My First Dead Body

I saw my first dead body last week. He was a victim of a plane crash in the eastern Congolese town of Goma. I don't know if he was on the plane or in the busy market it crashed into. I don't know his name or how old he was. The hospital worker unzipped the body bag and I just started taking pictures. It wasn't until he had unzipped a few more bags that the smell hit me and I realized what I was shooting. I stopped for a few seconds to process everything and then kept shooting.

Later I was at an internet cafe sending my photos to the Associated Press and to the European Pressphoto Agency. A woman stood out in the in the middle of the road, hands raised to the rain, wailing at the heavens. I felt mildly nauseous as I sent my photos.



Grief outside the morgue at Heal Africa Hospital in Goma.

Tears for the victims.

There are four hospitals in Goma, all over-crowded due to the armed conflict in eastern Congo. Hospitals keep tight security to avoid being swamped by patients.

Remembering Genocide

At the Red Cross trauma center during the commemoration ceremony in Nyamata, near Kigali.

The skulls and bones didn't really get to me. Neither did the clothes of the 600 people who were killed here at the church in Nyamata, just outside of Kigali, 14 years ago. It was the screaming that finally got to me.

All through the commemoration ceremony Red Cross volunteers were busy carrying people, mostly women, to a trauma treatment center they had set up not 200 meters from where President Kagame was giving his speech. First you'd hear screams coming from somewhere off to the right, then to the left, then from behind in a chain reaction of grief and mourning. In the trauma center dozens of women lay around the ground, in tents and on stretchers. The worst cases were reliving the horrors of the past, fighting the volunteers, believing they were the militias coming to kill rather than friends trying to help.

The genocide that made tiny Rwanda a household name started on April 7, 1994 with the assassination of President Habyarimana. Over the next 100 days between 800,000 and a million people were killed. Commemoration ceremonies are held every year. Stores close, transportation stops. There is no pop music on the radios. The mourning officially lasts for one week. But in the villages the screaming continues. April is the worst, when most of the killing was done. Things don't really return to "normal" until after July 4, the anniversary of the day the Rwandan Patriotic Front marched into Kigali and stopped the killing.


Volunteer helping a woman to the trauma center.


Remains of some of the 600 people killed in the church at Nyamata.


Clothes of those killed in the church stacked on the pews. Bullet holes mark the baptismal font and the wall behind.


Mourners wear purple to remember those killed in the genocide. This man also shows his patriotism with a Rwanda flag lapel pin.


Seraphine Mukamusoni was in the church in Nyamata when 600 people were killed there during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. She survived by hiding under the slain. "I was covered in blood so they thought I was dead, too," she said. Here she stands at the gate of the church where those taking refuge locked themselves in.

Wapi

Wapi is a very useful Swahili word that can be used in almost any situation requiring expression on negativity. My students use it when they’re having computer troubles. People use it when cab drivers try to rip them off.
The other day our domestic, Athanase, was up a tree picking edible leaves when the branch he was standing on broke. I heard the crack and looked up from my computer to see a small red blur surrounded by a large green blur crash to the ground. Athanase, in the red New York Yankees basketball jersey he wears while working, climbed up out of the fallen branches, shook himself off, looked down and exclaimed “Wapi!”

The Easter Bunny Brought Christmas Cookies

The week before Easter I received a phone call from the orphanage where I did my first photography teaching in Rwanda informing me they had a package for me. I didn't have time to pick it up until Easter Sunday, when this heavily Christian country more or less shuts down. On the package was a postmark for December 13. Inside were my long-awaited Christmas cookies, still edible, from my family back in Minnesota.

I took my cookies to the coffee shop (still only one) and put some Christmas music on itunes. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until I told a friend what had happened and she informed me that her office had just received a package postmarked 2004.

Domestic Living in Rwanda

There's a chicken in the garage, banana, papaya and avocado trees in the yard, and an herb and vegetable garden on the way.

Our "domestic" brought the chicken home a couple of weeks ago on his own initiative and feeds us omelets made from the eggs. Like most people in Rwanda we have a domestic. Even Rwandan friends who live in very small mud-brick houses have someone around to do basic chores. Ours cooks, cleans, does laundry, gardens, tends the trees and looks after the chicken. The other day our landlady brought over some seeds so he can plant carrots, eggplant, and a lot of other stuff we don't recognize. There are a number of other plants in the garden that he takes care of that we have yet to identify but that we think might be edible. Part of the problem is that our domestic doesn't speak a word of English or French and we don't speak any Kinyarwanda.

All this service and excitement costs us 30,000 francs a month, about $60. The average yearly income here is just over $200 per year, so he's doing quite well. He keeps coming in with new clothes, including a shiny red basketball uniform with a New York Yankees logo on it that he wears every day while doing his chores.

Uganda

The ride from the Rwandan border town of Gatuna to Kabale, Uganda only takes 15 minutes. But with nine people crammed into a Toyota Corolla it feels like a lot longer. "Now you see how it is in Uganda," said the passenger next to me.

Rwanda runs by the book. Possibly more so than any other nation in Africa. No more than four people in a cab. Period. We've tried to do five and there was clearly no way it was going to happen. In Uganda the cab won't move until it's full. Full meaning you can't get any more people in the cab. We had four in the back and FIVE in the front. Two in the passenger seat, two in the driver seat, and one perched on top of the emergency brake. Did I mention this was a stick-shift? No idea how the driver managed to change gears with one guy almost in his lap and another straddling the stick.

I was in Uganda primarily because my 90-day visa for Rwanda had expired. The easiest way to renew it is to wander across the border and then wander back. Uganda seemed like as good a place as any. The passenger in the cab next to me explained that the country has more than 30 tribes who all speak different languages. They communicate primarily in English, the language used in schools and for all government functions. So instead of the "bonjour, Muzungu " I get in Rwanda I got "how are you, Muzungu."

Vacation Games

Soccer, basketball, volleyball, dance and music competitions are all part of the Vacation Games, hosted by Maison des Jeunes, a youth center in Kigali, Rwanda. The games go on for two weeks during the school holidays in late July and early August. By the time finals roll around they're drawing thousands of spectators. It's one of the only places for kids to go during the holidays, and the impressive attendence shows a clear need for these kinds of programs here.


Soccer tournement during Maison des Jeunes Vacation games:

Even with the goal keeper laid out in a pile of sugar cane husks the green team somehow managed to prevent a goal.







Games were frequently interrupted when trucks brought in boulders to reinforce collapsing riverbanks next to the field.

Never did figure out why the guy in yellow is wearing black nylon stockings...


No Rwandan event is complete without some traditional dancing. For the Vacation Games groups of competed in singing and dancing.










As much as Rwandans love their traditional dance, "modern dance" was clearly the most popular event of the Games.
Stayin' Alive?

Nice hats. Nice pinstripes. Nice surgical gloves?

Oh yeah. Nice shoes.

Nice moves.

Nice shades.

These guys got kicked off the stage for making a mockery of, well, pretty much everything. Nice.

The kids on stage were lucky this woman wasn't competing.

The Vacation Games draw huge crowds. The director boasted that even the mayor of Kigali couldn't get such a turnout.

Top row, balcony.

The hills around Maison des Jeunes form a natural amphitheater.

Kimisagara Illustrated

I've been spending a lot of my time in a part of Kigali called Kimisagara, which lies immediately below the city center (Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills. The city center is at the top of one of them. Kimisagara is at the bottom.) The district is home to a youth center called Maison des Jeunes, the only one of it's kind in Rwanda. They sponsor youth soccer, basketball, and volleyball leagues; and host English lessons, a Kung Fu club and a journalism club. I'm also teaching photography there and working with the journalism club on radio production and reporting. Here's some stuff I shot while working with my photo students:


Rwandese drumline. These guys are getting ready to compete in a traditional dance competition during Maison des Jeunes' Vacation Games, a kind of youth Olympics held during Rwanda's school vacation.


This guy seemed to be acting as the captain of the drumline.


Not surprisingly, the youth center is always full of impossibly cute kids.

Mud brick houses on the hill facing the center make a great afternoon backdrop for photos.


Shootin' hoops. Basketball is second only to soccer in popularity here.


More hoops.


I disrupted things badly when I passed this primary school with my photo students. I created a catastrophic domino effect as I walked past the line of classrooms. Kids dropped everything to run to doors and windows to look at the Muzungu while teachers pounded on desks in a vain attempt to retain order. Pointing a camera at the kids didn't help.


I know this looks fashionable, but it's actually a form of street vending. Women walk around with impossible loads of fruit on their heads for sale to anyone who passes by.