Message from Rwanda

Hello to all my email contacts! Apologies if this is getting sent
accidentally to anyone but I have such a long list (and internet
speeds in Rwanda so slow) that keeping my contacts up to date has been
a nightmare.

Anyway, many people asked me to let them know if I was considering
doing any fundraising or getting involved in any other projects while
I was here. So this is my blog entry for January 28th in which I lay
out some of the ideas. I would really appreciate any feedback people
feel like giving me or any further suggestions they may have.

By the way, if you haven't been following my blog (Alfred: and shame
on you if you haven't, though it is SO wordy and detailed that you
could hardly be blamed) you can find it at www.roheithir.blogspot.com
(about the length of a short novel at this stage).

Alfred is a teddybear my students gave me to keep an eye on me while I
am over here – he insists on taking over my blog from time to time (I
blame Isabelle Duff).

Blog Entry for Wednesday 28th January: Day One Hundred and Forty Four
in Rwanda (Alfred: gross exaggeration! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!)

Hi there everyone! Dying of a chest infection (my friends and family
know this is par for the course with me and the Klacid Paul Carson
gave me before I left is doing the trick) but in good spirits overall.
The English classes continue to drive me demented - ten people turned
up today but no more than six of them were ever in the room at the
same time as they kept on getting called out for meetings, phone calls
and whatever. I just carried on regardless (words of a song? someone
tell me please).

Anyway, as I said before, a number of people - colleagues, family and
friends - have all said that they would be interested in supporting
any projects that I might start off here in Rwanda. When I came out
here I had various ideas of what I might do - buy cows for people,
install water systems in schools, sponsor children to continue on to
secondary school and whatever. Surprise, surprise, many of those ideas
have changed since I came into contact with the reality of Rwanda. One
thing is that whatever you do really needs to be a once-off: it is
very difficult to set up an ongoing project and then arrange for it to
continue when you leave. Second, Rwanda is INCREDIBLY bureaucratic -
if you want to set up an actual organisation the obstacles are immense
(and expensive).

Thirdly, there are some needs that are actually being reasonably well
met by either the government or various ONGs (as I have now learned to
call NGOs). There is a raft of provisions for genocide orphans (though
tough luck if you are an orphans for any other reason). The whole
HIV/AIDS area is - if anything - over resourced or, to be more
accurate, overstaffed. there are actually HUNDREDS of separate (and
mostly uncoordinated) HIV/AIDS projects going on here, most of them
concentrated in the same areas, leaving other areas neglected. You can
buy people cows if you want (hi Horst) and there are actually
professional cow-buyers who will do it for a fee which is a lot less
than they will rip a muzungu off for in the cattle market, but how
many people actually have the land for a cow (Alfred: trust me: buy
them a cow and they'll find it!). My friend Jane Keenan did organise
this so that is one possibility (I think they are usually bought for
widows with no means of support).

Coming to Rwanda, obviously the genocide and its after-effects was
uppermost in my mind. Today I finished reading Philip Gourevitch's
book We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we Will Be Killed With Our
Families which is possibly the best book I have read on Rwanda so far.
One of the themes he talks about is the injustices - unavoidable
injustices - that happen in times of crisis. I have been struck (as
readers of my blog will know) at the number of innocent people who
have ended up in prison while many guilty walk the streets free. For
those of us who grew up with memories of Nicky Kelly, the Guilford and
the Birmingham Six, cases like this really strike a chord (Alfred: he
actually typed cord originally - how embarrassing!!)

There are also aspects of Rwandan society that take a lot of getting
used to. Everyone is AMAZED when I say I am not married and do not
have any children, and I mean AMAZED. When you ask men if they are
married, and they aren't, they immediately trot out a load of reasons
why it hasn't happened yet, because they are really embarrassed if
they are not. Family is all-important here and if you don't have it,
you are completely bereft. Orphans are looked after by the extended
family (or the state in the case of genocide orphans) but a single
parent, an unmarried mother or women raped and made pregnant during
the genocide lead very lonely and unsupported lives.

There is an amazing absence of art here, in all its forms. English is
taught as grammar - the idea of creative writing is virtually foreign.
There is a tradition of poetry and some writing from the 19th century
but is barely exists today. Art and music are similarly neglected:
there is only one Art Studio and Gallery in the whole country and
these subjects are utterly neglected in the vast majority of schools.

So I would like your ideas on the following:

1. A while ago, a VSO volunteer, Marion Woolley and a Ugandan
woman, Jasmine Rizik set up a Rwandan NGO called Tabara, an
organisation dedicated to helping single parents in Rwanda (initially
focussing on Kigali). The membership includes some single fathers
(which is really amazing in a Rwandan context) and you can read more
about their aims and objectives at this link:
http://www.tabara.net/englishindex.html. You can also read an
entertaining account of their first public meeting on Marion's blog at
http://heathenblogging.blogspot.com/2008/09/tabara-public-meeting.html

2. Some of my regular blog readers will know the story of Déo
Nuwayo, my regular moto0 driver. Before the genocide, he owned a taxi
company and was a successful businessman. After the genocide he was
denounced and put in prison for thirteen years. While he was in
prison, everything he owned was taken. After thirteen years he came to
trial and was immediately released - the courts said it was a case of
mistaken identity (or malicious denunciation) and he was cleared of
having taken any part whatsoever. When he was released, he received no
compensation whatsoever and had lost his house, business, cars, his
wife had died and he has four children to support.

Today he hires a motorbike each day for RWF5000 and tries to make
enough to pay for that, pay for petrol and still earn enough to keep
his family. His main hope is to be able to buy his own motorbike
(which would cost RWF1.3m or about €2,000) but, at this rate it is
going to take him a long time.

Sometimes calamity falls on someone from out of nowhere - maybe
sometimes assistance can arrive the same way!!

3. The Kivu Writers' Workshops were set up by a VSO volunteer, Ben
Pollitt, in 2000 with the aim of creating a literary culture among
Rwandan youth. They hold creative writing competitions each year and
the twenty winners (10 boys and 10 girls) are invited to the workshops
held in Kibuye in Western Rwanda, on the shores of Lake Kivu. You can
read more about the workshops and the organisation on
http://www.vso.org.uk/kivu/ and also read some of the material on
www.voicesfromrwanda.org.

So those are my three ideas at the moment. What I am asking you (blog
readers and email contacts, because I am sending this entry out by
email also) is to tell me what you think of these ideas, and whether
you would be interested in supporting any of them. If you are
interested, I will be sending on details later about how exactly you
can help, but I am just looking for feedback at the moment
(roheithir@gmail.com}