Refueling the "interesting encounters" series

Friday, October 5, 2007.

I suppose it was no accident that, on my way to the Belgian employment office, I stumbled upon Rue Florence, the street of the hotel I stayed in during my very first trip to Brussels in the summer of 2005. The trip that resulted in losing both of my big toenails. Years of obstinate running and pounding pavement and I never lost a single toenail; a day of trekking all over Brussels and I lose both big toenails. It was enough to make you wonder if it was some sort of sign that Brussels would be some sort of painful experience. Perhaps some sort of cautionary metaphor that Brussels would strip off some sort of protective shell. Or maybe I just needed to get shoes that fit better. Who knows.

In any case, I saw the hotel and in that moment, there came the attendant self-reflection about whether or not my stay in Brussels had in fact come full-circle: was it what I had expected/hoped for? And in case you’re wondering why I even needed to pause and have this internal discourse, it was because I would be leaving my dear Belgium the very next day. For hills. In Rwanda.

I hadn’t really planned on leaving Belgium… at least not so soon. My life had become so comfortable there – my job was going well, I was living in a great apartment, I had a car that I loved (the PMP!), and I had a great group of friends with whom I could travel and in general cause a ruckus, swilling beer and cava, dancing on tables, and occasionally clicking our heels (shout out to the bru crew :)).

But what I guess I failed to notice was that I had built again a comfort zone composed of cozy little routines that didn’t really feed me creatively. Fortunately, I can always count on Garron to provide some serious cage-rattling… this time in the form of a job offer in (wait for it…) Rwanda. He had grown weary of his job at McKinsey and on a whim applied for a job in Rwanda. And of course, they extended him an offer. Given his long-burning desire to work in development/Africa, it became an offer he couldn’t turn down.

So then the question became, should I go too? And in the face of such an enormous change, it’s amazing how quickly your life can come into focus. I could suddenly see that the life I had created for myself in Belgium had taken on shades of my former life in the US: my job was vaguely interesting and important but did nothing for my long-term career goals (still so unformed), my French had stagnated and I was losing interest fast, and the bright bulb of my wanderlust had dimmed. I had become content to just get that monthly paycheck and be a homebody. In short, my inspiration had dried up and the radio silence on the “interesting encounters” email series (for those of you kind people who actually read and can remember those emails) was a perfect indicator of that.

The mechanics of the move (the perks of Garron’s new job combined with a healthy boost from the Belgian state for me) made it rather palatable… The possibilities seemed not endless, but at least, far-reaching. I could perhaps work for a Rwandan/African telecom company or maybe teach English, work for an NGO or (if I’m lucky) even the UNDP. So, it seemed the move would be good for both selfish and maybe even selfless reasons.

And beyond that, it would be Rwanda for chrissakes. Talk about an adventure.

Fast-forward through the resignation, the moving companies, 6 vaccinations, hallucination-free malaria meds (so far… knock on wood), a visit from my parents (preceded by a mild disapproval of this move and eventual acceptance that they couldn’t change my mind), a lovely short vacation to Spain (a last hurrah in Europe), and little farewells to la Belgique…

And I’m here. I arrived on Saturday, October 6.

While I’m here, I hope to refuel the earlier “interesting encounters” email series, so to that end, and in an attempt to be less of a luddite, I have started a blog. (For nostalgia’s sake I may even add the old emails in the archives.) I feel a little intimidated by it, mostly because I have hard time believing that my stories/thoughts/ramblings are interesting enough to justify Internet real-estate...

RWANDA FAST FACTS

Big City: Kigali, population ~650,000 (the capital and where we’re living)
People: ~8,800,000 (84% Hutu, 15% Tutsi, 1% Twa)
Languages: Kinyarwanda, French, English, Swahili (unofficial).
GDP per capita: $290
Size: 26,000 km2 (10,000 mi2, or about the size of Massachusetts and land-locked)
Elevation (Kigali): 1500 m (5000 ft) and hilly!
Nickname: “Le Pays des Milles Collines” = “The Land of a Thousand Hills”
Average Temperature: 23 C (73 F)
Number of Volcanoes: 5
Number of Lakes: 23
Trivia: Dian Fossey, author of ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ and renowned researcher, studied gorillas and died (under suspicious circumstances) in Rwanda.
Quick History:
1885 Germany creates “German East Africa” (comprised of present-day Rwanda and Burundi).
1923 The League of Nations hands Rwanda to Belgium as a “spoil of World War I.”
1962 Rwanda becomes independent from Belgium.
1994 The population of 7.5 million is decimated in just 100 days. 800,000 perish.

Garron has already been here a month and has regaled many of you with some great posts on his blog (www.millescollines.blogspot.com), and so far, my impressions have been very similar…

Some preliminary remarks:

1. At every turn and at every hour, the hills provide an amazing vista. By day you see a vibrant mix of verdant vegetation and burnt orange soil; by night, you see the twinkle of lights cast across the hills like a sparkly bedspread over a sleeping giant. Lovely to see but also comforting to know that the infrastructure is good enough to bring electricity to so many.
2. There are luxury hotels, tennis/golf clubs, and sprawling new villas occasionally abutted against mud/clay shacks. A strange dichotomy of prosperity and poverty.
3. People are everywhere, walking, socializing, and occasionally carrying everything except the kitchen sink on their heads. Yesterday we saw a man carrying two fully feathered dead chickens by their feet. Garron mused that one day that will be him and the unlucky bird will be the $%&! rooster that crows incessantly just outside the house. The bird must die.
4. I cannot shake the feeling that the house feels like… camping. It’s spacious and modest and lacks some furniture and personal accoutrements, but fixing it up should be a fun little project, I’m sure. More to come on the house and ‘staff’… No comment on the bugs just yet…
5. There’s a reason why there are so many all-terrain 4x4 vehicles here: the dirt roads here are a special breed. Steep, rocky, ragged, and multi-planar, they never fail to elicit a chorus of squeals from me or make me squirm in my seat or in other ways annoy Garron who has grown so accustomed to these roads that he just barrels over everything. I would have difficulty navigating some of these roads on bike let alone by car, not to mention a low-riding Toyota Corona (no, not Corolla, Corona) sedan like Garron’s. (As he’s mentioned in his blog, the steering wheel is on the right even though people here drive on the right side of the road. Apparently he often engages the wipers when he means to use the turn signal.) To be fair, the paved roads are generally quite nice but some of the more residential roads have pot holes the size of kiddie swimming pools. Negotiating them has become something of sport for Garron: if he hits one, I get 4 more grey hairs. Joy.
6. We might be the first people to go to Africa and get fatter. The food is good! Saturday night, we stuffed ourselves silly on some fantastic paneer and chili chicken at a lovely Indian restaurant. Sunday night, we had dinner with James and Maniza (a coworker of Garron’s and his wife) at a cozy little neighborhood restaurant with yummy bruschetta, beef brochette, and pizza.

The plan was to upload all the pictures I’ve taken so far, but the Internet connections here are agonizingly slow. So, in the interest of just letting you know that I’m here safe and sound (and sparing my very thin patience), I have only added a few photos here. More to come later, I promise.

As always, I would love to hear from you so please comment on the blog/email me/or look me up on skype!