road trip south africa - snippets from the first 8 days

day 1.  jo’burg airport.  it’s cold.  people are wearing winter coats and hats and bushy scarves.  my nose is red and my fingers numb.  we camp in front of the british airways info desk wearing every article of (not winter) clothing we’ve brought, snuggled deep into (thank god for) warm sleeping bags.  a security guard walks by, sees us, says ít’s no wonder we have ghosts in this airport.’

day 2.  jo’burg airport.  i’m behind the steering wheel of a vw golf rental car, aptly named chica.  we are on our fourth loop around the airport compound (whaddya say - departures again? or arrivals this time?), trying to ‘get used to’ driving a stick-shift, on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the car (passenger on the left, driver on the right, clutch thankfully still left foot).  i have yet to discover that what i think is first is actually third, and - more seriously - what i think is reverse is actually first.

the highway.  they have highway rest-stops here.  with aisles and glass freezers and cash registers.  62 varieties of candy bar and plastic two-liter bottles of flavored water.  beef jerky at the counter.  and there are white people everywhere - driving pickup trucks, working at the gas station, walking dogs, jogging on the road.  what country am i in anyway?

bergville.  camping at the foot of the drakensberg mountains, with the ‘mountain kingdom’ of lesotho in the distance.  it’s cold.  i’m wearing a sweater, a sweatshirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a t-shirt, two pairs of pants, and two pairs of socks.  i have ziplocked myself into the sleeping bag, and i’m still too cold to sleep.  sara gets up to pee.  í’m gonna make a run for it.’  she bolts for the toilets, runs blindly over rough terrain, trips, falls on her face, gets up and limps the rest of the way.  bloody knee.  first casualty.  it’s 32 degrees.

day 3.  royal natal national park.  hiking.  sunning ourselves on big rocks.  a back-drop of towering cliffs.  gorgeous.  and afterwards, sara learns to drive stick (on the worng side of the road on the wrong side of the car).  and we buy a blanket.

  

day 4.  durban.  we park chica in a parking garage (!) and go into a shopping mall (!) to see a travel agent who will tell us it’s too expensive for sara to fly back to rwanda.  we stop for lunch - a hamburger with feta cheese (!) and olives (!).  well toto, we’re not in rwanda anymore.

the highway.  i found the black people.  they keep them in run-down metal shacks in shanty towns outside the cities, or in tiny mud-hut villages with limited water and electricity.  i’m not sure i like this place.

port st. john.  night has fallen when we pull into a campground full of half-baked multi-colored hippies, jamming in a drum circle around an organic bonfire.

day 5.  port st. john.  beach.  ocean.  waves.  it’s still cold but we’re acclimatizing.  we walk on rocks doused in sea spray and Contemplate.  we take the dogs for a walk in the hills (not our dogs, not our hills).  we relax.

day 6.  sara sets my hair on fire.

day 7.  cintsa.  we go swimming in the waves (!).  we dive through them, jump over them, ride them, get tumbled, lose our bikini tops in the surf, get water up our noses and out our ears, relive our childhoods.  it’s thrilling.  then we have a bag lunch of bread and bread sandwiches and sandy apples.  then we have a sit-down dinner of tomato soup, homemade bread, red wine, roasted red peppers, egglant parmesan, spinach quiche, grilled calamari, jumbo shrimp, mussles, roasted chicken in gravy, baby arugula salad, bleu cheese, goat cheese, chocolate brownies, strawberries, and lemon meringue pie (!!!:)!!!)

day 8.  to date we have driven 1479km (on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car).  we have had no flat tires, breakdowns, or speeding tickets.  we have hit no people, no cars, no fences, no cows, no goats, no dogs, no trees and no (big) rocks.  we have fallen off no cliffs and into no ditches.  it’s cape town or bust.

  

images from the road

i’m barrelling down the highway east out of kigali, jammed tight between the wall of the taxi-bus and the hips of a plump woman in full african splendor - hand-sewn skirt and matching puffed-sleeve top in bright orange, her hair braided snugly to her head.  my head droops and nods and bangs against the rattling window.  as we round a curve, shadows bend to stripe the pavement, thrown from the west by trees and pedestrians.  my hip crunches against the wall of the bus.  i shift my shoulders.  my neighbor makes a tsk tsk sound through her teeth.  the bus swings wildly to the left, shadows bend again, sardine-can passengers grumble.  i stare longingly up at musha moutnain and the steel roofs of apagie school glinting in the sun above the road.  10 minutes longer.  i close my eyes.

sounds: the hum of rubber tires on pavement, the din of reggae on the radio, the rush of hot air past an open window, the murmur of voices chatting three rows back.  the bang of knuckles against the ceiling.  a shout from the driver- ‘arasigara?’ (=someone getting off?) ‘mmmm’ (=uh huh).  squeeling brakes, sliding door, grumbling passengers, and i’m off, out, free.  the long ride home.

two weeks later, two weeks before, last year, today.  the bus rushes past open fields of sugar and sorghum, past green hills patchworked by plots of banana and coffee plantations, through a tunnel of dancing eucalyptus trees.  at the narrow shoulder stretches a column of people.  men walking.  men on bicycles with all manner of stuff strapped to the back (water jugs, 50kg bags of potatoes, goats, people, steel roofing, chairs, you name it).  women with wide woven baskets of fruit balanced on their heads.  children in primary school uniforms running playfully, dangerously close to traffic.

beyond the crowded shoulder runs a 3-foot deep ditch for water drain-off during heavy rains.  the foreign firms (chinese? german?) who built the road weren’t kidding around.  considering all the litter that rwandans throw out bus windows (plastic bags, cookie wrappers, water bottles), it’s a wonder this ditch is always clean.  but one friend pointed out that kids like to make toys from the empty bottles, so maybe the trash gets reused, or maybe just carried away by the rain.

beyond the run-off ditch lies a new trench meant to bury the fiber-optics cable that will soon wire the country.  heaps of freshly-dug red earth swallow the workers digging it.  mile after mile, we pass them, thousands of them, barechested, swinging pickaxes, to the waist in dirt, men, women, not a back-hoe or tractor in sight.  a human machine.

further on, past the pedestrians, the run-off ditch, and the cable-trench, way out into the extensive fields of the maraba coffee cooperative, i sometimes get a glimpse of farmers in blue uniforms.  like their colleagues in the trench, they work in droves, in lines, organized to the point of beauty.  200 men with 200 hoes lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to clear a field, moving across it like an elaborate 200m-wide machine.  behind them, i watch three maybe four hundred others march single-file across the plantation carrying bundles of grass on their heads like ants.  it’s minutes before we pass them all.  scenes from a bus window.

huge slacker

sorry guys.  i’ve fallen off the wagon on the updates here.  i know you’re all eagerly awaiting the next entry, checking in regularly to see that, once again, those kivu writers smiles are staring back at you, frozen in time, never aging despite how many weeks go by.  i’m aware that you’re all hungry for stories, or at least a not-dead-yet update.  maybe it’s work overload, maybe writer’s block, maybe i’m just a huge slacker.  sorry about that.

the end of the second term is in sight.  the last few months have been insane.  i’ve finally started some teacher training.  once a week (when there’s not a four-hour teachers’ meeting, that is) i teach basic english to my francophone colleagues.  ‘what’s this?’ ‘this is a desk.’  ‘what are those?’ ‘those are windows.’  roaring fun, let me tell you.  but after a few nervous false-starts, the teachers seem excited and eager and i like teaching beginners.  and we might hope that some of the participatory methodology i use in teaching them will rub off, particularly because negotiations with the director to do teaching methodology trainings seem a bit stalled.

last weekend, i bussed out to kabarondo in the east to help a couple other volunteers with a teacher-training workshop there.  my session was on ‘teaching vocabulary using participatory games and speaking activities’.  it was nice to feel like, even if only a few of those teachers repeat what we practiced together, i might have made the smallest of sustainable impacts on the education system here.  maybe.

amanda and i ran a study skills workshop for the students of apagie a few weeks back.  we’re trying to help them break through the memorization habits to reach actual comprehension of what they’re learning, and then to help them with exam-taking skills to raise their test scores.  we have the support of the students and director, but not of the new dean of studies, who seems to have put himself directly in whatever path we’re making towards more training less teaching. 

so yeah.  busy.  exhausted actually.

singing in the rain

it’s that time again – time for the annual english club concert at apagie.  my clever gang galvanized themselves, writing comedy skits, choreographing dance numbers, rehearsing songs and poems.  for weeks we’d been ready and waiting for the school to fix the cd-player.  finally, we got the go ahead and set a date.  may 30^th.  i rearranged meetings and work in order to be supportive and available.  bosco designed and drew up posters.  jean de dieu sent out invitations.  david organized last-minute rehearsals.  jean claude arranged the use of the refectory as our venue.  robert and i scrounged for props and costumes.  pascal put together a cd with all the songs we’d need.  jean baptiste wrote out a program for the evening.  the day had arrived.  we were ready. 

then the dean of students, a dynamic reliable guy named innocent, showed up at my door to say that not only was the cd-player not working (again) but neither was the television (they can sometimes hook the two together to get better sound).  oh, and the microphone from the church up the road was also on the blitz.  bummer. after about an hour of putzing around with a screw driver on the faulty cd-player, we gave up in favor of my laptop and some speakers pilfered from the computer lab.  it would have to do. 

we traipsed across the road lugging tables and sheets and a canadian flag (for a hilarious skit in which the canadian government is taken over by a military coup).  the refectory was already buzzing with excitement – there were easily a hundred students already inside and two or three hundred more gathering at the door, all waiting to see the show.  we strung up clothesline and sheets to create a backstage area, did a little cheer to pump ourselves up, i took my seat as dj at the laptop, and then….

the lights went out.  screams, hoots, and laughter filled the cavernous refectory.  outside, lightening flickered nearby.  i turned to innocent, seated next to me at the v.i.p. table.  ‘what should we do?’

‘i think we can wait.’

and wait we did, in the dark, so dark you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face.  ten minutes.  twenty.  i had a lovely chat with innocent about the stresses of being dean of students.  i don’t know what went on backstage – to venture out of my chair in the pitch dark could have meant tumbling over one of the many people and cables sitting at my feet. 

and then?  well, then there was light.

screams and hoots again.  so much noise from the crowd, you couldn’t think.  i picked my way through arms and legs, under the curtain and backstage.  ‘let’s go!  let’s do it!  are you ready?’  as response, a clap of thunder and the heavens unleashed a downpour like we hadn’t seen in months.  as if all the dry season months had been storing up moisture for this very moment.  rain slammed against the corrugated steel roof, found cracks and dripped through to the floor.  students howled.  the noise was overwhelming.  i turned to david, the english club president.  through the din, i hollered ‘WHAT SHOULD WE DO?’

‘I THINK WE CAN WAIT!’

and wait we did, in the noise, so loud you could only scream to the person next to you.  ten minutes.  thirty.  i went backstage with the camera, out of boredom really, and took shots of club members posing in silly costumes.  gady, rafiki, freddy, and a few others grabbed a drum and started improv rapping in a little energetic circle in the corner.  drumming, dancing, singing teenage boys in backwards hats and jeans pulled down to show their boxers, jamming like they see on music videos.  having a riot of fun.  singing in the rain.  someday you’ll see the video i promise.

eventually the downpour became a steady rain and we gave up waiting and started the show anyway.  it was kind of a wreck – no one could hear anything and the actors were screaming at the top of their lungs.  we threw out half the program, the poems and non-physical-comedy skits.  the speakers weren’t anywhere near loud enough, we had no microphone.  then jean baptiste, little nerdy awkward supersmart jean baptiste, brought the crowd to their feet with an ethel merman style rendition of me love (oh oh oh oh why’d you have to go-oh away so long me love?).  where’d he get those pipes?  he started a sing-along.  arms waving in the air.  the rap stars joined in as back-up.  it was amazing.

the next week, we had ten new faces at english club.  and the week after, ten more. 

  

decoration

i’ve lived in this house for just over 15 months, which is actually the longest i’ve resided in one place since i left my parent’s house ten years ago. in bits and spurts, i’ve managed to settle in and decorate. batiks bought in uganda and tanzania are tacked up here and there. kanga fabric panels serve as curtains. congolese masks hang in the front room, rwandan masks in my room, and banana-leaf mobiles dangle in the bathroom. there are half a dozen handmade baskets scattered around, holding everything from jewelry to laundry to assorted electronics. it’s nice. homey.

but over the last year and change the house has also managed to acquire a different sort of decoration, one that ought to be more functional. for example, we have a decorative shower head in our bathroom. no water comes from this shower head, but it makes a nice towel rack. come to think of it, the sink fixture is also purely decorative. no water comes from the tap, and if you pour water into the basin, it all dumps onto the floor. but it makes a nice toiletries shelf. we used to have decorative light switches in the kitchen and bathroom for a couple months while we were waiting for the electrician to show up (funny story, though – when he actually did come by he took a broom and whacked the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling… and it turned on! see? decorative light switches, just whack fixture with broom to turn on and off, shoulda written that in the manual, why didn’t i think of it). i guess the bathroom was really in a state. amanda came out one evening, having just washed out of a bucket by candlelight in a room with a shower and overhead light. welcome to africa.

for awhile we had a decorative electric kettle (for boiling water for tea). our neighbor, who controls the electricity coming into our house, had without telling us put some kind of surge monitor fuse on our line so that we wouldn’t use too much power. every time we tried the kettle, the power would go out in the whole house. then we’d hop the fence and flip the fuse next door to get it back. like a dog learning the boundaries of a new invisible fence, after three of four trips to the fuse box we got the message. no more kettle.

but the latest addition to our non-functional appliance list is the beautiful new standing water pipe. it’s masterfully encased in a brick and cement block so that the kids from next door can’t wreck it like they did the last one. it worked for nearly 24 hours. then the on/off lever broke a few yards back, spurting water everywhere and making a nice pool which one of the students dubbed lake muhazi. a nice portable phone-booth man stopped the leak by tying used plastic bags (now illegal in rwanda) and banana leaves around it. needless to say, the water’s off again. not sure what to do with the gorgeous standing pipe now – birdbath? clothesline? sculpture? outlet for graffiti art?

don’t get me wrong. i really don’t mind filling water jugs across the street instead of in the backyard. i don’t need an overhead shower or an electric kettle. i was only mildly annoyed when the kitchen light went out (when mom was here we washed dishes on the floor in the hallway). all those amenities are things i never expected to find here anyway. what bothers me is the illusion of functionality. the idea that the water guy could dig up the yard and encase the pipe in cement, but couldn’t fix the on/off lever. that the plumber could buy and install the sink, but couldn’t hook it up to the water supply. it’s disappointing. but i suppose it makes for interesting stories. remember the time i was in africa? and that electrician whacked the lightbulb with a broom to turn it on? those were good times.

kivu writers workshop

today was the premier kivu writers workshop of the year.  for the first time in the group’s history, selected alumni were brought together for continued training in various techniques of creative writing.  these are the best of the best of young rwandan writing talent, and the room resonated with their talents.  here are some shots from the day:

  

   

 

kivu writers organization

now here’s an update that’s long overdue. kivu writers is the project i started working on last year, but it was founded in 2000 by a couple of then-volunteers. each year we take 20 rwandan high school students, selected through a tri-lingual national writing competition, out to lake kivu in the west for a series of three weekend workshops in creative writing techniques in drama, poetry, prose, song-writing, and journalism. it’s quite exciting, particularly as many of them have never travelled to that part of the country and most haven’t had the opportunity to learn about creative writing, a subject remarkably absent in much of the curriculum. the project’s alums have gone on to become teachers, journalists, song-writers, and writers for radio-drama and many have received full scholarships to national universities and even universities abroad. we’d like to think the project has contributed to that in some way.

anyway, over the last few years kivu writers has become increasingly autonomous with vso, receiving grants from organizations like unicef and care international to name a few, and training rwandan partners to organize and facilitate the workshops. this year we’re taking the next logical step and pursuing independent ngo status for the group. with luck, and a successful fund-raising campaign, i’ll be able to hand over control to the ready and capable hands of my rwandan partners by the time i finish my placement here.

we’ve had a minor set-back, however. vso international has made massive budget cutbacks on the program level this year, which has affected kivu writers, as well as many other projects around the world. so we won’t be holding a national competition or bringing any lucky students out to the lake this year. instead we’re holding three one-day workshops with previous participants of years past, to try to focus on building the capacity of the group and developing the organization. we’re also throwing energy into fund-raising, so that next year we can resume normal activities.

can anyone out there suggest any arts foundations or other donors interested in education or creative writing that might support our project? we’re looking at an operating budget of about $10,000 a year, with the potential for growth. any advice would be much appreciated.

the sandlucas (a joint effort by sara and lisi)

the wolcott children have a tradition of missing each other’s birthdays. we always seem to be on opposite sides of the globe on the day in question. so, in lieu of actually being there for each other, we’ve come up with creative ways of saying hey- i’m thinking of you. like for example, hiking to the top of a mountain and shouting happy birthday sara in the appropriate direction, trusting that the winds would carry the message on.

on this particular day, in order to mark the 26th birthday of our beloved brother, sara and i went to the beach. from the moment we opened our eyes that morning, we were inundated with special reminders - shall we say omens - of luke’s special day. the radio played the happy birthday song in kinyarwanda during breakfast, and when we stopped at the internet cafe, the 50 cent song “in da club” blared from a nearby computer (”yo shorty, its ya birthday, we gonna party like it’s ya birthday”).

so we hardly could’ve forgotten. we spent all morning brainstorming, scheming up different ways to celebrate as would do the man justice. we imagined climbing the tallest tree in gisenyi (which unfortunately was a palm tree and neither of us are that agile). we discussed having all the students of apagie sing michael jackson’s “don’t stop till you get enough” (but as we were no longer in musha this was logistically impossible). finally we settled on building an effigy of his face out of sand.

with waves crashing, and magic-hour approaching, we located a perfect patch of beach to give the four foot by two-and-a-half foot lucas the best view of the lake and the volcano in the distance. then we set to work. a strong jaw-line was sculpted, a distinguished forehead carved, and eye-sockets shaped. lisi delegated herself the task of chiseling the perfect chin while sara added bushy eyebrows and spiky hair. a face emerged from the sand, rose from our fingertips, summoned by our memories. now came the challenging task of calling forth… the nose. sara, for obvious reasons, was chosen to produce the likeness. a bordewieck bridge mounted between eyes glittering with volcanic residue. the defining wolcott feature rose, a promythean rock admidst the smooth dunes of his cheekbones. nostrils were dug and earlobes added.

then, out of nowhere, an unfortunate wave attacked from the south and returned his once prominent, now crumbling, chin from whence it came. lisi made furious attempts at reconstruction but to no avail. poseidon would have his way on this occasion. as lisi’s shoulders slumped in resignation, sara, giving her a pat on the back, said “you did the best you could.”

the two wolcott sisters stepped back into the crowd of 40 adolescent onlookers who had gathered, and admired the masterpiece that is our brother. we gave him a kiss on the cheek and warmest birthday wishes and then walked off into the sunset.

“it’s a shame about his chin,” lisi said.

sara replied, “like he hasn’t heard that before.”

 

happy birthday luke.

thanks again

school’s up and running again and students are back.  one by one, the students you’ve all helped to sponsor have appeared at my door to pick up this term’s school fees.  each brings stories to tell about spring break - many spent their time working in the fields of their family’s farms, some did odd jobs to earn money to support the family or help pay school fees for a younger brother or sister, some studied.  all send thanks, their own and those of their families, which i’m now passing on to you, along with my own.  thank you for making it possible for these kids to finish high school.  here they are: eric, francoise, innocent, hyacinthe, jean-paul, jean-claude, francis, and fulgence (missing are anthere, felix, and bosco).

  

  

p.s. two of the kids from last year whose third term fees you sponsored got scholarships to national university!  woohoo!

happy birthday to me

at 12:01am this morning in zanzibar, i got a birthday kiss from my tanzanian friend mosi. the hotel had decided to throw a full-moon party on the beach with hundreds of people, music, dancing, and an impressive acrobatic display by a troupe from stone town (all in my honor of course - why not?).

at 12:01am this morning in kigali, i got a birthday text message from three of my favorite girls - cathryn, giudi, and sara. they had decided to go out dancing and celebrating in rwandan fashion (without me, but with me in their thoughts - how could it be otherwise?).

at 12:01am this morning in new york, i got a birthday text message from my housemate and partner-in-crime amanda. she wasn’t actually in new york - she was in western tanzania - but she got her time zones mixed up.

at 12:01am this morning in seattle, i got a birthday email from my nutty brother. he had attached links to funny youtube videos he’d picked out to make me laugh (have a look). he had also written witty captions to the pictures on my blog (have a laugh at his comments).

at 12:01am this morning somewhere in the middle of the pacific ocean, i got a birthday phone call from my parents in new york. they had held a family dinner the night before (at perhaps the same moment i was collapsing weerily to bed as the sun was rising in zanzibar), had invited my grandparents and my aunt to show pictures and tell stories of their visit to africa to see their oldest daughter.

all these people i love, celebrating my day in their own corners of the world - it makes me feel very special. thank you all.

and now that 12:01am on april 20th in the year 2008 is gone and no longer exists anywhere on earth, i am eating ice cream at a quiet table in stone town, watching the sun set and local children do back-flips on the sand. the water has turned purple and the dhows are just rocking dark silhouettes. and it has been a very happy birthday.