lost time and compare notes on effective treatment of fungal infections (or, you know, whatever). With that said, I will also be very busy preparing for another position in Rwanda while wrapping up grad school applications and readjusting briefly to a much different lifestyle. In other words, free time might sadly be in short supply. At the risk of sounding like a pompous self-important jerk, I’d just like to share a few suggestions if you’d like to know more about Rwanda and my experience there (which I hope you do!).

First, I like Rwanda a lot, as much for its quirks as for its stunning beauty. It has some tremendous challenges ahead of it, and many things are far from perfect. However, blatantly insensitive questions, particularly about the genocide, are not welcome. For example, the question “Are all Rwandans really psychopathic killers?” is hopelessly stupid and patently ridiculous. Such questions are offensive, and I might just bluntly tell you so. I hope that my service here has motivated friends and family to learn a modicum about the country.

Second, and in contrast to the first suggestion, ignorance is okay. There is so much that I have to learn about Rwanda, much less other faraway countries I’ve never been too. Sometimes we know so little it’s tough to even formulate a decent question. Still, asking me, “How was Africa?” probably will not receive a very interesting answer. Instead, I suggest thinking about some aspect of your life that you might imagine changing dramatically in Africa, whether humorous or serious, and phrasing a more specific question accordingly. For example, “Did you really eat rice and beans more than three hundred times in a year?” Now that would likely generate a much more impassioned answer.

Third, I beg your pardon. I think we are all guilty of “out of sight, out of mind” to varying degrees. A year is a long time to be out of contact with close friends and family, and so much can happen in a year. People have gotten married, had babies, survived life-threatening illnesses, grieved lost loved ones, had personal successes and failures, etc. Likewise, I have had a great many things happen in my life the past year. Forgive my ignorance as I forgive yours. You never know what you might discover if you assume someone has been living in a cave for a year (not that I have been…or anything).

Expect this to be my last blog for the year. I have enjoyed writing this past year immensely; it was always a good release when I got the itch. However, the next few weeks will be spent assisting with national examinations, traveling a bit within Rwanda, and submitting applications to graduate school. I will probably return to blogging, with a different bent, when I return to Rwanda in the New Year.

Cheers,

Zach

ps. Headed back here for a few days of R&R next week:

Just what is frustrating about teaching in Rwanda?

In public, on this blog and elsewhere, I have bemoaned a general lack of critical thinking and very basic learning methods common in Rwanda. Usually such descriptions are somehow couched in a humorous anecdote or irreverent joke. For those with whom I have corresponded personally, you know my private observations are much more serious, worried, and cutting.

Now that my service is basically finished, and without going into a slew of details (some of which cannot be published on this blog anyways), there are systemic pressures and historical realities that strongly shape the ways students think and learn. In general, these combine to frustrate the hell out of me. The frustration is one part personal exhaustion and one part fear for my students’ futures. While certainly not unexpected, such frustration has, for better or worse, really shaped my experience here in Nyagatare (among other things!).

However, there are those really brightly shining stars in the classroom. Students who you know have so much damn potential, but they are being suffocated by a lack of resources, unprofessional teachers, and a formulaic system. These are the students that truly inspire; the ones who force you to show up to class even though their classmates openly mock you, skip lessons, and generally disregard instruction.

The following excerpt is pulled directly (unedited) from a recent exam I gave. The student, who will remain anonymous, is one of those exceptional students with the ability to think clearly about issues beyond his or her notes and then concisely record those thoughts. The student is very articulate and thoughtful, which sadly are wonderful skills that have little importance in the system.

Prompt: Discuss how starting lessons later at Nyagatare Secondary School might help you.

Student’s response:

“Starting lessons later in our school might help all of us students yet there are some that wake up earlier as four or five in the morning.

“On my opinion, I should propose to the school administration to first change the way of teaching students. Because students are forced to cram everything and to live in notesland; if the school could change the way of teaching the lessons, by making the students understand the material, and examine them in that way, students will have enough time of sleeping and take rest.

“That was of teaching and the early starting lesson time, hurts a lot students, because for example immediately after lunch you may find students sleeping in the dormitries. And due to that, they miss after lunch lessons, which to recover that time last is another big deal. Due to these, there are very low extra-curriculum activities; like no many students do sports, clubs are empty, others are not working, etc.

“So, to help students to a better success, and to have a healthy life later on, I propose that the school administration should study a lot about this issue, and try to find a solution. I as a student, I may suggest that we start lessons later like at eight in the morning, and make the evening prep ending at ten in the night, without forgetting to change the teaching method.”

After reading that, I quickly shared it with Evan, who also teaches the author. Evan is closer with the student than I am, and he immediately sent another student to fetch the author. The “notelands” reference is from Evan, who constantly beats a drum about thinking outside of notes in his entrepreneurship and General Paper courses. He sat the student down and had a long conversation about the student’s future and how to realize his or her incredible potential.

Thank goodness for such students. Rwanda, and the world, needs more young people like them.

Rub-a-dubs, overgrazing, and side dishes.

Relationships and sexuality are always interesting parts of culture, and Rwanda is no exception. What is interesting, from my perspective, is in Rwanda (and much of east Africa) how deeply entrenched very different dating and sexual norms are in society. Men and women, but men in particular, tend to have more concurrent sexual relationships but fewer partners on average over their lifetime than westerners. At the same time, sexuality also seems a less visible part of society, where touching others (regardless of gender) is widely accepted (and practiced!) but in entirely platonic forms. Any shred of intimacy is largely left behind closed doors. Few people speak openly about relationships or sex, and students appear to exhibit little knowledge or willingness to engage in conservation about them.

The concept of concurrent relationships is an important public health concern as HIV/AIDS rates have skyrocketed in most sub-Saharan African countries since the 1980s. In her alarming yet incredibly enlightening book The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein explores the rise of AIDS in Africa and the continent’s attempts to deal with the epidemic. She concludes that patterns of partner concurrency are largely to blame for the rapid transmission of AIDS in southern and eastern African countries. Male circumcision also appears to play a vital role, a potential reason Islamic west African countries experience much lower HIV/AIDS rates. HIV/AIDS in Rwanda is a serious problem, but not quite as acute as some southern African countries (check out the rates of HIV infection in Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho – terrifying!). Still, I have heard that HIV rates are dramatically underreported in Rwanda, although I cannot confirm this. All manner of campaigns have been launched in east Africa to educate people about the dangers of concurrent relationships. Uganda, which successfully combated the AIDS epidemic there in the early 1990s, has some catchy slogans: “No side dishes,” and “Overgrazing.” Clever.

The nature of dating and sexuality in Rwanda makes it difficult for people like Evan and me, who already are singled out as different, to understand how people view dating and sex. Evan teaches General Paper, an all-purpose current events and history course for upper secondary students. Sexuality and HIV/AIDS are part of the curriculum, but Evan cannot accurately determine what many students think because students do not openly discuss such issues. At the same time, we know some of our students have boyfriends or girlfriends and are sexually active (think, empty condom wrappers on the football field…no, seriously). The social obfuscation which pervades much of Rwandan society does not exempt dating and sex. Unsurprisingly, the cultural barriers have also largely prevented Evan or me from having any relationship with a Rwandan woman, which I must admit is a shame because Rwandan women are beautiful. Sigh. We’ll just have to content ourselves with the ever popular rub-a-dub. I’ll let you stew on what that one is!

He gets the mélange, too.

Wow, time flies. It has been a churning whirlwind of a term filled with unexpected holidays and massive upheavals to schedules. I’ve been so consumed by getting things done and managing the mismanagement that the blog has been neglected. Expect a few more blogs before my service wraps up in three weeks. Term ends in about two weeks, then a week of preparing reports, then some freedom.

Evan and I, like Sawa, have become common figures in the Nyagatare scene, traipsing to the market, eating at a few different establishments, and drinking at one local watering hole on occasion. Generally people have grown accustomed to seeing us around, especially the motorcycle taxi drivers and university students. This blog is dedicated to those university students who try so painfully hard to pretend they are our friends.

When we’re out and about oftentimes university students will approach us or make contact when we walk by. Inevitably they tend to act as if they know us, even though our range of what I might call friendly acquaintances at the university is quite limited. Most often, they belie their posturing by calling us Ivan and Isaac – our two cover names given to people who we quite likely will never see again or don’t particularly want to hang out with at any future date and time. Ivan and Isaac are common names in Rwanda, Evan and Zach are not, so we just make it easy for them. The ruse has extended into our private life as an inside joke.

Evan’s take on the whole situation is good, and it’s best explained by the simple statement, “He gets the mélange, me too!” (A mélange is just a plate of mixed food – gastronomically terrible but filling). You see, sometimes we wonder if people psychologically make themselves our friends simply because they observe us so much and find commonalities. Wow, he drinks beer at Blue Sky. Wow, they eat omelets at City Center Restaurant. Wow, they shop for crackers at the ‘supermarket.’ Just like me. This kind of identification is fine except when it actually intrudes too much into my real personal life. If someone wants to yuck it up for a few minutes on the road with the umuzungu, fine. That’s often a funny exchange. There are even some university students I enjoy sharing a beer with. However, it becomes a little tiresome when you become a linguistic punching bag for someone’s poor English and drunken Kinyarwandan.

While I enjoy meeting new people, and I certainly have met some interesting people in Nyagatare, the simple fact is my social circle is relatively small for a reason. Evan and I socialize with people with whom we have more in common, whether it’s another volunteer, a professor at the local university, or a teacher at school who we particularly like. Ten months have been enough to convince me of that. So watch who you call Isaac, you might just give yourself away!

When MJ met MC.

I had the distinct honor of presiding over my first high school dance this past weekend. Evan, like me a bit burnt out from a particularly rough two weeks of mismanagement and incompetence at work, had gone to Butare to visit John, our traveling partner from southern Africa. The Anti-AIDS club had arranged to use the dining hall for a series of performances, skits, and dancing sometime last week, but it was continuously rescheduled. Finally, Saturday night was a go ahead, and I was responsible for providing the supervision.

To my surprise and utter dismay, the students had actually decided to just dance, and perform not drama about AIDS education. They had already set up the dining hall with AV equipment and rearranged the benches and tables so I gave, assuring the Anti-AIDS group president that the shindig would last no longer than 10:00PM.

At first, students stood ringed around the enclosed area created by upturned tables used to contain the sound a bit and protect the windows. The girls especially, who trickled in slowly, just watched with bemused or ambivalent expressions. Small groups of boys jittered furiously, kicking, stomping, and sliding their sandal-clad feet, rhythmically twisting their shoulders and hips. However, with the lights on, most students seemed (unsurprisingly, I guess) unwilling to brave the “dance floor.” What’s more, the boys and girls were decidedly separated, boys to my right, girls to my left. It was just like those dreadfully awkward high school dances of yesteryear.

Eventually I caved on the lights. The bright fluorescent bulbs can be shut off piecemeal in the dining hall, so I allowed the students to leave the lights off in the third where they danced while the remaining two thirds stayed garishly lit. Within twenty minutes many more students were gyrating, swaying, and vibrating to the ubiquitously bad Rwandan hip-hop blaring out of overburdened speakers. Their dance style is distinctive, some silly hybrid of Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, and the Twist, but they are good nonetheless. In fact, really good. Hell, at least they’re exercising, I thought. And I was amused.

The night turned out to be good fun despite the chaperoning bit. A former student who now works as a lab assistant turned up to help supervise, along with Claude, the night watchman. Predictably the students bemoaned the admittedly early end time (although I had given them four extra songs past our agreed stop time!), and I could understand their displeasure. The students are so cooped up at school with little to entertain themselves. Dancing is a great reprieve for them from an otherwise stressful experience. I imagine that’s why we have the alcohol problems we do amongst some of our older students (who, were they not students, could drink freely outside of school as many are of legal age).

While I was sad to cut off the music, I knew if I didn’t put my foot down it would be a slippery slope. Some of the students will take all they can get and more if you let them. Plus I was famished having not eaten dinner. With dancing finished, the students trouped off to do god only knows what. With their energy levels spiked, I just hoped they wouldn’t break anything too big!

Retracing our steps.

After another wonderful flight on Kigali Air’s new 757-300 Johannesburg-Kigali route, we stepped off the plane into the pleasantly warm night air of Kigali. We spent the night briefly catching up with fellow volunteers over dinner, then the following morning sorting out phone issues. In the smoggy mid-afternoon glare we boarded a bus back to Nyagatare, quite unsure what might await us at home.

The heat in Nyagatare was immediately a stiff reminder of our everyday reality. The air sat heavy and still, not a cloyingly sticky humid heat but a weighty, oppressive heat pushing down, settling in and around the house over the course of the day. The curtains hung limp and motionless in front of the open windows; the trees stood mostly bare, lifeless, and statuesque outside. The sun shone as fierce and bright as ever. Occasionally a sharp, brief gust of dusty wind pierced the house, a rather grim reminder that we more or less live in a desert six months of the year.

Thankfully everything was in order at home (no sign of the rat!). Rainy season is also picking up here in Nyagatare, as elsewhere. Rain means cooler weather, more water, and less dust, all of which are welcome changes. We’ve also planted a new garden with Sawa, so we’ll see what grows. More updates soon.

Cheers,

Zach

Paraíso.

Tofo is truly stunning. And overrun with foreign tourists, but that’s neither here nor there. I contemplated posting a long report about each and every thing we did, but such a tranquil and relaxing place deserves a clean and spare treatment.

The beach stretches out in a long palm-tinged arc cradling the clear blue-green Indian Ocean. Swells roll in softly most of the time, providing just enough background music to soothe one to sleep. All along and behind the beach are restaurants and relatively shabby backpacker’s accommodations. We stayed in a plain palm thatch bungalow perched atop a dune looking directly onto the ocean. In town, situated neatly just behind the beach, a small market sat quietly staffed by ladies overcharging (understandably) for delicious produce and gleaming seafood. All around them were locals selling copious amounts of liquor and beer for the tourist crowd. Next to the market a local (and cheap) restaurant served heaping plates of rice, stewed cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes, and your choice of fried just-dead seafood (prawns, fish, calamari). Other restaurants dotted around Tofo served similarly delicious grub, ranging from fried eggs and salad on fresh bread to Greek salad and pizza. The matapa, a soupy greenish local dish commonly eaten with rice was also not bad.

Our only real goal in Tofo, besides relaxing and mentally recharging for Term 3, was to swim with whale sharks. Having seen whale sharks in captivity (sadly, I might add), Evan and I both relished the idea of swimming freely with them. Tofo is basically the place to go if you want to see the gentle giants in the wild. Roughly 300 of the world’s approximately 1,000 whale sharks are found for most of the year off the Inhambane province coast. Tofo is chocked full of ocean safari companies that organize snorkeling excursions to swim with the sharks just off the shore (no more than a kilometer!). Despite some early technical difficulties, our boat crew proved their worth. They found three different sharks in the span of two hours.

Once a whale shark was spotted the boat crew positioned the boat ahead of the advancing behemoth and everyone slid (or floundered awkwardly) into the water. I bobbed on the surface and dove down deep to swim right next to the sharks. My decent swimming skills proved handy. Each was large, but one in particular must have been seven or eight meters and entirely docile. It was, for lack of a better term, magical (am I gushing too much?). Highly recommended to anyone visiting southern Africa; in fact, almost worth a trip to Mozambique itself. And the price? Not too shabby: $30 for snorkel gear and two hours on the water.

Other than whale sharks, Evan and I just lounged around, wake up late, ate tasty food, read books, played pool at the hostel, swam, and sunned ourselves on the beach. Evan also built more than one sand castle. We met a lot of very different people, many from Europe, South Africa (obviously), and Australia. We shared beers and laughs, and did a bit of dancing. We even ran into the same older Dutch man from Zimbabwe at our hostel!

After our sojourn in Tofo, we took an early (think 4AM) bus back to Maputo, and then an overnight bus back into South Africa. Before leaving Maputo, Evan and I just sat for hours in a restaurant having lunch and coffee, then sipping Laurentina beers as the sun sank lower over the Indian Ocean. Before hopping on our bus we loaded up on tangerines, loaves of delicious bread, chocolate and devoured two highly suspect but scrumptious hamburgers (fried egg and pickles included) from a sidewalk shack. It had been a highly successful trip by most accounts. No crimes committed or arrested for, no major thefts (unless you count that bank hold-up…er I mean…canoe trip in Botswana), and some interesting (or phantom) visas for the passport. Would have been nice to see lions and other game in Zimbabwe, but life isn’t a script. We felt refreshed after five days at the beach, ready to tackle another four months of teaching.

The last chappa to Tofo.

Despite our border ‘troubles,’ we managed to get safely back to Pretoria. Unfortunately we arrived far too early in the bracingly cold early morning. We took a taxi from the Pretoria train and bus depot across town to the relatively safe and pleasant Hatfield neighborhood where we first stayed. We literally loitered outside the twenty-four hour McDonald’s for over an hour before another restaurant opened. Afterwards we gratefully dropped our bags at the same hostel and bid farewell to our travelling companions; Evan and I then grabbed a surprisingly stellar Lebanese lunch and watched a (rather disappointing) movie starring over-the-hill Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

That evening we boarded another overnight train (no sleeper births this time) for the run to the Mozambique border. Unlike our previous overnight train adventure, this trip turned into a miserable, numbingly cold, horribly uncomfortable fifteen hour misadventure. I cannot underscore what a dire state I was in mentally at 10:00am the following morning…hungry, exhausted, and barely defrosted.

We hopped a chappa to the border less than 10 kilometers away, still jammed into a tight uncomfortable space but happy for the warmth emanating from the dozen or so bodies packed into the van. At the Mozambique border we walked through a mildly perplexing maze of construction work and random buildings to exit South Africa and then strolled past an army checkpoint to the bustling Mozambique border post. Evan and I knew that Mozambique has a penchant for unexpectedly raising visa prices and admission requirements, but we hoped for the best. Turns out, it was highway robbery, but with a fancy visa: $82 for a full page brightly colored sticker visa complete with digital picture and oh-so-snazzy hologram. A visa not dissimilar to the damn Zimbabwean visa stuck in Hewsan’s passport.

Once through border control, we grabbed a few tangerines from the roadside, piled into yet another chappa, and took off for Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. We spent an uneventful afternoon and night in Maputo; I managed to sleep for about 10 hours despite a 5AM wake-up. It had been such smooth, if exhausting, sailing for so much of the trip, and Evan and I were grateful to make it uneventfully into Mozambique. Sadly our traveler’s luck had, unbeknownst to us, also exhausted itself.

A taxi ride to the bus park in Maputo was followed by a rather epic twelve hour bus trip to the picturesque laid-back beach town of Tofo. First, as we approached Xai-Xai, roughly three hours to the north of Maputo along the coast-hugging N1, the driver began intermittently pulling on the emergency brake. The bus rolled slowly through Xai-Xai’s main strip until without warning the driver pulled to the curb, hopped down from the cab, and sprinted across the street to a faded, rundown automotive supply store. He returned within minutes holding a small generic bottle, whose contents I couldn’t make out. At the northern edge of town, the bus pulled into a garage, and Evan and I both emitted the low, barely audible moans. We are accustomed to mechanical problems in Rwanda that can delay a trip for hours and hours. Generally, those delays are tire-related, but this new dilemma appeared brake-related, which could only mean serious trouble.

Surprisingly, although the issue was the brakes, the driver, conductor, and a few guys from the garage managed to remove four wheels, change two brake disks, and replace the wheels in about two hours – highly competent (by my standards)! We were back on the road. Little did we know that the trouble had only begun.
Roughly an hour further down the horribly pitted and rough highway extending northwards from Xai-Xai towards Inhambane province, we encountered an even greater obstacle. Somehow, in the hollow of two stubby hills, a tractor trailer had jack-knifed, flipping dramatically on its side, successfully blocking the entire two lane highway and an remotely passable areas to either side of the tarmac. A long line of idling trucks, buses, and 4x4s idled impatiently and expectantly in long queues up either hill, dots of a mechanical army ant war party snaking to the crest of the far hill. Within a few moments of our arrival, private vehicles began emerging along a sandy track to our left, seemingly out of the bush itself. Some had branches stuck in grilles and leaves clinging to windshields. Soon buses began appearing, too.

Other vehicles and their drivers began to take note and braved the deep, loose sand. 4x4s managed easily with enough speed, buses failed or didn’t fail based on the drivers’ skill. Unfortunately, our driver seemed to be a congenital idiot (just wait). Our first ill-fated attempt took us away from the worn path already forming, but rather to the left, up a small rise that would cut across a small plot to the sandy track leading into the bush. We hit the rise with too many people (read: everyone; they hadn’t thought to remove passengers) and too little speed. Shit, now we’re stuck.

After assessing our predicament, the driver and conductor began an elaborate back and forth dance to extricate the stalled bus. The conductor, befitting his title, conducted by digging furiously with a shovel and instructing passengers where to place branches and other debris to ensure traction. The whole affair became a communal struggle, first against the soft, tire-eating sand and then against the slick red mud churned up by the spinning tires. The effort, by most measures demonstrated everyone was ready to get back on the road, but the driver was a moron, turning the wheels in entirely wrong directions at the most inopportune moments.

Streaked with mud and sweating from exertion in the humid Mozambique afternoon, Evan and I rued our previous luck. It seemed travel karma had finally found a cosmic cure for our earlier good fortune. Eventually, we managed to get the bus back on the road. The driver, this time with an empty bus, drove headlong at the existing sandy track. To my astonishment, he managed to get stuck again. Doh! We pushed and soon had the bus free again. We bumbled down the sandy road through cassava fields and thickets of dense brush, dodging oncoming vehicles, before finally reaching the paved highway again. Inhambane here we come!

Our earlier delays put us into Inhambane late, really late. We had expected the bus to continue to Tofo, one hour by dirt road to the east directly on the coast. The driver and conductor flatly refused and ordered us off the bus. We had little recourse since neither Evan nor I speak Portuguese. A small boy immediately approached us offering small treats and the ubiquitous coconut bread. Instead, we asked him to find us a chappa to Tofo. The ride, and day in general, had been exhausting and humbling, but we desperately wanted to make it to Tofo the same evening. I was astonished when the boy beckoned us to follow right away, mumbling something about the last chappa to Tofo. Sure enough, Evan and I piled into the very last chappa of the evening, just after 7:00PM bound for the idyllic Tofo. We wedged ourselves and packs into the back row and waited. Before long, the chappa was filled to overflowing. The driver did some sort of vexing victory circle around the bus park and then careened towards the road to Inhambane. At first count, before anyone hopped off the bus, our small Toyota minivan taxi had twenty-five – yes, 25 – people crammed into its cabin or hanging precariously from the open sliding door. Bodies were draped over bodies; hands clung to whatever stable piece of metal or flesh they could grab (or grope). I’ve been squeezed before, but this was a new level of leave-none-behind public transport. I grinned the whole way to Tofo, praising the travel gods for our last little bit of luck in a depressingly luckless day.

Look for a final installment tomorrow, wrapping up holiday stories.

Zach

Warning: Do not open whilst train is in motion.

For anyone considering travel in Zimbabwe, especially to Victoria Falls, definitely check out the overnight train connecting the northwest tourist city with Bulewayo, located in west central Zimbabwe. Evan and I discovered the train online via a random BBC article metaphorically contrasting the current, decrepit state of the train with Zimbabwe’s own predicament. The rolling stock was built in Birmingham in the early 1950s then imported for use on Rhodesian Railways track. You can still see the chipped and faded fanciful R&R logo on all of the cars. At its inception, I’m quite sure the train would have been something, but today its glory is but a faint memory: no electrical power, all original fixtures (mattresses, it appeared, included), the barest of WCs, and doors at the end of the trains that swung freely and unpredictably open like hinged saloon doors.





With our bags packed and goodies for the train purchased, we clambered aboard the old sleeper car and into our cabin. Luckily, the arrangement of cabins is by two and four people, perfect for John, Evan, Hewsan, and me. Two bottom bunks, two top bunks, and two large windows looking out on the passing scenery. Temperatures dipped considerably during the night, but we had blankets supplied to us in enormous plastic zip top bags large enough to fit a small child comfortably (no bed bugs!). Everything about the cabin, like the rest of the train, was washed out, worn out, nonfunctional, but perfectly reasonable for $4!



There were more than a few stories online about the train hitting elephants on the tracks late at night, and there were clearly anti-elephant measures placed along the tracks in certain places. Fortunately, there was no elephant-related derailment, nor any derailment of any kind, although I think we did stop for an interminable period in the early hours of the morning. Regardless, we had a good time.

We arrived in Bulaweyo late but not terribly so (maybe two hours) and went in search of a bus to Pretoria. Greyhound, it turns out, had screwed us, but there were plenty of coach buses to be had, so we bought tickets later from another company. In the intervening time we wandered a bit through Bulewayo, which is a rather odd city in my opinion, and ate lunch. It seemed like something out of 1960s or 70s rustbelt America, with ugly, nondescript concrete block buildings dotted with the occasional aged colonial building surrounded by greenery.

Although the bus from Bulaweyo also left late (more than an hour), it turned out to be a comfortable ride complete with, yes, eight hours straight of Shaka Zulu. Now, if you haven’t seen this classic marvel of a series, run, no, sprint to your nearest computer and attempt to illegally download said program. It was a revelation filled with elaborate sets and costumes, large-scale battle scenes, and a really uncomfortable level of jiggling bare breasts. Okay, so maybe revelation and marvel are bit too complimentary, but it was rather (darkly) humorous to watch so much of the series.

The only rough bit of the trip back to Pretoria, as we had been warned, was the border crossing back into South Africa. The entire process took about three hours and there were people just everywhere, even late in the evening. The most worrisome event of the entire trip also transpired on the South Africa side. After going through border control and nonchalantly circumventing a baggage check with all the other passengers on our bus, the South African border police did one last spot check on us before allowing everyone back on the bus. Sure enough, the guy managed to grab the four white guys and four random African men for a “random” search. I didn’t expect anything different, but you it pays to be a little wary in such situations.

The officer escorted us to the “screening area,” which was in fact a small enclosed space off a men’s bathroom. Uh-oh. He proceeded to pat down the four African men, pausing only to give one Zimbabwean guy a hard time because his reason for visiting SA was rather vague (come on man, just say you’re visiting a friend!). At this point, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I was bracing myself and secretly hoping Hewsan’s would keep his Bostonian mouth shut (Hewsan, god bless him, has a sometimes worrisome knack of arguing or confronting in the entirely wrong situations). Does he want money, cameras, something else of value?

Turns out, the guy was just a pervert and wanted to cop a feel; he wasn’t corrupt, or, at least, not in your traditional way. Were we violated, yes, but we didn’t have to fork over any money or other valuables, which just might have been worth the trouble. My body involuntarily shuddered as I climbed aboard the bus but we were moving onwards to Pretoria! Border successfully navigated.

Back again with Mozambique in tomorrow or Saturday.

Zach