shameless

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/worldview/blogs/23276-living-in-a-culture-of-community

bloop blop beep writing here and there

Green Acres (Again)

“the chores, the stores, fresh air, Times Square”

I find myself once again bracing for another move from city to rural or rural to city. This time is a little bit different being that it’s all in Rwanda. My village Nyagatare is a little more rural than Boone and Kigali isn’t the same metropolitan city as Atlanta or DC but here I go again. The never ending transition of life is on the move once more.

I love different things about both parts of life. Rurally you get a lot closer look at the great outdoors and the communities might be closer. The pace is a little slower as it tends to be in sync with nature. The fast pace of urban life brings information and entertainment at your fingertips at all times. I thoroughly enjoy both but it never makes it easy to make the transition back and forth, especially with such little time to prepare. I finish in Nyagatare on Thursday and start work the following Monday in Kigali.

This time, I have found uprooting especially difficult. This is the smallest city I have ever lived in and when you really invest your time, it leaves its marks on you just as you wanted to leave some marks on it. I will forever be amazed at how many people I have met that knew so much about me before I even introduced myself. The generosity of people who have so little has been astounding. This community has made a little foreign village a million miles from what I’m used to be a comfortable home, regardless of how far I have had to come to adapting.

I have found this change just as hard as the others. I think I am a community man living in a time of community decline. I can work hard to build community strong wherever I go but with the ebbs and flows of life I now must go and seek another group to grow down deep and sprout the fruits of community once again. Like every good garden, the harvest will be good once again and life will be in its fullest communal swing but for now I must take the pain of transition in stride. Not ignoring or accepting it but taking the transition as a student of change, trying to learn from all parts.

SHOUTOUT: Bill Gates

Say what you want about how superior your Mac is to any other computer but Bill Gates is the real deal. For many millionaires, after making their first couple million it’s time to take it easy and enjoy fulfilling the American dream. Bill and his wife Melina (actually I heard the foundation is mostly her idea) have really hit the ground running, working on a variety of issues to help the developing world. I can’t vouch and say that his foundation is absolutely perfect and spends all of their money in the best ways but I can tell you that they are doing a lot. I spent a little bit of time talking to my friend Jacque about how he enjoys working for the Gates Foundation and besides the normal hardships of working in a developing country he has nothing but good things to say about the Foundation and feels confident in what they are doing.
My kids love Bill Gates. I have no problem vouching for Bill Gates either. Don’t worry I’m not trying to gloss over the aggressive monopoly he was trying to pull several years back but I have really good feelings toward hi m now a days. All my kids say ‘ah I want to be like Bill Gates, he is so rich and not only is he so ridiculously rich he actually helping people out too. I want to be like him.’ Then I tell them well best of luck, you’re going to have to study a little bit harder if you want to be like him.
I also don’t want to leave out this fact either. As a testament to how decent the Gates Foundation is, famous millionaire Warren Buffet has agreed to donate a significant portion of his millions to the Gates Foundation as well.
I know he's not perfect and same with the foundation but hey he's trying which is a lot more than other people.

Out of Balance

I just wanted to paint some things that just aint right. I realize that its kind of boring but maybe somebody could have interest

1) Pay. So I work at a government school and the school should be paid for by the government. Well when I say the government, I would guess a vast majority of education money comes from other countries considering other countries and NGO’s make up over 50% of Rwanda’s spending. The money doesn’t come though. Teachers are supposed to be paid monthly but they have been paid twice all year. This means that teachers have to rely on the PTA living stipend which comes from the kid’s school fees. A lot of kids can’t pay school fees so this month teachers haven’t received their $60 living stipend. This is a bummer in general but the other day made it tougher.

So our headmaster rolled into the staff room with a guest who made a little speech about raising money for a new classroom for a school in the district which apparently they do ever year. The teachers who haven’t been their normal salary in months and wouldn’t get their living allowance were now forced to donate toward a classroom. Ah, I feel bad for everyone. It’s hard enough as it is already but having to fork over what little cash you have for a random classroom somewhere sucks. Everyone was took and stride and donated but I could see it painful for most.

2)Fight! The other day I was on a bus back from Kigali when several young men dressed in camo carrying backpacks stuffed full various knick-knacks including ak-47 jump onboard and were lucky enough to sit next to me. I see military folk all the time but most of them have dropped out of secondary school and believe that they are God’s gift to Rwanda. This makes for not so much conversation. This time was different, I got to sit next to Steven who was a Butare grad (best school in Rwanda) and turned out to be a really nice guy. I’m going to give you the cliff notes. So, the reason he joined the military, the chance to travel to America. Apparently this is one of the best ways to recruit young Rwandans, give them the opportunity the chance to train in the military. Don’t worry only about 2% of the Rwandan military get to train in America, this list does include the president. I don’t know about you but that’s painful to me. I’m not going to rant about the military though (might be my next blog, it’s just building up, I can’t help it)

So what I wanted to say was this. The Rwandan military is probably the most feared militaries in Africa. This is mainly in part because America and other countries are arming and training them to the teeth. Now I want to contrast this. We have had some major problems with trespassing and kids just being plain violent, throwing rocks at folks, just being plain violent. As I thought about what would happen in the States the idea came to me, ah just call the cops, they will take care of it. I approached the Headmaster with my brilliant idea and was completely shut down. For starters, the cops in Rwanda don’t have any mode of transportation so if we called the cops we would have to pay for motos to go and pick them up. Then we would have to pay for their time here and the police don’t arrest anyone unless they have done something really bad because they can’t afford to put people in jail so my plan just crashed and burned. Look at this contrast. Anyone in the military gets new clothes, guns, and training while the cops might get a phone call every once and a while.

These things aren’t right. Light must be shed. I’m sorry to semi-rant here but it hurts my conscience of justice. I also just realized this is going on top of my glossy Nyagatare life post but that’s who I am.

Depends on Your Perspective

Monday turned out to be a pretty normal day. The morning was spent doing normal work things. The afternoon was needed for errands. I knew of this cute little local organic farmers market about 3 miles from my home and was a little low on fresh produce so I decided to head on down and see what kind of things I could pick up for dinner that evening. The rain had nicely cooled off the unusually warm fall air, so I decided to walk instead of drive, trying to be a good steward and all. The walk was quite nice, the weather stayed pleasant so there all sorts of folks out and about, moving around. The walk took about 45 minutes and when I arrived later in the afternoon I was relieved to see that the early birds hadn’t gotten all the worms. There was still plenty of fresh produce around. The market boasts about selling only local produce. I’m not sure but I think they are trying to be certified as locally organic. I’m cool with that, not being such a fan of chemicals and food traveling hundreds of miles. I might pay a little more but I think it’s worth it for the quality. I perused all the little makeshift stands with varying veggies displayed for purchase trying to decide who had the best looking produce before stepping up to buy. I ended up going to this fairly large woman with bright colorful clothes who I had bought from many times in the past. Her kind, crooked teeth smile displayed warm signs of recognition as she weighed some fresh local tomatoes for me. I also managed to pick up some fresh onions and a little bit of rosemary.

I know what these ingredients are going toward tonight, homemade vegan Italian red sauce for pasta. The walk home has a couple more hill than the one to the market but it’s never a bad thing to get a little exercise. I have also found that the more I walk to the farmers market and other places around town, the easier the walks become.

I arrived home just as the sun was setting and decided to sit on the back porch, play guitar and watch the sun go back into hiding behind the distant green hills. As the last rays of yellow disappeared, I returned back inside to start on the pasta sauce. Making pasta sauce from scratch takes a long time but everyone knows that a nice homemade sauce is far superior to anything canned so that’s how we make it. Actually, we have started to make everything homemade. It takes more time but the outcome is much better. The day was finished with fresh pineapple under the stars, a little grading and reading. Cormic McCarthy make reading easy as the words just drip off the pages.

This is a fairly normal day for Nyagatare, just taking it to a different perspective. What is your perspective for your life? How do you see every day? Can a reshaping the way you look at things improve your attitude toward them?

Bloop Blop Bleep Stop Climate Change!

I’m not sure if anybody actually reads my blehg but a couple weeks ago, I was gloating about the new garden that I planted. I also encouraged you to grow a garden. I still think growing a garden is a great idea but I have recently been thwarted by climate change. Everyone in my village had thought that the rains had come to stay but it turned out to be a big mother nature pump fake. Here you have the rainy season and the dry season. Either you get no rain or lots of rain, never just some rain. A couple of weeks ago, we had 3 solid days of rain and everyone thought that the rains had returned. It also was about the time the rains used to return. Dry season usually starts in May and ends in September. As of the last few years the wet season hasn’t returned until October. At the beginning of September we got those 3 solid days of rain and everyone thought the rain was returning to its old schedule and planted their plot. It turns out that it wasn’t and as a result, everyone’s crops died and they are going to have to dig again and replant. This means a loss of seed which also means a loss of money. I know I’m not a climatologist and that this unusual change in weather can be explained though many different reasons but it’s not only me noticing it. I was spending time with a friend who is an agriculture professor at the local university and told her that my garden died. She started to tell me that my case fairly common. For hundreds of years farmers have been on a similar schedule. The rains rarely fail or trick them. The changes in weather have left farmers confused and growing less.

It’s not that big of a deal for me. I’m sad I wouldn’t be able to eat any fresh veggies or basil before I go, but I don’t make my living growing crops like 92% of the population in Rwanda does. The earth’s condition is life or death for billions around the world and we must take care of it.

My time here in Rwanda has brought me closer to the earth and shown me just how important it is to take care of God’s creation. My neighbors all around me make their living from the earth and if we keep continuing to poison the earth our neighbors will have no means for survival. We are all in this together. Please, do your part in protecting our earth.

Swings

As for everyone there’s good days and bad days. Yesterday turned out to be pretty good in a different way. Power outages are fairly common thing here. It’s always a guessing game as to when the power will come back on. Sometimes is a couple hours and sometimes a couple days. The novelty of the ohh I’m in Africa, I’m going to have to read by candle light tonight had worn off about 6 months earlier and on this particular day, the novelty factor wore off about 4 hours earlier. After about 2 and a half hours of reading by candle light, I was about done. Also, this entire time you’re wondering when the power is going to come on. Then you have to start thinking of alternatives for dinner. You seem to always have 3 options: collect firewood in the dark to start a fire to cook (not doing again), east what little snacks and crackers you have or make the 5k trek to town. After a full day of teaching, none of these are ideal. So after reading I threw on my ipod to mix it up a little bit (I know I’m a jerk face and it isn’t so bad, I a freakin ipod) and started a countdown on my decision to trek it to town. About four songs in, to be honest, I had hit a low point, where I was just tired, hungry and didn’t want to deal with anything. Almost on cue, my ipod that was set on shuffle played this song out of the thousands of songs I have:

“Blessed is this life and I’m going to celebrate being alive”

If that’s not an omen, I don’t know what is. I kid you not, this one little song playing at the right time, changed my mood entirely. We ended up making the trek to town to eat and it was great. On this particular night, the skies ended being clear and the moon low, allowing you to see a million and one stars. I am attaching a map of earth at night below. You see that dark area usually called Africa, that where I live. Then multiply that by having all of the power out as far as you can see. This makes things so dark that you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. This also makes the million stars sparkle brighter than I have ever seen them before. It’s moments like these that confirm my creator. Not a creator who is static and distant but something more. It just makes me say ahh I’m not alone here and I feel that this creator is good. Regardless of how many people have misconstrued his name, he’s there to continually whisper good in your ear. Also this didn’t come through a change in situation. The power was still out, I was still hungry but the reminder of more being there brought change in me. Things aren’t bad, some of it is the mindset we are in.

This morning I woke up to the power returning and meditated on what negative mindsets might be clouding my perspective of the world and what I can do to bring God’s peaceful kingdom on earth.

Road Signs

I was on the road quite a bit this past weekend. I had to head south to Resumo with the kids for a debate on Friday. On Saturday I had to make a quick trip to Kigali to bid goodbye to friend heading back to the States. When you travel so much, you start to notice things along the road that you’ve never seen before. I started to realize that many parts of the journey portrayed the growing Rwanda of today. On our way down to Resumo, we spent several kilometers winding though a valley that had recently been turned into an endless sea of rice fields. The valley was speckled with women in colorful clothing putting rice into big brown woven baskets. What a beautiful picture of the changing face of Rwanda. The country is starting to use its limited land to try to grow enough food to feed its swelling population.

The newly acquired rice fields were not the only signs of the country’s progress. The entire trip from Nyagatare to Kigali is lined with freshly dug dirt. In contract with the rapidly changing East African Community, Rwanda is laying fiber-optic cable across the entire country. High-speed internet was promised last year and it seems as though it might be up and running by the beginning of this coming year. As you approach Kigali from further and further away, you can see the growing skyscrapers coupled with a half dozen cranes to help them reach the sky. Can Rwanda truly skip the industrialization stage of development and head straight to a knowledge based economy.

As you pass by the steep hillsides just before reaching Lake Muhazi, you can see the bleeding bleach marks along the cliff side that used to clearly read Kagame, Paul. The controversial election went off without a hitch now two months ago and the country is still on the possibly façaded up and up.

After a strong showing at our debate against Resumo, the kids were singing songs of joy and happiness as we travelled back north to Nyagatare. From Resumo to Nyagatare, you pass by 5 mass graves from the genocide. The large white concrete slabs are usually decorated with the memorial purple and decaying flowers. Scrolled across the entrance to each site are the words, “never again” and “we will never forget”. The kid’s songs never let up the entire ride home, even as we passed the various grave sites. I felt like the kid’s songs displayed the beauty of life, that Rwanda is alive as ever. In some ways it felt like their songs were overpowering the past. We know what happened 16 years ago but were not going back there and were going to sing songs of joy that we are alive and well today. Rwanda can be prosperous and peaceful and death and despair will not be our final word. I know the kids weren’t thinking about this as we passed reminders of the past every 30 minutes or so but I think it was beautifully symbolic. This country is moving. It has a long way to go but it sure is giving it a shot. It’s an exciting time to be a Rwandan. Their future is bright and in their hands to make the best of it.