July 13 A Real Mediation and Corn on the Cob

This is the third day of training in Muhondo. When we get to class we do some revision and mention is made by Eugene about doing some real mediations. It turns out the there is a small conflict between two of our class participants who both live in the village. So a mediation is organized by the members of the class. A woman who is a headmistress at the primary school will be the mediator. This is all arranged by the students without my participation. Then Eugene comes to me again and says there is another case and implies that I’ve been selected to mediate. The local government administrator whom we met yesterday has brought us a domestic violence case. Talk about pressure to demonstrate and perform what I’ve been teaching and to do it in a context of winning credibility for mediation in the community. I accept and select Jean Marie, a young journalist who works in a peace center in Butare, the National University of Rwanda town, and who has done some good translation for us to co-mediate with me. We meet the couple with the local government administrator and ask their permission to accept us as mediators which they do. The man really has little choice in the matter as he is currently under arrest.

We do this case in private, not in front of the students, because of the sensitive nature of the domestic violence and the fact that they live in a village which would negate any confidentiality in the process. When Jean Marie had done his practice mediation in front of the class , he, like new mediators will, seemed too rushed to come to a conclusion without getting to the bottom of things and stimulating positive communication between the warring parties. So part of my job was to keep a tight rein on Jean Marie, but also give him the chance to see the process slowly unfold and work. We were with the couple for an hour and a half and eventually crafted an understanding in their words which they could take home with them. They embraced quite strongly afterward and thanked us for our efforts. However I’m always wary of domestic violence cases, because they frequently recur even after peace appears to have been made. I spoke to the government administrator about my concerns, and he was not put off. He said he really wanted the matter to be settled even temporarily to get it out of his office. He said now he really saw the value of the process.

By then it was lunch time and a big lunch and closing ceremony were organized at the parish house. We ate and handed out diplomas including to Dominique and Gabrielle who was so patient as an eleven year old and sat through all 3 days of training.

After diplomas and speeches, Evelyne , one of the participants brought 20 young singers and dancers to entertain all of us. They were beautiful in all aspects and they brought us into the dancing which Gabrielle did so well with them. Finally things ended about 2:30PM. Later the school headmaster took Gabrielle and Dominique down to the school and walked them through all six grades of classrooms where they were greeted with a song in English, “We Welcome You”. The school system in Rwanda is being converted to English as the language of instruction, and this is a heavy burden on veteran teachers to make this change over from French. A lot of Ugandans are being sent in to replace those who cannot learn English quickly enough. Gabrielle and Dominique continued walking through each classroom and greeting students. All of them wanted to touch them and shake hands. The two of them reminded me of films of Princess Diana walking through the hordes of children in the Third World.

In the evening we were invited to Evelyne’s house to meet her family. Her father , Juvenal, is a big imposing man with a gentle personality. He was a member of parliament from 1968-73. He was only 27 when he first went there. He was also a teacher and headmaster and businessman in the community. Beer and soft drinks were offered and corn on the cob. This was not the kind of corn we were accustomed to eat. This was much heavier and well advanced in conversion to starch. It took me a half hour and a beer to consume one ear. Dominique and Gabrielle both managed to eat all their corn as well, a tribute to their willingness to be part of all this. We eventually walked back to the parish for the usual round of drinks and a big supper and eventually bed, although I stayed up til midnight using Fr. Pascal’s computer to check messages and do some planning for teaching on Pemba Island.


July 14 And a Happy Bastille Day to You

Fr. Pascal , has pretty much arranged everything for us since picking us up Sunday night in Kigali. Each night has been a trip somewhere. We are scheduled to fly from Kigali on the 16th, so what to do with us today and the next? He decides that we will go to Ruhengeri, the town you go to to see the mountain gorillas. We won’t however see the gorillas, because it is atrociously expensive. Instead we’ll go up near the Ugandan border to Kidaho about 10 KM from Ruhengeri and speak to some of the mediators Renee Bove and I trained in 2009. He connects us to Jean Baptiste, one of Pascal’s former classmates an IT guy at a local college. We all bundle up to Kidaho and stop at a Quaker secondary school with hopes that someone there will be able to put us in contact with some of the mediators. In the meantime we are asked to go in to meet the headmaster as a courtesy, but it seems also an interrogation. Because the schools are switching over to English as a language of instruction, I think the headmaster is anxious to demonstrate his mastery of the newly acquired language. However it seems that his only English words he can use are prepositions and conjunctions. Bizarre sentences in French connected with ‘however , because, therefore, etc’ We answer in French and a few Swahili conjunctions. We finally excuse ourselves because this is getting difficult and a bit pointless, and he seems relieved but satisfied that he can use his English effectively. His school draws students from those who didn’t do well on entrance exams, and so are classed as the dregs of the region. When he describes family problems and behavior problems, it’s as if I’m back home in Juvenile Court. Dominique and Gabrielle are asked to sit with a group of children from the ‘media club’, as they mistake our title as ‘mediators’ with ‘media pros’. Anyway while listening in I find these children to be very astute, well read, curious, and possessing a very good level of English, much better than the headmaster. In the meantime I also meet Jacques, one of my former students. He recently lost his wife to some illness and seems very sad, but when he and another colleague talk about mediation, their eyes light up and their enthusiasm abounds. They are doing about three cases a month each, and the referrals are coming from government officials. This is very encouraging and indicates that acceptance by the local authorities is there. This is what we hoped for, but we were not sure it could be accomplished. Great news!

That evening we ride a bus back down to Ruhengeri but stop first at a bar for more beer and brochettes. We stagger back to Jean Baptiste’s home to sleep, but feel a desire to get back to Muhondo where we are much more comfortable. The usual big meal is layed out and we pick through it. We somehow feel there is an ulterior motive on Jean Baptiste’s part for our being here, and we really don’t want to know what it is. We make our feelings known that we want to leave early tomorrow, and he says he will get us to the bus in the morning. However he has to teach a class from 8-10am and will come right back after that to take us to the bus. He doesn’t show up til noon. We had done a walk through the area and looked for a rehab center where Dominique might be able to talk to some occupational therapists, but that didn’t happen as the clinic was closed. That’s when we headed back to Jean Baptiste’s to wait two more hours for him to return. The television news mentions that 17 new Peace Corps Volunteers were inducted into the Rwanda program yesterday bringing the total to 135 volunteers in country working in health education and secondary education. The officialdom sitting at the ceremony appear to be a smiling bunch of overpaid functionaries with whom I would be ill at ease. Finally Jean Baptiste shows up with some American friends, and they take us to the bus station, and he calls Fr. Pascal to inform him when to meet us at the Muhondo turnoff. We finally get back to Muhondo about 5:00PM, glad to be there. But there is still another social gathering to attend, a graduation party for the primary school headmaster, Jeremy. I didn’t ask how he made headmaster without first getting his degree. However it was a lingering question. It was a nice polite affair in which there were plenty of drinks and food offered and where we sat in a circle in the main room of his house and told stories and ate and drank. In my speech I congratulated his wife for being there when he was away doing his studies and acknowledged her role in his success. We walked back in the dark under a full moon which was so bright that we could not easily see the stars and Milky Way. Hopefully by the time we get to Zanzibar the moon will have subsided and we’ll see a star filled sky.


July 16 On to Kilimanjaro, Our last day in Rwanda

We attend mass at 6:30am and are introduced and applauded by the congregation. The choir is an incredible mix of old and young voices and drums. Afterward I suggest that Fr.Pascal have someone record them and sell the CD’s of this group when he does his next mission tour. We have breakfast and then pile into the 4 passenger Suzuki that he came back with from the diocese. They needed his 7 passenger vehicle and traded him for this smaller one. With the three of us and our bags and Pascal we are really squeezed in. Apparently Evelyne is in Kigali and will meet us there to send some things with us for her sister and family who live in Chicoutomi, Quebec. One rather large picture in a frame makes that a serious challenge, but we manage. We buy a few things to take home as well and then have a quick lunch at Simba restaurant, a trendy upscale place that charges 4 times the going rate for soft drinks. Our flight is at 1:40 to Kilimanjaro via Nairobi. We want to be at the airport by noon, but Pascal takes a circuitous route from Simba to the airport to show us embassy row and various and sundry government offices. I’m getting more and more nervous as we meander through town. Finally holding in my temper I make and insistant plea to get us to the airport. We are the last ones to the check in and go through customs and immigration and get into the passenger lounge where we finally sit down to get our breaths and they announce that we should begin boarding. We make the plane by less than five minutes. It’s a smooth flight to Nairobi and I chat with a civil servant from the Burundi Ministry of Agriculture until we get to Jomo Kenyatta International. This time only a 90 minute wait for our connection and we take a smaller turbo prop Precision Air down to the Kilimanjaro Airport. A nice view of the mountain on our port side.

Dominique is sitting next to an Australian lady who is deputy director of St. Jude school in Arusha. She immediately begins recruiting Dominique , myself and Marie to come and work there. Not to teach but to mentor their teachers. And they also need an occupational therapist. Question is, are we ready? It’s a school for poor children, if they have more than a two room home, they are considered too rich to attend St. Jude. Their national test scores were second in the whole country last year, so they are doing something right.

We pay the mandatory $100 each for a 90 day visa and then another $50 for a taxi into Moshi where we will spend the night and hopefully be able to visit Sr. Daria’s parents who live on Kilimanjaro. Sr. Daria is a medical student whom we met at the University of Dayton more than 7 years ago. Marie recognized her order from her habit, the Sisters of Kilimanjaro from Marie’s days of working there in the 1960’s. Daria has put us in contact with her cousin Alphonse who is a priest in Moshi and stays at the diocese.




July 16 An Unsettling Night in Moshi but a Good Day in Arusha

As we ride into Moshi from the airport it is evident that commercial interests have layed waste to the countryside. The road is lined on both sides with bars, small hotels, markets, and small shops that were not there even a few years ago. Our driver takes us to the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU) where I used to teach business classes in 1966. It was and still is a hotel which I can no longer recommend. It’s cheap, only $15 for the three of us, but we can’t get a room with a view this night , only tomorrow night. We stow our bags in our room and since it is dark and the streets are crowded with people with whom I’m not very familiar , we head across the street to what was once the Hollywood Café, run by a Gujerati family, long departed. It is now a bar restaurant with fake palm trees and beschwipste Masaai, nursing their beers. We order hamburgers for the ladies and rice and meat (wali na nyama) for me for old times sake. The rice and meat turns out to be the winner. There is only one bun left so only one hamburger can be delivered. Dominique accepts to order chicken instead. The rice comes with beef in a sauce that can only be described as a boeuf bourgignon, clearly made with wine. I ask the waiter what is in it. It’s delicious. He says, “come early tomorrow, you can find out”. Gabrielle’s hamburger is near inedible so I switch with her. Dominique and I share three beers and I tell that I staggered home from the old Bamboo Bar which was next door to this place on many an evening when I was a peace Corps Volunteer in this town. The Bamboo Bar is gone, something is being constructed in its place.

We go back to our room and settle in to sleep but find that the street noise is amplified in our room by the architecture of the building. Being a Saturday night, it does not calm down til about 3:30AM. The old Moshi was never this way. Trucks and buses and people yelling and the bass back up in a band are going continuously. Add to the noise the diesel fumes from the bus and truck traffic and you have the recipe for an insomniac’s erotic dream. The noise stops only briefly and the traffic starts again about 5:00am. I can see that Dominique and Gabrielle are asleep but I get very little. At 8:00 we are up and go to the top floor restaurant and watch Kibo (the main peak of Kilimanjaro) come out of the clouds. We head to the cathedral for 9:30 mass and plan to meet Sr. Daria’s cousin Alphonse at 11:00 as he will take us up to her home area on the mountain (URU) to meet her parents. We meet Alphonse after the mass. He is director of Catholic education in the Moshi area, but is soon leaving for a new posting in Dar Es Salaam. He is very cordial and seems pleased to be our guide today. His mom and Daria’s mom are sisters. We visit Daria’s parents first, and Fr. Alphonse has not phoned ahead, so they are not expecting us. Dad is tending his cattle and Mom is cooking, so we sit in their dining room for awhile as they change clothes. They laughingly scold Alphonse for his neglecting to call them. Everyone has cell phones now. The mountain actually skipped the landline for the cell phone. Daria can call them quite easily from the US. We chat awhile and present them with some gifts and Daria’s mom brings us some delicious stew she had been cooking.

From there we drive on through the coffee and banana plantations to Alphonse’s mom’s. She is a widow but is such a cheerful person reminding us of Quebec hospitality, giving big hugs and kisses to everyone. Another son comes to greet us as well. He is a paramedic in Arusha about 50 miles away. After we leave Alphonse’s home we head to another parish of Holy Ghost fathers to try to make contact with a priest in Arusha who Dominique has been referred to. The fathers tell us where they have a guest house in Arusha and from there we hope to be able to book a safari to Tarangire Park to see some animals before we leave to go to Zanzibar and Pemba Islands where I’ll teach my last course on the coming weekend. Father Alphonse takes us to the Moshi bus station and gets us on an express to Arusha, a two hour ride for the fifty mile trip. There are a lot of speed bumps and traffic that slow things down. In the past there have been some terrible bus wrecks, and that is the reason for the speed bumps. We have no trouble finding the Holy Ghost guest house, and are surprised by the quality and cleanliness. It is the most expensive place we will stay at $90 a night but they give us a discount down to $75 on the second and third nights. The chef Molokai is a great cook and his soups are of an incredible standard. Every meal we have there is a surprise and it is very inexpensive. The next morning we meet a Canadian lady, Patricia, at breakfast and in our conversation ask her if she can recommend a travel agent that can put us onto a safari. She replies that she runs a travel service for the Holy Ghost fathers and can have us on safari by 10AM which she does at a very good price. I was so worried prior to this I would not be able to get Gabrielle out to a park. Dominique kept saying, “We wanna see a lion.” But I wasn’t sure this would be possible. By the end of the day it was a done deal, a reality. Patricia gave us a very good rate for a one day trip to Tarangire, a national; park which I had been in over forty years before when it was just a reserve with no amenities. We saw everything except buffaloes and giraffe up close and rhinos. We saw a leopard, my first ever, and a female lion and cubs with a wildebeeste kill. We also saw lots of elephant, zebra, waterbuck, impala, and a dik dik and rock hyrax. On the way out there were lots of Masaai cattlemen and we even saw a troop of camels. By the time we got back we were tired but content. To me I’d done all I could for Gabrielle, but there were a lot more good things to come. My biggest doubts were behind me.