Naming Ceremony, Development, and Daily Living

Farewell dinner at the house of an inspirational woman: Gasana Mutesi. Gasana is the ripe young age of 27 and has received her masters; started her own NGO helping to heal the minds, bodies and sprits of orphaned youth in Rwanda; given birth to two children; adopted five more children; works full time for the Rwanda Bauer of Statistics; and is married to a gold medalist runner! Gasana has connections with everybody who is anybody in Rwanda. Present at the dinner the famous Rasta Rwandan singer, Nady Dread. His dreadlocks are almost as old as me; his lovely locks are 20yrs young. Nady insisted we all receive Rwanda names. I was given the name of Mutoni which means something like: dearly loved and seated close to heaven. It also happened to be the name of a cow owned by Nady on his organic, environmentally sustainable farm in Uganda.

I have two days left in Rwanda and I am starting to realize that this enduring country has crawled beneath my skin. It is a tumultuous relationship though. Daily I experience things that make my stomach turn and my heart ache at the same time. The natural beauty of the country, as one example, brings peace to my soul. Yet, then I look more deeply at the terraced landscape covered with agricultural crops, the thick smog hanging in the air, the litter scattered about . . . the utter devastation of development. This country is panting to keep up with a 3.2% population increase in what is already the most densely populated and one of the poorest countries in African. They are racing to develop, but what does development mean: advancement, environmental destruction, a standardization of culture? There is a shopping center in the center of Kigali which we have termed “Muzungo Land” of white man’s land. It is swarming with Westerners who are here to do research, to vacation, to develop Rwanda! Cross cultural exchange is vital to our global society, but I am becoming a skeptic on development. Rwanda is receiving a great deal of international aid and they are talking about sustainability and development by the year 2020. They are racing and panting. It is an amazing duality of looking at a country which is trying to develop in two realms: Rwanda is developing its post genocide capacity while also trying to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. Conflict and poverty are in such an intimate dance; to address the roots of genocide is to address global poverty, and the question of how to address poverty and development still remains

Today, a typical day, consisted of waking up to the soft singing of the nuns in morning prayer, a delicious pot of African Tea at a nearby restaurant, meeting with the director of Fight Illiteracy Youth Organization, interviewing the director of an orphanage, helping to write a family planning proposal with Health Development Initiative, crowding onto a mini bus to go downtown, weaving through a local market and holding on tightly to my money belt, negotiating a bus ticket to Nairobi with a women who would nod every once in a while to confirm that she was actually alive, blowing my nose to find black snot, being serenaded by honking horns as I dash across the relentless traffic, and all the while walking everywhere and hearing calls of “Good Morning Muzungo! (white person)”