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<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\nIn the spirit of keeping my posts to manageable lengths, I\u2019ve broken this one day into three parts (who am I kidding, it\u2019s still going to be long), so bear with me as I try to group the day\u2019s events into sections\u2026<\/div>\n
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If yesterday was \u201cdeep fieldwork immersion,\u201d today was \u201ceven deeper fieldwork immersion.\u201d Our friends greeted us at the usual meeting place in the camp around 9 am and informed us that there was a whole section of the camp we\u2019d never been to. That\u2019s not surprising considering it covers an entire mountainside. But, to our surprise, we were told that the best way to get there is by car. By car?? I can\u2019t even picture where we\u2019re going. We all jump in the SUV and turn down a road I had honestly never even noticed before, let alone observed that a car would fit down it. Around the mountain we wound, traversing the very border of the camp. I think sometimes the image of a \u201crefugee camp\u201d carries with it some sort of containment, but the \u201cborder\u201d here is simply the place where cramped housing stops and farmland begins. There are no fences, walls, or signs. They just know that they can go no farther. So we drove about 15 minutes down a rocky, steep red road that led us to an entirely different section of the camp. There, in the only spot to put the car, we got out and our friends asked around about meeting more village leaders. Women gathered at the huge cement washing station and churned clothing in suds while mist hung all around us on the mountaintops. In this surreal environment, deep in the recesses of this camp, we watched as neighboring Rwandans brought their cows in to drink at the refugees\u2019 water wells\u2014a testament to their ability to live in harmony\u2014and a baby screamed as its mother tried to wash it with the laundry. <\/div>\n
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Apparently this wasn\u2019t deep enough into the camp, so we were motioned to follow our friend down a thin winding path between the houses that led down to another, more remote village. The path was steep and twisted past the doorways of people going about their business. If you missed a step, you might fall right inside someone\u2019s home. At about halfway, we saw what looked like a wooden closet on stilts standing in a small space between the houses. With the words \u201cWord Vision\u201d (they forgot the \u2018L\u2019) painted across the front, a man unlocked the padlocks to reveal 20 bunny faces peering out from the dark. Raising rabbits for meat and trade is one of the widow projects started by a nonprofit inside the camp recently. They beamed and showed me how you pick rabbits up by their ears. The privileged Westerner inside me cringed at the ear pulling and lack of airflow\u2014but they were so proud, so we all took pictures and commented on how many they had raised. Moving along, we continued down at an angle that made me comment, \u201cCan you imagine what it\u2019s like around here when it rains??\u201d Some of the sewage pipe was broken along the way, so the trench we straddled as we made our way down looked like it would fill with some pretty\u2026uhh\u2026gross stuff if train flowed down it. <\/div>\n
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At the bottom, just at the edge of the mountain and the very, very furthest tippy tip of the camp, we sat down on wooden benches that again appeared out of every home and prepared to speak with two men leaders who had agreed to speak with us. One Direction\u2019s \u201cThe Story of My Life\u201d wafted over radio waves from some nearby house. It reminded me that the first time we came to the camp, we were surprised to hear Beyonce booming over the radio along the main street. Then more people showed up, and others forfeited their seats to them. Then an audience gathered to the side, giving the leaders their space, but close enough to hear the questions. Our guide is incredibly savvy at both translating and navigating social spaces, so while we prepared, he entertained them with stories in Kinyarwanda. I don\u2019t know what he said, but they laughed and felt at ease as we moved into our interviews. About 30 minutes in, giant raindrops began to fall from the sky. We all pretended that we didn\u2019t notice, but the skies opened up and it began to pour. Having accumulated 5 neighborhood leaders, one of whom is one of just two women leaders at the level just below the camp president, we crammed into a room to keep everyone (minus the audience) together without losing the opportunity to speak with any of them. We had an amazing time interviewing them, particularly the high-ranking woman, and heard incredible stories of survival. One of the great revelations about language that came up was in our instinct to ask them at the end of the interviews if they had any questions for us. In Kinyarwanda, apparently this is like asking if there\u2019s anything you can do for someone, so they would often ask how we planned to change their lives or what kind of guarantee we could give that we would be good ambassadors. These are tough questions and speak to larger issues about power and the role of academics in the lives of everyday people, particularly those we are researching. (More about that in my dissertation\u2014the rest of this post is about my brush with death\u2026)<\/div>\n
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After several hours of talking\u2014and luckily allowing the rain to subside\u2014we ventured out to make our way back to the car. First, not without a stop at the potty. The leaders all discussed together which we should be allowed to use, and finally they decided we would use one that was farther away\u2014the newer, all cement one. My professor and I have been discussing writing some articles along the theme of \u201cthe places we pee\u201d and this will definitely make the list. It was relatively clean, but a spider in my stall about the size of my fist had created a tunnel at the end of a hammock of web that could\u2019ve caught a small mouse. I wasn\u2019t too thrilled about that. We left all of our life possessions (passport, money, phone) with the woman leader while we ventured in, which worked out fine. And afterward she ordered another to gather water from the cistern to \u201cflush\u201d after us. Definitely not the worst toileting facility I\u2019ve seen in the camp. <\/div>\n
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