H is for HOME

Below, a virtual tour of my home here in Rwanda-- 

G is for GLOW

The November 2011 GLOW & BE Camps in my district acted as a catalyst for the youth group I help facilitate at the local secondary school. The students named the group “Icyizero” meaning hope. We have general body meetings once a week, and the executive committee meets an additional hour per week to plan the next session.

To Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide, regardless of your sector, I highly recommend getting involved with youth. The energy and determination I see coming from the students during our club sessions makes up for all the other problems I face in my primary assignment at the health center. The students glow!  

At this year's Rwanda Southern Province GLOW & BE Camps, we had talent shows. Peace Corps Volunteers joined forces to present what can only be described as YouTube's next viral sensation-- 

F is for FLOWER

I’m no gardener, but I can tell you that the flowers around Rwanda are absolutely beautiful. Colorful wild flowers grow everywhere.

E is for ENGLISH

I thought about making this post about Peace Corps Volunteers and the merits of speaking English at post (helping colleagues improve their English) versus learning the local language (reaching even more people, including the uneducated)… but it’s an exhausting topic that every PCV and host country national seems to have a strong opinion on. I think there are merits to both sides of the argument. I have been reprimanded, on more than one occasion, by Rwandans and PCVs alike, for not speaking enough English, and later, for speaking too much Kinyarwanda. Both types of comments are upsetting, particularly when I haven't made up my mind on which approach is best.

So, instead I just want to grace you with a few of my favorite examples of Rwandan-English. 

D is for Development

Development. Sustainable development. Community development. Community health development. Grassroots development. Locally initiated development. International development. Peace Corps approach to development. Economic development. Gender development. Youth development. Democracy and development. Long-term development. Short-term development. Urban development. Rural development. Agricultural development. Development studies. Peace and development. Great Lakes development. Human Resource development. Decentralized development. Millennium Development Goals. Assisted development. Development assistance. United States Agency for International Development. United Nations Development Program. Human Development Indicators. Human Development Index. Non-sustainable development. Ecological development. Green development. Rwanda Development Board. Business development. Private sector development. Public sector development. Non-profit development. Educational development. Infrastructure development. Progress towards development. Development policy. Developing countries. Developed countries. “I work in development.” “Are you looking towards a career in development?” “Yes, but is it real development?”

Signs of development:
Next to my health center, a new micro-finance and lending bank has opened . 

I hear the word development so often that I’m not so sure I know what it means anymore. Hundreds (thousands? millions?) of books, academic articles, university courses, organizations, and agencies are dedicated to development. I too, think I am dedicated to development. I believe strongly in the universal, inherent need for all humans to constantly improve, to develop.

Since I arrived in Rwanda, the government has expanded
free access to education from 9 years to 12

When I joined Peace Corps, I thought I wanted a “career in development”. I imagined facilitating development across Africa, while also developing personally. Well, I’ve certainly developed personally, and in Rwanda, I’ve witnessed a lot of projects and programs labeled ‘development work’.

Rwanda is a country that claims to be dedicated to development. The government’s Vision2020 outlines the country’s lofty goals, the most prominent being transforming Rwanda into a middle income country (defined as per capita income of 900 USD) by 2020 (current per capita income is around 220 USD).

New classrooms built at the local secondary school

But as Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen has explained, and Owen Barder nicely paraphrases in a Center for Global Development blogpost: “development must be judged by its impact on people, not only by changes in their income but more generally in terms of their choices, capabilities and freedoms; and we should be concerned about the distribution of these improvements, not just the simple average for a society.”

Clearly, there’s no magic formula or monitoring and evaluation report that can measure development. Still, after two years of watching countless development projects worth millions of dollars assist with ‘immeasurable and unquantifiable results’, I can’t help but become extremely frustrated as I witness "development workers" develop new projects and programs, while the people who are in most need of development assistance go on without it.  

So, I’m afraid I will just have to continue to develop my thoughts on development…   

C is for COW

Cows are a signal of wealth and pride in Rwanda. Bridal dowries are paid in the form of cows. Mpa inka! literally translated means “Give me a cow!” and is a common expression used to show surprise or disbelief. Visit any Rwandan at her home and she will likely offer you a large mug of warm milk (often accompanied with an excessive amount of sugar). Traditional Rwandan dance involves raising your arms and hands and swaying them, like the large horns of precious Rwandan cows.

"Cow callers" sing to the cows presented at a bride's
dowry ceremony

The Rwandan government has initiated a “one cow per family” program, which aims to provide poor families in Rwanda with cows. Villagers meet together to vote on which family is most in need of support, and later provides them with a cow. Once this cow has given birth, the recipient family will return the calf to the village so it can be given to another poor family. All the while, the cow’s milk and manure can provide nutrition, fertilizer, and/or income for the family, as well as generally elevating their social status.

When I first heard about this program I thought it was ridiculous. Just give a cow away?! If you have read any other posts on this blog, you know how I feel about this sort of charity. Early in my service, when I visited the home of two malnourished siblings and found their father drinking sorghum beer, feeding an enormous government-donated cow while his children cried with hunger, I felt my skepticism was vindicated. Months later I found the man had sold the cow and spent all the money on alcohol.

Experts also warn about the dangers of these types of aid programs. The well known charity Send a Cow works around the developing world (Rwanda included) giving poor people, women in particular, cows and other farm animals like sheep and goats. In the developed world, they market their fundraising campaigns around the idea that when you buy a family a cow, you are providing them an opportunity for a new life, animals being such a good source of income in most developing countries.

There are numerous problems with this model. Send a Cow in particular, has received criticism several times for the amount of money they actually spend on donated farm animals versus their European office and administrative costs. More importantly, however, cows don’t just magically produce nutritious, income generating milk. They also consume an enormous amount of food. In the most densely populated country in Africa, you can imagine how taxing it is for farmers and families to decide between using their scarce land to plant food for themselves or their cows. In case you’re wondering, it’s often the cow that is prioritized.

Environmentalists worldwide have come out against this animal giving charity scheme. Conservationists at the World Land Trust have referred to these projects as “environmentally unsound and economically disastrous”. Scientists are also warning, world food shortages and the impact of animal grazing on water supply and farming is alarming. 

So, why the ruinous program to provide everyone with a cow? The cooperative nature of the scheme forces Rwandans of all ethnic backgrounds to work together for the sake of community development. If you look further back in Rwandan history, you can understand even more.

Traditionally, the minority Tutsi ethnic group (persecuted and indiscriminately slaughtered in the 1994 genocide and in several previous attacks dating as far back as the 1962 independence), were cow herders. Many were Rwandan royalty and considered much superior to their neighbors, the majority Hutu ethnic group, who were poor land farmers. While attending a Genocide remembrance ceremony last year, a survivor retold the audience how groups of interahamwe came through the villages, stealing all the cows of the Tutsi they were about to kill. I was surprised by the emphasis he placed on the loss of cows while retelling a story about the death of almost a million people.

So, in my very non-expert opinion, I think I understand how, when the Tutsi-born President tells his countrymen (the majority of which remain poor, rural farmers, and are descendants of Hutus), that they should all have the opportunity to own cows, the positive symbolism and good will, in this case, might outweigh the negative environmental and agricultural effects.  

B is for BABY

Meet Baby, my delightful neighbor. Baby is the third child of my neighbor Assumpta, a nurse at the hospital who recently opened a small shop in town. Baby’s real name is Ingrid (her older sister is Igette and her older brother Ig), but in the year and a half I’ve lived next to her, I’ve only ever heard people call her Baby.

I really don’t have words for the love I feel for Baby. When I first moved in, Baby was just a baby. She could barely crawl and spent most of her time wrapped in a cloth on her mother’s back. Today she is an energetic toddler who runs up and down the small sidewalk that connects my house to hers: squealing, laughing, and proudly chanting the few words she’s just started speaking.

I take back anything negative I ever said about studying child development—it’s fascinating. Each month Baby seems to take on a new personality. From shy dependant infant to curious and active toddler, she never ceases to amaze me.

In the evenings, when I come home exhausted from a long day of work, Baby acts like a ray of warm sunlight, replacing the real sun that’s already disappeared behind the hills, leaving my house cold. She runs towards me, arms stretched out, sometimes squealing, sometimes just smiling. Then, she generally proceeds to parade around my house, which I am sure she does just to show off. If there are other children around, she taunts them as she walks through the door, knowing she’s the only kid I will allow inside. After inspecting my quarters, Baby attempts to help me with my dishes, inevitably ending up soaked in water. Next, she follows me around while I cook. By the time the fire is ready, I gently nudge her back to her home, at which point she cries hysterically. 

In a country where warm affection is rarely shown, I feel a mix of pain and happiness when I hear the Baby crying because we’re parting for the night.