Rwanda

My colleague Aimable, who teaches in the School of Pharmacy at Loma Linda University, remembers beautiful Rwanda with fondness. Besides the many lakes and volcanic mountains, he appreciates that during his childhood, children belonged to the community. He and his brother and sisters could follow the shepherds taking the cows to graze, eat sweet ripe coffee beans before they were processed, climb on the wheat harvesting machines, eat freshly baked bread on Friday afternoons, and form their own choir imitating the adults. Later, Aimable taught high school chemistry and physics in Rwanda, his best teaching experience ever, because when he asked a question, every student raised their hand.

When I recently had lunch with Aimable, I told him that I had already read and was moved by the historical survey We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch and the novel Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron. I chose them as the most highly rated books about Rwanda that I could find at our local libraries. He recommends the book below by Clemantine Wamariya and I added an additional book that takes the conversation beyond what happened and into the difficult work of speaking in a way to make a change for the future:

· The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil. Clemantine Wamariya’s TED Talk is here: https://www.ted.com/talks/clemantine_wamariya_war_and_what_comes_after?language=en

· God Sleeps In Rwanda by Joseph Sebarenzi. An interview with Sebarenzi discussing forgiveness and reconciliation is here: https://www.inyenyerinews.org/truth-reconciliation/god-sleeps-in-rwanda-a-must-read-account-by-the-honorable-dr-joseph-sebarenzi/

Knowing how carefully Wamariya and Sebarenzi are speaking, I tried to be as careful while selecting a short story or poem from Rwanda in Words Without Borders. Some writers are processing their grief, others are moving toward the future. This short work on the beauty of Rwanda spoke to me: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2017-07/july-2017-divided-countries-from-abadaringi-jeroen-janssen-michele/

There is so much more to read, but I’ll finish the book list with Land of a Thousand Hills by Rosamond Halsey Carr, which is recommended by my friend Bob. I haven’t yet gathered the courage to watch the violence in the movie Trees of Peace on Netflix, but their drama series Black Earth Rising about the prosecution of war criminals looks interesting.

A well-known movie from Rwanda that takes my thoughts in a completely different direction is Gorillas in the Mist. Besides the movie, I also found a documentary on Dian Fossey here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFndwaCDvF4

Before I met Aimable, I had already gathered a group to cook a meal to represent Rwanda. It was one of the best meals I have had, but a bit of a production as we made everything as written in the links below and then made it again with vegan ingredients. First, Sheryll and I put the donuts together to rise, making the vegan version with Just Egg. Then we started the stew with the collard greens (this is already vegan, so we just doubled it). Kaitlin and Andrea made the marinade and put the skewers together. I couldn’t find vegan goat, so we used vegan beef that was in the frozen section at Loma Linda Market. I boiled the eggs (and scrambled some Just Egg for the vegans) to go with the Rwandan pepper sauce that I ordered online. The pepper sauce is so hot and so good, and yes, one drop is plenty! We put the sweet potato fries in the convection toaster oven and Michael put the skewers on the grill. After we ate all this, Andrea fried the donuts, vegan ones first. Besides sprinkling with powdered sugar, we also drizzled a little honey on them. Having two recipes of everything was the right amount of food for the eight of us. I would make and eat any of these again, and I highly recommend the recipes.

· This link has all but one of the recipes: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/about-food-and-culture-of-rwanda/

· This link has the recipe for the collard greens: https://myafricanrecipes.com/rwandan-agatogo-with-collard-greens

Looking for traditional dancing from Rwanda, I found:

· Intore dancers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJpHKFkwLUA

· The Miss Rwanda 2021 traditional dance performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFZlEZyezzs

I loved seeing the various beautiful places in Rwanda while listening to Jean Paul Samputu sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JkE_a7dWo

Aimable told me to make sure and show the king’s palace. It’s here on the Rwandan tourism page. Make sure and click around for other options: https://www.visitrwanda.com/interests/kings-palace/

Another list of the best places to go in Rwanda is here https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-rwanda/ and yes, I would love to go. I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Rwanda and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Christian Ruehmer https://unsplash.com/photos/e4-1w26UZGM