Impromptu photo taken in the Kiziba Refugee Camp WFP warehouse.
Kiziba Refugee Camp.
View of Lac Kivu taken from the side of the road on the way up to Kiziba Refugee Camp.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Trip to Kiziba
Impromptu photo taken in the Kiziba Refugee Camp WFP warehouse.View of Lac Kivu taken from the side of the road on the way up to Kiziba Refugee Camp.
Loving Rwanda
Here’s a run-down of what I’ve been up to lately:
Friday after work my colleague took me to the Butare market to buy fabric, and then to the tailor. She also convinced me that I needed some dressier sandals to go with my new African outfits. What you wear on your feet is definitely noticed in Rwanda, and apparently my beloved hiking sandals don’t always make the cut.
Saturday I joined some friends on a trip to Gatagara, where we toured a pottery studio and bought some beautiful hand-made dishes. On our way back to Butare we stopped by what used to be the Mwami’s palace in Nyanza to take a look. Then, after a swim back in Butare, we cooked and feasted on delicious dal and lemon rice. Although I will admit that it wasn’t on par with the food you can get at my friend Garry’s Indian restaurant in Kigali (for anyone who will be in Kigali, you have to eat at Indian Khazana in Kiyovu it is SO good), we were pretty happy with what we put together.
Sunday afternoon I left with my colleagues (Leopold, a Field Monitor, and Mohammed, a chauffeur) for Kibuye. Forty minutes up a dirt road, on an isolated hill overlooking the volcanic islands of Lac Kivu, are over 17,000 Congolese refugees living in Kiziba Refugee Camp. We wanted to be there early Monday morning to start the week-long distribution of WFP food to all the refugees.
We stayed at a simple guesthouse in Kibuye, just behind a church that now doubles as a memorial for the almost 12,000 Tutsis who were massacred there in 1994. The view from my room on the second floor was gorgeous, and Leopold, well prepared with his kettle and food supply, put out tea and breakfast on the balcony each morning.
The Land Cruiser was full on the way up, as we give a ride to the government officials that help manage the distribution. I learned numerous Rwandan jokes as we chatted non-stop the whole way in interchanging French, Kinyarwanda, and English. Through translation and explanation of the jokes I was also to understand a lot more about Rwandan culture, especially as it relates to sex and relationships. I’ll save that for another post.
The refugees were happy because they were receiving rice this time, which they prefer over the maize meal WFP often gives. I was able to have some interesting conversations with people, and got a tour of the camp. Interestingly enough, in some ways the refugees are better off than people in the surrounding hills, due to the food rations they receive. At Kiziba’s nutrition centre, I met a woman who showed me her starving 8-month-old baby, with legs as thin as my fingers. She is not a refugee, but came from a nearby village to benefit from the therapeutic feeding at the centre.
Mohammed and I dropped off Leopold at the camp Tuesday, before we headed back to Butare so I could continue my work there. On the way we stopped to look at some waterfalls, and a boy told us the spot’s story. Before the water came, and there was just the cliff, a man saw bees down below, and got some others to lower him down on a rope so that he could find honey. He started eating the honey while hanging on the rope, and his friends asked why aren’t you bringing some honey up for us. The man replied, when you come down here and get stung by all the bees you can eat some too. The others explained that they were doing their part by holding the rope so he should share the honey. He refused, so they dropped the rope and he fell to his death. The moral of the story being, don’t be greedy.
I automatically greeted a woman who had been working on the roadside, and she exclaimed to Mohammed that she was so happy because she had never met or touched an umuzungu before. She wanted me to take a photo of her, and when I offered to get a picture of us together she was ecstatic. When I showed her the photo on the digital camera, she fell over laughing. The others watching made us climb back over the fence because they were worried we would fall over the edge the way she was carrying on.
We made it back to Butare safely, where I had to laugh to myself when I read a woman’s t-shirt, which she herself probably could not read: “It’s not a bald spot. It’s a solar panel for a sex machine.”
Friday after work my colleague took me to the Butare market to buy fabric, and then to the tailor. She also convinced me that I needed some dressier sandals to go with my new African outfits. What you wear on your feet is definitely noticed in Rwanda, and apparently my beloved hiking sandals don’t always make the cut.
Saturday I joined some friends on a trip to Gatagara, where we toured a pottery studio and bought some beautiful hand-made dishes. On our way back to Butare we stopped by what used to be the Mwami’s palace in Nyanza to take a look. Then, after a swim back in Butare, we cooked and feasted on delicious dal and lemon rice. Although I will admit that it wasn’t on par with the food you can get at my friend Garry’s Indian restaurant in Kigali (for anyone who will be in Kigali, you have to eat at Indian Khazana in Kiyovu it is SO good), we were pretty happy with what we put together.
Sunday afternoon I left with my colleagues (Leopold, a Field Monitor, and Mohammed, a chauffeur) for Kibuye. Forty minutes up a dirt road, on an isolated hill overlooking the volcanic islands of Lac Kivu, are over 17,000 Congolese refugees living in Kiziba Refugee Camp. We wanted to be there early Monday morning to start the week-long distribution of WFP food to all the refugees.
We stayed at a simple guesthouse in Kibuye, just behind a church that now doubles as a memorial for the almost 12,000 Tutsis who were massacred there in 1994. The view from my room on the second floor was gorgeous, and Leopold, well prepared with his kettle and food supply, put out tea and breakfast on the balcony each morning.
The Land Cruiser was full on the way up, as we give a ride to the government officials that help manage the distribution. I learned numerous Rwandan jokes as we chatted non-stop the whole way in interchanging French, Kinyarwanda, and English. Through translation and explanation of the jokes I was also to understand a lot more about Rwandan culture, especially as it relates to sex and relationships. I’ll save that for another post.
The refugees were happy because they were receiving rice this time, which they prefer over the maize meal WFP often gives. I was able to have some interesting conversations with people, and got a tour of the camp. Interestingly enough, in some ways the refugees are better off than people in the surrounding hills, due to the food rations they receive. At Kiziba’s nutrition centre, I met a woman who showed me her starving 8-month-old baby, with legs as thin as my fingers. She is not a refugee, but came from a nearby village to benefit from the therapeutic feeding at the centre.
Mohammed and I dropped off Leopold at the camp Tuesday, before we headed back to Butare so I could continue my work there. On the way we stopped to look at some waterfalls, and a boy told us the spot’s story. Before the water came, and there was just the cliff, a man saw bees down below, and got some others to lower him down on a rope so that he could find honey. He started eating the honey while hanging on the rope, and his friends asked why aren’t you bringing some honey up for us. The man replied, when you come down here and get stung by all the bees you can eat some too. The others explained that they were doing their part by holding the rope so he should share the honey. He refused, so they dropped the rope and he fell to his death. The moral of the story being, don’t be greedy.
I automatically greeted a woman who had been working on the roadside, and she exclaimed to Mohammed that she was so happy because she had never met or touched an umuzungu before. She wanted me to take a photo of her, and when I offered to get a picture of us together she was ecstatic. When I showed her the photo on the digital camera, she fell over laughing. The others watching made us climb back over the fence because they were worried we would fall over the edge the way she was carrying on.
We made it back to Butare safely, where I had to laugh to myself when I read a woman’s t-shirt, which she herself probably could not read: “It’s not a bald spot. It’s a solar panel for a sex machine.”
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