Umuganda

So here we are, my last weekend in Rwanda falling on the last weekend of the month.  Besides being a special occasion for me (I guess?), the last Saturday of the month is also umuganda, a day when shops are closed in the mornings and Rwandans are required to do work in their community.  This is essentially what we took part in last week at the AMU near Kibuye (although not officially the same), and we joined in with the one in our neighborhood this morning.  Frankly, we probably accomplished even less than we did while tearing down the building (even with our brick passing expertise), but I suppose it means something that they let us join in.  This time around we were cleaning up a dirt road a ways up the hill from our house, and we obtained some tools to help with the process (probably the dullest of the bunch).  Shovels and hoes tended to be the best at clearing weeds and brush, but I worked with what was essentially a rake (kind of looked like a bent trident) and a machete as dull as a butter knife (likely explains why so many people survived with scars on their heads and necks).  We once again joined in after work had begun, and we had probably finished within an hour.  After that, there was a community meeting held in Kinyarwanda, but we stopped in to say thank you.

After singlehandedly saving that road from certain disaster (possible overgrowth), a group of us decided to walk down to the Rwanda International Trade Fair held in town (about an hour or so walk).  Running for about two weeks, this seemed to be a fairly big deal in town, garnering multiple billboards... but it would probably be comparable to a county fair back stateside.  They brought in a bunch of vendors including ministries of this and that, beer tents, tea tents, people selling everything under the sun (from farm equipment, to bags, to musical instruments), and rickety carnival rides (one of those spinning swing contraptions, which had quite the line).  The one catch was that it was umuganda... and we hadn’t necessarily accounted for that.  Since the expo was a big deal, the general consensus was that it would be open as usual, but it was umuganda... and we waited.  I think we showed up about 11:30, and it didn’t actually open until 1:00.  Thankfully, we were at least let in a little early while most vendors were still setting up, and we went to one of the vendors which was run/managed/something important by a South African.  He gave us some free drinks while we were there and told us they’d be grilling burgers later in the afternoon.  We thanked him and eventually made our way toward the rest of the vendors. 

The good news is that I came away with a fair supply of souvenirs.  The bad news is you definitely win some and lose some in the souvenir game (I feel like my game face breaks down after a while, particularly since this was plausibly our last souvenir day).  Anyway, I walked away from a particular vendor having traded my State hat and still gotten ripped off, but at least it was a fairly fun process, and I bought the hat on sale for $10 a year ago (and it was covered in red dirt/dust by this point).  Also, I took a picture with the guy wearing my MSU hat, easing the pain a bit (I’ll assume picture is worth 1000 Rwandan francs in this case).  Moreover, my HU hat fits better anyway.  And, I’d already lost my sunglasses on the trip, so it seemed fitting that I lose all of my non-liquid sun blocking capabilities (can you tell I’m reasoning through it at this point?)  If nothing else, I’d say there were some wins in the souvenir shopping game to (somewhat) cancel out the losses, and we had a good time at the vender providing free drinks and cheap food.  It turns out that they had a guy from Toronto cooking up cheeseburgers, and I was able to get a double cheeseburger and fries made by a guy who knew how to make a double cheeseburger and fries for $5 USD.  It was a nice respite from Rwandan food, if you could call it that. (I actually like the food here for the most part, but they certainly limit the spices/sodium content, which can be rough on the American palate).  And for the Canadians in the crowd, the cook said he was originally from the Hamilton area, and he had two kids recently graduate from med school, one at McMaster and the other in London.  He was apparently here to open a fastfood joint (I have yet to see one in Kigali) after spending ten years in Siberia opening restaurants. 

So, there’s my day in a nutshell.  Not sure how it got into the nutshell in the first place, but it was probably a slow process if my sense of “Rwanda time” serves me right. 

-Scott

For no reason other than a lack of new pictures, I'm going to talk about the busing system in Kigali.  For 160 RWF (about a quarter), we can take the half hour walk down our hill and hop on a bus to take us into town.  The buses essentially operate in a wheel-and-spoke approach, with all buses running to a central location "in town" and then running back out. I think the key to keeping prices so low is that their "buses" are really just 15 passenger vans, and it's not uncommon to pack 18-20 people into a bus, including the driver and guy handling the money (record is 21 at this point).  If the bus isn't full when you get on, it's your lucky day.  It's now going to take you 2-4 times longer to get where you want to go as you drive a block, attempt to get passengers, drive another block, attempt to get more passengers, and repeat.  So, if the process is so bad, why do you even use it?  Please see the parenthetical of the second sentence above.