I woke up this morning and the help (Meridian) once again was trying to communicate with me. It's like sign language between us two. I learnt she's from Burundi. She can't speak French and I can't speak Kinyarwanda or Swahili. However, today as she started talking to me, I had the bright idea to download a Swahili language app and I was able to tell her the tea she was pouring was enough, that Carmen didn't like milk and that I needed hot water (thanks to Shem Mbogo for that since my app isn't that advanced). She got excited and started spewing out more Swahili phrases and I politely responded "Siwezi kusema Swahili mengi" (I don't speak much Swahili). She kept on talking though so Carmen and I went straight to google and started to put together phrases that probably didn't make sense to her but at least we are trying!
Today started out rather gloomy as it rained all morning through mid afternoon. We had nothing planned till Tantine Chantelle (Carmen's younger Aunt) passed by and decided to take us out.
Our first stop was the market place. I must first add that there are no street hawkers in Kigali (unlike the plethora of streethawkers in Ghana). Everything is contained in the market places which I thought was an orderly way of doing things. When we entered the market I noticed the grounds were just as clean. I saw a bunch of men in yellow jackets. Tantine Chantelle explained that they were market helpers. Each of them had a designated number on the jacket and they all belonged to a market association. These helpers were able to go into the market to purchase whatever you needed and were even able to home deliver the goods, if you called them. And since each of them had a unique number, if they decided to run off with your money, the association could track them down. I thought this was a pretty good idea (maybe Ghana needs to learn a thing or two)! So, we just sat in the car as the gentleman with "56" written on his jacket went in to shop for Tantine.
Next stop was Tantine's house. We spent the afternoon chatting (which pretty much meant polishing my rusty French by speaking with her children) and eating our meal of ugali (their version of fufu) with cassava leaf stew and fish. We took a drive through town and she pointed out a couple of the Genocide Memorials and the National Stadium. We also passed through the ritzy side of town where most of the expatriates live. Close by was an SOS village and a SOS Hermann Gmeiner Technical School.
We spent the rest of the evening with Carmen's grandparents. Her grandmother owns a dairy farm, so for the first time, I had fresh cow milk which didn't taste bad at all! I was called a "muzungu" (white person/foreigner) by her grandma, which really made me chuckle. Her family had spent their entire life in Kinshasa, (DRC) and moved back after the Genocide. Grandpa explained that when they moved back to Kigali, the neighborhood consisted of only 2 adult men, a young boy and a couple of women. So the neighborhood was pretty much built by the people that were present and the government offered them plots of land to rebuild and settle. He talked on length about how the country rebuilt after the Genocide. He mentioned how each community set up tribunals to judge the perpetrators of the Genocide and how these tribunals relied on the eye witness accounts of members of the community. He said it was more so a reconciliation effort than a persecution process because perpetrators had the option to apologize to the people they had offended or not. Either way, once they were identified, they were sentenced to jail for a short period of time because of limited space and the need to have people help rebuild the community. Therefore, after their jail terms, they were released back into the community to carry out community labor some for a set amount of time. He commended the efforts of President Kagame and the efforts he had put into helping rebuild the country. At a point his French was a bit rapid for my understanding. But the end of his long narrative included him mentioning a fund that was started by Rwandese (when the French cut their funds to the country), supported by Rwandese that goes into building roads and other infrastructure (pretty innovative)!
Again, it has been a day filled with new learning experiences. Before I end this blog, I would like to mention that they do not really use plastic bags here. When we arrived at the airport, they told as we could not leave the airport with our duty free plastic bags so we had to remove all the contents from the bags. I thought it was just an airport rule, but we went to the market and everything we bought was placed in brown paper bags (probably that's why this country is neat!)
Before the power goes off again, I am ending this blog! Muramuke (goodbye)!
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| Our fresh milk! |
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| From L-R: Tantine Chantelle, Tonton Emil, Baby Gabriella and Carmen |
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| R-L: Ugali, Cassava Leaf Stew and Fried fish |
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| Carmen vs. Mosquito (who wins?) |
kyeno thanks for the history.....keep them coming....love every bit of it...maramuke :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!!! U owe me for every post i put up..lol..jk
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