Dirty grass

I felt like I was going insane yesterday. I was being told, by multiple colleagues and neighbors, that something totally normal and logical was completely unacceptable, nay, dirty.

I should have maybe seen it coming - but how could I have expected something so asinine? In retrospect, they were all trying to tell me that I was doing something wrong: my landlady when she barged in and weeded my yard and the 4-foot high hillsides to the south of my house, causing miniature mudslides and concerns about erosion, Robert when he found a boy to weed my yard although I’d told him I was waiting until closer to when my family would arrive, another woman who’d discussed working in my yard coming to pull the grass and weeds off my path without my permission, leaving me slipping, sliding and splattered in mud every time I went to the bathroom, and a few comments here and there about my grass.

That’s right: the root of my temporary madness was grass. Or rather, the root of my temporary madness was that multiple people were telling me, with the utmost conviction, something that was totally false in my worldview: my grass was unhygienic.

Apparently, what was growing in my yard was “unhygienic grass.” When my counterpart finally broached the subject directly with me, I asked about the grass over there up the hill, and he said it was “good grass.” What about the grass by the road? It didn’t matter, because I am in the village to teach about (among other things) good hygiene, and how could I tell people to wash their hands with soap after using the toilet and boil their drinking water if I had unhygienic grass in my yard?

(From my perspective, of course, how were people who don’t use soap to tell me my grass was dirty? The “good” grass at my office was more neat and manicured than my grass, but really? Good grass and bad grass? Dirty grass and clean grass?

I take a lot of care with my community reputation: I want to be viewed, in the Rwandan parlance, as a “serious” person. I’m careful to respect Rwandan cultural mores, not to drink in the village, usually to dress in skirts or wrap a sheet of igitenge fabric around my waist when I leave my yard. I regularly sweep my house and dress in clean clothes. So being told that I was unclean, unhygienic, especially by people who don’t boil their drinking water or wash their hands with soap, was a pretty big affront.

Eventually, after angrily shoving some cuttings from a flowery bush into my naked and eroding hillside, I came around and accepted what I’d been told. Just as I think it’s crazy for people who don’t wash their hands with soap to tell me I’m unclean for having grass in my yard, I am losing credibility with them when I try to teach about proper handwashing because they believe my yard is unclean. So I’ve accepted the irrational, counterfactual cultural belief and submitted to it: negotiating “good grass” to be planted in the front yard, planting “good” grass on the paths and stairs, and hiring the rogue path-weeding lady to turn most of the rest of the yard into hills for planting (it’s been a long time coming).

Preparing for the office Christmas party

"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:

Hannukah in Rwanda

I’ve been celebrating Hannukah here in Kinihira, using the opportunity to do a little cross-cultural sharing with my friends and colleagues.

Sunday I taught my adopted family dreidl with dried beans. It was a big hit, from age 5-50! I’m planning to pass out a few dreidls now that the holiday is over; my dream is that in a few years some Jewish tourist will pass through the village and wonder why there are kids sitting on the side of the road playing dreidl in the middle of August.

On Monday my coworkers and I did a potluck dinner. I made applesauce, taught Rebecca’s houseboy how to make latkes (potato and white sweet potato), and we coupled these with a few Rwandan dishes. I explained the origin of the holiday, lit the candles, and then they dug in. I’m happy to say that there was not a single latke left and one notoriously picky coworker even asked for the recipe! We played dreidl with desert.

I’ll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about matches in Rwanda. Matches here absolutely suck. They are far inferior even to those paper matchbooks that are impossible to use: basically rolled pieces of paper with tips that often fly off when you strike them, lit or unlit. Lit tips make a bit of a fire hazard and really hurt when they stick to your finger (which you must use to press the tip against the striking surface because the matches are too feeble to strike without this).

On the first night of Hannukah I went through about 12 matches before I got one to light; I was starting to think I’d need a Hannukah miracle to get the menorah going. The next day, running low, I set off to buy another book of matches, in search of a different brand. The first store I went into had “S.H.U.M.U.K.” matches - no joke! However they could not break my 500 franc note for the 15 franc matchbox. I went to another store, bought a pack of Sunny matches there (brand diversity = insurance against cold dinner), and then returned to the first store with change so that I could light my menorah with Shumuk matches (which were slightly more cooperative than the last brand I tried).

Thanksgiving in Rwanda

I managed to turn a day of feasting into a full week here, so I think I’ve done pretty well for myself.

On Tuesday I “catered” a party for GACP’s forest research staff: pizza, bean dip and guac, pudding. We (the researcher Rebecca and I) explained that America is a nation of immigrants who’ve brought their food with them, creating a diverse culinary scene including Italian pizza and Mexican bean dip and guac and English (sort of) pudding. In keeping with the Rwandan love affair with beans, the bean dip was the biggest hit. I think they enjoyed beans that had a little more going on than just being boiled to death.

Wednesday we had a little vegetarian Thanksgiving in the village. I taught Rebecca’s house boy how to make garlic mashed potatoes and stuffing in a frying pan, and talked about the origins of Thanksgiving. When we went around the table to say what we're thankful for, he said "for the delicious food Tuesday and Wednesday."

Thursday I got together with my Peace Corps posse in Musanze and we made a delicious instant Thanksgiving from packages - canned cranberry jelly (also good on muffins the next day, FYI), stove top stuffing with instant turkey gravy and canned chicken, and heavenly Betty Crocker sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows. Friday I stuffed myself until I felt sick at an expat Thanksgiving that included turkeys freshly killed on Wednesday! And Saturday my boss, Rebecca and I had a girls’ night at a restaurant in Gisenyi. Topics of conversation included the difficulties of finding and managing housegirls/boys and email identity theft.

There was also shopping - a quick Black Friday trip to the Musanze market (I got the cutest aprons! $.12 each!) and today while waiting for an appointment I found some nice clothes in the Gisenyi market. Bet you can’t get $11 DKNY jeans in the US, even on Black Sunday (alas if I were a different size DKNY could have been Diesel for $11).

So have no fear, I’ve already started working on my holiday weight gain and consumerist binge, even in Rwanda.

I want to say how thankful I am for my amazingly supportive family and friends from home who spoil me rotten, my wonderful friends and colleagues here, and for being born into such incredible privilege in America.

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.

An atypical day in the life

I had to see the doctor Thursday in Kigali, so I left Kinihira Wednesday morning to run some errands in Gisenyi in preparation for moving next week. I traveled to Gisenyi in 2 overcrowded taxi-vans (matatus), which was relatively comfortable compared to the alternative: the puke-green bus of death.

In amongst arranging to buy some furniture I’d been eying for a while (a cushioned chair and a few coffee tables, one of which will be a book shelf on the cheap), I visited the post office. I got my parents’ Halloween package, as anticipated, but there was no sign of my absentee ballot - way to go MA! However, there were about 14 newly delivered mailbags, so I asked if I could wait and see if there was anything more for me.

Although they weren’t doing anything else, it took the post office employees 30 minutes to get around to opening the mailbags. I occupied with fresh copies of the New Yorker, courtesy of my grandparents, then turned to watch as they dumped the bags unceremoniously onto the floor with painstaking slowness. The bags themselves were quite interesting: they originally came from France, with a few from Great Britain and the US, but seem to have been appropriated by the Rwandan Posita. There was still no sign of the absentee ballot, but my parents’ Thanksgiving package had made it to Rwanda in about 16 days - a record! The post office workers kindly offered me a French mailbag so that I could carry both packages home, and allowed me to trade it for an American one (which has a neat little Velcro closure at the top). After a 30 minute climb uphill I made it home with the USPS sack of packages slung Santa Claus like over my shoulder just as it started to rain. Phew!

At dusk I went and picked up the remainder of my furniture and as I was going to buy cushions in the market had to fend off a teenaged ass-grabber with a slap. But the excitement was only just beginning.

That evening I went to my old boss’s new mansion for dinner. Much to my surprise I found a new used car in the driveway! Papa Rene, as he is called, is a proud member of Rwanda’s NGO-funded upper-middle class. Although I was 45 minutes late, I still waited over 20 minutes for he and his wife to come home from work, which I occupied with phone calls to friends, wowing the housegirls with my rapid English, and by playing with the cutest 3-year-old on earth, Glory. When Papa Rene arrived he informed me that before dinner they’d be visiting his family in Brasserie (where the brewery is, 6km away) and said “I think we can move together,” indicating that I was to join them in the car.

Much to my surprise his wife (who is about 26 and the mother of 3, the oldest of whom is 8) got into the drivers’ seat. “Does Mama Rene know how to drive?” I asked. “She knows buhoro buhoro,” said my boss. If you don’t recall, buhoro buhoro means slowly by slowly and is the phrase I use to describe my Kinyarwanda abilities. Did I mention it was dark out? Needless to say I found the only working seatbelt in the backseat, buckeled up, and made the 3-year-old who preferred to tumble all over the backseat sit on my lap where I could keep a firm grip on her.

The car stalled 5 times as she backed it out of the gold-painted gate and up the steep street, and another time as she attempted to pull into traffic. With Papa Rene calmly coaching his wife in Kinyarwanda, we made it out of Gisenyi town and turned up the hilly and curvey road to Brasserie. For the next 6km I texted goodbyes to a few friends as Mama Rene slowly wound her way to our final destination, the outer tires running off the road only a few times and the breaks being slammed once as she got scared by oncoming headlights, though they were safely on the opposite side of the road.

We finally arrived at the family’s house and I unclenched my fingers and texted news of my ongoing existence to a friend. At the family’s house, I introduced myself, showing off my Kinyarwanda, and then accepted a Fanta and mostly tuned out the conversation in favor of children-watching. Papa Rene’s 3-year-old was playing with her cousin, an 18-month old, precariously feeding him orange Fanta straight from the bottle as mothers sometimes do to their young children. Note that mothers usually have a lot more arm strength and coordination and do not attempt this act over their shoulders. Miraculously she didn’t’ spill any before her mother stepped in with a plastic mug. The 18-month-old was playing with a plastic toy truck, which was marked UN in large letters, I kid you not.

After the Fantas were empty and family business was concluded and a bag of eggs was given to my boss’s family (they gave it to the tired 3-year-old to carry, and I carried her) we returned to the car. I was dismayed but not surprised to see the tired and slightly frustrated Mama Rene slip back into the driver’s seat for the trip back to Gisenyi.

When we’d safely made it back inside their gate and Mama Rene had almost but not quite hit the side of the house as she brought the car to a stop, Papa Rene turned around and said “You see, Agatesi, she knows!” “Yes, she knows!” I agreed. 8 months in Rwanda have at least taught me to lie as well as Rwandans.

Dinner was delicious and thankfully it was my boss who drove me home, otherwise it might have ended up all over the new-used backseat of the car.

As a postscript, today I found my ballot in the Peace Corps office in Kigali, shipped by UPS express. The address was my Gisenyi PO and didn’t mention that I’m a PCV so I have no idea how it found its way to the PC office, but I guess MA is no longer as delinquent as I thought. I’d already voted by email, though.

Don't use Facebook during working hours!

From the newspaper Umusanzu, an article about why Facebook should not be used during working hours. I particularly like the partially photoshopped graphic.

Rwandan etiquette

There are lots of things Rwandans do and say that seem rude when considered in an American cultural context:

- To get someone’s attention, say that of a waiter, a passerby in the street, or a potential customer in the market, many Rwandans make a hissing noise. It’s alarmingly effective.
- There is no word for “please” in Kinyarwanda. The word for “thank you,” murakoze, translates literally as “you have just done (done well).”
- There is no word for “excuse me” either. When people want to get by, they push you out of the way, usually gently.
- Picking noses and shooting snot rockets onto the ground are common occurrences.
- So is picking one’s earwax in public. Two recent experiences: the woman on my bus last month who bought a lollypop, picked her ear with the end of the stick, and then unwrapped it and ate it, and the guy who walked into the milk bar where I was eating a sambusa and wished me “Muryoherwe” (bon appetite) as he twisted a cotton swab in his ear - and then reached over to shake my hand.
- Upon meeting someone new, a Rwandan immediately asks “Are you married?” and “How many children do you have?”
- It’s also common to ask a near-stranger if they are looking for a husband. It’s not just men who ask me this, but women as well.
- Discussing weight is in no way taboo – I’ve been in multiple conversations where Rwandans have talked about each other’s weight, particularly in the context of “so-and-so used to be skinny before you were married.”
- One colleague once told me “your face is very nice without glasses but I don’t like it when you wear your glasses.”
- Another asked me what medicines I take at home.
- Asking how much money somebody makes isn’t taboo either.
- As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s quite common to answer one’s phone during a meeting, church, or anywhere else, and proceed to talk on it in hushed tones without excusing oneself.
- Rwandans have no issues with describing people by their skin color (be it Muzungu vs. Rwandan or a distinction between “brown” and “black” Rwandans).
- Rwandans throw food on the floor of their homes and others’ homes. Using a toothpick? Just spit out the food you’ve dislodged! Throw the toothpick on the floor too. This makes more sense when you realize how often they (or their houseboys) clean the floors, but it sure is off-putting to observe.
- Waiting on a Rwandan? Call to ask when they will arrive, and they’ll tell you a few minutes. Always, regardless of whether they’re actually going to be an hour or two late. It would be rude for them to say anything but Ndaje, ndaje “I’m coming, I’m coming,” even if they haven’t left yet.

This all takes some getting used to, but it’s normal here to be nosy about somebody’s marital status, and comments about physical appearance and skin color don’t carry the same weight as they would in the US.

On the other hand, there’s a number of ways in which Rwandans might find our culture quite rude. They greet everyone, while we hardly ever talk to strangers we pass in the street. Greetings often extend to discussing marital status, what one does, etc., so it’s a nice way to get to know the people I pass every day and the shopkeepers I’ve arbitrarily chosen to frequent. Rwandans also love giving gifts and will usually share food with guests. They also accompany guests to the front gate and sometimes halfway down the street - an American who stopped at the door when seeing guests out would be viewed as rude. There is a very nice tradition of randomly giving small gifts - buying a coworker or neighbor ears of corn or a bunch of bananas, for example.

Although sometimes I am frustrated by what might be considered rude behavior, it helps to take a step back and remember the cultural context. Except when I’m told I’m getting fat - it may be a Rwandan compliment, but that’s just not fun to hear.

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.

Musical chairs

At our end-of-training goodbye party for our (amazing, fantastic, incredible) Kinyarwanda teachers, we played musical chairs. All I can say is, a Rwandan could easily become the adult champion of competitive musical chairs. Watch out for the hip check, and when there’s a tie, it’s a battle of strength for who wins the chair.

Cross cultural hot dog issues

In honor of our last day of Kinyarwanda class, I present a lesson in cross cultural confusion. A few weeks ago, we were going over the imperfect tense by discussing what we used to do in America. The conversation inevitably turned to food.

“In America, I used to eat ice cream,” I said. My classmate said “In America, I used to eat hot dogs.”

Our teacher reacted with great surprise, which in America Rwandan means an explanation like “aaaaaay!”

“I know, some people find them gross, but I love them,” said my classmate.

“They eat them in the Congo, but Rwandans don’t do that, it’s wrong here,” said our teacher.

It was then that we realized he thought we were discussing eating actual dogs.