A haircut
A friend invited me to to accompany him on his monthly trip to the barber. In Rwanda the barber shops are called Saloons. In Burundi, they're Salons. You say Saloon. I say Salon. Let's call the whole thing off.
January 11, 2010
Security
Security is a serious issue in Burundi. After a recent ambush on the road leading to the VHW clinic where beloved driver Claude was killed, security forces accompany every vehicle bound for the clinic. During our daytime drives between Bujumbura and Kigutu we travel with police. But since we were traveling at night we took a couple of military guys. They mugged for the camera after protecting us the entire ride along National Route 3.
Finally I'm a first at something
It was a dark and stormy night. After a vehicle mix up we got a late start in our drive from Kigutu back to Bujumbura. By the time we rolled into town we were hungry. So we made a pit stop at a restaurant where people lounged under tin coverings, sipping their Amstels, protected from the rain. As we were led to our table, a woman approached me and said, I was the first white person to ever step into her restaurant. We had our picture taken together.
Production Guide for Kigutu
We scouted the mountain looking for the perfect spot to film the interview with the founder of Village Health Works. We wanted to film outside to show the utter beauty of the community where he grew up and where he has returned to re-build a community after 13 years of war.
The wild card when filming in outdoor locations is the sun. Clouds come and go. The sun shines brightly, then dips behind some trees. We needed a sheet to diffuse the sun's rays to ensure consistent light throughout the 3 hour interview.
All the sheets that we found had wild prints on them. So we set out to a village near the base of the mountain. There we found a man selling narrow strips of white linen. Across the street: a sewing shop. We may not be Hollywood, but with these few production expenses we managed to revitalize the local economy for the day.
See the final results of the sewing project here:
Malnutrition, Plastic Seedling Bags and Watermelon from the Community Garden
One of the biggest problems that the doctors of VHW see on a regular basis is malnourished children. Cassava is a staple crop and the leafy vines are ubiquitous along roadsides and in small garden patches. However, cassava offers no nutritional value and leaves babies and children starved of the vitamins and minerals they need to develop properly.
VHW is trying to fix that. They have planted a vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Members of the community come daily to work in the gardens and take home long blue plastic bags filled with sweet potato or carrot seedlings. They take them back to their gardens at home -- fortifying their diets with veggies rich with vitamins.
Watermelons were introduced and planted earlier this year. They are by far the most popular garden item. The flesh of this melon is pinky white, but so sweet and refreshing after a full day of running around the mountainside with heavy camera equipment. And a nice change for the palate after many days of rice, beans and Irish potatoes.
Home Visits
With the VHW founder, executive director, board of directors, and a NY-based architect who will be designing the new women's center, we went on a walked down a dirt path, under African Palm leaves to visit many of the villagers who come to the VHW clinic. We greeted a woman who was well over 70 years old, held a baby that was only 1 week old. We looked at homes constructed from mud and straw. Their poor ventilation is a breeding ground for tuberculosis, one of the diseases most commonly treated at VHW.
yet another gorgeous sunset
A typical evening in Kigutu.
Nothing but Flowers
We accompanied the VHW founder on a flower buying expedition in Bugurama, a thirty minute drive from Bujumbura along a winding mountain road. He believes that poor deserve to be surrounded by tranquility and beauty as much as the wealthy. And it with this in mind that he has created a garden oasis, with the help of a large staff of grounds workers. VHW isn't just a health clinic. Entering through the gates, one feels like she's stepped into an Eden.
January 08, 2010
Song and Dance
When Claudine isn't working as a janitor at VHW, she teaches girls educational songs about HIV/AIDS prevention.
January 04, 2010
Baby I love you, by Best in Crew
More dancing from Best Crew
January 03, 2010
Local Performers
While we shot a time lapse of the sunset over Lake Tanganyika from the hills of Bujumbura we were entertained by Best Crew -- a local performance group.
Yes We Can Bubble Gum
Strawberry Flavor Obama gum
January 02, 2010
Umwaka Mwiza (Happy New Year)
New Years Eve Burundian Drummers in Kigutu from
We leave Bujumbura and drive two hours south along the shore of Lake Tanganyika, Congo's mountains border the lake's edge. In Mugare, we turn left off National Route 3, and begin our steep ascent up the bumpy dirt road that leads to the mountain of Kigutu where Village Health Works is perched. It's a path that thousands of patients take mostly by foot, to receive free treatment. As we jostled about in the vehicle, I think of the truly dire cases -- ones that require ambulance pick up. For the sick, the ride in the ambulance can't be comfortable with all the rocks and pot holes we hit.
For almost five years I have heard about Deo's vision to create a health care oasis in the community where he was born and raised. Everyone, he believes, including the poorest people in the world should have access to health care, regardless whether they can afford to pay. And with most hospitals and doctors located in Bujumbura - the great distance and costs make seeking medical attention difficult if not impossible.
December 31, 2009
Lumb of God
Last night after watching the sunset over Lake Tanganyika while the hippos splashed in the shallow water near the rushes, we headed to Botanika for some dinner. The restaurant is a little garden oasis, off Bujumbura's busy streets. The Executive Director of Village Health Works had arrived in town and we took this opportunity to welcome her and hear more about the project. I was excited to try the mukeke, a local dish of fish from the lake. But they were all out so we all found delicious alternatives. No one ordered the lumb.
December 30, 2009
BujumBond
I arrived at the Bujumbura airport a little after midnight last night. The airport is beautiful. A Beaux Arts collection of domes that is a worthy location for the next Bond flick. Can't you see the Bond girl being rescued from the top of the dome?
The Airline Food Report
Flight delays at JFK
People have come to expect an airline food update from me, so here it is. I may be one of the only people on the planet who looks forward to a good airline meal. But this time, KLM airlines let me down with their mile-high kitchen.
KLM had two different opportunities to impress me - NYC-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-Nairobi, but neither will be remembered in the catalog of great airline meals. "Dinner" on the flight from NYC to Amsterdam was a serving of a sweet, boggy red goo slathered over what they called "chicken." I drank my mediocre red wine and lavished in the impossibly abundant leg room of the exit row.
Unbelievably, the Amsterdam to Nairobi leg saw a decline. The "sesame noodle salad" was composed of mushy noodles and tasted like it had been sitting in a can since before the start of the Cold War. While the entree was equally inedible, it did present a curious first for me. Next to yet another "chicken" dish with sugary red sauce was a heap of reconstituted potatoes. Nothing unusual here. But when I scooped in to try what would be my only bite of the dish, my fork struck skin. Potato skin. A bit confounded, I began to wonder, a. are these reconstituted potato skins or b. did someone actually cook a real red potato, peel off the skin and add it to the reconstituted potatoes. Or c. Maybe these potatoes aren't reconstituted at all. Maybe they were just prepared in a way that makes them tasteas though they are. Food for thought. When the kind KLM steward came around with cardboard packs of ice cream, I forgave them.
Kenya Airway's chicken was surprisingly delicious. It was a blend of rice and raisins, cinnamon and pepper. It actually tasted like, er, food.
In the greater scheme of things I have nothing to complain about. I arrived at my final destination on time. My luggage arrived. I was given my visa, even though it was after midnight. But that's the point. I like airplane food. I don't usually complain, so I'm irritated to find myself in this unusual position where I am.
December 28, 2009
Tomorrow
Tomorrow evening I will bid winter adieu. In what is becoming my annual escape from snow, salt stains and slush, I will board a plane that will take me first to Amsterdam, then to Nairobi. The final leg will deposit me south of the equator in Bujumbura, Burundi. I will land just after midnight on the second to last night of the decade and will spend the next two weeks producing a story about Village Health Works, an innovative health clinic that is providing more than health services to the community.
While the United States, one of the world's richest nations is debating how to reform health care, I travel to Kigutu, two hours south of Burundi's capital to a hilltop overlooking Lake Tanganyika. There I will find out what lessons we can learn in one of the poorest nations.
October 25, 2009
Rwandan Survivors Build Future in New York
I produced this story about Rwandan survivors in New York for VJ Movement earlier this year.
August 06, 2009
The power of radio
The Economist had a short article about the trouble radio is causing in Afghanistan and Pakistan's Swat valley. There are serious echoes of 1994 Rwanda here:
In an era of drones and spy satellites, it may seem odd that crude simple radio transmitters can still make huge mischief. But the scale and sophistication of broadcasting has mutated downwards as well as upwards....In the Swat valley, [Richard Holbrooke] noted in March, “Fazlullah is going round every night broadcasting the names of people they’re going to behead or have beheaded. Any of you who have a recent sense of history will know that that’s exactly what happened with Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda.”
April 25, 2009
Colombian Refugees turn to Sex Work
This winter I spent two weeks in Ecuador on the northern border of Colombia, producing several short documentaries for VJ Movement. This story is about one of the only economic opportunities for Colombian refugee women living in Ecuador: sex work.
March 25, 2009
Ecuador Banks on Black Gold
Oil sales account for 40 percent of Ecuador’s budget. Since 2008 the price of a barrel of Ecuadorian oil fell from US $118 to a mere US $30. I wanted to find out how the major town producing Ecuador’s oil has been affected by the market crash. So, I headed to the oil capital of Ecuador – a border town called Lago Agrio. I produced this story about oil, the U.S. Dollar and the vulnerabilities of Ecuador’s economy for VJ Movement.
January 29, 2009
Hailing Hitler
On our second day in Lago Agrio, at 8 p.m., Hitler picked us up at the intersection of Guayaquil and Venezuela. MHP, Amy and I scrambled into the backseat. Amy propped her camera on the windowsill while I wired Hitler. Yes. Hitler. This is the third of our nighttime cabbies with a penchant for after hour adventures and a good nose for nightclubs.
Hitler gave us the redlight district tour: La Casa de Citas, Las Munecas, El Boricua, La Pantera advertised their presence with loud graffiti, lewd murals and neon lit nudity. Some were little more than shacks. Only La Casa Blanca, a freshly painted hillside villa with an armed guard and silver SUVs outside parked, aspired to an air of distinction. Every time my camera flashed, Hitler hit fifth gear in fear of being identified.
At 11 p.m., our driver reversed his pickup truck taxi down a steep riverside road. Klo-Klong. The taxi boarded the Gavala moored in the water. Gavalas are floating metal contractions that look light but are solid enough to support the weight of several cars. We crossed the river. The only lights on the water came from car headlights and the carnival colors spilling out of waterfront clubs.
We crossed over to the neighborhood of Aguarico. A few months ago a shoot out broke out between police and residents who had an arsenal of small weapons for trafficking. Now, Hitler explained, most of the crime comes from this neighborhood but they are not committed in the neighborhood. Still, he started and stopped the car with unease every time we drew near a nighttime establishment. To our surprise, many had shut down.
The area of Aguarico, unlike the rest of Lago Agrio, felt like a ghost town. The roads were rough. Petrol tanks doubled as trash containers outside rundown homes. It was hard to believe that this was narcotrafficking nexus. The occasional clue came from suspiciously high quality cars given the context. It could have been any community in the world beyond recrimination.
-- Dominique Soguel
Mesa de Anti Trata and Single Moms
We arrived to Lago Agrio behind schedule. Valentina, our Italian guide from UNHCR, punched numbers into the phone and reschuffled the day's agenda.
Our first meeting was with a Carmelite sister that chairs the anti-trafficking roundtable. Short-haired and stocky, this Colombian woman chronicled on camera her own adventures in and out of brothels trying to pinpoint and save trafficked minors.
It is a tricky task. The brothel industry follows a "fresh faces" protocol. This means that women and girl follow a fast-paced itinerary across the country's brothels. Lago Agrio, Guayaquil, Santo Domingo, Esmeraldas, San Lorenzo are some of the traditional stop-overs.
She cried at the memory of a ten-year-old and seven-year-old working at a beer bar surrounded by seedy men. Cantinas and Chongos are teeming with minors from Colombia and Ecuador, she says. Men demand tight girls and pay for it. Police fail to interfere and pin the perpetrators with the law. Mafias target social workers and buy the men in blue.
The boom of the Petrol industry in the late sixties meant that Lago Agrio developed along the lines of an old Western Movie with bars and brothels on every block. In the last decade, the Colombian conflict an dollarization turned the town into a hub for all types of trafficking: white gasoline to refine cocaine, small arms, drugs, women and girls.
Displaced Colombian women and minors without papers are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, UNHCR representatives explain. To work in Ecuador, you need refugee status. This process takes an average of 18 months in Lago Agrio. Single moms, for 18 months, have no legitimate source of income and at least three mouths to feed.
"Sometimes you are forced to do things out of necessity," said a new arrival to Puerto Nuevo, a town on the banks of the river San Miguel, a 50 meter boat ride to Colombia.
In the afternoon, we joined the Red Cross in door to door visits of women who fit this profile. The faces of these women scream poverty, not prostitution. Their children are pure, under five years old, and full of unbridled joy and love for their mothers. A child's moment of sickness means a night of work for medicine.The love of these single moms understands only the need of the children.
-- Dominique Soguel
Oil Men and some numbers
This morning we head to the Quito airport to catch a flight to Lago Agrio, the northern oil town near the Colombia border. As we board the plane I take inventory of the ratio of men to women on the plane. In the Sucumbios province where we are headed, there are about 50,000 people who are an economically active part of the population. Nearly 40,000 of this population are men. The remaining 10,000 plus women work in agriculture, domestic work or commerce. We are going to document the segment of the population of women not included in these numbers, sex workers.
In a town with 7,000 petroleum workers, military men, police and vendors, there is a high demand for sex. Evidence is in the pool halls, karaoke lounges, discoteques and brothels. And only twelve miles to the Colombian border, the town offers financial opportunity for women desperate to flee violence and war.
In the first half of 2008 alone, over 270,000 Colombians were displaced by rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug cartels. I do not know how many of that number are women or of that number how many ended up resorting to sex work. But a 2005 study found that at least 70% of the sex workers in Ecuador are Colombian.
On the plane the stewardess tells us there are 84 passengers. I count five passengers who are not men.
-- Amy Brown
January 27, 2009
Queen's Nightclub
Dominique sits on a black vinyl bench in the front of the night club. Red lights flash in time to the bass-heavy beat. The light show was not the only reminder that we had entered the red light district of Quito.
In Ecuador, it's summer year around. But the woman sitting next to Dominique is dressed with her profession, not the season in mind. Her shorts reveal the entire length of her legs. I want to take off my sweater and let her sit on it so her legs don't have to touch the sticky vinyl. Instead, I lean back in a mirrored corner at the rear of the club, guarding my camera and following my clear instructions.
"You can film the architecture, but not the people," the administrative manager told me.
I shoot abstractions of mirrors, lights, poles, and television screens, trying to avoid the human figures that I can't help but see in mirrors. I wait for word from Dominique. She must convince the woman she's sitting next to speak to us on camera. It is her story that represents that of so many Colombian women. In her village, her father was hacked to death by paramilitary forces. She fled to Ecuador and now is a sex worker in Quito. These few snippets that Dominique is able to glean are noticeably painful for the woman to share. She teared up as she mentions her father.
Our Quito driver is who we have to thank for access to the nightclub. At night he is contracted by three night clubs to drive the sex workers to and from work. He paces, speaks to a woman, then he joins me at the back of the club to keep me company while I wait.
We exchange broken Spanish. I answer basic questions about my family, my work, my age, my home. This is so surreal, I think. I try to maintain eye contact with him. If I don't the television screen is in my direct line of sight and it's broadcasting material that can't help but distract in the most vulgar of ways.
Dominique and the women part. Dominique walks to me to report. The woman lights a cigarette and perches on a bar stool next to a woman in a short red dress. "She doesn't want to talk to us," Kiki tells me.
We go to leave.
-- Amy Brown
January 26, 2009
A Monday in Quito
There are sports bars and then there are sex bars. The common trait between them is surplus of TV screens. In both, avid aficionados stare fixated at the plasma, salivating over strategy, movement, physical contact, with guttural gusto. As a woman, the images in sex bars overload your eyes, penetrate your pores and leave your body begging for a shower strong enough to wash away the dirty data overload.
Our Virgil into Quito’s nastiest scenes is a cab driver, Miguel. For a living, Miguel shuttles prostitutes from the brothels to hotels, motels and parking lots. He works at Night Katz. Twelve taxi drivers work with him. Initially, there were twenty five men hired for these runs. More than half in the group got laid off for sexually abusing or robbing the call girls after work. Miguel is one more spider in a vast web of facilitators and exploiters.
We finished our reporting day at 9 p.m. in Queens. A black bouncer blocked the blue lit doorway. Posters silhouetting curvy girls and trumpeting prices -- $10 a pop, or fifteen minutes -- plastered the walls. We crossed a second doorway and met the administrator, a man who previously worked at a New Jersey mattress company. He welcomed us inside and gave us the greenlight to film. Monday nights are low key.
At the club, we met a Colombian girl, who had all the elements of our missing profile for the story. She was very traumatized and determined not to speak to us. Off camera, she shared elements of her family's experience at the hands of guerrilla. It was not a happy story. She teared up six times. I encouraged her to tell it for the sake of other women in that situation but she would not budge.
"It didn't make sense," I told her. "She had shared her story off camera for nothing. Why would she not share it on camera for something: the help it could bring to others?"
For a moment, that argument seemed to hold weight. It was the first one out of many that she actually mulled over. Despite three moments of hesitation, she stood her ground. We gave her our number in case she changed her mind. We'll see how that goes. Miguel is now pitching sources that want to sell us such stories. The answer was no and an explanation of basic ethics that hold even when access is difficult.
Accessing Colombian sex workers is one side of the obstacles coin. The other side of the coin is the hermeticism, bureaucratic jargonese and red tape that one needs to cut through when dealing with the NGOs theoretically meant to help this people. The story is there but many forces sabotage our access, close the valves of information flow. Sources sidestep the issue fearing a diplomatic controversy with Colombia or a backlash from the men who represent the cause of displacement (guerrillas, paramilitary, abusive relatives.)
The night ended at Dragonfly in Quito's red light district. The bar was on the same block we circled earlier in the evening looking for minors, transvestites and Colombians working the streets. Amy shot footage from the front seat while Virgil gave us the scoop on the streets who's who: crack whores, drug dealers, underage girls, narcotrafficking night club owners, ad nauseam. Virgil was a breakthrough after many roadblocs. But into what?
-- Dominique Soguel
Much too young
The problem with looking at the underbelly of society, is once you start to look, you can't stop. What you're bound to see will make you weep.
Yesterday, we had an intensive interview with a Margarita, a sex worker from Colombia who works for Lucia. Margarita perched on the edge of the company bed in her professional work quarters for the interview. The 5' x 7' room felt like water-free aquarium with the green walls and aqua sheets. In the space, I felt the claustrophobia a fish snatched from the ocean and dumped into confining glass walls would feel.
Unlike many sex workers who sleep in the same beds as they work, Margarita lives with her grandmother in Esmeralda. She agreed to let us film in her apartment the following morning, on the condition that we not mention her work. We made arrangements to meet the following morning in front of the Gran Mision Esmeraldas al Encuentro de Cristo -- a church overlooking the central square.
We slept, then awoke. Stalin picked us up and drove us to the meeting point.
Outside the church young boys and girls huddle, giggling and joking. Dominique gets out to scour the area for Margarita. I sit in the car guarding my camera and watching the crowds.
On a bench across the street from the church, a middle aged man in a day-glo green tank top and white shorts catches my attention. Seated on his lap is a young girl, probably eleven or twelve years old. Next to him sits another girl, a little older, who stares at the sidewalk, not getting nearly as much attention as the other. Both are wearing jeans, pink tank tops; their is hair is pulled back in tight cornrows. Given the man's age, my initial assumption is that this father is dropping his daughters off for the church's Saturday activities.
Dominique still isn't back. I continue to watch this trio. The girls bear no resemblance to the man. The way he looks at them is not at all paternal. I am disgusted, sickened. These girls are too young. I resist the urge to call him out on his predatory behavior. Dominique returns. Margarita is nowhere to be found. We drive around the block two more times before concluding Margarita changed her mind.
-- Amy Brown
Born into Brothels
I hear a faint mewing coming from the bedroom of Lucia's daughter. We are at the home, not the brothel of Lucia. I lift back the pink curtain, and piled on top of their mother is a heap of new born kittens.
-- Amy Brown
Camouflaged from Fire
When we're not interviewing sex workers, brothel madams, health officials and police, our trusty driver, Stalin (for more about Stalin read Dominique's post here) transports my Dominique and I around Esmeraldas on a hunt for activities to film. He has taken us to fish markets, cargo container lots, oil refineries and vistas with sunset views in the background and cranes and industry in the foreground. I have been trying to collect footage of activities around Esmeraldas to create a real sense of the place.
To properly tell the story of Colombian sex workers in Ecuador I'm collecting footage of the places where the women live and work. We've filmed inside and outside of the brothels. We've filmed nightclubs and pay-by-the hour motels. We've filmed a brothel owner preparing lunch for her family. But there are less conspicuous places like massage parlors and karaoke bars -- venues camouflaging the reality that here too, women can be bought. And in many cases the women are actually girls. Today it's these places we are trying to spot.
As we drove around Esmeraldas, our eyes scan buildings and billboards for signs announcing this underground marketplace.
"Look Dominique, actual camouflage," I say, pointing to two men wearing red, gray and white pants in a pattern typically seen in earth tones. "Who are they?"
Dominique leans forward to ask our driver, Stalin if they are in a branch of the military.
"They're firemen," he says. I notice the fire trucks parked behind them.
If the army members wear khaki camouflage to remain inconspicuous in forests, do the firemen wear red camouflage to blend in with the fire? Or is that they want to camouflage themselves from the fire's red flames?
-- Amy Brown
January 23, 2009
Making Enemies
Our adventure to the border boonies was not without consequence. The next morning, Elizabeth Molina called me in a rage. The night club owner called RedTrabSex at midnight reporting our visit. Paramilitary men, apparently, stopped by shortly after us, putting the fear of God into Harold’s soul.
Molina was furious that we had not given her a heads up.
“You blew it,” said Molina, president of RedTrabSex. “Why didn’t you go through us? No sex worker, no club owner in Esmeralda will open up to you. I advise you to leave soon. You might have trouble with the paramilitary. The head of the sex worker association in Esmeralda is furious with you. Forget about everything. Get out of town.”
At first, her tirade gave me pause. Had I blown it in a greedy moment of tight scheduled reporting? But as I listened to her go on and on, I came to the conclusion that the real reason for her rage was that we had gotten access to a night club without RedTrabSex acting as ambassadors. We had failed down to bow down to the sex world Queen.
She knew that we were interviewing Lucia, one of the few female brothel owners in Esmeralda, that day. As I hang up, I knew, that she would mobilize rank and file to block that interview. I immediately called Lucia and told her we were on our way. When we reached the brothel, Las Hermanitas, Lucia’s sister parried us at the door.
“The girls won’t talk to you,” she said. “You don’t have permission from the sex worker’s association.”
“Where is Lucia?” I asked.
“She walked off that way,” she lied.
We drove the car up the street and round the block looking for Lucia but she was nowhere to be found. I called her again.
“On a taxi” she said. “Be right there.”
Our interview was on.
Luicia, unlike Harold, or Elizabeth, had full command of her ship. She introduced us to everyone as if we were long lost family members. The clientele, seeing Lucia’s approval, became comfortable with the camera. A number of sex workers refused to talk to us. They had been tipped off, Lucia said, with false rumors. Molina’s work, I am sure.
We interviewd a veteran sexworker, Alexandra, over 40, and a very young girl, Jacklyn. The latter said she was 20, looked less, and admitted to starting work at age 15. The province of Esmeralda has witnessed a surge of minor sex workers. Girls are starting the business as early as 12, according to Jacklyn, Lucia and Elizabeth.
Both women we interviewed worked at Las Hermanitas to support out of wedlock babies.
The brothel was sparse and overheated. Women performed in tight quarters that stunk in the aftermath of its activities. There was no running water. The rooms offered three buckets instead of a sink for washing. Small corner shelves supported personal belongings ranging from vanity mirrors to condoms to nail polish. Handbags containing health and identity papers hang on a single nail.
Las Hermanitas is one of two family run brothels. It operates in daylight hours. The second venue, Las Canitas, opens its doors for the night shift. Lucia and her mother, an aged woman with nutty skin, run the show. Their business is almost 50 years old. Relatives provide labor as bouncers, DJs and bartenders but not as prostitutes.
-- Dominique Soguel
Esmeralda and Borbon
I´m writing to you from Esmeralda. In the 16th Century Spanish cuinquestadors were said to have found emeralds the size of pigeon eggs when the landed here. Flash forward to today. While the hillsides are as green as emeralds, Esmeralda is a industrial coastal town. When we arrived, our drive through town took us past welding facilities, auto repair shops and bus stations. Our hotel is a short walk to the ocean, but the shoreline is shared with oil tankers, cargo containers and the cranes needed to lift and load them onto the boats.
Upon arrival on Wednesday afternoon we hit the ground running. While in Quito we had made friends with a sex workers association called Red Trab Sex. They want sex work to be recognized as a legitimate profession with workers rights, health benefits that extend beyond gynocological exams, and appropriate pay. In Esmeralda we spent the afternoon getting them to know them better. But more importantly, over shrimp cerviches and mucha agua, they got to know us. By the end of the evening they had invited us to attend the sex workers conference that they organized. Brothel owners, sex workers, police and health officials would attend. The major issue on the agenda is to make sex work legal. Currently, sex work is neither legal nor illegal, if contained behind closed doors.
Thursday was a jam packed day. At the sex workers conference we made a number of good contacts including Lucia, a women who is a brothel owner in Esmerelda. What is interesting about her is unlike the Red Trab Sex association of sex workers who believe that sex work should be considered a legitimate profession, Lucia believes that sex work is a profession that only people in desperate situations choose. She wishes that the demand for sex work didn´t exist and that women never had to be put in these positions.
In the evening, more shrimp cerviche. Then we hit the road with our trusted driver Stalin to our next shooting location in Borbon, La Jardin de Sensation, a brothel that granted us permission to shoot inside.
Now we´re in Esmeralda with a full day of shooting ahead.
-- Amy Brown
January 22, 2009
Esmeraldas Travel Warning
Before we land in Esmeraldas, I cram as much information as I can from our guidebook during the short 30 minute flight from Quito. There is a whole paragraph on who, what and where to avoid. However, there is nothing written about the territory which we are about to enter. We must navigate the brothels, nightclubs and karaoke lounges on our own.
A Sample of Daily UNHCR Testimonies
Our first stop in Esmeraldas was UNHCR. This is where Colombian women displaced by violence turn to for help. Not everyone knows UNHCR exists. In fact, one of our interviews, Karen, had already spent a year and a half in Esmeraldas before discovering this safety net for asylum seekers. Karen is a single mother of two. Her daughter Daniela, a 14 year old girl, atrophied by cerebral palsy, lay in her arms limp and gargling with a slight grin that turned into a moan of discomfort as time passed.
UNHCR's Manuel Alcivar told us that Karen was representative of the women who pass through his office seeking refugee status. Violence in Colombia has amplified domestic violence to new levels of brutality within the home. Karen's partner locked her, chained her and beat her. As a mother, she perceived the psychological trauma such sightings of violence had on the only, silent witness: Daniela. She suspected her partner was paramilitary but was uncertain of his real identity.
"Paramilitary seduce women or take them by force," explained Alcivar. "Then, as heads of households, they force them to work. Then torture them, chain them and rape them.
Daniela's discomfort and the insecurity of her newborn, Marisa, gave Karen the courage to organize an escape. The owner of the house she lived in had a copy of the keys and helped her out of a lockdown situation. Bruised and beat-up, she took shelter in a church and then traveled on a clandestine speedboat to Esmeraldas with her daughters. For the last year, she has scraped a living from housework. Sex work, she said, was not possible given her daughter's condition but she reported recruitment efforts from a trafficking net when she was younger. A friend of hers, lured with promises of commercial success, died in the trade.
-- Dominique Soguel
Flight to Esmeraldas
Flight to Esmeraldas from on Vimeo.
Steady Behind the Wheel, Stalin!
Yellow taxi cabs add a dramatic dash of color to the petrol blue and jungle green port city of Esmeraldas. But the city really should be red. Egalitarian epithets – comrade, sister, brother, colleague, compatriot – infuse every interaction with a sense of revolutionary respect. The strongest incarnation of the ghost of communism was our taxi driver Stalin.
Dear Stalin. A man of gentle moods and docile disposition hid beneath this commanding name, hard with history, hid a man of gentle moods and docile disposition. As we pulled away from Hotel Kennedy, he kept a steady hand on the steering wheel, yes his voice wavered when asking: Why at night? Why indeed dear Stalin. En route, I explained to him the geopolitical scope of our project and its particular focus on sex workers.
"Aha," he said full of sudden understanding. "You want to capture them in their natural habitat."
Earlier in the morning, during a conference organized by RedTrab Sex, the national network of sex workers, I approached a young pimp who dressed the part. Pavel wore Georgio Armani imitation glasses and a neon orange polo shirt. A baseball cap did little to disguise the tight curls washed out by peroxide. At 22, Pavel is an administrator at club Sensation, in Borbon, earning $80 per week.
I persuaded Pavel to allow us access into his nightclub. Borbon is north towards the Colombian frontier, two hours away from Esmeraldas.
Stalin's car swerved and swung down a muddy half-built highway. Frogs ricocheted across the pavement. Crabs crawled crossroads. Cicadas complained at the heavy rains. For We navigated pockmarked asphalt and cut across high grasslands. Mosquitos and chitchat distracted our minds from the worst case scenarios: muggings and murder. The police had warned us. Stalin kept a clenched fist.
We took precautions: two undercover policemen. Stalin's nerves were not of steel. If we left him outside the nightclub he could bolt back to Esmeraldas and leave us stranded in the greasy hellhole of Borbon. Rain had stripped the streets down to rubble. Puddles and potholes made driving past loitering men at a safe speed impossible. The yellow cab conspicuously lit the empty streets and solitary, locked down shacks.
The taxi pulled up to Sensation shortly after 10 p.m. Sargento Sanchez's patrol car was parked in the vicinity, watching the back of his undercover officers. Three marine patrons stormed out with scowls on their face pissed off at police for not warning them before busting into a brothel with cameras.
Clients tempers boiled. Some pleaded for mercy from their wives, others threatened to take our tape and ban our entry to the brothel. I gave Pavel the kiss of Judas. "We are here under invitation from Pavel and the owner of the establishment. They have the right to show and promote their locale."
The owner of the establishment broke a sweat as the customers' finger wagging, popping veins and aggressive language, shifted onto him. The anger boomeranged back on us soon enough. I was pushed. Amy got hassled but kept silent. American citizenship and accents are a major liability here. I reassured two harried husbands that we respected their privacy and that we would not record faces.
Unconvinced, the men moved on to minor shoving and major cursing. The policemen watched bemused from their doorway, one arms crossed, the other thumbs hooked on his belt. So much for back up. While Amy shot undercover, I convinced Harlod Valencia, Pavel's uncle, to grant us an interview in one of the rooms reserved for sex workers. We talked about business.
Valencia bought the place three months ago for $25,000. The return of investment is slow. We were only allowed in because he had pinned his hopes on the press to boost his popularity. Before the clients revolted at the entrance, all he had cared about was whether the footage would appear on national television. I told him we were international press but that there was always a chance that national channels might pick us up.
Sensation as a"family heritage" in Valencia's mind.
"The idea," he says, "is not to make money but to offer a space where people who cannot obtain jobs find an income. We are an enterprise."
Sensation nets $100 to $150 dollars per week drawn from the labor of seven to 14 prostitutes and the demand of local and itinerant men. Harold took pride in the generous dimensions of the rooms (at most three meters by two), the availability of a fan, a sink and puppy printed sheets. He takes $1 per client.
As we shot Valencia, women walked in and out of rooms Short skirted, shirtless ladies wove their way through circles of men sitting on plastic chairs, sipping beers and playing cards. A hand was held. A man was led. Here, the toque – intercourse-- is worth $6. A session lasts ten to fifteen minutes depending "on a man's capacity to discharge himself."
One hour of sordid details later, we left Sensation and its seedy clientele. The mob mentality persisted as we walked out the door but some men visibly relaxed as we left and some even came forward with smiles and handshakes. Perhaps it was a last ditch effort to ingratiate themselves in the hope that we keep out their faces off national TV.
We dropped off our undercover policemen at the station.Sanchezescorted us halfway out of town inthe patrol car. When we parted, Stalin confessed that he wished the escort had lasted longer. The policemen were petrified at the club,he said. The fear was clearly transferred to our driver.
Click here for Stalin's video testimony.
Stalin stopped the car. We faced a barricade and a man in a ski mask…
Click her for video testimony.
-- Dominique Soguel
January 21, 2009
Quito to Esmeralda
view of the city looking out from inside Quito airport
Last night I flew from Cali to Quito via Bogota. Before transferring planes in Bogota, I paused to watch the television screens broadcasting coverage of Obama´s inauguration. I got teary, both filled with pride for my country, but also sad that I´m am miles away DC and the festivities. My fellow passengers smiled at me and it reminded me that for now, we have regained the respect of the world.
We dip below the thick cloud covering to land in Quito. An urban sprawl of lights emerged like I have never seen. The city of Quito is situated in a long narrow bowl, sandwiched between two mountain peaks. A dense grid of cubes creep up the mountain sides and down into valleys. The low lying lights seem to extend for miles and miles.
My reporting partner greets me at the airport and we drive to a lovely home in the valley of Cumbaya which will be our home base. Today, we fly west to the coastal town of Esmeralda where oil is the predominant business. We will begin talking to women refugees from Colombia who have fled poverty and violence and have ended up here as sex workers.
-- Amy Brown
January 20, 2009
The streets of Cali
Cali Streets from
The people who make it happen
the whole gang -- folks from Fundacion Carvajal, the grad students and CEO/founder of Frogtek, me
One of the reasons that David has access to many of the micro-retailers based in Cali is because of a local foundation, Foundacion Carvajal that has long-standing relationships with hundreds of the shop owners around the city. They have been incredible liasons, taking us down narrow streets in remote slums to talk to the people who sell meat, produce and other products to their communities.
Carlos, Andrea and Donald have been working especially hard on behalf of Frogtek and after spending the past four days with them, I feel I'm must give a shout out to them in the form of posting some pictures.
Cali the city compared to Cali the U.S. State
While vastly different, there are certain similarities between Cali, Colombia and Cali[fornia]. Here's the list I've been compiling:
- in both locales the song "Going Back to Cali" is the repeatative soundtrack running silently in my brain.
- both places can boast bountiful quantities of creamy, ripe avocados.
- both have a serious driving culture. It's rare to see people walking on the sidewalks and streets. Like California, Cali, Colombia is a sprawling city. As the city developed is was built out, instead of up. This means there can be considerable distance between point A and point B. I'm also told that traveling by foot introduces the potential for a mugging. It's better to be in rapid motion than walking at a 3 mile per hour clip.
- Cali is the plastic surgery capital of South America. I've seen more face lifts, artificial curves created by tummy tucks and butt augmentations in Cali, Colombia than I have ever seen in Los Angeles. But I'm sure they are in close competition for each other. To partake in the local culture I've considered having a pinky finger augmentation.
January 19, 2009
Drive outside of Cali
January 18, 2009
Introducing the cast
I am part of a small entourage made of up three business students and David, a recent business school graduate whose early-stage social venture, Frogtek I am here to cover. In Colombia there are between 400,000 to 500,000 micro retailers selling groceries and products in storefronts -- everything from Procter & Gamble toothpaste to local produce to flaky pastries filled with warm guava paste. David is developing a product aimed to help these shopkeepers increase profits and efficiency, while simultaneously developing a social enterprise that will make investors money.
My home in Cali
the entrance to my home.
My accommodations while in Cali are at the Casa Santa Monica -- and it's really more like an apartment set up than a hotel. I have my own room and bathroom but I share a common space with the entourage I'm filming. It's a great set up. There's an abundance of electrical outlets for charging my camera batteries. And I have a wireless internet connection so I can update my travel blog frequently.
The hotel is situated on the side of a mountain. The foliage is too lush to allow for views of the city below. I feel like I'm in an urban rainforest. There was a heavy down pour a few minutes ago.
Here's the view looking up from our doorway:
January 17, 2009
The flight and arrival
Within 12 hours my luggage was lost, but then found -- and delivered to my hotel.
When we dip beneath the cloud blanket to refuel in Medellin, Colombia that's when the reveal happens. Dark green mountains thrust through the clouds. These mountains are angular, almost more black than green. My initial reaction to the mountains is to parachute down. Why continue on to Cali when utter beauty is before me.
We land about 40 minutes outside of Medellin at the new airport. My seatmate tells me that the old airport was located in a mountain bowl in the center of the city. The necessary steep nose-dive landings didn't do much to keep crash rates down, so they moved the airport. It's a lively bunch on board my plane. There were great whoops of relief and cheering when we landed, despite a nose-dive free landing.
We take off a few minutes later and I take in the lush land swells -- the mountains are covered in a messy grid work of grassy fields, stitched on their borders with darker trees.
My seatmate makes a list of dishes I must try while in Colombia. Ajiaco, a stew of chicken and potatoes is high on the list. I hope to pack in a potato sampling, to try the numerous varieties grown in the area. I also hope to find a big bottle of tipple -- sugar cane liquor -- to take home. At my summer barbecues, the corn liquor I brought back from Vietnam had quite a following. I think all barbecue guests would partake in tipple shots.
We land. I meet up with the three business students I will be filming over the next week: Julio, Rafael and Eduardo. We retrieve our luggage. All bags arrive except mine. We wait and wait and wait some more. It's getting late and we need to go to a presentation led by Fundacion Carvajalon micro retailing.
After the presentation, we go to La Papa Papa restaurant. Eduardo tried to order the Ajiaco. We were told the dish is only served domingo (Sunday). I will have to put the tastings on hold. We return to our hotel -- really more of a multi-bedroom apartment (complete with wireless internet). There sits my lost luggage.
January 15, 2009
Meet my reporting partner
Dominique Soguel is a journalist and photographer working at Women's eNews in New York. She covers international policy, religion and gender issues. Soguel has filed stories from the US, the Middle East and Africa. As a citizen of Chile, she looks forward to this opportunity to report from the South American continent. Soguel graduated from New York University with a joint masters degree in journalism and Near Eastern Studies. Previously, she studied political science at UPENN and Sciences Po, Paris. Prior to Women’s eNews, she conducted translations and reporting for WNYC, The New York Times, WQXR and Voice of America.
Departing on a new adventure
Introducing two new short documentary projects.
Tomorrow I fly to South America where I will be producing two short videos over the course of three weeks.
I first fly to Cali, Colombia. I received a video journalism fellowship from Columbia University business school to cover social enterprise in the developing world. I will be producing a short video about the efforts of Columbia University business students collaborating with a local organization, Fundacion Carvajal.
On inauguration day I will fly to Quito to meet my friend and reporting collaborator, print reporter, Dominique Soguel. We will team up to produce a multimedia project about refugees and internally displaced women who turn to sex work to make a living.
Here's more information about this project:
May 21, 2008
Fundraiser to Support Rwanda Reporting
In March, I have returned to the States after spending an incredible seven weeks documenting the lives and reporting of an impressive group of journalism students. To take the next steps -- to edit the 50-hours of footage down to 90-minutes -- will require some tough choices, a very skilled editor and of course further funding to pay the editor.
If you happen to be in Brunswick, ME tomorrow night you can support our film AND enjoy some delicious spumante and presecco.
Here are the details:
Where: The Gelato Fiasco, 74 Main Street, Brunswick, ME
When: Wednesday, 21st, 8 pm
RSVP: rsvplehayfashionpress@yahoo.com
March 11, 2008
No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn
my sister welcomes me back to NYC
They confiscated my Rwandan mayonnaise in the Brussels airport. That, and the extreme jostling and bumpiness over Montreal were the only hassles I encountered during my flight home from Rwanda.
There were two legs to my 25-hour return: Kigali to Brussels and Brussels to New York. For the first flight I contorted myself into the most comfortable position possible given that my legs are long and my seat mate's elbow kept drifting over the armrest into my zone. I proceeded to conk out in exhaustion and sadness for the duration of the flight. Occasionally, I awoke to accept the miniature liquor drinks offered to me by the kind stewardess who seemed receptive to my desire to numb the pain.
The sleep did me well because by the the time I had forfeited my precious jar of mayonnaise to the vigilant anti-terror security guards at the Brussels baggage conveyor belt I was actually starting to get excited about my re-entry into the Brooklyn world I had left behind. I spent most of the flight to New York watching the movies on demand that for some reason all seemed to be period romance films. I was glad Atonement was an option but the film stalled 50 minutes in. I attempted to watch Shakespeare in Love, but got too irritated with Gwyneth's accent to continue so instead turned to Elizabeth which was a joy to watch if only for Cate Blanchett.
Everyone seems glad to have me back which feels nice. Today, I celebrated my return with what I intend to be a marathon of Asian dining. I kicked it off with bibimbap -- the Korean comfort food I've been longing for from a land where it does not exist. Tomorrow I will enjoy izakaya (Japanese pub fare) and Wednesday it's on to either some Vietnamese Banh Mi or maybe I'll just go straight to the raw stuff and pig out on some sushi.
bibimbap all up close and personal
But tonight I kick off the birthday party marathon where alcohol, not food is king!
March 08, 2008
The end of my Odyssey
dance party to celebrate the end of my time in Rwanda
I took my last cold shower this morning. It's my final day in Rwanda -- and not even a full one at that.
Tonight, I board a 8:50 pm plane to Brussels. By tomorrow afternoon I will be home in Brooklyn. According to the party planning committee an impressive series of homecoming events await me. If all goes as planned I'll be dining on some delicious izakaya and catching up on all the flicks that I've missed since I left 6 weeks ago!
Last night I said my good byes at a farewell party in our yard. What better way to bid Rwanda adieu than with a spitted and roasted goat and cold Mutzig draft. I have been wanting to prepare a whole goat in my backyard for several years now, but in Brooklyn goats are hard to come by. So I jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at this feast. Pablo sent out the invitation proclaiming that my Odyssey had come come to an end and quoted from the Odyssey:
Ulysses now left the haven, and took the rough track up through the wooded country and over the crest of the mountain till he reached the place where Minerva had said that he would find the 'goat'herd, who was the most thrifty servant he had. . . .As he spoke he bound his girdle round him and went to the sties where the young sucking 'goats' were penned. He picked out two which he brought back with him and sacrificed. He singed them, cut them up, and spitted on them; when the meat was cooked he brought it all in and set it before Ulysses, hot and still on the spit, whereon Ulysses sprinkled it over with white barley meal. The 'goat'herd then mixed wine in a bowl of ivy-wood, and taking a seat opposite Ulysses told him to begin.
"Fall to, stranger," said he, "on a dish of servant's 'goat'. The fat goats have to go to the suitors, who eat them up without shame or scruple; but the blessed gods love not such shameful doings, and
respect those who do what is lawful and right.
Sticking with the Greek theme, we hired a mural painter to paint a Trojan Horse on the wall of our home. Mutzig beer flowed freely from a keg and Matilde and our friends at Papyrus provided a full spread of food. We danced to the music of a dj who lives on our street into the night.
Keeping with the Odyssey theme, we hired a mural painter to cover our wall with a Trojan Horse
Today, I joined the Hash Harriers -- the Kigali running club to do a run up and around Mount Kigali. The views from the hilltop were magnificent -- on one side of the mountain top the city of Kigali was visible; on the other the rural mountains and rivers were illuminated by the sun. It was a great way to end my stay here, though the run was delayed by an hour making it a tight race to catch my flight to Brussels. We'll see if I make it or if I'm stuck here until the next flight out on Tuesday. As much as I will miss this place, I'm hoping for the former.
Saying goodbyes
Me with some of the students we've been following
I don't know how many times I took the Volcano bus back and forth between Kigali and Butare over the course of the last six weeks. After I return home to the States I will go through all my receipts to get the total tally. Whatever the number, I could now drive the route blindfolded.
Last Thursday we took our final trip from Kigali to Butare to visit the National University and to say good bye to the journalism students we've been following for the last six weeks.
The relationships we built with the students has been one of the highlights of the trip and I look forward to seeing how their careers progress.
I stand outside a classroom at the journalism school with a 2nd year radio broadcast student
two 4th year broadcast journalism students reporting on Lake Kivu in Kibuye
March 04, 2008
In Anticipation of My Departure I Attempt To Predict What I Will Miss
Preparing to leave Rwanda
1. For the fifty days that I've been in Rwanda there is one person with whom I have spent all but three days: Pablo Jerah the Extraordinary. I know that the withdrawal symptoms I will experience upon leaving him will be severe.
2. Our "family" dinners at the house, prepared with finesse by Matilde.
3. Boubie, the house dog's gimpy greeting.
4. Ever since I first arrived in Kigali I have been waking at an unprecedented hour of 5 AM nearly every day. I can't see this trend lasting when I return to New York and I will miss this heightened level of productivity...not to mention those lovely sunrises.
5. The wind on my face and in my hair during my moto rides around Kigali and those delicious gulps of diesel exhaust.
6. My bizarre taste for wildly over-produced music.
7. Phone calls by cell phone are so prohibitively expensive that the only way to avoid bankruptcy and remain in contact with friends is to text message. I will miss the long-winded text messages clogging my in box -- and the preference for the "written" language versus the phone call.
8. Frites, Mayonnaise & Brochettes
9. Three-kiss hellos
10. When it comes to cooking at our house, there are no measuring utensils and it's typical to be missing at least three ingredients because 1. our pantry supply closet isn't stocked; 2. there very well may have been baking powder at the German grocery store, but since I couldn't properly translate the words on the packaging from German to English, it does not exist. 3. the ingredient simply has not been imported to Rwanda. I actually enjoy this cooking puzzle and will miss my improvisational cooking.
11. The utter beauty you're bound to encounter whenever you open your eyes on any drive anywhere in the country.
12. The eagerness by Rwandans to get my phone number and email address makes me feel wildly popular in a way I rarely experience in the U.S. And the frequent marriage proposals are a huge ego boost. For anyone who is curious about my worth I was told that I could probably get about 15 modern cows in a marriage deal!
13. I will not list all the people I will miss.
The Milk Man
A few weeks ago I was dining at Papyrus -- a restaurant in my neighborhood where I go to get a healthy dose of American hip hop, to pretend I'm in the Hollywood Hills, and to dine on delicious homemade pastas and pizzas made with cheeses produced at Masaka Farm -- a local farm outside of Kigali. (They also make a really yummy tiramisu made with the farm's ricotta. Keeping in line with the gas, coffee, and at times, electricity shortages -- more often than not, Papyrus has run out of the tiramisu. I've started putting a slice on hold when I first arrive to ensure that dessert is waiting for me when I'm done with my meal.)
A group of diners came to our table, including a guy who introduced himself as "a dairy man." He told me he is the man behind Papyrus's dairy products. (He's also the first Rwandan I've met who has tattoos.)
Ever since I visited the grocery store with the regional cheeses of Rwanda I have been wanting to take a tour of a fromagerie. When he offered to show me his farm and dairy processing plant, I couldn't say no. So, yesterday I went on a tour of Serge's dairy farm to see for myself how he makes the ice cream, ricotta, yogurt, mozzarella, butter and creme fraiche. Serge learned to make these products in Italy, the homeland of his wife.
What follows is a photo tour of my visit.
Serge the milk man in his Mercedes Benz milk truck
February 29, 2008
Kibuye Sunrise
Kibuye sunrise
Our four-day marathon of 20-hour shoot days culminated in Kibuye -- one of the most beautiful places that I've been in Rwanda. We stayed at the Bethanie Hotel, right on Lake Kivu. We woke up early on Friday morning to tape the sun's rise up over the mountains that border the shore.
While the sun was still hidden and the sky remained dark, we scouted the property of our hotel looking for the perfect vantage point to capture the "magic hour."
We noticed that the door to a beautiful Italianate building on the hotel property was ajar. We approached the door and cautiously peered inside. The building didn't seem to be occupied so we walked in, following a dark hallway to another door. As the first light of the day glowed at the horizon line we opened another door which led to a balcony. We couldn't have asked for a better seat to watch the sun come up.
February 24, 2008
Typing Masters & Their Keyboard Cake
two of my favorite typists
In Kigali, I'm living in the Voices of Rwanda House. During the day our living room is transformed into an office where a team of typists transcribe and translate video testimonies of Rwandans. VOR is an NGO committed to recording oral history as a form of transitional justice and as an effort to preserve the history of individuals and in effect, a country. Eventually, the video database will be used to educate high school students in the U.S. and around the world about genocide.
When the executive director, Taylor Krauss was starting the organization he arrived in Kigali expecting he would have no problem enlisting a team of typists to transcribe the interviews he was taping. He was wrong, but he turned this deficit into an opportunity -- an opportunity for himself and for Rwandans. In collaboration with a technology school in Kigali called E-ICT, he started a 6-week touch typing course to create a body of potential transcribers.
Yesterday, at the house we held a graduation ceremony to celebrate the first class to graduate from the typing certificate program. All the students graduated with distinction and many of the students already have found jobs. Several students are currently employed by VOR.
Inspired both by the students and the Krauss's efforts, I'm producing a documentary short called "TypingMaster 10-Finger Touch Typing," about the typists -- many who are orphans and survivors of the 1994 genocide and each with a big dream about where typing will take them.
My contribution to the graduation ceremony itself was as the executive in charge of decorating and as the chef on the dessert committee. Here is a photo of the cupcakes I made and assembled to resemble a keyboard.
The night ended with a game that is the Rwandan equivalent of Secret Santa, called cacahouette. Everybody draws a name of a person at the party and in two weeks (the night before I depart) we will all convene and give a gift to the person whose name was drawn. The intention of the game is to create an opportunity so that the relationship which started at the party continues on.
For more photos from the night continue reading...
February 21, 2008
Framboise in Super Foam
We are throwing a party tomorrow night at our house and I have volunteered to bake a cake. Cake ingredients here are easy to find if you know where to shop. I made an excursion to La Galette, a German butcher that has hard-to-find ingredients like pure cocoa powder and confectioners sugar.
As I was leaving with my bundle of groceries a man approached me. He was carrying a bucket that once carried clothing detergent but today was filled with freshly picked framboise. Actually, they looked more like the jelly candied framboise than proper raspberries and they tasted like a cross between a strawberry and a raspberry.
When I brought them back to the house, one of the Rwandese women who works here said she used to pick them as a girl but hasn’t seen them since.
My local saucisson
I awoke yesterday morning to discover that while our pantry was stocked with the delicious Rwanda coffee beans ready for percolating, the refrigerator was without milk. I took a stroll up the dirt road to my local “bodega” to stock up on a box of the stuff. While I was there a delivery of fresh sausage links arrived. Of course I had to try one.
Yesterday, I had a tapas style lunch of sausage, cheese, bread and olives. It’s been a nice departure from the brochettes et frites which have become a staple in my diet.
Actual Crowds for Bush
On Tuesday, George Bush arrived to spend 10 hours on Rwandan soil. We were taping students who traveled from the University to Kigali to cover Bush-related stories for their university radio station and print publication.
The students did vox pop interviews, asking people on the street what they thought of the Bush visit. Other students worked on stories about how the president’s visit will influence education and prevention of malaria and HIV/AIDS in Rwanda.
But my favorite story of the day is one my roommate told me. A Rwandan was asked whether or not he likes George Bush and if so, why he does. The man said he likes George Bush very much. The reason: “because of all the money that Rwanda gets from the Clinton Foundation.”
It was a great day for all and I think it gave the students a sense of all the running around that is a required of journalists.
February 18, 2008
Mayonnaise
Rwandan Mayonnaise
One of my favorite guilty pleasures is eating french fries that have been deep-dipped into a pot of mayonnaise. In Rwanda, french fries come with nearly every meal so this decadent indulgence is fast becoming habitual.
In most countries the frite would be the highlighted ingredient -- made better only with the richness of the greasy condiment. But in Rwanda the mayonnaise is so good that the frite is merely a vehicle by which to transport the spread from bowl to mouth. The mayonnaise here tastes lightly of lemon -- hollandaise sauce's close cousin. The rich buttery yellow comes from the dark orange yolks. The slight crust that builds around the edges is worthy of its own name. I'll even admit that I've been caught scraping off the congealed build up and devouring it as a delicacy as rich as fois gras.
Why is the mayonnaise so delicious in Rwanda? It's a question I have asked all the waiters and chefs I've encountered. No one knows the secret, but I have my theories. As with all things delicious, ingredients is key. After oil, the main element in mayonnaise is the egg.
There are choices when buying eggs in Rwanda. All are small -- two sizes larger than a quail egg, one size smaller than the Grade A Extra Large egg found in America. The choice comes with color. Brown eggs come from chickens that are fed fish feed. The resulting yolk is a pale white color, basically albino cholesterol. The white eggs are an entirely different entity altogether. They contain the yolks used for Rwanda's amazing mayonnaise. Occupying the majority of the space inside the white egg shell is a dark orange yolk sunnier and denser than the flesh of a pumpkin. It is the egg flavor and a hint of the native lemons that punches through the oil and sets this mayonnaise apart.
It's clear that the mayonnaise here hasn't been pasteurized and warm mayonnaise is quite common -- evidence that it has never seen refrigeration of any kind. In this way, perhaps I'm tempting fate. But considering all that I've eaten thus far, it's impressive that my stomach remains content and without incident.
February 17, 2008
Church & a Run
new Rwanda for Jesus church
This morning we got up early to follow a student working on a story about a new evangelical church outside of Butare.
The service was held in a skeleton of a building with dirt floors and a holy tin roof (pun alert) at the top of a long hill. There were no crosses, no bibles or church programs, but there was a keyboard, amp and an old IBM computer from the mid-90s set up on a table with extension cords running through the banana trees to god knows where. Since the "church" has no doors to lock, the usher's job is to haul the equipment to the building every week.
It was a typical evangelical service -- complete with tongue talkers, praise & worship music, dancing and personal testimonies about being saved. It's a great story to follow since Evangelicalism is such a huge part of the culture here.
This afternoon my cameraman and I did an 1 hour 15 minute run through the countryside just outside of Butare. We ran past marshes where rice grows, through rural villages, up and down hills, racing against the impending darkness. We ran out for 30 minutes, then reached a village, hugged a couple of kids for good luck and then turned back. Children who had seen us run by earlier joined us for a portion of the return trip in what became a brief impromptu running club. At one point we had about 25 kids trailing us, many of them barefoot.
The run home offered a breathtaking view of the distant mountains. And if nothing else we can count the trip as a location scout for beauty shots. We'll definitely return to film the beautiful sunset and distant misty mountains.
Tee Shirts
Darth Maul sweatshirt
With all the missionaries running around here it is inevitable that tee-shirts donated by well meaning Christians in the States would wind up on the backs of Rwandans. There seems to be an endless number of tee shirts created for church barbecues or the one I saw today that said "Westwood Baptist Church Summer Hummer." I'm not sure what a hummer is in the context of a Baptist Church, but I'd love to find out.
The fun is also in spotting tee shirts designed for a very specific population, but worn by someone outside the intended demographic -- like the teenage girl with the "World's Best Grandfather" tee.
February 16, 2008
Rwandan Valentines
Rwandan Valentine's Day Card
Valentine's Day isn't that big of a deal here in Rwanda. Despite this, stationary shops in Butare offer a plethora of choices when it comes to Valentine's Day cards. They were so delightfully over-the-top that my cameraman and I each bought two. In about three weeks our sweethearts will receive evidence of our love in a combined effort of the U.S. and Rwandan postal service (and all the post offices in between).
Butare Rain
I am sitting in my Butare hotel room overlooking the garden courtyard. The rain is pinging loudly against the tin roof above me -- a sound I welcome today as I doze off for a lazy afternoon nap. However, earlier this week I was cursing the ubiquitious tin roofs of Rwanda and the music of the rainy season.
Finding a location to film interviews is a challenge anywhere you go. It requires a large quiet space that can be lit dramatically, has electricity and is more or less accessible to all parties involved.
Last Thursday, we went to a rural village outside of Nyamata to film some interviews. We managed to locate a large room at a conference center that was removed from the noisy road, had a multitude of working electrical outlets (fingers remained crossed that it would stay that way given the frequent power outages) and there was even a cafe nearby and a nice waitress who delivered chilled water on a platter.
When we "took a listen" to the room the sun was shining. But when the interview began, it wasn't long before we became aware of the roof above us. The rain started and was so loud against the corrugated tin that despite the sensitive microphones, we could barely hear the words of the person we were interviewing.
We waited for ten minutes until the rain subsided and had to pause again for the Muslim call to worship broadcast over a loudspeaker down the street. We got a few hours of clear interview sound, but as the sun began to set, the cicadas announced themselves. Any other day I would have welcomed their chirping. I think the location goes on record as being the noisiest I've ever experienced...and I usually shoot interviews in one of the noisiest cities in the world: NYC.
February 15, 2008
Ryeru Song
While I waited for my cameraman to finish up the shooting he was doing in a rural home outside of Nyamata, I was serenaded by these children with a song they had learned in church.
A lovely Valentine's Day treat even though I was apart from my Valentine.
February 12, 2008
A Balancing Act
Throughout Rwanda it's quite common to see people, primarily women, carrying items on their heads. This leaves their hands free for other tasks. Yesterday, on our drive from Kigali to Butare on the Volcano bus there were storm clouds overhead, so it made perfect sense when we drove past a woman carrying her closed umbrella on her head. I've asked around to find out the most unusual or unexpected items that have been spotted on women's heads throughout this country. Here are the results:
Cornucopias of bananas and other fruit are quite common as are bundles of eucalyptus tree branches. Less common, and therefore quite exciting to spot on heads are 20' 2x4s, 20 kilogram jugs of water, a coke salesman carrying a crate of bottles; square of wood with a pile of fish; a pepper grinder; a backpack.
With many bags to carry, I decided that I needed some training so that I could carry extra luggage on my head. I gathered together a team of trained balancing professionals (read mockers) to guide me in my balancing training. They told me as a woman I should be a natural. As you will see in this video, I am not. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be hands or back free for a while. I think I need some more practice before going public.
Butare Birthday Party
We’re back in Butare. Last night we got the rare opportunity to visit the home of one of the students we’ve been spending time with. It was her 20th birthday.
We drove a short distance out of downtown Butare to a suburb called Tumba. The sun had set and except for dimly lit storefronts the space around us was devoid of light. We bumped along an eroded road and pulled up at the birthday party house. We entered at a bamboo gate and walked down a short dirt path to the porch and into a concrete L-shaped room lined with benches and couches where party guests sat as if shy 7th graders at a dance – looking straight ahead and not talking. We were greeted at the door by a beautifully regal woman in a pink and white traditional dress and were ushered to available seats on a couch in a corner.
For a few minutes we sat quietly exchanging a few words in kinyarwanda with the other guests. A little boy came over and showed me that by folding his foldy-cube toy he could display a variety of bible scenes. A young man and woman came around with a wooden crate filled with glass bottles of Fanta and Coke for us.
Apparently, they were waiting for our arrival because shortly after we sat down, the birthday girl's mother stood up and welcomed everyone, taking time to introduce each group and asking them to stand. There were church friends, neighbors, family and members of Rwanda for Jesus. We were introduced as the Americans.
A student translated for me as the introduction led into an expressive recount of the day that her daughter was born 20 years ago. It was really moving and clear what pride and love this mother has for her daughter -- and so wonderful to have the stories told reflect what we were in fact there to celebrate: the story of a person's arrival in the world.
Then big plates heaped with food were brought out -- a real feast of cassava leaves (which tastes a lot like sag paneer), fried irish potatoes, buttery rice and stewy beef. Then cubes of birthday cake were passed around in a basket. It all tasted so good.
Singing, clapping, more stories followed and then guests paraded up to present their gifts. Her brother re-gifted a stuffed animal with a missing eye. A fellow student gave a bag of popcorn and a carton of milk. We gave her a bottle of perfume called Passion -- I think the imitation version of CK's Obsession.
It was a real treat of a night.
February 08, 2008
The Saloons of Rwanda
Forget Spaghetti Westerns. With all the Hair and Nail Saloons in this country, Rwanda is the perfect place to stage a Western. Hollywood, are you out there? Oh, and this little photo gallery is only the beginning. I snapped these five images within a 1 km radius in the Kigali suburb of Remara. There will be many more photos like this to come.
Regional Cheeses of Rwanda
Yesterday, I woke up early to go to Nyamata - a town about twenty minutes outside of Kigali to pre-interview some people I may potentially film.
Before leaving Kigali I asked Papa Fred to stop the car at a market so I could buy us a round of water. He pulled over at a shop just down the road from Car Wash (which as its name suggests is a place to get your car washed. But it's also a watering hole where you can lounge and enjoy a nice cold Mutzig beer).
When I went to the counter to pay for my water, I noticed two refrigerators behind the cashier. Both were filled with creamy wheels of cheeses. Each shelf was labeled with a different region of Rwanda. Who knew that Rwanda has regional cheeses? I'll have to have a cheese tasting party. The only problem is even though the cheeses come from different regions of Rwanda, they all look the same.
I'll have to ask our cook, Matilde about her regional cheese preferences. Maybe she'll even tell me which cheese she uses in that delicious cheese and eggplant casserole she makes.
Poulet Froid
view from Butare hotel balcony
I’m feeling exhilarated after spending two days with the students at the National University. And the Butare visit was fruitful in more ways than one. A teacher gave me some really beautiful music by a Rwandese musician called: Inyarwanda. It sad and beautiful – reminds me of an acoustic African Low – for those familiar with the band Low.
The day was long, but rewarding. By the time we had a chance to check our email at an internet café where the bandwidth was so small that it took a half an hour to load a three line email in my old yahoo account (my gmail wouldn’t even open) there were limited dining options.
We headed to Hotel Ibis, the only place where two people could get a hot meal at that hour of the night. But even Ibis was preparing to close. The grumbling in our stomachs overpowered politeness and we insisted we would eat anything: eggs for tomorrow’s petit dejeuner, bread, cold frites, anything. Our waiter went into the kitchen to see what could be done. Apparently the spaghetti and meatballs hadn’t been particularly popular with diners that night because he came back and offered us poulet (meatballs). Not spaghetti. Not sauce. Just the balls themselves. We ordered twenty warm meatballs to share.
When they arrived we devoured them. They were made with beef and fresh herbs and garlic and tasted so good. So good, in fact that we ordered another round. Because it was so late the waiter warned they would be brought out froid. And that my friends, was our mistake in judgment. Cold meatballs are a dangerous thing. We continued to be reminded of this mistake for several days.
February 04, 2008
More Potholes than Pavement
We arrived in Butare (Rwanda's college town) after a stunning drive through tea farms and the Nyungwe Forest in southwest Rwanda. It was so wonderful to pass through this beautiful mountain forest during daylight hours. There were more potholes than pavement, but I'm continually astounded by the consistently breathtaking effect the Rwanda countryside has on me. The highlight of the drive was seeing all the little golden monkeys clinging to the mossy cliffs. I'm not sure why they're called golden monkeys since they're black and white.
We'll be in Butare for the next few days, filming at the Journalism School and the University Radio Station. We'll return to Kigali by mid-week. By then I'm sure we'll welcome our in-house high-speed internet with open arms.
Update from the Epicenter
Day 1
Yesterday afternoon, as the second round of earthquake tremors rippled through Kigali, we got a call from the Associated Press. They needed footage of the earthquake's aftermath. We loaded up our camera gear, called our wonderful driver Papa Fred and began the long five hour journey to Cyangugu, the southwestern most area of Rwanda.
Here are some pictures from our drive from Kigali to Cyangugu:
It was dark by the time we passed through the Nyungwe Forest so we didn't get to see the monkeys and chimpanzees in their home. Instead we bumped along the rocky road looking up at the cliffs above us, then down on the road before us to see the rocks and earth that had crumbled off.
We arrived in Cyangugu late and went straight to the Gihundwe Hospital. It's a typical 3rd world clinic -- dimly lit with overworked doctors and crowded rooms filled with metal beds and patients. The director of the hospital said that earlier in the day there were long lines of injured people along the concrete path outside the hospital. In the afternoon ten doctors had arrived from Kigali to help out so by the time we arrived they seemed to have moved the people with minor injuries through. We toured the hospital rooms. Injured people from neighboring villages lay on beds with broken arms, head gashes and broken legs. We were told 34 people had died in Rwanda due to the quake.
Photos at Gihundwe Hospital:
We got to our accommodations, a Catholic retreat center up the hill from the beautiful Lake Kivu. For the duration of our drive we'd been receiving messages from our friends in Kigali that officials were warning to stay out of buildings between 8 pm and midnight. Apparently the were some warning issued based on a prediction of another earthquake. However, it was well after midnight when we arrived and finally sat down to edit the video footage. A minor tremor around 2 AM made me realize how uneasy I was about being so close to the epicenter. We jumped from the computer and lunged for the door frame, then laughed when the shaking didn't amount to much.
February 03, 2008
My Very First Earthquake
Cyangugu, in southwest Rwanda -- the epicenter of this morning's earthquake
Until this morning I've never experienced an earthquake.
At 9:43 AM, as I was planning how to spend my Sunday the dining room hutch, floors, and window panes began rattling. I had just woken to the distant chorus of church-goers singing hymns in kinyarwanda. I'm such a sucker for good Christian music -- bluegrass, gospel, and now kinyarwanda hymns. Hearing the soulful music is the only time when I actually entertain the idea of conversion. In a nation as Christian as this one, with a fast-growing shift away from Catholicism to evangelical churches, I was trying to decide which church invitation to accept. I could join a new friend at the Assembly of God church this afternoon, or I could accompany a women who heads one of the Kigali prisons to the Zionist church this evening. I'm looking forward to entering this world of Rwanda that I haven't seen yet. I plan to bring my mini-disc recorder and make a field recording of the music.
My thoughts were interrupted by the slight rocking of the ground beneath my feet. Last night at dinner at Restaurant Hellenique, I had been talking to some NGOs about efforts underway to harness the methane gas from the volcano outside of Goma to provide electricity for the region. So already volcanos and plates were on my mind. But I've never thought of this area as particularly proned to quakes.
The shaking we felt here pales to what people in the epicenter, 300 km away in Cyangugu felt.
The strangest thing to me is that it's now been nearly three hours since the earthquake, yet there are still no news reports -- only a mention on two geological survey sites. Registering at a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter scale, it's hardly insubstantial. The area where it occurred is densely populated. Surely there's been a fair amount of damage.
**UPDATE
KIGALI (AFP) - At least 23 people died Sunday in western Rwanda after a strong earthquake shook several countries in Africa's Great Lakes region, Radio Rwanda reported.[from Rwanda Radio]
For more about the cause of earthquakes in this region, read on.
February 01, 2008
My neighborhood from outerspace
a satellite image of my Kigali neighborhood
I've started jogging. It's a way for me to learn my neighborhood, to kill time while waiting for the paperwork we need to film, and to blow off steam about some of the roadblocks we've hit.
Above is a satellite photo of my neighborhood in Kigali. I've circled the house where I live. The image doesn't accurately convey the steep incline that I must ascend to get to the large circle on the right side of the satellite image near the Rwandan Revenue Building. The loop is a favorite workout spot for the Chinese business people who live in the neighborhood. We pass large groups of them walking the loop every evening. I say hi in mandarin, ni hao ma-- the only word I know. My cameraman, who is much more proficient in the language usually asks them if they've seen our dog, Beaubie, who has inevitably run off since we don't have a leash for him.
Beaubie, the dog who came with my house
Yesterday, we were jogging the loop and Beaubie was running around in the middle of the road. He's already been hit by a car once, so you'd think that he'd be more cautious around moving vehicles. But no. He ran towards a Jeep that was driving too fast. Luckily, the driver slammed on the breaks and avoided making impact with the poor mutt. But when Beaubie fell over he re-injured his leg. He hobbled home, whimpering in pain. I felt horrible. I was doubtful that we would be able to find a vet. But today we tracked one down. He gave us antibiotics and medication to reduce the swelling and pain. Already, Beaubie seems much happier. I'm going shopping for a leash, though it may be a few days before Beaubie is ready to run again.
Continue on to see another picture of Beaubie before the injury.
January 28, 2008
Kimironko Market
During my first three days in Rwanda I spent almost every waking moment with my intrepid tour guide/cameraman. He has been living here off and on for the past 10 months and has been an incredible resource, helping me to navigate the town and translate my incomprehensible french and even worse kinyarwanda to a language that people living here can understand. But by Sunday it was time to cut the umbilical cord. I decided that if I'm going to learn how to find my way and communicate with people here, I need to risk getting a little lost and risk humiliation by speaking my limited french.
For my first exercise in independence, I set out to find the marche de kimironko -- where all the locals go to buy their produce. I had a craving for some juicy pineapples and bananas. Uncertain that I would actually reach my destination, but willing to take that risk to acquaint myself with Kigali, I threw caution to the humid wind and headed out to find a moto.
With the exception of a few main roads, there are almost no street names in Kigali. To give or get directions, people first state the neighborhood then describe a series of well known landmark buildings to help hone in on the zone that is the ultimate destination. The system would work fine if I actually knew where any of the landmark buildings are. When still in Brooklyn, I sent an email to find out the address where I would be living. I was told, "tell the taxi to take you to the Kimihurura neighborhood, near the house of Rubangura on the same road as Hellenique Restaurant." For someone who likes a lot of detail and lost-proof directions when embarking on a film production, this was the first ominous sign of the challenges ahead.
To hail a moto, I hike up the hill from my house to the main road and mimic the loud tshkch sound that I heard people make when hailing transportation. Somehow the sound I make works. In broken french I explain to my driver that I want to go to the market in Kimironko. My directions must have been okay, because after a short drive I am in the right part of town -- but my pronunciation of market, marche, was poor or maybe my driver couldn't imagine why a white girl like me would go to the market when most westerners hire locals to grocery shop and cook for them. Instead of taking me to the produce market he stops in front of tailor who makes customized dresses out of African prints. I explain that I want vegetables not vetements.
He looks at me as though I'm crazy, but then we turn around and in less than a minute I'm standing outside an open tent filled with produce, butchered goats, fish and fabric. I make the rounds testing pineapples and mangoes and practicing the four kinyarwanda words I know: mwiriwe=good afternoon; murakoze=thank you; amakuru=how are you; ni meza=fine -- except I kept saying mi neza. I'm not sure how that translates.
I buy a small chunk of rock salt. It comes from the floor Lake Kivu -- the lake in the west that runs along the border of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. Most people buy the salt to give to their cows, but I bought it because the salt crystals are so beautiful and it's a reminder of the history contained in the soil around me. I think of the stories I read in Alison des Forges book, Leave Not to Tell the Story about bodies being thrown down the embankment into Lake Kivu during the 1994 genocide and how mutilated bodies were seen floating along the shores. I touched my finger to the salt and taste it. I feel queasy even though all I taste is salt.
--
I walk back to the produce area to buy some food and purchase a small pineapple, a cluster of five bananas that look like stubby yellow fingers, and ingredients for guacamole -- a purple avocado, cilantro, tiny fresh limes, hot pepper and tomato. Now I just need to find a market that sells tortilla chips.
Heading home, I negotiate a price with my driver for even less than the ride to the market -- the equivalent of about $0.50. Not bad for a newbie.
January 26, 2008
Every town has one....
Before departing on our two hour bus ride from Butare back to Kigali we decided to stock up on some food for the road. Since there are no take-away joints and the market was closed, we turned to the simple, cheap and delicious alternative: bread. Rwandans are very very good bread makers. Any opportunity I get to eat some Rwandan bread, I take. You can find the most amazing, freshly-baked loaves of bread along the side of the road, in little store fronts and in this case, next to The Chinese Restaurant. We stocked up on a bread braid that looked like Challah and tasted like the warm oatmeal bread my mother used to bake. Then we raced to catch our bus.
Getting Reaquainted
With Ibrihim our taxi driver in Butare
It's hard to believe that I've only been here for 48 hours. I guess jetlag continues to disorient me, but I've also managed to pack in a lot. On Saturday morning my cameraman and I got up at 5 am and took the Volcano bus down to Butare -- a college town about two hours south of Kigali. The town is the largest in Rwanda after Kigali. The ride there was utterly breathtaking and the early morning light, incredible. Like most drives in Rwanda, the road south winds up and down through the lush green hills and despite my fatigue I couldn't help but keep my eyes open taking in the beauty.
Evidence that this is the most densely populated country in Africa is not seen in high rises or traffic congestion. Rather, it becomes clear looking out the window and seeing the people themselves; for the entire duration of the trip through the rural countryside not a minute goes by when we weren't passing people walking along the road -- some carrying bananas and pineapples in baskets on their heads, other just socializing with friends. At first glance it's easy to miss all the housing necessary to accommodate Rwanda's large population. Looking out my window into the valleys and up the hills it seems there are merely leafy banana trees and green. But looking harder the camouflaged tile-roofed homes emerge. Once I spot them I realize they're ubiquitous -- dotting the valleys, lining the road, stacked up terraced hillsides.
The main street of Butare is dusty and lined with storefronts -- there are a few restaurants, an internet cafe, gas station. The town is much smaller than bustling Kigali and feels a little like the set of an old western. We arrived by 8:30 am and had time for a leisurely breakfast at Hotel Ibis before meeting with the head of the journalism school. I ate the omelet special -- tomatoes, cheese, meat and rice suspended in egg. I think next time I'll ask for sans riz.
We had a good meeting with the journalism school director and then walked to the house where the Rwanda Initiative teachers live while teaching at the journalism school. We had lunch with them, explaining a bit about our project. Together we headed to Radio Salus -- the university radio station, now ranked 3rd in the entire country, thanks in large part to Aldo Havugimana.
During our last trip to Rwanda in 2004, we had met and interviewed Aldo who was then a journalism student at the University. He hoped to become a radio journalist. Four years later he is the director of Radio Salus and has successfully boosted the station's ratings by creating a range of diverse programming which includes news, short radio documentaries, talk shows, music shows, often featuring question and answers. The station has come a long way since we were last here when it was just starting up.
It started to rain lightly as we made our way to catch the last bus back to Kigali.
January 25, 2008
Chez Moi
The view from my home in Kigali
Over the past two days I've crossed seven time zones and have slept very little. Maybe that's why it feel like the days between now and when I left New York are running together like a long poorly constructed run-on sentence like the one I'm writing now.
My flight arrived at the Kigali airport at 8 PM, right on time. It was a quick drive from the airport to what will be my new home for the next six weeks. In Rwanda there are few street lamps, so at night, even at the airport, the stars pop out of the sky. It was great to see so many stars, but the lack of man-made lighting made it hard to take in the buildings and distant hills I knew were out there, but only came through to my strained eyes as silhouettes. I will have to wait until morning to really see.
To get to my house we drove a few miles on a paved road to my neighborhood in Kimihurura -- a neighborhood on a hill that has about 8 rows of terraced red dirt streets stacked up the hillside. We're in the middle of the hill and from my front porch I look directly at the lights dotting the next hill over -- where downtown Kigali is situated.
The luggage containing our camera lens is still missing so I make another Skype call to "FlightCare" to find out if my bag was found in Delhi, but there was no news. Time to adjust to GMT +2 and get some sleep.
January 22, 2008
Rwanda-bound
As the markets head south -- I prepare to do the same. Tonight I will begin my 48 hour journey from New York to Kigali, Rwanda via Belgium.
Everyone tells me that Kigali has been developing dramatically since I was last there in 2004 and I'm getting excited to see all the changes firsthand. A friend on the ground said there's a new mall in downtown Kigali, complete with a Starbuck's-esq Rwandan fairtrade coffee shop: Bourbon Coffee. Ben Affleck was recently spotted there sipping coffee. Facebook and blogging are becoming favorite pastimes of students who have access to the internet and there are a lot of exciting new developments at the journalism school in Butare where I will be doing the bulk of my documentary shooting.
top image c/o Flickr
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