That's Rwandan hospitality for you...

1

I'm completely alone, walking toward Byangabo's small city center. The darkness is thick save for the moon at 11:30pm and I'm wondering, "What the heck am I doing?"

Every Friday night I host an English Film Night and discussion for the students at ISAE. So far, we've seen Inside Man, Blood Diamond (their request), and The Curious Case of Benjamin of Button. Two weekends ago, we watched Slumdog Millionaire (most Rwandans love Indian movies, especially with dancing, so they were excited). My four hour lecture ended around 6 and we started at eight pm. The small cement room was packed, students scrunched up on benches and several times we had to find more seats.

My friend Danielle (she's the other Fulbright here, whom many Peace Corps Volunteers believed was my wife and that our last name was Fulbright, hence the blog's url: Jonathan Fulbright), she and a group of her college friends came up North to visit. I'm not sure why, but there is a large pack of Yale alums in Rwanda. I figure Rwanda must have had a mind boggling booth at a Yale career fair some months ago.

Anyway, I was hoping to meet up with them after the movie. It would be difficult to find a ride, being so late, but I'd give it a shot.

After Slumdog's dancing credits ended, I'd never seen the students so animated, and though I wanted to see my friends, I let go of that eagerness to leave. I asked them what they thought of the repeated theme: "it is written." This launched a debate about whether fate, choice, or chance dictate our lives. Many agreed: What Imana (God) wants is what happens. Life is fated.

Rwanda is an extremely religious--particularly Christian--country. Nearly every day I see a group of students at a Bible study group outside; the weekends are filled with dozens of Christian singing groups practicing away for future performances; and Church often lasts for 4-6 hours.

Some students argued that life was dictated by choice. "Imana may have created us, but we choose whether to good or bad, to try, or to give up." The quality of the discussion trumped many that I've heard in the US. Someone asked me what I thought, but I'll spare you my philosophy. Without realizing, we'd spent an hour exchanging opinions, weaving through ideas as though walking in a garden of forking paths, on one of the most central of philosophical inquiries. I was pumped.

I left the gates of the school compound, asking the guard in his skull cap and puffy yellow jacket if it would be possible to find a motorcycle this late. He walked me to a neighboring house and banged on the door. It was late and these folks were not coming out at 11pm. He wished me good luck and I set out on an impossible task, following the one road to town.

When the moon is full, even the most isolating of darkened moments seem possible.  It shown like a floodlight, drowning out surrounding stars, echoing off the mountains hugging our valley. The solitude of walking in that darkness produced an intoxicating freedom.

I realized quickly that there were no motorcycle taxis at 11pm from here. In fact, Byangabo is so small, I've yet to see a single moto taxi, unlike in most towns. Then, I did what many have done in similar situations: I took a stance on the roadside and stuck out my thumb. Only two or three trucks and one bus passed. None slowed, and one seemed to speed up past me. "What the heck am I doing?" came to mind.

Putting the thumb down, I went to a nearby bar and saw a young man dressed like a student and asked him if he had any ideas on how to make the 30 minute trek to Musanze, where my friends had now arrived some time ago. Valentine was indeed a student at ISAE and energetically took my hand, walking us down some mud paths carved out by powerful little rivers, between clay-brick houses with corrugated metal gates warped from wear, some of which glimmered in the moonlight.

He knocked on an unassuming house door stained with rust and a naked man wrapped lightly in a towel emerged to answer, clearly awoken from sleep. He and Valentine spoke in Kinyarwanda while I laughed to myself at the situation, simultaneously feeling sorry for the sleeping man. Valentine turned and said, "he's got a bike but it's not working. But, he thinks he can find another." Disbelief turned into excitement as the man disappeared into the greater darkness of his one room home, reemerging with what looked like snoopy's outfit when dressed as the Red Baron.

We walked to another house that had a moto and the Red Baron took the helm. Valentine said, now it is late so he won't do it for less than 2,500 francs. That's $4.16. "Ok," I replied. As I turned to thank him for spending so much time on a whim with me, for hunting down a ride in the middle of the night, for being so generous, he replied simply, "That is how we treat our guests." Now that's Rwandan hospitality for you.

The rest of the night was fun. I met with my friends who had teamed up with a group of German and American volunteers. We all crammed into the back of a white safari truck and went to a really sketchy bar that smelled more like urine than stale beer. I saw several students at ISAE there, and one in particular who must have learned English from a Rasta because he's vernacular contains "Bodacious" and he refers to himself as a "ghetto boi." As is customary in Rwanda when dancing at a club, I only danced with guys. (Girls at clubs are almost always prostitutes and homosexuality does not exist in Rwanda, according to culture, so dancing with guys doesn't bother them, a lot like girls dancing with each other in the US doesn't alarm anyone.) So, long ago yielding to the awkwardness potential, I danced with the ghetto boi and with a few friends in a circle, holding hands and kicking our legs out in a  whirling dervish of sorts.

We left early because one of my friend's phones was stolen. (more later on getting that back) We took motos back to Byangabo at 2 in the morning, winding around the edges of a thousand hills, tired and free, cutting through the valleys filled with moonlight, our bodies swaying on machines beneath the stars unseen.

Living it

Sometimes you can’t explain it. Depending on what ‘it’ is, the lack of explanation can be trivial or mundane, but depending on what ‘it’ is, the absence of certainty can unnerve you to the core, can unravel your sense of truth and reality.

Late last night I found myself unraveling. Fortunately for me, the uptwisting and outpouring I am alluding to was what most modern doctors would call ‘food poisoning.’ Nevertheless, for hours in the middle of darkness I succumbed to this ‘it’ that had taken hold of me and demanded out.

Although I didn’t have any official obligations today, I had promised my friend Fofo—yes Nigerinos I have a Rwandan friend named Fofo :) --that we would climb the mountain across the street from ISAE, the landscape that fills the brown metal of my square bedroom window like a painting of vibrant realism. I had bailed earlier in the week, and didn’t want to flake again, so although I felt exhausted mentally and physically, I figured, what the heck, maybe a hike would do me some good.

We set out at 10 am and unlike the recent weather, a thick fog layered over the morning with intense fortitude. “Rain’s going to come today,” I suggested. “Yes, but not yet.” “Then let’s get to it.”

Crossing the street into Byangabo, the small roadside town outside of ISAE is always an exciting thing—not because Byangabo is a fascinating place by any means, but because being the town’s only white person, or muzungu, most everyone seems so excited to greet and share a few phrases. As we walked towards the base of Mount Byangabo, a chorus of school children in blue or tan uniforms rang out: “Muzungu! Good Morning!” I love joking with Rwandans, and when I hear the title muzungu I often shoot back: Muzungu ari hehe? Bari abanyarwanda gusa hano! (Where’s the white person? There are only Rwandans here!) Although I wasn’t feeling too hot, hearing the responding laughter cheered me up immensely.

We cut through a field of tall grass still wet with morning dew, past the local primary school, and into a small village set at the base of our day’s objective. The dramatic transition from life on the main road to country life was made more so because of the minor distance separating the two. Some 200 yards from the main road—one of Rwanda’s four—there is no electricity, the paths are all mud, and the well-kept western clothes most Rwandans wear around ISAE are replaced by aged cloths and plastic sandals.

Cementing our transition into another world, one distant from modernity in most senses of the word, a crowd of 20-some young children instantly gathered around Fofo and I. They all wanted to touch our hands, to ask what we were doing, and to laugh from their tiny cores when we could communicate in Kinyarwanda. 

Now at the foot of Mount Byangabo, we began with a brigade of local 6-8 year olds that apparently didn’t have any official obligations today either. The path upwards became way steeper than I had imagined near instantaneously. The fitting was slippery because of the morning fog, and the grey clouds seemed intent on unraveling and outpouring just as I had last night, and soon.

I grabbed for branches or rocks on the side of the slick mud path that sloped a twisted upwards, and as we made our way higher, our brigade dwindled to an elite special forces unit of lil’ Rwandans.

It struck me as we climbed that people lived on this mountain, that the mud brick houses we passed on this sloping gradient were inhabited by people that traversed this path each day—with groceries, with gallons of water in their arms or on their head, with infants on their back. That sense of humility struck me in a fashion like I had seen in The Motorcycle Diaries when Che and his friend are passed up by an elderly, indigenous man porting a huge load as they collapsed on the roadside. Upon seeing him, they quickly rose and continued, and remembering this helped me suppress a little post-nausea fatigue.

The slopes of Mount Byangabo are similar to most of the mountains I’ve seen here—incredibly steep and cultivated. I had no idea one could raise corn, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, or green beans on gradients that one could easily slip straight off, but Rwanda’s population density has necessitated drastic and innovative measures to keep up with the growing demands of a hungry and ever-larger populous. As we turned a corner along the way, we came upon an entire family tilling their land by hand. We greeted them, and as we continued to walk throughout our day, they remained there with hoes in hand, for hours, farming on the mountain’s edge.

At one point the path literally washed away from beneath us so Fofo and I got on all fours and crawled our way upwards, often sliding back several feet. But regardless, we were getting up that mountain. We paid a child 100 francs (20 cents) for water to wash our hands, and we were on our way.

As we pressed on the morning fog began to melt away and the distances across the surrounding countryside came into precise focus. At the summit, there is a Pentecostal Church. So many mountaintops are capped with churches in Rwanda.

On our descent, a woman picking corn with her young son hollered down to us and brought us handpicked ears of fresh white corn. As we stood and spoke with her, a flock of sheep enveloped us and the 9-year old herdsman cackled as I tried to speak sheep.

At another turn, we came upon an umudugudu (village) meeting. Elders and local leaders were meeting on an overhang over a grass-covered cliff, debating and deciding in an age-old democratic form. Our presence had gathered pretty stern glares of interest, but when we greeted them, prostrated, with utmost politeness, the tense atmosphere evaporated just as the fog had recently melted away. “Hey, the muzungu speaks Kinyarwanda,” exclaimed a man on a thick log bench. “Who, me?” I tossed back. “I only speak Kinyarwanda. I forgot my English when I came here.” As we rounded the corner away from this now jubilant scene, a sense of warmth filled me as a mixture of sun, laughter, and the beautiful landscape seemed to pour into me. It’s moments like this that make the hard times worth it.

We continued downwards, passing more people, taking photos with droves of children, and feeling refreshed. When I got home, I slept for 7 hours straight.

Sometimes, I suppose you can’t explain it, whatever ‘it’ is.

Yesterday ‘it’ was the origins of sickness. Today, it was the sights and sounds of a mountain village and the crossing of paths between people that had, until today, no connection. Maybe that unexplainable causality propelling us towards our future, towards one another, and away from our lunch holds answers. At this stage, I couldn’t tell you. But I could tell you that whatever that mystery is, ‘it’ sure is beautiful.

"The harder we push the faster we'll all get out of here." -- Chief Wiggum

Hello everyone! So much has happened in the past two months, my words will undoubtedly fail to express the moments I have spent here in Rwanda, but I hope at least these words will keep us connected though the distance between us endures.

This weekend was full of surprises. On Friday shortly after dusk, one of the directors of my school, ISAE, (the Higher Institute of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, French Abbrev.) tapped on my glass door while I was practicing "A Day in the Life" on guitar. He invited me to go to Kigali and watch Rwanda compete against Burkina Faso--one of the only 3 nations in Africa I've been to--in the Under-17 African Championship. I hadn't thought about the game at all and had been planning a Saturday of bucket laundry and leisure reading, but as he sat in my cold, concrete living room I realized that there was fun to be had.

We made the 2.5 hour drive to the capital from our natural haven at the base of the national volcano park and soon found ourselves at the jampacked gates of Amahoro (Peace) Stadium with no tickets--the impulsive wailing of vuvuzelas and anticipation surrounding us. Unfortunately, we quickly realized there were no tickets available, that we had made the trek for not. Then, just like a caravan of officials, a caravan of officials drove up to the gates. We pressed ourselves against the steel bars of the makeshift roadblock, positioning ourselves for what would be at least a glimmer of hope of entering. Guards--some in suits, most dressed in camo and brandishing automatic rifles--told us to stay back as we edged our way close, shifting among the swelling crowd.

Though his attempts to coerce the lead guard failed again and again, without warning, the lead security officer opened the gate ajar, pointed to two people and they pushed their way through and onto the grounds, then another, then the director! But just as it looked like the impossible had happened, the gate shut. "My colleague, my colleague! He's with me!" In a rushed blur of pushing and running I had breached the gate, joined my superior and we made a mad dash for the field, beaming because somehow we had managed the impossible. We rushed through security, then sprinted past the ticket takers and as we climbed the slab steps up, the roar of the crowd beckoned like a siren's call, but a lot more like a large group of excited people.

Rwanda played a hardfought match, but ultimately lost 2-1. The disappointment was palpable because after going down 0-1, Rwanda equalized in the second half and the sea of Blue, Yellow, and Green waving flags and chanting in unison, everyone in that stadium was urging Rwanda to victory, everyone seemed to believe. Though Rwanda lost, I saw President Kagame on the jumbo-tron. The crowd went absolutely wild when he entered the stadium and took his seat. The man has a staggering level of popular support.

So, all in all, not too bad for the price of admission.


Saturday morning I went for a run at a stadium adjacent to the campus. While there, a few young boys gathered and started playing soccer. When I finished my last lap around the field, I ran over to them and asked if I could play. We spent about 2 hours playing a version of monkey in the middle with a rolled up ball of plastic bags held together with twine. The kids were hilarious. For those of you that know, I'm not the best soccer player, but my skills were decent compared to 8 year olds--just needed to find some opponents at my level, haha.

Most of them had ripped clothes, no shoes, and brimming smiles--I wonder how many millions of children fit that description and how many will fit that description 50 years from now. At one point I was in the center trying to steal the ball, which was passed to one of the kids. I had tried to anticipate it being passed and made a sprint towards him. As the ball touched his feet he looked up at me with the biggest eyes you could imagine, made an about face, and sprinted for his life. As I got to the ball and stopped we all started laughing and the little guy joined in too when he realized I was never actually going to slide tackle him, haha. Pretty adorable.

That's a taste of my life here and not the worst weekend I've had. Until next time...