"Fruit" salad

On Thanksgiving I taught Robert how to make fruit salad. He had never encountered the concept (“Where do I put the banana?” “In that bowl.” “But that bowl has the pineapple!”). Still, it was a big hit. When we returned from the day trekking chimpanzees, Robert was gone for the night but had laid out Rebecca’s dinner, including this artfully layered fruit salad of mango, pineapple, cucumber and carrot:

Is this what JFK had in mind when he came up with the Second Goal of Peace Corps?

The second goal of the Peace Corps is to u a better understanding of America and its peoplehos within the host country. Usually I fulfill this with casual conversation, sharing American food, or explaining pictures of Boston and home. Often, Rwandans ask me questions about how things are done in America, and I’m put in the position of distilling our massive and diverse culture into a neat answer that can be conveyed with my meager Kinyarwanda vocabulary.

I had the funniest conversation the other day with my counterpart and the head of my village. They asked me if men in America can take more than one wife, so I explained that they can’t do so at the same time but they can after a divorce, of which we have many (and likewise, women can take a second husband). And that some men, and some women, take girl/boyfriends despite being married, but that I think that happens in Rwanda too and usually it’s frowned upon in both cultures. They asked me if sometimes men might have kids with different women and therefore a few different families. They asked me who would get the kids so we got into court arbitration, child support, etc. I told them that there is a slight bias towards the mother getting the kids, and they seemed to think there would (or should?) be more men getting custody. I said usually a man (particularly athletes and rappers) who has children with several different women would rather find new women to have relations with than take care of the existing kids so usually the mothers get the kids.

I kid you not, the head of my village then said he wants to go to America some day and impregnate a woman. (Good luck dude, you’re a great village leader but with your middle-age paunch, your total lack of English and money you would not have so much game…)

Throughout the conversation, they kept asking my opinion on all of this and I kept navigating between keeping up my reputation as being “serious” and culturally appropriate while speaking for all of America on the topic with some semblance of nuance.

Rwanda book reviews: Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard

Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard is perhaps the worst book I have ever read, and I can confidently declare that it’s the worst book ever written about Rwanda. It combines terrible, stilted prose, one-dimensional characters and a flimsy illogical plot, topped off with the perpetuation of incorrect ethnic stereotypes and graphic, exploitative references to the genocide. It’s both tacky and offensive. At the same time, the author displays solid knowledge of Rwandan geography and culture.

The synopsis of the book calls to mind madlibs and will do a better job than I ever could in conveying how ridiculous the plot is:

Father Terry Dunn thought he’d seen everything on the mean streets of Detroit, but that was before he went on a little retreat to Rwanda to evade a tax-fraud indictment. Now the whiskey-drinking, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt-wearing padre is back trying to hustle up a score to help the little orphans of Rwanda. But the fund-raising gets complicated when a former tattletale cohort pops up on Terry’s tail. And then there’s the lovely Debbie Dewey. A freshly sprung ex-con turned stand-up comic, Debbie needs some fast cash, too, to settle an old score. Now they’re in together for a bigger payoff than either could finagle alone. After all, it makes sense (no, it doesn't - ed)…unless Father Terry is working on a con of his own.

Here are a few choice excerpts - by no means the worst the book has to offer:

Ethnic stereotypes
“Father” Terry, who’s pretending to be a priest to hide in Rwanda from charges of cigarette smuggling for the Detroit mob, is hearing confession. On page 3, A man tells him that the guy who murdered his family has come back.

Terry said, “Is the guy bigger than you are?” “No, he’s Hutu.”

Terry is sleeping with his housekeeper, but don't worry - he’s not really a priest anyway (his most priestly duty aside from hearing the occasional confession seems to be consuming imported whiskey, a tradition that is quit). On page 15 is the first of many unnecessary references to Terry’s housekeeper’s stump.

She brought the bottle of Scotch under her arm - actually, pressed between her slender body in a white undershirt and the stump of her arm, the left one, that had been severed just above the elbow. Chantelle seldom covered her stump. She said it told who she was, though anyone could look at her figure and see she was Tutsi.

Um.

African stereotypes and bad economics
Another scene from confession, page 2:

“Bless me, Fatha, for I have sin. Is a long time since I come here but is not my fault, you don’t have Confession always when you say. The sin I did, I stole a goat from close by Nyundo for my family to eat. My wife cook it en brochette and also in a stew with potatoes and peppers.”

Pretty savage English, huh? Also, any guy starving enough to steal a goat would not have the money to buy peppers.

Ah-fri-ca
Or so it’s called, on page 234 and again (!) on page 320.

The sex scene
In which Terry shacks up with Debbie, the private investigator who just got out of jail and is out to get back the money her ex-boyfriend conned from her. Debbie wants to be a stand-up comic, but is not remotely funny, although Terry thinks she is (p. 233 - “There was no question in his mind Debbie could be the right girl. Christ, look at her. And she was funny. How many girls were funny?”). To be generous, perhaps Leonard never intended her to actually be funny - it would add a little bit of sad complexity to her desperate, stupid character.

They left the lamp off but could see each other in the light from the hall, where the bathroom was. She said, “It’s been so long for me.” And said, “I know, it’s like riding a bike.”
Only a lot better. But Terry didn’t tell her that. He wasn’t a talker in bed.

So romantic! So cumbersome to read. Page 128 if you need more.

The prose
If anything in the book is more offensive than the ethnic stereotypes, it might be the prose the reader is forced to endure. On page 149 is a prime example:

Her cell phone, a faint sound coming from her handbag. Debbie got it out and for the next few minutes listened to a lawyer, a good friend of hers, answer a question she had left with his assistant two days ago. As she listened she said “Yeah?” a number of times. She said “Oh?” thinking oh no. She listened and said, “Oh,” a few more times. Listened again and said, “No, I’m outside, on Frank Murphy’s front steps,” and looked up at the building against a dead-pale sky. “I’m with a friend, a smuggler.” Had to explain that, then listened for more than a minute and said, “Get out of here. Really?....

It keeps going but it hurts to keep typing such drivel.

I think most offensive of all is that the reader’s supposed to buy the plot, which twists in turns in ways that are never remotely plausible but somehow predictable anyway. The greatest point of suspense in this “crime novel” is why it was ever published and how the hell it was able to print “New York Times Bestseller” across the front without being sued for false representation. Sad to say, I read all 350 pages and it’s still a mystery.

Got Jesus? This guy does

Virunga bus station, Kigali

Gorillas Hotel, Musanze: menu goofs

With reasonably priced ($5) and generously portioned pasta dishes and fantastic half-frozen chocolate mouse, Gorillas Hotel may be your best bet for non-Rwandan food in Musanze before 4pm (when Volcana starts serving pizza). The English side of the menu provides the laughs:

Unfortunately neither fish with crazy salad ($7) nor evil shrimps ($17) are in my budget so I can’t tell you if they’re any good. I can recommend the pasta with mushroom, ham and cheese.

Clubbing in Muhanga

This post is rated PG 13 for adult language and content.

Last night I went to a club in Rwanda’s second largest city, Muhanga (sometimes called Gitarama). There are sadly no pictures beyond the mental images permanently burned in my brain. After waiting 10 minutes for my change (cover: 1000 francs, or less than $2) and being felt up by the security guards, I entered the club. Impressively, it was a split level, so my companion and I retired to the second floor where I promptly spilled half a 1500 franc beer (aka very expensive) when I leaned on the rickety counter it was sitting on.

The upper level offered an excellent view of the place. Picture a dark and dingy split level club, decorated with eclectic posters (a basketball star, an action movie, Bob Marley). As is typical wherever there is a Rwandan bar with a TV and music, the music videos did not match the music that’s playing. On the upper dance floor were two guys taking advantage of all the empty space to find a happy medium between dancing and seizuring. On the lower level were lots of Rwandan men, but not a woman to be found, so the men were grinding on each other. And I do mean grinding as in crotch-to-leg contact (remember, kids, homosexuality doesn’t exist here).

Eventually more friends arrived and we moved to the lower level where the male in our party was subject to aforementioned male-on-male grinding. (“I think I might have felt his penis.” “If you think you felt it….you did feel it.”) About 3 Rwandan women eventually arrived, but it was still a mostly male affair. One guy we were dancing with offered to buy drinks, and in a classic Rwandan manner, brought the unopened bottle and bottle opener onto the dance floor so he could open the beer in front of me so I would know it wasn’t poisoned.

The music was a nice mix of danceable hip-hop and 2-year-old pop songs that were fantastically fun to sing along to. Despite the auspicious start (gropey security guards are always so charming) it was a fantastic night, topped off by the 3am discovery that my 5000 franc ($9) hotel had half-frozen water bottles in their fridge.

Happy Youth "Week"!

From outside the district office. It was quite a long week….

Toilefs

From The Petite Prince, Butare’s nicest hotel, where I was asked unexpectedly to attend a training for CHF/Higa Ubeho, the project I’m working under with AEE, my local Rwandan partner. Every public toilet in the hotel had a Toilefs sign.

Outfits of Umuganda

Umuganda presented an opportunity to photograph some of the clothing that makes its way from the West to second-hand shoppers in Rwanda. Here are some gems:

Above left, this guy laughed at me for not hoeing well, but he had figure skates on his sweatshirt.

Above right, Harry Potter would have had the hoe going on its own with a few simple incantations. But I’d put a lot of money on this guy never having read or seen Harry Potter.

I’m jealous of this sweet Ferrari shirt, below left as he cuts up cassava branches...

Above right, I wonder if the ladies in Norfolk appreciate the fantastic workout that comes from hoeing – great for your upper back and arms!

Allegedly, it keeps the mosquitoes away

For the record, I still woke up with a few bites.