Note: Between 1999-2004 I traveled around Rwanda during research. Many things happened on my trips and it is only now that I start to share them.

The hotel in Butare (the college town of Rwanda and second largest city) was sparkling white and it seemed the staff was bent on keeping it that way – literally.  They seemed to constantly be on their knees.  Every day they washed the floors, the walls and windows. As I walked down the hallway, porters and cleaners busily went about their business.  One needed sunglasses to walk by so as not to be blinded.

Breakfast was always the same.  Upon reaching the dining room, I made eye contact with the host, found a seat and within seconds was brought a pot of tea, milk as well as a bowl of white and brown sugar on a tray.  Now, interestingly, in this hotel you could never just get a cup with no milk and no sugar.  This was how they served it and there was no deviation.  If there were two of you, then you would each receive the same tray: a pot of tea, milk as well as a bowl of white and brown sugar.  There was no sharing: one pot, two cups.  I tried several times to modify the practice: identifying that the two different people could share the milk, the sugar and even the pot; noting that they could save their resources.  All this was to no avail, however; the exact same trays kept on coming.

The breakfast itself was pretty simple.  Pretty bland as well: white bread, jam, sweet bananas and some kind of peach-like fruit were available on a table in the center.  One could also order some pancake-like substance or some eggs – as long as they were boiled, you were ok.

The other guests seemed to arrive in shifts.  If you were an early bird you caught the older crowd: businessmen, military personnel and seasoned travelers getting a jump on the day.  The Rwandan work day is pretty short.  Also, if one wanted to get anywhere in Rwanda (avoiding the perilous high-speed journeys by moonlight), then they had to get started as soon as possible.  Later birds caught the younger crowd: tourists, idealistic anglo do-gooders from the far corners of the Western world.  After a relatively late night with some bizarre drink from Uganda, this morning I was sitting with the latter.  Alas, I have identified a third group: those who are recovering.

This day, I immediately noticed a new group of young people – they sat at a table in the middle of the room.  I sat at my usual corner table, started to pour my tea before getting some bananas.  Several glared in my direction – trying to ascertain my background but they were thrown off by my Kinyarwandan greeting to the host.

At that moment, Prof. Robert Bates (from Harvard) entered the room.  Now, in many respects Bob defines the stereotypical Africanist scholar to a tee: white hat, white suit, white person, upright, astonishingly aware of history – specific parts of it, people – certain classes and policies – most of them.  In other respects, he was about as different as it comes: he was kind, engaging, personable and interested in understanding the world around him.  Despite sticking out like a single grain of rice on a sea of black beans, it was clear that he was comfortable here.  It was also clear he was totally different from everything I had seen in Rwanda up to that time. 

Indeed, after leaving Kigali one rarely saw the color white at all – in any of its forms: skin or clothing.  At the Milles Collines (the hotel in the Hotel Rwanda and main spot in the capital), it was almost as if a white suit was the official costume (as if communicating that regardless of location, I will still be unsullied/untouched by the dirtiness of the place).  Bob seemed very untouched, floating into the room and toward his group of students.  We caught a glimpse of each other quickly and immediately he gave me the warmest of greetings.  He then turned, introduced me to the students and we all sat down.

The group was nothing short of amazing.  Evidently, Bob had been talking to his class about the Rwandan truth and reconciliation effort – Gacaca.  The students had decided that they wanted to help, they had contacted Rwandan authorities, generated some cash, got Bob’s assistance (who admitted to doing very little) and they traveled to Rwanda to assist in the process.  The group was diverse – I mean, they were all white and seemingly with means but there was some diversity among them (kinda).  One had lived in numerous African countries, another had never been to Africa before.  Most spoke English, French and a few other languages.  All had engaged in some kind of activism/advocacy before.  Compared to most of the kids I taught at the University of Maryland - where I has a Professor at the time (many of whom had never been out of the country and who engaged in little to no activism), I could hardly believe my ears.  The upper-crust arranged field trips to Africa.  The working-class slept in my political film class and haggled about when assignments were due. 

Now, clearly this is a simplification: I think all students haggle and I know for a fact that many of my students at Maryland upon hearing about Rwanda wanted to do something, anything.  They just did not take it to the level that these students did to find out what could be done and then make it happen.  They also did not/could not tap the resources of the school, parents, friends, multinational corporations in their family/circle or the Harvard alums to bank roll it.

I just sat there hating and admiring Bob's students while at the same time hating as well as loving my students.  As they rattled on about what they were doing and what they saw, I could only see and hear my kids – wondering how they would respond if they had the same opportunity, what they would see, what they would tell the others at home.

Now, exactly what the Harvard group would do to be helpful was unclear.  Hell, at that point, the Rwandans themselves were still trying to figure out what they were doing with Gacaca.  But all the students believed in it (some intensely), and their attitude was at once refreshing and alarming; Refreshing because the exuberance they showed made me happy to be alive and an American, which was rare; Alarming because, despite seeing many flaws, no guarantees of honesty or protection of witnesses, no investigation into anyone’s testimony, no coordination between sessions, the lack of evidence necessary to bring someone to court, their optimism seemed unqualified. 

I then thought that my students would not have been duped like this.  Their conception of the world was somehow more realistic about such matters.  Perhaps the water is clearer from the bottom of the pool. 

From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

I wish to free the rural women of India and take them to the Indian version of Amazonia – a world occupied by women, for women, of women.  The reason is simple: they are locked down beyond belief.  From birth they are seemingly prepared for marriage.  They work, then work some more, then work again without adequate compensation. They do everything inhumanly imaginable, in flip flops and a sari (not an apology, which I will offer them now but a flimsy piece of fabric that stretches beyond belief). 

Any man appears to have more rights than they do – frequently able to exert them directly. There is no divorce without major stigma; no jobs and no apartments for the husbandless.

What is the key or, rather, one of the keys to their freedom?  Well...  African American women.  As I came across different situations and heard different stories, at different points I kept thinking about different relatives as something of a mental experiment.  None of the schemes worked completely but it did provide some insights, albeit for a minute.

Option 1 – The Freedom Ride (from my Aunt Pat who often served as a delivery truck for the family taking anyone and anything to anybody):

The freedom ride would be a black bus with a huge flag held at 15-20 feet high so that it could be seen from a distance;
            
There would be no doors and the windows would be blackened;

It would always drive at the same speed to facilitate getting on or off; 

There would be no questions – any woman could just step on it and be brought to Indiamazonia

Problems:

How would folks find out?  Word of mouth wouldn’t work because if men found out they would either take out the bus or follow the bus and extract their property.

One could send a witch into a village who threatens all the men. After they leave there could be a meeting to tell the women what is up.  This is problematic as well because one informant takes down the whole idea.


Option 2 – Witchin Woman (My Aunt Annabelle – the closest to our geechee roots in south Carolina who with her multi-colored wigs, babble-speak, tribal markings otherwise known as makeup and individualized incantations to deliver death to ex-husbands, liquor by the bottle and magic numbers put fear into all of us)

This solution was simple: use witches to threaten abusive men, identified by women to local stringers at the well.

Problem:

It is not clear how new witches are brought into communities.  They all appear to be locally-developed and thus the only solution would be to turn them to the cause.


Option 3 – Micro-Mace (One of my aunt's on Mother’s side who gave out advice, weapons and training to all women in the family).

Similar to giving poor people access to credit, I thought that there could be some allocation of mace given to women at watering holes so that they could protect themselves

Problem:

Men might get a hold of them and use them on the women and each other


Option 4 – The Woman’s Protection Program (This one was inspired by Nana – my mother’s mother, who would take in anyone for a while and would lie left and right to keep them protected while in her care).

Essentially this would be an organization whose job it would be to extract oppressed women, relocate them to a new locale (like a city) and create a back-story that explained their legitimate departure.  They would provide a new identity card, new family history and a new village complete with a false history to provide cover.

Problem:

Almost regardless of location, single women are stigmatized and thus it is unclear if any legitimate excuse could be found.  An alternative would be to pair them with men who seek to escape oppression, creating a back story as well as separate living quarters for the couple.  

There has gotta be a better way.

From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

There once were 4 girls from Mississippi.  Now, I know what you’re thinking but it ain’t them.  These girls were not really from Mississippi; they were visiting there and had just returned to Dalit Shakti Kendra (Dalit Power School - DSK), filming and exploring the similarities between racism in the US and untouchability in India.  These 4 girls were Indian, from Gujarat, outside of Ahmedabad to be exact.  Hell, they weren’t even girls.  They were all very much women – in all senses of the word, likely from an early age, India tends to do that. 

Regardless of origins or ages, the 4 were as fantastic as any image created by Marvel comics. The 4 were as different as the elements but when put together you had the components to make almost anything. They embodied the best that humanity had to offer, peppered with some of the worst.

For me, T (not her name) always comes first (the one on the far left in the photo).  She was the worker-bee of the group, first out the gate, first out the house, the plane or whatever was going on.  If it needed doing, she was ready and in all likelihood she had already done it, written a manual for others to follow and on to the next.  She was hungry like Whoopi Goldberg after she got away from Danny Glover in the Color Purple.  For her, life was an oyster and she had just pulled up to the free buffet of life.  T would later manage our 1589 village census, essentially by herself, navigating around her own ambition, inabilities, neglect, familial obligations as well as others expectations and sexist preferences for male involvement. 

N (not her name) was the elder of the group and the soulful one (third from the left above).  You could tell from her face that something horrible had happened to her but that she lived through it – barely.  All of the single women at the school had stories of abuse, abandonment, fear, persecution and/or death. N was responsible for teaching individuals at the DSK how to make clothes.  That someone with such a dark cloud over them was associated with some of the brightest colors that you could possibly imagine, died into the cloth in a slow process, was constantly paradoxical.  Perhaps the light that was incorporated into the fabric represented the light that she wished to bring forward into the world.  Perhaps the darkness that surrounded the splashes of color was the best that she could do to counteract what had happened to her. 

R (not her name, first on the right) was the firebrand of the group.  She had gone to Mississippi over the objections of her then husband (M).  He was to blame though.  M worked at DSK and began a project with video-taping the activities of the group as they challenged untouchability as well as the activities in the school.  At night, he would bring the camera home.  He would not let R touch it, saying that it was very expensive as well as delicate.  Nightly, however, she would see it in the house and every now and then she would sneak out of bed and begin to play with it.  This became an obsession of hers and after waiting for quite a while she approached the leaders of DSK, expressed an interest in learning about film and then the opportunity to come to the states had arose.  M threw a fit but in the context of a progressive social movement to uplift the Dalit as well as a strong commitment from the leaders of the organization to fight sexist practices as well as caste discrimination, his position was not supported.  R went to the American south, she learned many aspects of film-making (quickly surpassing M and getting an offer from National Geographic for a small project) but under the strain of the interaction as well as M’s ambitions, she got divorced, left the school with her lovely newborn and attempted to find her way.  M was in Canada but is now back in Gujarat.

Finally, there was Z (second from the left) – the heart and voice of the group.  Now, Z is one of those people that defies description. She, like the others, had a light and like N you knew that there is some pain in her past.  But, the way she has moved beyond it is as uplifting a presence as you can imagine.  I was actually introduced to Z through her voice and strangely I was reintroduced to African American history by the experience. 

At Martin Macwan’s invitation, she sang “We shall overcome.”  Now, I had heard the song a million times before but somehow her version brought me back to it, through it and beyond it.  With the different points of emphasis, different accent and rawness of the presentation, I began to feel the resonance of the song and of the African American struggle.  Sitting in a courtyard in the middle of some Indian village, I listened to the words and felt renewed.  The struggle was here, I thought.  Our struggle was here.  It continued.  It grew.  They had heard us – all the way over here, felt solace and moved accordingly.  Our presence was much needed.  Gandhi and his non-violent movement was not their inspiration, King and his movement was.  Gandhi represented Hinduism and betrayal; King represented the oppressed who struggled, righteously and with little contradiction.  Mississippi in Ahmedabad. African Americans were kindred to the Dalit – they who believe and practice equality.  African Americans were fellow travelers – in the old sense of the word.  As we attempted to overcome, so would they.  As we attempted change, so would they.  As we attempted, so would they.  Hopefully they would do better.

Reflecting about my sense of failure regarding the African American struggle in general and the civil rights movement in particular, I heard the song of my liberation for the first time and realized that my metric for success was deficient.  Mos Def had it right: the invisible man got the whole world watching.  This time though 4 girls from Mississippi showed the light – yet again.

Note: Between 1999-2004 I traveled around Rwanda during research. Many things happened on my trips and it is only now that I start to share them.

As part of my deal for going to Rwanda, I was supposed to teach some students at the National University of Rwanda at Butare about research methods. It was not exactly clear what I was supposed to do – like everything else.  That was cool though – I was getting a trip to Africa and I would be the first in the family to go there. 

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with teaching.  I love the engagement, the pursuit, watching young minds come alive – preparing to struggle, challenge, overthrow and prosper.  I hate the machine that education has become however: most of my colleagues lectured and did not interact much in the classroom, students want an A and most acquired them (the essence of my teaching method was Socratic with a healthy line of Dewey), most didn’t want to read and most couldn’t write – I’ll just stop there.

The situation had started to slowly kill me.  Every now and then I would come across a jewel of a student: engaged but reflective, hardworking but carefree, troubled but helpful, young but old.  These had become fewer and far between.

In response, I had started to pull back – moving to the dark side: research (or, was it the other way around?).  Regardless, I felt it creep in: fewer written assignments (a pain to grade), fewer books assigned (a pain to pull out of them), fewer questions (more talking to as opposed to talking with for the students weren’t interested). 

Being asked to teach in Rwanda was thus a mixed blessing.  I figured I would give it a shot.

Once in the classroom, it was a different story.  The classroom existed in what looked like a military bunker made of brick and wire fences.  There was a basketball court in front of the Rector’s office (the American equivalent of the University President), a field for “experimentation,” dormitories and other classrooms – all surrounded by jungle and barbed wire. 

The students ranged from ages 18 to 40.  They had very different backgrounds: some had fought in the civil war (not a handbag in sight), some had been abroad the whole time and had just returned and some had been in Rwanda hiding.  Some spoke English, most spoke French and all spoke Kinyarwandan. All the students were neatly dressed and were respectful to a fault.  All had cell phones and grumbled when they were asked to turn them off.  This was somewhat similar to the states until I realized that cell phones here were a life-line in the literal sense.  How could you ask a student to stay off their cell in Rwanda when the next revolution could be coming over the airwaves?  The immediacy simply trumped the courtesy.  We settled on them applying a higher criteria for accepting a call: it had to be “important.”  Over time, they got the point.

All the students were surprised to find out that their instructor was an African American.  They had never seen one and thus whenever they had a chance, they would ask questions about my life and my take on America.  This came later though. At first, they just sat there quizzically.

Socrates did not come to Rwanda with me nor did he already reside there for me to run across.  The Rwandese were used to lecturing.  They were used to being told what to do and how to do it.  Unlike the deferent to authority machines discussed in the Western media, however, once the students were given a chance, prompted and made to feel comfortable, they were full of questions and challenges. 

Interestingly, there was a certain degree of skepticism about statistics and numerical representation –the “you can say anything with numbers” variety. Walking by a chart plotting nose size against ethnic identity that I saw on a wall in a nearby library (provided by the Belgians but replicated elsewhere), I understood how they could come to be this way.  Nevertheless, we pushed on.

What struck me most about the students was that the “children are the future” stuff we always hear in the states is a genuine reality in Rwanda.  These kids literally are the future and much of the present.  These kids are not going to be the farmers who made up the majority of society.  They were going to be the lawyers, entrepeneurs, generals and Rectors who ran it.  They know it and you can see it in their faces, which leads to a certain degree of snootiness.  Now, it is not like interacting with kids from the uppercrust American institutions (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc.) but it is in the same ballpark; or, neighborhood of the ballpark. 

These kids had to get it right and so did everyone around them.  Some of this was interest driven but some of it was external.  They were handpicked the way athletes had been in the former Soviet Union, given everything to become the very best that they could be so that they could later serve the state who would continue to allow them to be the very best. Kinda like “Be all that you Can be – or else.”

But, this was not necessarily good for education and knowledge building.  Could you learn something which you thought was used to hold you back?  Could you take it in but not be taken over?  The students evaluated everything that came out of my mouth by some metric of state and nation-building.  Will this help Rwanda?  How?  Can we extract something that is useful from this America?  And, so it went for weeks.

The student’s intensity, the little state and nation-building exercise, the weight of their expectations were energizing.  It was not like interacting with the kids back home at the University of Maryland (where I taught at the time) who were only excited when class was over, moving on to the next mediocre experience.  These kids were hungry.  It was not like interacting with the kids from Ivy League schools either, who now walked around Rwanda as consultants, humanitarian aid workers, bankers and cultural attaches with a combination of derision, awe and compassion on a stick.  Rwanda was off.  Rwanda was raw.  The students followed suit.  Some eye of the tiger like stuff. 

But, if they were the tiger, then who was I: the meat, the zoo keeper, the visitor getting too close to the cage or was I just another animal in the cage daydreaming while someone slipped a needle under my fur to keep me calm and unpredatory?  The students seem to have the same quizzical look directed at me as well, trying to figure me out.  Who was I to them (cue the music)?  Was I the oppressor in a new package?  Was I some ally who recently found his way to their school in the jungle?  Was I one of the thousands of individuals who came to Rwanda after the violence to pay pennance, soon to leave after I felt my soul had been cleansed?  Or, would I return to keep putting up my strange words and equations on the blackboard, year after year?  On opposite sides of the cage, we looked at each other, wondering who was on which side.      

Note: Between 1999-2004 I traveled around Rwanda during research. Many things happened on my trips and it is only now that I start to share them.

As one leaves an establishment in Rwanda (a restaurant or a hotel) one must invariably prepare themselves for the onslaught of thin, hungry, dirty, scantily dressed but completely adorable children who ask for food or a few francs.  The culture at that time was still essentially Francophone – this would change quickly as the RPF presence increased.  There is little variation however: there are no fat children, none who look healthy, none who appear clean and none of them is fully dressed.  Now, being from New York, I have been approached a million different ways by people in the street: “hey buddy, got a quarter,” “got a light,” “got busfare,” “got my rent in yo pocket,” or “blow for a meal”?  You hear everything.  I have even been approached by kids who just pull your heart strings.  Literally.  They just open you up, pull out veins and start playing.

The situation here is compounded by the sheer volume of the issue.  There is no isolated child like in New York but rather there is a veritable sea of youth.  The onslaught is held back by armed guards, making the place safe for foreigners and those with resources, but once you leave the safety of the establishment – unless you have guards with you or manage to sneak to your vehicle – you have to deal with the kids.

After a while, I could take it, which I was both grateful for and troubled by.  After the umteenth child solicitation, a certain degree of callousness overcomes you in Rwanda.  I really could not function in any other way because there were simply too many children.  The problem was too daunting to contemplate.  My colleague Candace could not take it either but she decided that she was going to cave in completely – albeit reacting to only one at a time. 

Something that became obvious upon closer observation was that there was a system to the solicitation.  While you were approached by a barrage of individuals, if you interacted with one or gave something to one of the children, you were thereafter “owned” by them.  If after marking, another kid interacted with the marked outsider, then it appeared that you could be sanctioned by some regulator with a stone, stick or some harsh words.

Candace was marked by a spry little kid with eyes like midnight, a smile like sunlight and a face like the sky (vast, full of potential and haunting).  He was named Innocent like many people in Rwanda.  You could not help but want to help him.

It was absolutely amazing to see.  Upon coming out of any store on the Butare strip, Candace’s Innocent would find her.  “Madaam…  Madaam…”  He would start, tilt his head to the side and smile – hand out.  Initially, Candace would give him a franc or two but then she came up with a mini-development strategy.  First, she would work on his nutrition: a sandwich instead of a franc, a power bar or a vitamin or two.  Second, she would take him for a visit to a doctor – after the buy-in purchased with a meal.  Then she would talk about school, over a bottle of water or coke. 

Candace was all into his life and he lapped it up.  How could he not?   They both seemed to need each other and you were warmed by the connection. Amidst all the horrible things one saw in Rwanda, if just one life could be improved, things would be just a little more tolerable.  That was the idea at least.  The reality was more complex. 

You see, the children were also marked.  They did not run amok as we thought.  Over a few weeks, I managed to sneak in the back of the Made Niggaz Hair Salon and sat in the front with some people I had met before.  This allowed me to watch where the kids were hanging out as well as where Candace was coming from.

Watching the street, I could see that there were clics/groups of youth – a gaggle of little capitalistic entrepreneurs.  There were older kids as well – between 15 and 20 who seemed to run the pack.  The leader would gather the youth at the beginning of the day and pass out assignments.  Innocent’s job was seemingly Candace.  He would trail her everywhere – walking, running, hiding, waiting – always placing himself where he could be seen (which after you have been marked becomes easy somehow – it’s like there are no longer a hundred kids in a crowd, just yours). 

At the end of the day, the kids met again to hand over their goodies to their handlers, from the days catch.  There is no joyful enjoyment of the goodies.  There is no gracious handover of the piece of bread to grandma back at the old house in the bush.  Rather, grandma is dead and there is no house but there is a somber handover and reallocation.  After Candace’s giving, all Innocent does is cross the street, turn the corner into an alley and hand over everything he got.  On the way back to the street, he might take a nibble but not too much or else he might get caught.

Why give up the goodies?  Protection.  Fear.  Survival.  Numbers are the only thing that seem to keep you alive on the streets of Rwanda.  You give up to get set up and you get set up to live (not die). 

Seeing this whole process once, by mistake, Candace later mentioned to me that “oh, that’s so cute.  He’s sharing.”  I just looked at her.  She missed his submissive demeanor (it looked like someone waiting to get punished), the look on the older kid’s face of anticipation (it looked like some drug addicted fiend waiting for their fix), the eight or so kids that stood around waiting their turn (reminiscent of the first).  She even missed Innocent’s look on his face after he gave over this prize (like his lunch money was taken that day, like everyone before it – this was actually pretty accurate but the money was not just for lunch). 

At that moment, I realized that we were and were not from the same place.  Later, I realized that she needed to see Innocent share.  To see anything else would be too hard.  I, on the other hand, didn’t need anything but to see what was in front of me.  Both of us were likely wrong.  I needed more of a filter for all this stuff lest I be overcome by it and Candace needed less of one lest she be underwhelmed. 

Note: Between 1999-2004 I traveled around Rwanda during research. Many things happened on my trips and it is only now that I start to share them.

“I had a farm in Africa.” 

I swear this is how Rosamond Carr began her story.  We had traveled to one of the farthest points in Rwanda to see a genocide site, and we were told that if we were going to be over there, we should stop in and see Ms. Carr who ran an orphanage.  She was well known for she was the oldest consistently present white person in the country (even Pres. Bill Clinton buzzed through on his visit).  Over her 30+ years spent there, she had lived through a great deal: regime change, revolution, civil war, genocide, poverty, regime change, revolution, regime change and civil war. Recently, her plantation/farm had been taken from her during one of these events.  She currently lived in a house provided by Anheiser Busch – the beer people. I have no idea why.

We actually had a hard time getting to Ms. Carr, having been directed to another old white woman in the region.  This was pretty embarrassing - actually.  As we rolled up and were introduced to the roar of several hundred kids penned up behind a fence and playing soccer (for their protection or ours), we knew from Ms. Carr’s picture on the cover of her book that we had the wrong white lady.  She seemed to realize this immediately; with a shrug she said that Ms. Carr was up the road – pointing dismissively.  So as not to offend her, we asked if we could visit with her anyway.  Surprised, she gestured to her man Godfree (not his real name) and we had some tea.

Evidently, she too had been there for quite some time (not as long as Ms. Carr but for a while).  Her orphanage was larger than Ms. Carr’s.  But, lacking a best-selling book and the attending cache, her facility was less well-funded (Ms. Carr received large sums of money).  Interestingly, she was not bitter. 

After touring the facility, we pushed on, laughing about the fact that to Rwandans one ol’ white woman might be the same as another. 

Meeting Ms. Carr was a different matter entirely.  She was from a different era.  She came to Rwanda from a high-profile socialite family on the East coast of the United States with her husband.  He later left her.  Stubborn and not yet ready to leave the country, she decided to stay.  I swear this sounds like Out of Africa, the more I think about it.  There didn’t appear to be any more passion between her and her husband than between Meryl Streep and Robert Redford who were both a bit too stiff for my taste but I digress. 

As for the meeting, Ms. Carr had it all down to a tee.  You came in, met by her man Godfree (not his real name either) – a polite gentleman with white gloves, a white coat, black pants and no shoes (I kid you not).  We introduced ourselves and then were invited to sit.  Godfree brought tea and Belgian chocolates.  By that time, we had been in Rwanda a while and needed a shot of sugar, so we politely wolfed them down.

The drill was simple.  Ms. Carr literally turned to each of us and said “tell me your story” – we evidently were supposed to skip the boring parts.  Each of us complied and she delicately sat there, sipped her tea and actually appeared to listen. 

It was all pretty routine for her until someone in our group talked about where he was from – New Hampshire.  At that moment, the whole interaction changed.  It was as if there was a secret door that had been opened and only Ms. Carr and our colleague went through as the rest of us watched outside the metal gate.  It was classic: he dropped a name or mentioned a store (secret handshake noted), which caused her to glow referencing someone/someplace and they provided additional information about how it changed or stayed the same.  Never before had I seen the Northeastern uppercrust recognition dance/ritual revealed.  Ms. Carr seemed overjoyed that she could once again touch the shores of home with “her” people – she had not been back in quite some time.

Hearing it all, her stay in Rwanda had been quite something.  She talked of the troubles she had lived through and she would occasionally let something slip about how “they” (the Rwandans) needed “our” (Western/civilized) assistance or how “they” tended to have difficulties with one another.  Every now and then, Godfree would check on us.

Godfree invariably brought me back from Ms. Carr’s romantic meanderings.  Indeed, I sat there somewhat overtaken by the whole affair.  Part of me wanted to slap this ol’ racist woman; part of me wanted to listen to her tales of violence and survival; and, part of me wanted to have another piece of chocolate.  I took the latter two options. As I mentioned, I had been in the country for a while by then and needed a lil’ something sweet, a fix; my sense of righteousness was thus depleted.  Hard to fight “the man,” or “the woman” in this case, while hungry, hot and tired.

Truth be told, I was also caught by Ms. Carr’s charm. She seemed vivacious despite her age and it was infectious because she appeared to transport all of us back to her time – well, not completely for I realized that if we went back too far I would end up with Godfree in the kitchen looking at da company as well as da chocolate from a crack in the door. 

When she was done with us, Ms. Carr rose, Godfree appeared from thin air, and we signed our names in her book.  We requested photos, which she granted, posing demurely, gracefully and professionally as though she did this everyday (which, of course, she did).  Mine is provided above. 

Walking out the door, you realized that while she was in Africa, she was very much out of it.  In many ways, the world she had known changed.  Now, the weapons were bigger, migration on a larger scale, desires for rebuilding after the violence more grandiose.  At the same time, it was clear that the world she occupied had not changed at all.  Godfree had probably been serving her for years and she had a beautiful home in the middle of an amazing valley – on lease from a multi-national corporation.

She had a farm in Africa; now the farm seemed to have her.

Come to think of it, we never did see those damn kids.  Makes you wonder.


Note 1: I am sure there were kids and an orphanage.
Note 2: Ms. Carr passed in 2006.