INTO AFRICA

Two months have passed and I’m sitting in the lounge at the Hotel Serena drinking a decent cappuccino while Nancy is preparing for New York City by having a two hour spa facial and sports massage. We started the morning with a spectacular Serena breakfast buffet while meeting with the academic director of the OB/GYN program here in Kigali. Nancy then went to the gym and the crystal blue, doubly water-purified pool while I finished packing. We arrive back in New York City noon on Sunday and around 8 o’clock on Monday, Nancy reports back to work. That’s why it seemed appropriate to spend our last day in the five star, number one hotel here in the capital. Yesterday, when we arrived, however, we had a difficult time making it to the hotel, because the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame was here for the “Smart IT “conference; his security platoon had closed all the streets in the area. The contrast to Butare, where we have spent the last 2 months, and  the US is overwhelming. This is Rwanda, where a full-time, 12-hour-a-day housekeeper/cook/ laundress is paid $50 a month (19 cents an hour) by a well-off Rwandan , $100 a month (39 cents) by a generous American, and where a mid-level administrator, working for a government program, makes $700 a month ($3.50 per hour). I was discussing pay scales with a newly arrived US doctor, here for 2 months and being paid by his practice group on the east coast. He thought he shouldn’t pay more than $35 monthly because that’s what the Rwandans paid their help. I pointed out that he was being paid more per hour than he intended to pay all three of his employees in a month.

The point of all this is quite simple, Hotel Serena, at $470 a night with dinner at $75 for 2 (with 2 glasses of wine), with all the services that you would expect from a five-star hotel, is the perfect transition to 20 hours from now when we will be back in Manhattan. This is really quite a hotel, owned by the Kenyans  and part of a chain of 32 high-end hotels and safari camps here in East Africa and in Southern Asia, Our hotel caters to wealthy African businessmen (who pay the special corporate rate) and 30-something adventurers, mostly guys who are stopping here before going to see the gorillas. They have probably seen the Serengeti, they may even have tented in South Africa, but they are easily identifiable. For some reason, they think that wearing printed T-shirts and Bermuda shorts with flip-flops is how to dress for dinner. The wonder is that the safaris they have booked range in price from $6000-$12,000 a person. If I had that kind of money to travel, I think I might don a dinner jacket… oh wait, that was the last century or maybe even the turn of the one before!

So I sit here in the lounge, while Nancy is being pampered, watching the afternoon sky turn gray. When I started writing this, it was so hot and sunny that I chose to sit inside, but now it’s obvious that the torrential rains will begin again, and last till 7 or 8 o’clock… it is rainy season, you know. If asked to summarize Rwanda, I would have to say that it is an impossible situation, waiting for—and strongly believing in—miracles.It is simplistic to say that there are too many people and not enough resources to produce any kind of respectable GNP. Skyscrapers and shopping complexes rise in Kigali, government buildings are everywhere…it looks like a medium-sized American city downtown, but in the immediately surrounding areas, there are mud-brick houses, pit toilets and children carrying yellow jerry cans of water from nearby wells (still, better than the rural areas where wells are few and muddy streams supply the water source). This is a country that has decided that IT is part of the answer, but whose Internet is a 3.5 G or 3.75 G cellular network …a country that is rolling out 4.0LTE, but only in limited areas and at an unimaginably high price for the average citizen ($200 a month), a country that is excited by Korean fiber optics—but whose electric power is unreliable in the big cities and even more limited in most rural areas.  Read the English-language newspapers and follow the reports of the commissions and conferences on medicine and IT and infrastructure development, and you’ll hear all the right things being said. Remember the visits and dreams of Howard Buffett, (Warren’s son), Bill Gates and Bill Clinton were all scaled back because of the realities in Rwanda. Read the shocking story of the entrepreneur who developed the UTC, a shopping complex of 80 businesses, as reported by the PR Newswire: ‎On 13 Jan 2014 UTC ceased to exist as private enterprise. The USD20million shopping mall was henceforth seized by government without compensation and without due legal process. Government’s Commission of the Abandoned Properties took direct control by installing its own managing director. Government justifies this nationalisation without compensation with claims that UTC is ‘an abandoned property’ because the company’s shareholder resides outside Rwanda. But shareholders of most leading companies in Rwanda, including BRALIRWA (Rwanda major brewer and bottler), MTN (largest cellular and internet provider), and Kenya Commercial Bank  live outside Rwanda. The real motivation for illegal seizure of UTC therefore remains mysterious and troubling for a country that has invested heavily in its reputation as serious investment destination.

Rwandan who become your friends will not talk about the problems—there are no problems… we are left to wait to see if the constitution is changed under the new Senate president so that the president is able to run for another term.

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Remember, brick, that thou art dirt, and to dirt thou shalt return.

Rwanda has the most amazing weather: it’s in the high 70’s and low 80’s all year round. We are very near the equator, so the sun has risen by 6am and set by 6pm. There are two rainy seasons—the major one from March to May, and the minor from mid- September to November, and two corresponding dry seasons, major from June to mid- September and minor, from December to February . The farmers count on this and plant accordingly. The problem is… it isn’t true! Whites say knowingly “global warming” but a wise older Rwandan told me “it’s been happening for twenty years… it started with the itsembabwoko n’ itsembatsemba”. Building a house in August and early September seemed like a good idea, at least until this year’s torrential rains in the first week of September. We were fortunate—all our blocks were up and the roof was on before the rains began.  Claude’s neighbor was not so lucky:  he hadn’t started construction in time and the blocks began to disintegrate. It’s not a big worry; they can simply be recycled into new blocks during the next dry season.

Roll your mouse over pictures to see captions, double click to  see slide show.

We bought “trees” to build the roof.

A special crew assembles the trusses

Machete, the only tool

Roofers making rafters

The finished roof

Meantime the interior is mortared

The view from the front

Meredith and Chris’ roof in Stebbing

Weeks two and three bring amazing results. Just like in the USA, specialized subcontractors are used. The two roofers worked alone, converting $125 worth of trees into the rafters supporting the metal roof. There are three kinds of roofs in village construction:  thatched roofs like Meredith’s home in England, fired clay tiles for the wealthy and metal roofs for everyone else. The metal comes in plain steel, painted steel or painted, stamped steel made to look like exaggerated shingles (my favorite). Thatch was wisely outlawed because of its fire hazard (I’ve yet to see a fire truck). The next step is to cover the blocks with mud stucco, a line of defense against the rains.  For many this is where it ends, a tin roof, mud stucco walls and a dirt floor. Not for Claude’s mother!

The front and one side done

The dirt, sand and cement

Can you see the Easter Island head?

The “export only” cement

Behind the porter the first stucco goes up

The finish is pale white, we will paint

A mixture of dirt, sand and cement is used to coat the walls giving a smooth, waterproof  finish that will double the life expectancy of the house, some say up to 50 years. The third week ends with the used windows re-glazed and painted bright green to match the recycled heavy duty front door. Behind the house a 15′ deep pit toilet was dug and a combination (3 separate rooms) toilet, bathroom and kitchen. Water is drawn from the Stream at the bottom of the hill that supplies the rice patties. It is where the neighbors congregate to do their laundry. The  light weight plastic jerrycan makes it possible for the children to fetch the water.

Let me first say that all these stories are based on repeating what local residents have told me. I do not speak Kinyarwandan or French and they barely speak English. The added problem is that Rwandans are the most gracious and agreeable people, and would do nothing to upset or contradict me. Think of these stories as the most wonderful fantasies of an old man, documented by photographs.

We have a neighbor who lives at the end of our street in what looks, for all the world, like a deserted, ramshackle building… perhaps a former school or office. It is, in fact, home to her and her extended family. It sits next to what I have called in the past the cow field. It is located behind the municipal building where the drummers for Jesus drum, the dancers rehearse their dances, the preachers preach, and the politicians draw crowds for the elections. What sets this home apart, in the middle of our little downtown, is the fact that they have a cow—a beautiful, healthy brown cow—that seems to be given free rein to wander through the field and the yards outside of our neighbors’ walls (We all live behind six-foot high walls with either embedded broken glass or barbed wire running across the top.  Although most likely constructed to prevent petty thefts, the barriers evoke in us unsettling images of the genocide where 220,000 people died here in Butare 20 years ago).

Two years ago, our neighbor was walking by the hospital in the early morning. She saw a cardboard box alongside the road, and curious, she went over and opened it. Inside was a very healthy newborn baby. Rwandans have great respect for governmental wisdom and authority, so of course she took the baby to the District Office.

The District Office contacted the Sisters of the Mother of Good Council who, besides running one of the best hotels and restaurants in Butare (Centre d’Accueil Mater Boni Consilii), also care for orphans. This is the part of the story that I’m not a hundred percent sure of, but I was told that the nuns said to the woman “if you will raise the child, we will supply the money for her clothes and food”. Then the district stepped in and agreed to give the lady a cow to provide milk for the child. Yesterday, I was introduced to the child by her older brother and sister and was allowed to take pictures of her. I had taken pictures of cow at an earlier time, and I will add to this blog pictures of the District Office and the sisters’ hotel (where my friends from Matar Supermarket sent me for a really wonderful dinner).

When my daughter Elizabeth reads this blog, I hope she imagines the wonderful set of drawings that can be added to the story, to make it a perfect children’s book. Who knows?—At 72, I could become an author and book publisher (one of my earliest dreams).

Shamefully, I realize that it’s been almost 2 weeks since my last post. It’s been a combination of things. I began to realize that the language barrier is keeping me from really understanding what’s going on around me. I commented earlier on the Chinese engineers putting in the electrical system, only to find out that the electrical system is being done by the Koreans. The sign that I presumed was referring to the electrical infrastructure was actually about the roads, which the Chinese are doing. And if I understood my Lebanese friend at the Matar Market correctly, the Japanese are doing the water and sewer systems. (And by doing,  I mean they are working on the planning and finance in cooperation with the federal government, while the labor is being done by the Rwandan crews.) The streetlight project, started by the Belgians, continues throughout the city. There is something special about a dirt road leading to the one paved National Road being lighted by the most modern means.  Nancy particularly likes the vaguely Nouveau form of the arabesques at the top of the stanchions.

As a former retailer, I always ask “How’s business?” and got an answer I didn’t expect from my friend at the Matar Market and Cheers Coffee & Fast Food. “Not so good”… and then begin the sad retail story of a money-losing expansion into Kigali (a beautiful store, including a bakery, in the perfect part of town with parking for 10 cars out front) and the continuing urban renewal of Butare/Huye. Matar is a single-story stucco building on the National Road in the center of town. In December, it will be torn down and replaced by a three-story building. Three-story structures seems to be the new trend in inner city building, allowing for three floors of retail. I have to say, that except for the block long strip that Nancy and I call “urban renewal” (you know, where I learned to be a shoemaker) all the storefronts seem to be occupied. I know that we have declared that next to coffee, tourism is the most important source of income, but I’m not sure these three-story modern buildings are what tourists are looking for. Anyway, my friend is moving to back to Lebanon, getting married to his fiancée, and following her to Qatar, where she has a good job. He will be missed by the expats because of his excellent command of French and English. In the 15 years that he is been here, he’s also mastered Kinyarwandan.

My second pressure has been the report that has been due on my Internship. I spent the last year and a half taking a program at New York University towards Certification as Fine Arts Appraiser. Because these are adult education programs, the University is very liberal about when final papers have to be turned in, offering up to a year in most cases. Then I learned, just before leaving for Rwanda, that my tutor was leaving the AAA in September, and returning to her primary passion, Fine Art Photography. Now the pressure was really on. The good news… yesterday I emailed the paper at 9 o’clock our time (3PM in NYC) and she got it, thanks to Rwandan Internet.

So now I have the time to post, and will continue posting more regularly.