Home visits, being scared, Genocide Memorial, general observations, and pictures:

This is going to be a lonnng post. But really interesting stuff…(I think)…Brace yourselves.

Some general observations about Rwanda and or life:
• Women and men→ There seems to be little sexism wrt working and education here. If anything, the women work much harder than men and succeed more than men. OK true-this is a huge generalization, but it seems like the men are lazy and just lay around the street, whereas women try to find work and succeed in school. In addition, many women hold very high, powerful jobs here. One reason this could be is that most of the women are single mothers and therefore must work in order to take care of their families. By going on home visits with the counselors, I see that the vast majority (if not all) of the homes are single-mother. Typically the mother has at least five kids and she takes care of them all. What I have learned is that the father of their babies leaves the woman once he learns the mother is HIV + (many times he is not infected), so the woman is left to raise her children all alone as well as manage her own illness and that of her children.
• I touched on this issue in my last post, but something I am having a hard time with is the hired help! Nearly every family has a cook, security guard, and usually a third or fourth person to help. But I really bad for these people, they are typically really poor and uneducated and have no families. The families for whom they work hardly even acknowledge their presence! It makes me so sad…but I do think this is a reality of many cultures—not just Rwandese—and actually is good in a lot of ways because it provides jobs for people (and a home and food). But it is definitely taking a little bit of getting used to…something else that is hard for me is how many beggars there are on the street--so many of them have scars from the genocide--whether missing legs, arms, or a substantial welt in their face--but the hard thing for me is to know who to help and what to do. As many of you know...I have a hard time saying no to people...but its becoming a problem here becauase there are so many people who need the help and i want to give to everyone but of course I can't do that because I don't have the resources-but it's sad and different than other beggars you would fine on the streets of any city because I know what they have been through...that may have made no sense..just rambling about it--if you have any advice about what I can do, let me know.
• Related to above bullet—LEVEL OF UNEMPLOYMENT!!! This is bad. Really bad! I believe Rwanda is the second most densely populated country in the world—it is a tiny place (you can get to nearly any border in around 2 hours) and has over eight million inhabitants. There are just not enough jobs for people—this forces many women, for example, to turn to prostitution because there is no other option. Because of this level of unemployment, many families don’t eat every day of the week. My dad was telling me about the book Collapsed (Jared Diamond) and that he attributes much of what happened in the past fifty years in Rwanda to this issue—too many people for not enough land. It really is an interesting theory…
• Last little note--Something I am learning about myself is that I really want to work with babies in the future—I am so drawn to them it really feels like some sort of calling for me (not to sound too cheesy…. which I know I do…)

Alright—now some stories and more thoughts about the last two days.
• Home visit 1: So I began going on home visits on Wednesday and Thursday. A Home visit is when a counselor from the clinic goes to the house of one of the patients to talk with them—the idea is that it makes him/her feel more comfortable talking in the privacy of his/her own home. On Wednesday we went to the home of an orphan who is 14 years old. Her parents died of AIDS in 2000 so her 19-year-old sister and she have been living on their own since then. The older sister is not infected with HIV, but the younger sister is. The story is sad because the older sister (19 years old, has a baby, she looks like she is 35, they age so fast) refuses to help pay for her sister’s schooling because she knows her sister is infected and since she is going to die anyway, sees no point in sending her to school. Money, of course, is an issue. The older sister is unemployed and is a prostitute. Their home was located in the outskirts of Kigali, on a mountain called Kigali Mountain. We hiked up the mountain and found their home among many others—it was made entirely of clay and the smell was unbearable—I think water and thus bathing is an issue for them. But the good thing that came out of that visit is we learned that the younger sister is very motivated to go to school and she really appreciates the family programs the clinic offers (every Sunday there is a 3 hour session for kids with HIV to hang out together and talk about what it is like to live with HIV).
• Home visit numero 2—This visit was very sad. I’m going to share with you all this woman’s story-but you should know it is especially horrific. We went to visit a mother of three (+ one adopted son). She was a teacher. In 2003, she was kidnapped from a home where she taught (local teachers are paid by the government to go to homes and teach families in poor areas) and taken to this mountain far away from her home. There were four people involved in the kidnapping—three men and one woman. The men tied her up, covered her eyes, and raped her many times. The woman poured gasoline inside of her. She was tortured further. She was rescued three days later when her daughter (13 years old at the time) told authorities that her mother was missing. She was in the hospital for half a year. As a result, this woman is deeply traumatized. It was so sad seeing her and knowing what she had endured. She is a smart woman and a very good mother-but has it so hard. The story is even worse, though. Not only did she become infected with HIV as a result of the rape but also she was impregnated, and now is raising the baby, who is also HIV positive. I asked her whether it was hard looking at her baby and loving her baby when she knows she is the product of rape—she said it is extremely difficult for her because she is reminded every single day of what happened. I can't even imagine how it would be for that baby to grow up, knowing that half of her is the man who raped her mother. The eldest child, a daughter, resents her mother for having HIV and doesn’t want to be a part of the family—she has considered turning to prostitution. Fortunately, she has a good relationship with the counselors at WE-ACTx and they continue to encourage her to stay in school and get an education so she can do something with her life. Below are some pictures of where they lived and the family. Hopefully they worked....




• For some reason, I was scared going on this second home visit. We went to a remote area, far from the city. We had to walk a long distance to get to her house. There were so many people on the street—and for these people, seeing a Mazungo (white person) is very rare, especially in the remote area in which they live. So being a white young woman is a little bit intimidating because of all of the attention I recieve. It is sweet when the little kids follow you around shouting mazungo!, but it scares me when drunk men in groups yell it and say things I don’t understand in Kinyarwanda (the language spoken here). Also, I think I was even more on edge at the time because I had just learned about the story of the woman I just told you about—and knew that it had happened only three years ago. Most of the major crimes that occurred happened around 1994 and so that was a long time ago. But the fact that such a brutal attack occurred relatively recently made me was especially nervous. In addition, we were so far away from any city or any policemen. I think the reason the country is so safe today is that the police force and army is so tough—they all carry machine guns and follow a “shoot to kill” policy for many crimes. But when they are not around…people are freer to act out. Obviously, everything was more than okay, but I am going to need to get over this nervousness because I will be going on many more of these home visits!


• Genocide Memorial—After the second home visit, Bertin, the counselor, and I went to the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. It was a very well done museum in that it was honest, unbiased, and uncensored. A holocaust survivor helped with the design of the museum and in a way it reminded me of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I will talk about some of the things that stood out for me. First, in a video they showed, they interviewed a man who survived the genocide. Something I have always wondered is how many people were actually involved in the killings—the books I have read have been vague when describing it, saying “nearly every Hutu was involved in the killings…” but how could they know? What does “nearly every” even mean? So anyway-back to this interview. The man said that 5% of Hutus helped, 5% did nothing, and 90% were involved with the killings. These numbers shocked me. Could it be true? After the museum I talked with Joy and we actually went and did the math—to kill one million people in 100 days (1/8 of total population of Rwanda) it would require many many people. Also, Joy was telling me that it was the point of the masterminds to involve everyone (many times they threatened you or your family with death if you did not participate). If everyone were involved, it would be nearly impossible for them all to be punished after the genocide. In addition, what they have learned through the local Gacaca courts is that on average, a group of 4-6 people killed one individual. So the numbers did seem to be somewhat true. I really could not believe it. This means that most of these people walk around on the streets before my eyes every day. Really, I don’t know what to make of the reconciliation that goes on here every day. It is like a part of their lives and they accept it—I don’t think I would ever be able to do this. It would be like my relatives who survived the holocaust to move to Germany and forgive the Nazis—there is no part of me that would be able to do that. I’m kind of going off on a tangent here…I will get back to the museum shortly...first I am going to tell you about the Gacaca courts. I mentioned them a few days ago—but they are a very old way of dealing with disputes in Rwanda. They were reinstated to deal with the prisons that were filled with people from the genocide. The problem was that it was relatively easy to go to jail because of crimes committed during genocide—basically one went to jail if someone accused him. The problem was—there was not necessarily any evidence to support accusations and many grudges, jealousies, etc. played a part. The jails were so filled that most of the people accused would spend a lifetime in prison before ever making it to trial. To deal with this problem, the government decided to reinstate the Gacaca courts. So here is how they work—the country is divided into many small districts around where you live. A panel of judges is selected (they are usually very trusted people who live around you) and they decide on a day every week that you will meet. Usually it is on Sunday afternoons. For the past few years these trials happen once a week and last a few hours long. Witnesses, survivors, and neighbors give testimony to determine the truth. Like I said earlier, those who admit to their crimes and describe them and show where the bodies were buried-are given much lesser sentences than those who do not admit to them. Joy thinks that the Gacaca courts have worked very well—she even went to the house of a neighbor Hutu who had been freed from jail. She tells me that this is really the only way they can move on when nearly the entire population was involved in the genocide. It was like mob psychology. I guess the point of the courts and letting some people free is that they will suffer more living next to families that they destroyed than they will living in jail where they never have to deal with the consequences of their actions. This point I can somewhat understand. But this leads me back to the museum…because the next thing I wanted to describe was what a confession at Gacaca court is like. This video at the musem showed a man confessing to his crimes-- he described in gory detail the murders he committed. He was rude and didn’t even seem remorseful for what he did! The judges ask questions like-how many children did you kill—he had killed three. They didn’t say what happened to that man….but I pray that he is in jail. Something else that surprised me was seeing the photographs of the masterminds of the genocide. They looked like absolutely normal human beings—I guess I had somehow imagined them looking like ravaging monsters. Instead they were wealthy, educated men. The last thing that was especially powerful for me at the museum was a quotation from a thirteen-year-old boy who survived the massacre—“In my search for a hideout, I found Jerome, his legs cut off. I could not leave him in this state. I tried to lift up Jerome so that we could leave together, but the car of the commune stopped near me. It was full of machetes and other instruments of death. I lay Jerome down on the ground and ran because a man got out of the burgomaster’s car to kill me. He finished Jerome off. I saw this when I looked back to see if anyone had followed me. I will never forget the way Jerome’s face was filled with desperation. Whenever I think about it, I cry all day long.”

I have much more that I want to write, but I will save it for the next post. I’m glad you are reading this as it is a great way for me to share with you all what it is like for me here. Thank you for all your kind words to me in posts and emails—but I want you to understand that the frustrating reality is that I am gaining so much more out of this experience than I think I am giving back while I am here. I just hope I can find my niche here where I can really be of help. I am going to meet with a director of an orphanage in Kigali who is a pretty incredible guy—he was a Hutu, and one of the few individuals to protect families and children during the genocide. I would love to spend time working at the orphanage during my weeks here. Alright, I’m truly done. MIS YOU ALL!!!