Small Town Rwanda
By Megan Haggerty Foster
Living in Rwanda very much reminds me of growing up outside a small town of 636 people in
northeastern Oregon. I was a mountain kid, ten miles out of town, and one of the few exceptions for weather related tardiness. Now, even though I live ten feet from my health center, if it is pouring down rain, it seems I am expected to be late. Having traveled half way around the world to a country a fifth the size of my home state with three times as many people, I find myself living again on the edge of a wilderness, or maybe in this case a jungle.
My site outside Nyungwe National Park hosts kilometers of tea covered hills mingling into the dense monkeyridden forest. They even grow wheat here, if the agricultural similarities were not enough already. Granted, our forest back home is not littered with monkeys.
Walking down the hill from the health center and my house, I can almost name all of the families along the way and people stop me just to chat for what seems like hours at a time. One of these days, maybe a rusty old pickup with a farmer in a cowboy hat, chewing on a long strand of grass will pass by me as I’m walking the dirt road to the tea factory, and I won’t even know the difference between here and home. Although, it is much more likely that the hat will be leopard print and fuzzy here in Rwanda than those back in Oregon. I am even beginning to see an interconnectedness and invisible mesh of community relations emerge within each passing experience.
Beginning a project to develop a directory of organizations in my community, cooperatives, clubs and outside groups, I find that all I need to do is ask one person any question and I’m sent on a very detailed and successful mission to attain information from several other places in my community. At this point I could probably ramble down any back way and run into someone I know, whether here or in Oregon, or at least someone who knows me and calls out my name in greeting. I set out to visit the honey cooperative and the women’s basket weaving cooperative in Nyungwe, only to be sidetracked by a new acquaintance (and husband of my coworker) who takes me to the site of a traditional Rwandan village/tourist lodging to be completed in December. Next, I swing by the Nyungwe park office and meet who turns out to be my nextdoor neighbor and discover that my tailor’s sister works there. I adventure onto unmarked dirt roads leading back amongst the hills and I wave at every passing car, greet every passing person. After, an RDB pickup pulls off on the side of the road with some friends who offer to take me along on their driving tour of the park. I walk to the environmental university to teach English and run into two United States Forest Service employees from Hungry Horse, Montana, a town just outside of Glacier National Park (one of my all time favorite places in the world). I make it home for lunch just before the daily rains come, and a morning is spent in my small town Rwanda.
Dirt roads twist and intertwine with footpaths endlessly amongst the hills of my site. Often I’m not sure which it is I’m traveling down. Some places are so narrow, I’m completely sure a car could not traverse it and the next thing I know, I’m stepping into the bushes to make way for a tea company truck. I often pause to take pictures of rutted roads disappearing into uncertainties around the bend or over the hillsides. I could probably fill a whole album with similar photos of favorite back roads taken in Oregon. Comparing all of these pictures I’ve ever taken, it would probably be hard for me to distinguish the location of each of these nameless roads that hold and have held some importance to me over the years.
I attend events, church, and awkward visits to my coworkers, neighbors and community members, which are often spent in fumbled discussion and usually a great amount of laughter. I receive a consensus of community concern for my future and for my current state of being, often in the form of queries surrounding my marital status. I find myself dressing the part in igitenge as I venture out amongst the occasional “muzungu” cries of children intermixed with words tumbling out of me in what I can only assume is actually a semblance of Kinyarwanda. I meet someone new each day whose name I unfortunately forget as I am conversing with them. I unexpectedly see these people wandering the streets of Kigali, at weddings, in restaurants, at the MTN store in Butare. I see people who know me, who call out my Rwandan name and wait for my attempted acknowledgement as I search desperately to find their place in my memory. I’m very lucky that Rwanda reminds me of home, and that my home in the United States will always remind me of Rwanda.
northeastern Oregon. I was a mountain kid, ten miles out of town, and one of the few exceptions for weather related tardiness. Now, even though I live ten feet from my health center, if it is pouring down rain, it seems I am expected to be late. Having traveled half way around the world to a country a fifth the size of my home state with three times as many people, I find myself living again on the edge of a wilderness, or maybe in this case a jungle.
My site outside Nyungwe National Park hosts kilometers of tea covered hills mingling into the dense monkeyridden forest. They even grow wheat here, if the agricultural similarities were not enough already. Granted, our forest back home is not littered with monkeys.
Walking down the hill from the health center and my house, I can almost name all of the families along the way and people stop me just to chat for what seems like hours at a time. One of these days, maybe a rusty old pickup with a farmer in a cowboy hat, chewing on a long strand of grass will pass by me as I’m walking the dirt road to the tea factory, and I won’t even know the difference between here and home. Although, it is much more likely that the hat will be leopard print and fuzzy here in Rwanda than those back in Oregon. I am even beginning to see an interconnectedness and invisible mesh of community relations emerge within each passing experience.
Beginning a project to develop a directory of organizations in my community, cooperatives, clubs and outside groups, I find that all I need to do is ask one person any question and I’m sent on a very detailed and successful mission to attain information from several other places in my community. At this point I could probably ramble down any back way and run into someone I know, whether here or in Oregon, or at least someone who knows me and calls out my name in greeting. I set out to visit the honey cooperative and the women’s basket weaving cooperative in Nyungwe, only to be sidetracked by a new acquaintance (and husband of my coworker) who takes me to the site of a traditional Rwandan village/tourist lodging to be completed in December. Next, I swing by the Nyungwe park office and meet who turns out to be my nextdoor neighbor and discover that my tailor’s sister works there. I adventure onto unmarked dirt roads leading back amongst the hills and I wave at every passing car, greet every passing person. After, an RDB pickup pulls off on the side of the road with some friends who offer to take me along on their driving tour of the park. I walk to the environmental university to teach English and run into two United States Forest Service employees from Hungry Horse, Montana, a town just outside of Glacier National Park (one of my all time favorite places in the world). I make it home for lunch just before the daily rains come, and a morning is spent in my small town Rwanda.
Dirt roads twist and intertwine with footpaths endlessly amongst the hills of my site. Often I’m not sure which it is I’m traveling down. Some places are so narrow, I’m completely sure a car could not traverse it and the next thing I know, I’m stepping into the bushes to make way for a tea company truck. I often pause to take pictures of rutted roads disappearing into uncertainties around the bend or over the hillsides. I could probably fill a whole album with similar photos of favorite back roads taken in Oregon. Comparing all of these pictures I’ve ever taken, it would probably be hard for me to distinguish the location of each of these nameless roads that hold and have held some importance to me over the years.
I attend events, church, and awkward visits to my coworkers, neighbors and community members, which are often spent in fumbled discussion and usually a great amount of laughter. I receive a consensus of community concern for my future and for my current state of being, often in the form of queries surrounding my marital status. I find myself dressing the part in igitenge as I venture out amongst the occasional “muzungu” cries of children intermixed with words tumbling out of me in what I can only assume is actually a semblance of Kinyarwanda. I meet someone new each day whose name I unfortunately forget as I am conversing with them. I unexpectedly see these people wandering the streets of Kigali, at weddings, in restaurants, at the MTN store in Butare. I see people who know me, who call out my Rwandan name and wait for my attempted acknowledgement as I search desperately to find their place in my memory. I’m very lucky that Rwanda reminds me of home, and that my home in the United States will always remind me of Rwanda.