{"id":122,"date":"2011-03-15T12:38:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/2011\/03\/15\/my-dog-is-my-cow\/"},"modified":"2011-03-15T12:38:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T16:38:00","slug":"my-dog-is-my-cow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/2011\/03\/15\/my-dog-is-my-cow\/","title":{"rendered":"My dog is my cow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today was our second day in the Kibiza refugee camp along the Congolese border with Rwanda.  We didn\u2019t have our Red Cross escort today, so we went in with the intent of meeting some representatives from the community who never showed up.  After we gave up waiting, we wandered over to have another look at the market.  This time we ventured farther toward the back and found a little motorized (via generator) corn grinder and two men working as tailors.  One of them had a hand-turn operated sewing machine and was sewing a mosquito net- the materials had been provided to him by UNHCR.  This little girl attached herself to one of my travel-mates and ended up following us pretty far down the road past the market.  This is just an example of mothering within a fenced in area- children wander around as they please from the moment they are old enough to walk.  No one seems to worry much about their safety.  It\u2019s fascinating that the three year olds will help each other out when no adults are around.  If one falls and cries, the others come over to help her stand back up.  Before too long, we had a gaggle of children following us through the streets pushing to be the one who gets to hold one of our hands.<\/div>\n
We attracted quite a bit of attention with all these children following us, and a young man walked up to Savannah and introduced himself.  Gaston is 25 and has lived in the refugee camp since he was 15 or so.  His father was killed in the violence in the Congo, and he fled here with his mother and little sister.  He\u2019s graduated from as much school as is offered in the camp (9th<\/sup> grade) and says he literally does nothing all day long because there are no jobs and nothing to do.  They just wait until the next month\u2019s rations are distributed.  He was more than happy to use his excellent English to show us around the rest of the day.  <\/div>\n
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With his help, we made our way to the perimeter of the camp \u2013 the area most interesting but that the camp elders don\u2019t generally show off to foreigners.  The people are a little less outgoing there.  One woman sat idly on a stump with her baby strapped to her back.  If there\u2019s one word I could use to describe the situation of adults there- it\u2019s \u201cIdle.\u201d  Warehousing at its worst.  We wandered down this mountain path in order to see the camp soccer field.  On the way down, we stepped over sewage draining down the mountain side, and moved out of the way for cows and goats to pass.  An old man stopped us and spoke in Kinyarwanda.  He was apparently saying that he was sick and needed medicine.  Our guide laughed it off and told us just to \u201cpray for him.\u201d  There were several churches- religion is very big here.  They have churches for Catholics and Protestants.  The pastors are all funded by an NGO here so they are generally brought in from elsewhere.  <\/div>\n
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We saw some tiny children in school uniforms and asked our guide about them.  He said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s the nursery school.  Do you want to see it?\u201d  Without hesitation, Savannah and I vered right into the school yard.  You could heard dozens of children singing in unison.  We peeked into the windows and the teacher came right out.  She invited us to sit in on her class\u2014it\u2019s been the best part of the trip so far!  The kids all speak Kinyarawanda, and although the government now mandates the use of English in schools, they were learning French.  It\u2019s hard to describe the atmosphere in the classroom, but it was energized and full of hope.  If I had had a preschool teacher as awesome as this woman (also a Congolese refugee), I might have made it through preschool!  The little girl sitting next to me inched closer and closer as class went on.  She wanted to sit close to me- but she didn\u2019t want me to notice.  That teacher, who is only 23, did so much with so little.  It was really inspiring.<\/div>\n
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After the school, we had a meeting with a woman who represented the global NGO that is supporting education in the refugee camps (and others around the world).  I was fascinated by the fact that she said we would never be refused by someone in the camp because of remnants of ideals of colonialism.  Coming from white people, they\u2019re conditioned to just do as we ask- so she said.  But, at the same time she talked about the refugee camp schools and the refugee camp students with an air of ownership.  \u201cMy kids\u2026My school\u2026\u201d essentially \u201cmy\u201d or \u201cour\u201d (referring to the NGO she works for) preceded every word she used to talk about the schools.  It was a bit ironic given her previous accusations of our abuses of colonialist privileges.  In the end, even after her short ten months here, she was a bit jaded and shared that frustration with us.  Most interesting was that any word in reference to the government was uttered in a whisper.  She refused to use any political terms out loud, despite our isolation in a dark little dirt floor room with thunder and pouring rain drowning out the sounds from outside.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We have one more day left.  Gaston has agreed to serve as our guide again tomorrow morning.  He has promised to let us see his home \u2013 we have yet to actually see the inside of one of these huts.  He has also offered to take us around and allow us to talk to some of the population.  It\u2019s so fortunate that we ran into him.  It\u2019s funny, I remember him scoping us out on the first day.  I think he was getting up the nerve to talk to us.  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was our second day in the Kibiza refugee camp along the Congolese border with Rwanda.  We didn\u2019t have our Red Cross escort today, so we went in with the intent of meeting some representatives from the community who never Continue reading My dog is my cow<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/efrydenl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}