Anita's Introduction and Coming Home

Anita’s Introduction and Give-Away happened Friday and the wedding on Saturday. It was all beautiful. The Introduction is the most traditional part and went roughly as follows: A group of female relatives of the bride presented themselves to the groom’s family. The family looks for the bride, saying “Where is Anita?”. In this case, the group answered, “Maybe she’s gone to fetch firewood”. They are given an envelope of money and leave. The next group of female relatives presented themselves with firewood- but still not with the bride the groom’s family is looking for. Having said Anita might be fetching water and receiving the envelope, they left and the next group came back with calabashes. Ah, but still no Anita. Finally, they all came back with Anita. The groom’s family recognized her. Anita then had to find the groom among the relatives. She found him!

The Give-Away happened privately- a negotiation between two families for the bride price. And the wedding and reception were joyful- with a bubble machine, sparklers, confetti, and fireworks in the flowers in addition to the traditional dancers, singing preacher, and a hip-hop dancer.

Yesterday was my good-bye pig roast. (done, as all things here, with the aid of google and jerry rigging). We found a pig in the village last week and brought it home to the compound. There were some rough spots with the three guard dogs. I designed a rotisserie and had it welded. The project gardener kindly slaughtered and shaved it. And, mostly, the process went fine.

So I have said many good-byes and am on my way home. Unless something unexpected happens, this is my last blog post. Thanks for your interest! The photos are of the women with calabashes, Anita finding her groom, dancers at the reception, and Anita and Amos. (I’m sparing you photos of the pig.)

Shared Solar

Electricity is slowly, slowly coming to Ruhiira. Due to funding bureaucracy, the plan to connect Ruhiira to the Ugandan grid has been put off. But in the meantime, a shared solar project has gone up. Most of the time, solar power requires a considerable up-front investment for individual solar panels. This project is similar to connecting to the electric company, then paying as you go. A small building in the village has several large solar panels and good batteries to store the energy. About 20 homes or businesses can then be hooked up. To use the system, consumers buy scratch cards that have code numbers on them; they then dial into an SMS system using a cell phone and put the number in. (This is the way cell phone airtime and internet time/data is done here- you pay prior to use using scratch cards and once your credit is gone, the cell phone or internet stops working.) As you can imagine, electricity use is MUCH lower in the village than in the US. There may be one or two high efficiency bulbs and a socket for cell phone- no refrigerator, dishwasher, air conditioner, etc., etc. (and the guy who wanted to hook up 125 watt speakers was told no.) So people may buy $1-$2 of electricity at a time; $1 would buy about 10 days of a single 8 watt light bulb shining 3 hours per night. The photos are of the panels, Innocent, the onsite supervisor, and the first test run of the system. A website that shows more photos of Ruhiira with the lights on is http://sharedsolar.mech.columbia.edu/

couldn't resist one more trip to Mgahinga

Despite just having made the 5-6 hour trip to Mgahinga National Park 2 weeks ago to track gorillas, I couldn't resist going back one more time. The inn there, a bed and breakfast called Traveler's Rest is SO inviting that staying there was half the reason for the trip. (Diane Fossey used to stay there sometimes.) On arrival, nasturtium petals are arranged on the towels and pillow- which I now believe in the definition of luxury. There's a beautiful garden with full views of the volcanoes and the cooking is great (suffice it to say that multi-course dinners with strawberry crumble for desert are rare here).

And then there's the park. The Virunga Massive is a chain of 7 dormant volcanoes, with 3 in Uganda. The borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo meet here so at the top of Muhavura Volcano it's possible to plant an extremity in 3 different countries. The tops of the two other Ugandan volcanoes mark the border between Rwanda and Uganda. I had not planned to climb any of the volcanoes- I wasn't sure I could do it- but in the spirit of group cooperation with my travel partners we compromised on climbing the lowest, Mount Gahinga. Gahinga means 'pile of stones' and refers to its resemblance to the many piles of volcanic rocks in the surrounding fields. We were prepared for rain since the tops of the volcanoes are usually covered with clouds and rain falls throughout the year, but it was a gorgeous day. Gahinga is 11, 400 feet above sea level and we started the hike at 7500 feet. 58% of the small Mgahinga Park is covered by virgin bamboo forest so we walked though dense bamboo at the base. Bamboo stops growing at 10,000 feet and it was replaced by senecio trees, giant lobelia, and mountain heather. We walked 3 1/2 hours up and 2 hours down- some of the walk was steady uphill; other spots were stair-like; and then there were the ladders. The frequent ladders were made by cross branches nailed to uprights. I did many of them on all fours and on the way down did most backwards. At the top of the volcano was a 'crater swamp' which was otherworldly. Every 5 minutes or so a cloud would blow through and obscure the swamp, then it would pass and the swamp would reappear. The photos are of Mount Gahinga on the right and Mount Muhavura on the left (where the gorillas are) with Jackson in the foreground with his AK-47 in the event of aggressive animals, descending through the bamboo forest, and the crater swamp.

Tracking mountain gorillas

First the downside- the permits are really expensive and there’s been criticism of this type of tourism as gorillas can catch human disease.


Now the upside- I decided to see mountain gorillas before leaving Uganda and am grateful for the experience. Mountain gorillas -about 800 in the world- are found only in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda and in the Virunga volcano (dormant) range, which sits on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of Congo. These are the gorillas that Diane Fossey studied. The national parks in Rwanda and Uganda (DRC is not a tourist destination) sell eight permits per day to see each family. We went to Mgahinga National Park in the Virunga volcano range. Tracking is an overstatement (though that’s what my official certificate says!). There are trackers who go out early in the morning and go back to a camp in the evening and they know roughly where the gorillas are. It’s rainy season and the volcanoes are often shrouded in mist even on otherwise clear days so we were fortunate to have a beautiful, sunny day. We climbed to 9000 feet before crashing though the forest to find the gorillas. The gorillas have been habituated since 1994, meaning that humans have been approaching them daily since that time (not closer than 21 feet). The tracker makes a sound like clearing his throat to alert the gorillas that we’re approaching but otherwise there’s no interaction; the gorillas ignore us as a non-threat. This family is made up of 3 male silverbacks, 2 babies, and 4 females and they chose to spend most of the one hour we were allowed to stay in a thicket. We were told that the silverback leader had fought the oldest silverback for dominance and won but the older male was allowed to stay with the group. The dense underbrush and sunny day (us in the sun, them in the shade) made photos tough though, thankfully, the people I was with were undaunted in their photo-taking and gave me theirs. The adults were mostly munching vegetation though periodically cracked off large tree branches to ‘play’. The babies, 10 and 12 months, were more active, climbing bamboo trees and then falling out as their weight broke branches.

Preparations for a wedding (and Passover)

My coworker, Anita, is getting married just before I return home. Weddings are big events here- often many hundreds of people- and are costly. The cost of the wedding is borne by the community so the invitation comes with a pledge card and often a budget. Clothes for the bride and her bridesmaids, food (e.g. one cow, 4 goats, 20 chickens, 30 bunches of matoke, 25 kg of cornmeal, etc.), spices, vegetables, fruits, drinks, decorations, and entertainment are included. I’ve been to one wedding planning meeting so far. The meetings can occur weekly and are attended by friends and family. They are conducted with meeting rules: there’s a chairman, attendance is kept, and minutes are read. The point of the meetings is to collect money. People who have pledged money pay up publicly and more money is collected. A ‘chairman’s bag’ for donations is passed initially and then the meeting goes on for more hours (sort of like a telathon), during which speeches and challenges for money are made. (I was asked to play the part of the village elder at the meeting to inspire all present to donate generously.)

The Introduction and Give-Away will take place the day prior to the wedding. These are traditional events in which the groom and his family come to the bride’s home. Part of the Give-Away involves a bride price, which is hefty. A number of cows are usually part of the deal, though Anita told me that money could be substituted. People wear traditional clothes to the Give-Away and I am very much looking forward to this part. The fabric choices are endless though the dress pattern is always the same. So my current challenge-so tough- is to choose the fabric and then a seamstress will make the dress.

The photos are of Anita helping me at the fabric store and, completely unrelated, my first Passover Seder, organized by my housemate Henry and attended by housemates from across the world.

Millennium Voice 102.2

Millennium Voice, a radio station with a broadcast radius of 50 km, is one part of the Millennium Villages Project. Lots of people have radios here- operated by batteries or solar- and the station was put up as a public service to play Runyankole and Ruchika music and to disseminate information. They do shows on best agricultural practices, gender discrimination, health topics, and entrepreneurship. There are large solar panels to power the station but there are challenges. I’m learning about things like why inverters help- ours is blown. And it’s rainy season so that the sun doesn’t shine all day every day. They usually use a gas-powered generator in the morning (a problem since gas, which is more expensive than in the US, needs to be carried in jerry cans by motorcycle on the steep and slippery dirt roads) though they are often able to turn it off by noon. My spot of fame on the radio says, "I'm Dr. Linda. I'm from the US. I stay in Isingiro (district) and I listen to Millennium Voice 102.2!" The line-up is Wake Up, Workers, local music mixed with call-ins (this week they talked about things like whether jealousy is good or bad and why cross-generational sex occurs), then Welcome Home. The DJ in the photo is ‘DJ Papa’.

Rwanda

Kigali, Rwanda is a 5-hour drive from Mbarara. Crossing a border is always exciting, but Uganda to Rwanda seemed particularly so. The language changes (to French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and only newly introduced English), the driving changes from the left side of the road to the right, and the country looks and feels different. The first thing any Ugandan says about Rwanda is ‘it’s so clean’. It is. It’s illegal to bring the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags into the country and there’s a once-a-month ‘voluntary’ Saturday country-wide community cleanup. Unlike Uganda’s widespread deforestation, Rwanda is covered with trees. It’s illegal to uproot a tree without permission and there’s one week a year for widespread tree planting. The toilet in the inexpensive guesthouse we stayed in had a faucet on the lid of the tank so that the water could be used for washing hands before it flows into the tank (my response was ‘of course!’). The landscape is stunning. It is lushly green with mountains and high volcanic peaks in the north. And everyone we met (with the exception of the unknown person who we think stole our driver’s cell phone) was friendly and helpful. My Ugandan housemate, Sam, would often get out of the car when we asked for directions to ‘experience’ the interaction and would typically return to the car with his arm around the person’s shoulders, talking and laughing. More often then not, the person would drop everything he or she was doing and offer to come with us to show the way.

And, of course, the history is different. We arrived on April 8, a day after the anniversary of the start of the 1994 genocide, during which 1 million people (out of a population of 8 million) were killed in 100 days. There is a yearly one-week commemoration with fires, ceremonies, and community discussions as well as other events throughout the 100 days. So throughout the country there were purple (for sadness) and white (for hope) banners and ribbons. We went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial where there are gardens; a museum that contains many photos, remains, and belongings of victims and that explains events before, during and after the genocide (including it’s roots in colonialism and the roles of hate speech and mass media) as well as rooms devoted to genocides throughout the world; and a mass grave containing 258,000 victims. There is a wall of names containing only about 1000 names, as the work of trying to name the victims is ongoing. From there we went to the Hotel des Mille Collines, the site of events depicted in the movie, Hotel Rwanda, and then to a church, which was the site of a massacre of 10,000 people who’d taken refuge there. It was profoundly sad. Yet the insistence on preserving the past- the overwhelming horror and occasional good-, on honoring the victims, and on talking as communities and countries about the events was extremely moving. Seventeen years later the events have immediacy. When we arrived at the church, a local leader had just come to bring bones for cleaning and burial that had just been found. The photos are of the garden dedicated to women, a statue of an elephant (who never forgets- though I just realized it's actually a gorilla) holding a cell phone (trying to tell the world), a flame in front of the memorial which burns for 100 days each year, and the church with the Rwandan flag at half mast.