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.

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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.

Posted by Amy at 11:23 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Amy at 10:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Amy at 09:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Amy at 05:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)