I’ve just returned from Ethiopia. For four years in high school I had a good friend whose parents had come to the States from Ethiopia as young people and had ended up staying there to raise their family. This friend and his entire family were brilliant, striking and interesting. This friendship probably made Ethiopia the first African country that I started to understand as its own unique country and culture, rather than just a name of a place on a continent where I vaguely thought there was mile upon mile of sameness.
Eight years after I last saw this friend, I took my first trip to Africa and began to fall in love with the people, the culture, the diversity of the various countries I visited. But still I had never made it to Ethiopia. That took nearly another eight years.
My Ethiopian friends tell me now, however, that it didn’t take me quite as long as I thought. Proudly declaring that they have “13 months of sunshine,” Ethiopia’s calendar runs separately of the calendar I have always known. This past September, the country celebrated the millennium. The typical jokes they receive about running very late are countered with a reminder that we should be very glad to know that in Ethiopia we are 7 years and 9 months younger than usual.
Using this same logic, we figured out that since my first visit to Africa occurred when I went to Tanzania in 2001, and it is right now 2000 in Ethiopia … well, my first country to visit in Africa was Ethiopia! Are you sufficiently confused?
Among the Ethiopian people you find a wonderful range of skin tones, from a light yellow-brown to stunning purple-black. And everywhere you see big, open, friendly smiles that are in pleasant contrast with their soft-spoken, gentle, deferential demeanors.
Coming to Ethiopia after visiting and learning about many other countries and cultures over the last decade, I find myself using these others as a reference to describe what I found there. Soft-spoken voices, striking traditional clothing, spicy sauces and an emphasis on education that bear strong resemblance to India. Music, dance and language reminiscent of the Middle East. The wide white smiles of East and West Africa. Independently courting and marrying a spouse of one’s choosing (and often waiting till one’s late-20s to mid-30s to do so) like so much of the West -- and so UNlike almost all their neighbors.
All these comparisons served to help me at once contextualize this culture I was visiting and also appreciate how unique and “other” this beautiful country is – as indeed every country is, if we only can take the time to recognize it. Much as I have grown to enjoy the familiarity and understanding that comes with going back to places like Uganda and Tanzania and now Rwanda again and again, this trip also allowed me to remember how much fun it is to experience a new place as well.
English is quite widespread in Ethiopia, which I find extremely impressive. The Ethiopian alphabet is a series of characters -- with the same roots as Arabic and Hebrew -- called Amharic. As I understood the description, the alphabet consists of twenty-something consonant-type starting sounds, each with seven possible vowel-type following sounds. Combined, these make up all the possible sounds of the language, so Amharic is entirely phonetic.
In the good schools, by seventh grade the students’ day is entirely in English. Which means that by 13 these children have learned not only a whole new alphabet, but an entirely different spelling and pronunciation system. Trying to fill my head with Kinyarwanda at the moment, I found that I could never really get past “salam” -- or “hello” -- in my Amharic lessons on this trip.
I did learn one other … well, not word exactly. I guess you’d say I learned one more sound. I remember traveling to India a few years ago and being a bit confused when I asked questions only to get a response of head-bobbing that was a sort of a cross between a US “no” and “so so,” accompanied by a verbal “yes.” After a few days I realized that this was how they nodded yes in India. I thought of this again during this past week in Ethiopia.
Within my first few hours there, the person to whom I was talking had a quick intake of breath. I paused for a moment because it was the kind of sound I often make when I’ve suddenly thought of something that I forgot to do. However, she seemed to be waiting for me to continue and so I did. Only to have her gasp similarly several times through the rest of the conversation, making me decide that she was having hiccups.
In a bit, I was conversing with someone else. Same thing. I would be sharing some detail only to have them respond with that sudden “hhhhp.” More hiccups? Next I overheard one side of a phone conversation and there it was again. And I finally realized that this is a sound of agreement. It’s a “right, I’m listening, I’m right there with you” sort of sound. Even once I figured this out though, it still caused me to pause at times, waiting for them to say something like “I forgot to turn the oven off!”
Another one of those funny language/interpretation differences right here in Rwanda is the word for no: oya. It is pronounced almost exactly like the US informal “oh yeah” — in other words, “yes.” It can get especially confusing among people who speak what I’ve decided to call Kinyarwenglish, which is fairly common due to the number of people who have returned to Rwanda after years in the US, Europe and neighboring English-speaking countries like Uganda and Kenya. Tone becomes essential in figuring out if they are agreeing or disagreeing.
Much as I enjoyed my time (and the people and the coffee and the food) in Ethiopia, I found myself looking forward to returning to Rwanda. Each time I travel somewhere and then return here once again it seems to help this feel a little more like home. My house is still empty, but as I write this I am sitting on the front veranda of my little house, looking out at the trees and flowers and shrubs of my own place, and the hills of Kigali stretching out beyond my gate. The air is pleasant and the view is beautiful and I’m happy to be here.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
three crazy days
I know, I know -- two posts in one week! The mind reels. But truly, the last 72 hours have been such a sequence of crazy, sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous events that I feel like I have to put them down on “paper”.
I will start back on Tuesday night, which as I mentioned before was my first night in my new house. What I did not mention before was what I managed to do during my first half hour in the house. I’m going to tell about it now because it seems to be the moment when the week started going, as Joe would say, all pear-shaped.
Because I don’t have most of my things at this point, I’m continually making due with not-quite-the-right-tool for various jobs. One thing I did not have (and needed) on Tuesday night was scissors. So I was using a knife to open some packaging. Some of you may be already starting to cringe as you see where this is going.
I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that I cut myself rather badly across one of my right-hand fingers. Unsure where to even go to see if I needed stitches, I washed it as thoroughly as I could and went in search of my little first aid kit. Remember that I had just hauled all my things over to the house and because I was only moving a few minutes away, I hadn’t bothered to pack with much of an organizational plan. Meaning that I really had no idea which bag I had thrown the first aid kit into.
So there I was trying not to bleed all over everything, having the use of only one hand, looking through every single suitcase, plastic bag, etc, in search of some antibiotic ointment and a few bandaids. I did eventually get myself bandaged and the mess cleaned up. Though I’m staying away from knives for a few days and now have a pair of scissors at home. (Let me pause here to say that after a couple of swollen, sore days, the finger is healing quite well now -- just so you’re not left wondering…)
Wednesday morning was humorous and slow as I tried to get ready for work still with only the use of my left hand. But otherwise it was uneventful. In the evening, I went to buy a surge protector/extension cable for my electric oven, since the plug couldn’t quite reach to the outlet. It will become evident in a bit how ironic the word “protector” is in the previous sentence.
I then spent a bit of time with Chantal making a list of Kinyarwanda words with their English translations. I’ve been wanting to do this since I arrived but finally got desperate enough to make it a priority when I moved into my house. You see, Baptiste, who I told you a little about previously, decided to join me at my new house when I moved. He helps around the house and garden a bit, but more importantly provides security since I live alone and travel frequently. Baptiste does not speak English, so we’re quite a funny pair at times. Since my learning of Kinyarwanda is driven by necessity my vocabulary is probably a bit funny at the moment – “rubbish” (umwanda, if you’re interested) was among the first words I learned.
Wednesday night I set about making dinner, excited to cook my first real meal in the house. Only to realize that the tomato paste I had bought required a can opener to get into it. And I don’t have a can opener. Now, I know cans can be opened with knives but we know my history with those at the moment, so I was reticent to try. But I also wanted to eat. So I stood there looking at the knife and at the tomato paste. Thankfully at that moment I was rescued by Baptiste (of course this whole knife thing does nothing to help his view of my kitchen abilities…) who opened the can effortlessly.
Thursday rolled around. I worked. I drove home. Baptiste was out running an errand so I parked the car outside the gate, got my key, opened the little door in the gate and opened the gate. This was my first time to do this by myself and I was very aware of how much amusement I was providing for the security guards across the street as I attempted to look nonchalant and experienced as I struggled through the process. Successfully got the gate open only to find that I had locked the keys inside the truck. Sheepishly, under the stares of those security guards, I wrestled the gate closed again.
Thankfully, my phone was not in the truck so I was able to ring a man called Samuel, who had a spare key, to come rescue me (I am borrowing a vehicle at the moment, since I won’t have one of my own until April). That is not a fun phone call to make though, especially when it is dinnertime for the person you’re calling.
Waiting for Samuel, I decided to work on dinner myself. “Why not test out my oven?” I thought, and got some toast ready to put under the grill. The instructions said to let the grill heat for 10 minutes before using it. During those 10 minutes, Samuel arrived. We visited outside for a few minutes, he unlocked the truck, and I pulled it inside the gate.
Walking back into the house, there was a funny smell. I walked into the kitchen to find smoke. Thinking it was just caused by using the oven for the first time, I opened the oven just to make sure there was nothing wrong. When I suddenly realized that the smoke wasn’t coming from the oven at all, but from the cord of the surge “protector”!! Quickly unplugging and moving things, we got the smoking cord out of the house, and miraculously there was almost no damage to anything else.
Friday (today) rolled around. About 10 minutes after I awoke, my phone started ringing. Barbara, with whom I work, had tried to come into the office early but was locked out -- due to a string of circumstances I won’t go into here. After my little episode last night I was hardly in a position to be upset about it, so threw on some clothes and headed out the door, trying to gesture to Baptiste that I wasn’t leaving for the day, but would be back momentarily. To the office I went, dropped off my key (the one that only works from the outside, if you recall…) and was back home again.
At lunchtime, I had arranged for someone to come to the house to look at something they're working on. Chantal was also meeting me there. Moments after arriving at the house, there was shouting in the street. It was a security guard from one of the houses a little ways down from me. Chantal translated that a child from that house was very ill and they had no transportation to the hospital.
We ran down to the house, where I met my first neighbor, Raffa. Her family is from Madagascar and thankfully she speaks English so we could quickly confer. Within a couple of minutes she and her small son were in my truck and we were headed to the hospital.
Raffa’s husband had been called from work and he was able to meet us there just a few minutes after we arrived. I left them there with their little son in a bed and the doctors talking with them and examining the child. I hope to stop by their house tonight to find out his status, so I will try to give an update soon.
Now I am finishing things up at the office before I head to Ethiopia tomorrow for a week. Next week I won’t be cooking, arranging the house, or driving, so maybe things will be a bit calmer. Incidentally, after my lunchtime experience today I know where to go if I ever need stitches.
I will start back on Tuesday night, which as I mentioned before was my first night in my new house. What I did not mention before was what I managed to do during my first half hour in the house. I’m going to tell about it now because it seems to be the moment when the week started going, as Joe would say, all pear-shaped.
Because I don’t have most of my things at this point, I’m continually making due with not-quite-the-right-tool for various jobs. One thing I did not have (and needed) on Tuesday night was scissors. So I was using a knife to open some packaging. Some of you may be already starting to cringe as you see where this is going.
I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that I cut myself rather badly across one of my right-hand fingers. Unsure where to even go to see if I needed stitches, I washed it as thoroughly as I could and went in search of my little first aid kit. Remember that I had just hauled all my things over to the house and because I was only moving a few minutes away, I hadn’t bothered to pack with much of an organizational plan. Meaning that I really had no idea which bag I had thrown the first aid kit into.
So there I was trying not to bleed all over everything, having the use of only one hand, looking through every single suitcase, plastic bag, etc, in search of some antibiotic ointment and a few bandaids. I did eventually get myself bandaged and the mess cleaned up. Though I’m staying away from knives for a few days and now have a pair of scissors at home. (Let me pause here to say that after a couple of swollen, sore days, the finger is healing quite well now -- just so you’re not left wondering…)
Wednesday morning was humorous and slow as I tried to get ready for work still with only the use of my left hand. But otherwise it was uneventful. In the evening, I went to buy a surge protector/extension cable for my electric oven, since the plug couldn’t quite reach to the outlet. It will become evident in a bit how ironic the word “protector” is in the previous sentence.
I then spent a bit of time with Chantal making a list of Kinyarwanda words with their English translations. I’ve been wanting to do this since I arrived but finally got desperate enough to make it a priority when I moved into my house. You see, Baptiste, who I told you a little about previously, decided to join me at my new house when I moved. He helps around the house and garden a bit, but more importantly provides security since I live alone and travel frequently. Baptiste does not speak English, so we’re quite a funny pair at times. Since my learning of Kinyarwanda is driven by necessity my vocabulary is probably a bit funny at the moment – “rubbish” (umwanda, if you’re interested) was among the first words I learned.
Wednesday night I set about making dinner, excited to cook my first real meal in the house. Only to realize that the tomato paste I had bought required a can opener to get into it. And I don’t have a can opener. Now, I know cans can be opened with knives but we know my history with those at the moment, so I was reticent to try. But I also wanted to eat. So I stood there looking at the knife and at the tomato paste. Thankfully at that moment I was rescued by Baptiste (of course this whole knife thing does nothing to help his view of my kitchen abilities…) who opened the can effortlessly.
Thursday rolled around. I worked. I drove home. Baptiste was out running an errand so I parked the car outside the gate, got my key, opened the little door in the gate and opened the gate. This was my first time to do this by myself and I was very aware of how much amusement I was providing for the security guards across the street as I attempted to look nonchalant and experienced as I struggled through the process. Successfully got the gate open only to find that I had locked the keys inside the truck. Sheepishly, under the stares of those security guards, I wrestled the gate closed again.
Thankfully, my phone was not in the truck so I was able to ring a man called Samuel, who had a spare key, to come rescue me (I am borrowing a vehicle at the moment, since I won’t have one of my own until April). That is not a fun phone call to make though, especially when it is dinnertime for the person you’re calling.
Waiting for Samuel, I decided to work on dinner myself. “Why not test out my oven?” I thought, and got some toast ready to put under the grill. The instructions said to let the grill heat for 10 minutes before using it. During those 10 minutes, Samuel arrived. We visited outside for a few minutes, he unlocked the truck, and I pulled it inside the gate.
Walking back into the house, there was a funny smell. I walked into the kitchen to find smoke. Thinking it was just caused by using the oven for the first time, I opened the oven just to make sure there was nothing wrong. When I suddenly realized that the smoke wasn’t coming from the oven at all, but from the cord of the surge “protector”!! Quickly unplugging and moving things, we got the smoking cord out of the house, and miraculously there was almost no damage to anything else.
Friday (today) rolled around. About 10 minutes after I awoke, my phone started ringing. Barbara, with whom I work, had tried to come into the office early but was locked out -- due to a string of circumstances I won’t go into here. After my little episode last night I was hardly in a position to be upset about it, so threw on some clothes and headed out the door, trying to gesture to Baptiste that I wasn’t leaving for the day, but would be back momentarily. To the office I went, dropped off my key (the one that only works from the outside, if you recall…) and was back home again.
At lunchtime, I had arranged for someone to come to the house to look at something they're working on. Chantal was also meeting me there. Moments after arriving at the house, there was shouting in the street. It was a security guard from one of the houses a little ways down from me. Chantal translated that a child from that house was very ill and they had no transportation to the hospital.
We ran down to the house, where I met my first neighbor, Raffa. Her family is from Madagascar and thankfully she speaks English so we could quickly confer. Within a couple of minutes she and her small son were in my truck and we were headed to the hospital.
Raffa’s husband had been called from work and he was able to meet us there just a few minutes after we arrived. I left them there with their little son in a bed and the doctors talking with them and examining the child. I hope to stop by their house tonight to find out his status, so I will try to give an update soon.
Now I am finishing things up at the office before I head to Ethiopia tomorrow for a week. Next week I won’t be cooking, arranging the house, or driving, so maybe things will be a bit calmer. Incidentally, after my lunchtime experience today I know where to go if I ever need stitches.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
presidents and houses and gas tanks
This photo doesn't have anything to do with this post, but I just loved the look on Arienne's face. At 18 months, she and Dorcas (in pink) are always very busy.
here a president…
Well, friends, I had intended to say hello again before now but I found myself without an internet connection for most of last week while I was visiting Uganda. Then I got back and was catching up on email so still no blogging for me. So here I am now, but some of my news is perhaps a little old.
You may have heard that on Tuesday, February 19, President George Bush was visiting Kigali, Rwanda. I had heard he was touring Africa, but hadn’t thought much about how it might have anything to do with me. What I didn’t realize is that in a country the size of Maryland, such a visit would affect everyone.
That morning, I got into work by the skin of my teeth before they closed the road outside the office in preparation for the motorcade from the airport to the U.S. Embassy. Mbanda, who I work with, was a couple of minutes behind me and not quite as fortunate. He was forced to take a bumpy detour to get to the office the back way.
I sat at my desk and watched out the window as dozens of Suburbans, Land Cruisers, press buses, police vans, trucks full of Rwandese soldiers and various other vehicles drove by. I tried to decide which one of them the President was most likely to be inside. The ones with flags? Too obvious? The procession drew quite a crowd, both inside the office and along the street.
I was flying to Uganda that evening, so headed home in the early afternoon to pack and prepare for my trip. I was supposed to meet the taxi at my office at 4:30 PM. I hadn’t thought to ask the President about his schedule when I made these plans. At 4, I decided to head to the office (usually a 5-minute drive) to check email one last time before flying out. Only to find that the road had been closed for the President’s return to the airport. The next half hour was a mini-adventure on a narrow, very rutted dirt road that I was sharing with entirely too many cars, not to mention swarms of people, all trying to go about their business without the use of the main road.
As a fan of “West Wing,” I knew all about Presidential motorcades (in the same way that I know all about medicine because of “ER” and all about how to take a case to trial from “Law & Order”…). But what they never showed on “West Wing” was what was happening on all the side streets and how it affected all the lives and schedules of the people who would usually be on that road.
…there a president
I did successfully make my flight to Uganda, where I spent a nice week with my regional team (we’re scattered across 7 countries so we’re not all in the same place very often) -- as well as Joe! I won’t go into the long explanation of why he was invited, but suffice to say it was wonderful for me to get to share a bit of Uganda with him. If I’m counting correctly, this was the sixth country we’ve met up in during the last year -- aren’t we quite the international pair?
On our last day in Uganda, Joe had joined some people for a little sightseeing and I was having a late lunch meeting with some of my team. Security had been heightened during the previous 24 hours as rumors of a visit from Uganda's President Museveni made the rounds of the hotel.
I headed down the steps from lunch just a few minutes ahead of the rest of my group only to be met by an entourage of about 50 people -- led by Museveni himself! It took me a moment to recognize him outside a photograph, and perhaps it wouldn’t have clicked if he hadn’t been looking very closely at me with an expression that said “how did you get there?” I’m fairly certain security was not supposed to let me down the steps just then and I’m fairly certain that the look on my face also said “how did I get here?”
It was an interesting moment.
home sweet (empty) home
I spent my first night in my new house last night! Because the floors are tile, the walls cement and the ceilings a bit high, I’ve been wandering around singing loudly and enjoying hearing it reverberate off everything. On the flip side, at the moment the only room I can successfully talk on the phone in is the bedroom, where the bed and my clothes absorb some of the echo.
Chantal helped me piece together a bed, some sheets, towels, pots and pans to last me until my own belongings arrive in mid-April. Since I bought my stove, refrigerator and washing machine on arrival, at least I can cook and wash clothes in the meantime. Yesterday I bought buckets and mops and rags and all the other things that aren’t very fun to spend money on, but which are sort of important nonetheless.
After being in a variety of hotels and temporary housing since I left Colorado, I keep having to remind myself that I’m finally home. That I likely won’t be packing all these things up and shifting them again for a good long while.
As I work at setting up my life here, I find myself often comparing and contrasting the experience with what it would be like had I just moved to another US town, rather than across the world. There are challenges: hunting all over town for a used, empty gas tank to buy for the stove so that I can trade in my “empty” for a full one. Making me realize how amazing it is that there’s just a line that comes into the house in the West without anyone having to think about where the gas is coming from or whether it’s getting low.
There are also benefits. The plumber was at the house fixing another issue yesterday when he noticed I needed a longer pipe for the washing machine and gave me a very reasonable price for which he could fix it for me. By lunchtime today it was fixed, and cost me exactly what he’d said it would. No setting up an appointment a week from now and giving me a 3-hour window of time in which they would show up, and then adding on various and sundry costs that somehow hadn’t been included in the estimate.
And while Mexican food, which I love, may be hard to come by here, mangoes and avocados the size of melons are not hard to come by. And I love those too.
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