All That Is Bitter and Sweet (64 page)

The wards were bare cement rooms with simple aluminum cots lining the walls. The beds were all filled, mostly with mothers nursing their newborns. The minister and I stopped at each bed to talk about how undeveloped children’s immune systems are and why sleeping with mosquito nets is essential. I was able to hold a sleeping two-day-old baby, tiny and probably premature. Low birth weight is a very common consequence of both malaria during pregnancy and other maternal health issues, such as lack of adequate spacing between births. Rwandan women average 6.3 babies each. That means if I were a Rwandan, I would have nearly seven kids and I would be almost dead; life expectancy for women here is forty-four years. I contemplated this for a while, but not for long … the minister was off to the prenatal ward.

Although we were there to teach the ABCs of malaria prevention and treatment, the minister never missed an opportunity to reinforce other key health messages. At this clinic and everywhere we went, the indefatigable minister also discussed family planning and water purification. He even inspected the outdoor toilets and gave spontaneous talks to observers about sanitation and hygiene.

The sad fact is that 60 percent of rural and 40 percent of urban Rwandans do not have access to safe water. Even the 2.5 percent with piped water cannot know if that water is safe. Unsafe water makes millions sick and kills 2.2 million worldwide every year. The UN clearly states that disinfection of water at the point of use is consistently the most cost-effective way to save lives. To that end, PSI markets our miracle powder, Sur’Eau, in Rwanda to disinfect and purify polluted water. It comes in a small plastic bottle that provides safe water for a family of six for one month for a total cost of 55 cents!

After an exhausting day of running around the countryside, our convoy returned to the pasture where the helicopter was waiting. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people had gathered and were lining the field in the most orderly fashion. They were tiered, littlest sitting to tallest standing in the back, staring silently at the big machine. I dove into the crowd and plopped myself down in their midst. I was immediately surrounded by an epic mural of shining black faces, seemingly from grass to sky.

I noticed a boy in a ragged shirt holding a bundle of old plastic bags that he had compacted and tied up with string to make a precious football. I gestured to him and the ball, stood up, and we were off. In one of the most memorable moments of my life, the kids and I began to stream joyously all over acres of green grass, passing the “football,” shrieking with glee. I was in a state of grace, and I knew it. It felt as though it lasted forever, the running, lungs heaving, laughing, and seeing their unmitigated joy, the color of their skin so black with my own little white body nestled in the herd. I kicked off my flip-flops and ran barefoot hither and yon. I happened to have on my favorite secondhand dress, an old calico print, and I connected easily with the mountain girl in me. I am sure that was what they connected with, too, and why we fit so well together in spite of all our “differences.” When the illusion of differences is rendered obsolete, this, I believe, is heaven.

At last the helicopter people started to shepherd us off the grass, and the minister, who was ready to go, gave me the stink eye. But it was good while it lasted.

On the last Saturday of each month, every citizen of Rwanda sets aside three hours to participate in community building. This old cultural practice of helping one another, called
umaganda
, is absolutely glorious—I would love to start the practice in my hometown in Tennessee. Today’s
umaganda
project, led by our tireless minister of health, was building homes for genocide widows. (And of course, as there was a throng, he never stopped reinforcing the government’s health messages: “A small family is a healthy family! Use soap! Treat your drinking water!”) As suggested, we all wore get-dirty clothes, and some of us engaged in tough physical labor. It was an enormous turnout. Laboring together has been influential in healing from the genocide; Rwandans now want to be known as just that, Rwandans, and not Tutsis or Hutus. They help one another without reservation, no questions asked. They manage to live side by side; one may literally live beside a neighbor who tortured or murdered members of one’s family and village. It’s remarkable.

I was reminded of an image from my visit to the genocide museum on my first morning in Rwanda. Outside the building there are graves where thousands upon thousands of genocide victims were buried en masse. The slabs that cover the graves are fifteen feet wide, twenty feet long, several feet above the ground (the graves are so deep, so deep), and go on for as far as the eye can see. In the poured concrete that is the final resting place for bones hacked by machetes, I saw a white flower, tinier than my pinky fingernail, growing out from within the flat cement of a massive tomb. Rwanda is like this flower, a thing that is blooming out of the detritus and wreckage of the absolute worst humanity has to offer.

The wheel of time turns: Life, death. Life, death.

Life.

he border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo resembles nothing more sinister than a gate connecting the pastures on our farm in Tennessee, but what a shocking difference a few feet makes. On the Rwanda side of the crossing, in the city of Gisenyi, the roads are tidy, maintained, lined with tiny, colorful flower gardens. The breezes lapping the shores of Lake Kivu are serene, and the people are friendly and helpful. Passing into the DRC, however … Oh, my God. We were leaving a country with virtually no official corruption to go to a place where bribery and coercion are a way of life. It took me, Marshall, Papa Jack, and our driver an hour to navigate through the immigration and customs routine—which involved Papa Jack reaching into his pocket for a steady presentation of $20 bills. We joked that he should be used to it as the parent of a teenage daughter. As soon as we cleared the border post, all color seemed to drain from the earth, and we entered an urban wasteland of some eight hundred thousand people, most of them displaced by war.

As soon as we cleared the gate, we were stopped by a group of uniformed “police” carrying heavy weaponry. No traffic violations, just a simple and typical moment of attempted extortion. James, our driver, spoke Lingala and told them we didn’t have anything to give them while I nervously sat on my laptop, suddenly imaging it, and all of my writing, being taken from me.

The lead extortionist shrugged and waved us through. DRC is essentially a failed state, and government, army, and civil service jobs pay nothing. Some are specifically directed, when they begin their jobs, to “live off the land,” meaning the people they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Crimes, from the petty to those that qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity, are committed with impunity.

A few hundred feet later, the road opened up and I saw the notorious city of Goma for the first time: a vast, relentless, dusty slum. There was rubble, garbage, filth, people covered in muck and grime, buildings that were nothing more than lean- to shanties. The earth was gray, drab, choking with dust and ash, courtesy of a volcano just north of town that had been erupting on and off for several years.

Our first stop was a clinic run by one of PSI’s partners that specializes in family planning, maternal and child health, and the treatment and prevention of malaria. The clinic’s doctor was waiting in his office in a white stuccoed cinder-block building; his hours were painted in a sweet shade of blue paint, and they did not include Sunday mornings, which was when we arrived. I thanked him for making the special effort and asked him about his job.