Living the Green Life

My attempt at water collection, before I really knew what I was doing.

And by “green” I really mean brown – as in the color that your food turns when you don’t eat it and it’s left in the compost bucket for crows to scavenge.

6/6/09: Today I made mushroom soup from a packet for lunch. After the requisite 6 minutes of cooking (the one thing all my lunches have in common is their quick prep time) it was a congealed pinkish-gray. It resembled Java the Hut more than any soup I’ve ever encountered, but when faced with the possibility of not eating it, I was immediately confronted with what it would look like in a few hours, or days, mixed in with the rest of my food waste in the oddly cheerful red bucket that occupies the farthest corner of my court yard. In fact, that image was so frightful I actually ate half the bowl before Java the Hut won.

Claire and I often joke about the ease with which we have converted to our “green” life here – no plastic bags (they’re illegal), taking the most gas efficient public transport within safety limits (actually we’re stretching the safety, but still, van service is considered more efficient than bus services because they more often run at maximum capacity, and here they’re almost always beyond max cap), eating our “organic” vegetables (the only ‘additives’ you worry about are parasites)… All these changes felt pretty easy since we didn’t have another choice. But my more recent adaptations – again forced by circumstance – have been harder to get used to. These changes fall into two major categories: water usage and garbage disposal.

6/18/09: Water is back to being a problem (my pipes are more like decoration these days). I managed for the first month (May) without water thanks to the rain, but dry season is officially here and with it come water worries. Worry has two sides – awareness and difficulty. On the one hand, now that it’s precious, I only use the very smallest amount of water I need to get a job done and I know exactly how much I need for everything: I am a master at the bucket shower, and the approximate 4L that my biggest pot can hold feels luxurious; I know that rice takes less water to cook than pasta but more to clean out of the pot (pasta, basically leaves the pot clean when it’s done – a little extra starch never hurts the next batch). Even then, I reuse all water I can – wash my hands over pots that need to be soaked a bit, use soapy laundry water to wash the floor, etc. And when/if it does rain, I have the rain water collection down to a beautiful system. In our last big storm I managed to fill two jerry cans, and five 5L jugs (the trick is a good funnel and some pots to catch water while you switch out full containers). This all sounds environmentally idyllic – oh, me and my efficient house – but when I have to choose between showering and washing dishes (at which point laundry just feels wasteful and luxurious), I really wish for the guilty abundance of America.

Similarly, I am both proud and profoundly annoyed at my garbage system. I now separate burnable, plastic, food plastic (can't be kept in the house) and food waste. I've mentioned the red bucket already, so I'll spare you further descriptions of that... Everything else is pretty painless - I especially love burning my burnables because they disappear! The catch is competitive non-wastefulness. I have a shared dump spot out back, so I feel constantly under inspection ("oh look at that wasteful American"). Furthermore, while everyone else seems fine with dumping non-biodegradables out back, I am not, which leaves me with the slightly awkward task of getting rid of my plastics some other way. (I've thrown them out at Claire's where the street kids love to take her garbage, but where I'm pretty sure I'm still littering in the long term, and when my parents were here I guiltlessly left it in their hotel room for housekeeping, but now that luxury is gone.)

Oh, the problem of plastic.

Drinking Games with Nuns

I AM a good host.

Being a good host is an important part of Rwandan culture, one I thought I had finally mastered during my parents’ stay, but with my brother George’s arrival two weeks ago it become clear that I still have much to learn.

My first mistake was taking George on a bus from Kigali to Save. It was a struggle getting his two huge bags up the very long hill to the street where the buses depart, but once we made it on the bus – and bought two extra seats for the bags – everything was a breeze. My bicycle taxi friends were thrilled to see another muzungu to pay them twice the normal rate for the trip to Save (200 Rwf instead of 100, a difference of about 20 cents) and practically fought each other to take us or the bags. By the time we made it to my house we were hot and tired, and George had experienced the highest and lowest levels of travel in Rwanda (the express bus being the nicest, and the bikes being the cheapest, though not necessarily the most uncomfortable).

And then we told the sisters. Their reaction would have been suitable (in my coarse American opinion) if I had tied the bags to George’s back and had him hike to Save, pulling me behind him in a cart. They scolded and yelled and shamed me for the first hour of our welcome tea and returned to the issue whenever I made the slightest slip for the next few days. These other mistakes – not peeling his orange for him, not refilling his beer after every sip – might have slipped by unnoticed if I hadn’t proved to be so in need of their correction.

For the first week we ate dinner with the sisters every night. So for two hours I was chided and reproached in French while George sat by unable to argue on my behalf. When he didn’t eat enough (basically every night, since ‘enough’ seems to be equivalent to about three servings at least), it was my fault for making him feel uncomfortable eating since I was eating so little myself. When I translated his insistence that he did like the food, and just felt very full, the sisters’ response was “Stop lying, we can see he is still hungry.” All of their persistence came from the best intentions and for the first few nights that was enough to keep me from getting really angry. But each night it wore me down more until I had to resort to the clownish antics that keep me sane in the classroom. I would pour George’s beer until it threatened to overflow and then keep pouring so he had to drink while I poured to prevent a mess. The sisters loved it! When I was told to offer him food I would bow down with exaggerated servitude. As I have found before, sarcasm is generally lost on people here, so the sisters were entertained and I was able to partially vent my anger. (This was a good quick fix, but after a full week, I finally convinced them to allow us to come only on weekends.)

With our newfound freedom, George and I have had the chance to make a huge breakthrough in low resource cooking: brownies! You start with some simple ingredients – aunt Jemima mix (an import, I admit), Cadbury’s cocoa powder, sugar, eggs and Blue Band imitation butter…

Mix it all up and cook it in your kids camping gear sourced solar over (basically a box with a clear plastic top and reflective fins making a big collar).

Et voila! Brownies!

NB: This may seem like one small step, but try going for six months without warm from the oven baked goods and you'll realize what a big deal this is.

Half-Time Recap

As I suddenly find myself tumbling into June, a full five months behind me and another, seemingly slighter, five in front, I realize some important events and milestones of my achievement have been left out of my public records.

Teddy's momentous first ride on a moto.

THINGS I FORGOT TO TELL YOU

Extreme Home Makeover: Rwanda Edition

While my parents were here they decided to support the local economy and redecorate my house (I bet you can guess which parent was most wholeheartedly behind this). This meant our entire day for exploring Butare was devoted to the arts cooperative store. In two trips we bought two arm chairs woven out of banana leaves, two round side tables also from banana leaves, three woven floor mats, and a few smaller baskets to hold teas, utensils, desk supplies and toiletries – not to mention the assorted souvenirs to send back (almost all woven as well). Three little boys were overjoyed when we let them carry our booty across the street to the car for a few hundred francs (maybe a dollar total). I wish I had a picture of the two with the chairs – almost twice their heights – balanced on their heads.

Back in Save my mother rearranged my house so the entry room is no longer where I do work and instead has a little sitting area with the two chairs, a rug and a table. She also cleaned and reorganized my kitchen, hung up a painting we got on the street so it would be more cheerful (it is an outdoor room, with bare brick walls, a precarious wooden bookcase and a concrete sink painted brown). Meanwhile my father unloaded all the goodies he brought for my school (see #2) and Teddy helped by burning all my garbage. Thanks to their efforts I can now entertain or just relax with my feet up!

My Father’s extended visit

My father, never being one to pass up an opportunity to try new technology in Africa, decided to extend his visit from one week to four. He came a week early while I was correcting exams and then stayed all the way through vacation and a few more days when we were starting term 2. Thanks to him my school now has a strong internet connection, about 20 computers* around the school that are connected to it (including 14 in the two computer rooms for the students) and a digital library called an eGranary that is connected via a network to all the other computers. Plus, with the added clout of his being there in all his generous American glory, I felt I had the power to demand to rearrange the computer room I generally teach in, taking out the broken computers, organizing all the wires and benches so I had a chance of walking around without snagging a computer’s power cord, and deleting all the files the students had saved over the years – most of these had less than five words in a document, the students just always save everything. My sanity has been much restored with these changes and I hope the teachers will learn to incorporate these new resources into their classes. (I would love to give some weekend classes on such possibilities, but for reasons that are too boring an predictable to be worth explaining – essentially, bureaucracy – it is not deemed worthwhile.

*He did NOT bring the computers, just helped check the connectivity.

Many More Views of Rwanda

First with my dad and then with our whole group, Claire and I got the chance over vacation to see (besides the gorillas) the well-known lakes towns of Gisenyi, Kibuye and Cyangugu. All on the shores of Lake Kivu, these are the vacation getaways for Rwandans and expats alike.

The view leaving Gisenyi was beautiful,

as we reentered the Ruhengeri area (with the volcanoes and gorillas)

Gisenyi was once considered the best of the three, mainly because of its proximity to Goma (in Congo) with its palatial houses and crazy night clubs, but thanks to the same relationship it now feels abandoned and neglected. Not to say that it’s empty – it was full of people and busy with the countless huge trucks coming back and forth over the border (which by the way is just a stone wall, on which people from both countries hang their laundry to dry). But the streets were in some of the worst condition I’ve seen (the worst until we went to Cyangugu) with huge pot holes in paved ones and dirt ones that had all but washed away, many hotels and fancy houses along the lakeside were abandoned , some even covered in big red X’s (reminiscent of Fern Gully) that we guessed showed intended demolition.

Kibuye was the complete opposite. Under-hyped for all its beauty, it is really the Lake Como of Africa. It still lacked a real tourist town with restaurants or bars – all we could find was a gas station and a bus ticket booth – but the hotels are removed from the town, high on a hill with panoramic views of the lake or down on the shore, complete with a beach and boat dock. Had I brought a bathing suit I would have jumped into the water without a second thought to bilharzias (a parasite found in just about all lakes and rivers in sub-saharan Africa that can cause multiple organ problems).

A solid patch of road as we drive down into Cyangugu

Cyangugu meanwhile really feels like a border town - not great for vacationing, but not abandoned in the least. The border crossing looks like a wider footbridge that connects to Bukavu, DRC. The lake is still beautiful, but the road is so bad that's it hard to appreciate anything. (Apparently, Cyangugu has not yet recovered from a rather serious earthquake about a year ago.) We only came down this far to the Southwest of Rwanda to get gas when we just about ran out in the middle of Nyungwe Rain Forest.

Despite our gas situation, I did insist on stopping for some pictures of the rainforest.

That was quite a little adventure. One of the car running boards was falling off so we couldn't go too fast over the potholes, but at the same time if we lost all momentum we'd have to rev the engine, costing us precious fuel. And when we finally got through the rainforest (full of towering green canopy, terrifyingly steep drop offs on on side of the road and rising cliffs on the other that spoke clearly of the fatal danger of landslides), we were faces with endless tea plantations and no towns or villages in sight.

Every time we stopped, people eager to help would just come forward and start fixing the car.

We stopped at the first planation, but after a lot of helpful smiles, it seemed they could not give us any fuel. Finally. we drove through some small roadside towns - at each we got about 5L and many eager offeres to help fix the car. So Cyangugu was a necessary detour before we turned around and drove the three hours back through the rainforst in the haze of dusk to Butare.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED

What lizards do for fun

A version of slip and slide down my corrugated roof until they plop with a thud on the ground. I'm happy to decide they are also the tenants responsible for all the scampering and crawling I hear above my head, between the roof and the ceiling (especailly when the alternative is some huge insect colony I have yet to meet). I think the lizards also help keep down the mosquito population, so as one by one my fellow volunteers seem to succumb to malaria, I'm glad to have my exuberant little friends.

How to teach ICT without doing anything

How did I learn about computers? By using them. Now when in doubt, I take my students to the computer lab - for quizes, for review, for wasting a period that I forgot to plan for. They love it and I'm happy to sit in front of the open window and day dream - coming to to answer questions of course. Ironically, they are all doing much worse grade-wise but seem thrilled to be getting so much time to practice. (This is largely in part to a practical quiz which many failed when they didn't save their document for me to see.)

I am quite possibly a brilliant cook

A two item repetoire has been expanded to lentils, shitake mushrooms in honey and soy sauce, french toast, egg salad, and candied bananas. Of course there were some grand failures too - mushroom soup that resembled java the hut in color, texture and taste (as I imagined it), and chocolate pudding that proved that if everythign comes from a powder, the results will not be the same. Still, I have great hopes for my continuing improvement.