March 5, 2009
Butare
This morning we were scheduled to meet with the Dean of the medical school in Butare, then to visit the national museum and stop at Gitwe on our return trip. Gitwe is where our friend Vienny has his hospital and where the Smile Train folks are doing their work. We start out along the road out of Kigali and see a very different side to this town- the industrial area and slums (for lack of a better word).
In Rwanda everything happens along the roadside, it is the lifeline to getting supplies, it is a smooth place to walk from one village to the next, a place to meet friends and family. On the back side of Kigali, following the road to Butare in was not unusual to see a man carrying 5 mattresses stacked one on top of another- all balanced on his head, tiny children walking alone with jugs to fetch water, someone bringing a goat in to town for slaughter, nicely dressed folks on their way to work in the city.
After we exit the city we begin the journey between villages- it’s rare to go even 200 yards without seeing someone on the road. Its clear that this province has more wealth than Bugesera province where we are doing our teaching. Houses have decorative accents in the stucco or clay, most compounds will have some goats and a cow in the yard, many of the children along the road are dressed in school uniforms and carrying primers.
We drive about 2 hours along this road and at some point begin chatting about the truck in front of us. It is a bank truck and along the bed of the truck it is fitted with seats that look out on either side. Security guards dressed in head to toe black, with black hoods and machine guns on their laps occupy the seats. I discretely take a photo. Suddenly the truck pulls out and to the left, we continue on, then the truck swerves to the right, making a right hand turn onto a road in front of us- collision! Our left wheel and headlight hit their right back panel. We stop and everyone is quite shaken, but no one is hurt. My camera is somewhere in the front seat. A man from the truck runs up and asks Aflodis for his identity card, he takes the card, runs back to the truck and quickly drives away! We slowly begin to exit the car where a crowd is swelling and Aflodis calls the police. Thank god no one is hurt but now what?
We realize that we are surrounded by probably 100 pairs of eyes looking at us. A few people speak maybe 1 or 2 words of English. As the police arrive we start to visit with everyone as best we can. A tiny toddler has a deflated plastic ball and I begin to kick it around, we take photos and show them on the screen- which is a big hit. Most people rarely see themselves so this is a treat. I teach a young kid in a low slung baseball hat to say, “Its coooool” and give a thumbs up – you know , anything I can do to help this society- ha. Eventually the matriarch of this village, Consolee, makes her way forward. She speaks French so I can communicate with her a bit. She visits with us, I show her pictures of the boys and she holds them up for all to see. She is a neat lady- clearly well-respected- and I thoroughly enjoy visiting with her. We exchange contact information before we leave.
The bank truck returns- and tells the police that they have too much money in the car to stop- they need to travel on to Butare. That is why they didn’t stop previously- they had to deliver some of the money to the small bank along the road. At least Aflodis gets his identification back. It looks like the car is drivable after he reshapes the wheel well and we are allowed to continue on to Butare as long as we are back by 2 pm to meet again with the police. So after about an hour we are free to travel on for a bit.
We pile back into the car for our meeting with the Dean. Butare is a beautiful city, small and tidy. We have a very abbreviated meeting with the Dean and he tells us more about how the medical school is operated. It is quite different that they system we are used to. They study 6 years- right out of high school- and when they are done they have a Bachelor’s in Medicine and a Bachelor’s in Surgery. If one wants to specialize they go on for further training.
We are due back at the accident site so we do a quick tour through the national museum and are soon on the side of the road once again. The police encourage the 2 parties to reach a gentleman’s agreement about who is at fault- and truly it’s hard to sort out who was at fault. We purchased biscuits for the kids at the store (a little closet) and I spend more time with Consolee and the crowd. This woman is sharp- she begins asking me about Obama and everyone begins to cheer for Obama. She says he is a good man because he closed the prison and Abu Ghrabe- she is clearly more well informed than most US citizens-- she tells me she listens to the radio all day. I tell her that I want to give her a gift, can we go somewhere so I don’t have to do it in front of everyone? We go into a small room next to the store and I give her an Obama button and my umbrella. She thanks me, we return to the crowd and all eyes are on us. She declares (in French)….. The American…… has given me……. A button of Barack Obama……….. and an umbrella. Everyone nods and says Mmmmmm, as is the custom here (kind of an alternative for saying, OK) -so much for being discreet.
It sounds like the problems caused by the accident will be tough. The police man is asking Aflodis to travel back to Butare at a later date to receive the judgement of fault. This may be a tactic to try to get a bribe. Additionally, the car is borrowed from a driver and he will lose income during the time the repairs are being done. This is a much larger deal than in the US and I feel sick about it. We slowly make our way back to Kigali, we can’t make a tight right turn as the tire rubs, our nerves are frazzled by the time we reach the hotel.
