A new life built on solid remainings

It is rather strange to start writing in my blog about, probably trivial, events after what happened in Paris not even forty eight hours ago. But time is what  it is and after weeks writing reports for Rwandan authorities about professionalization of Rwandan dance and vocational dance education in Rwanda I thought it was time to update all of you a bit about what happens in my ‘new life’ in Africa.

So this could be the end of my today’s message because as I told you I was sitting mainly in front of my laptop writing reports with a resulting low back pain. For sure I’m proud of my writings and I will publish them soon after they have been handed to the ministers who ordered them. Now it is on their plate and it is up to them to take the required steps and decisions with courage and determination but in Rwanda there is no shortage of that!

In between I was working hard with two dancers to prepare the opening act of a Contemporary Dance Festival coming Thursday in Kigali. The two ladies who started a professional dance education path in Senegal at l’École des Sables, will present a combination of two solos in an unexpected arrangement and I’m looking forward how it will be received.

Last week I started to teach dance to orphan boys, primary school level. After more than thirty years it was a great experience. I completely forgot how it was but after a few minutes I was in the mood again and time is flying with those kids.

For sure I also had time for leisure in between. Our monthly ‘sports day’ with the friends, which means walking from Kigali to 33 km² Lake Muhazi, was a sobering experience. It’s clear I don’t have the condition of 2010 anymore and when arriving at the bottom of that last hill I climbed… into the sag wagon. That has probably saved my life for that day. In a few weeks we will repeat the experience and now I’m climbing the road to UTC here at city hill at least two times a day to check if the condition is improving or deteriorating. By the way … after the sports part we have spent a nice relaxing, read: eating, drinking and dancing time on the borders of the lake with the athletes and the not so sportive mates coming later and inventing the most exotic excuses for not walking. So I can be proud of myself at the end… because I’m not only the errant muzungu but also the oldest of the pack. Now and then I go out for a diner with friends and I have to confess that an evening in front of the tv screen is sometimes a welcome alternative after a hard working day. 

Last week I met Maarten Blolkland, former distinguished staff member of UNESCO-IHE and then in Kigali for a trainer course. I took him to my favorite bar, were he also met the oldest of the 2005-2007 Rwandan batch, Egide Nkuranga. I was particularly happy with some unexpected news from Delft. My institute is alive again and that made my day! Something funny… my Rwandan IHE friends who are visiting me are telling me that they find back here the atmosphere of my Delft apartment. Well it’s true, I took pictures and frames from Delft with me, the famous calendars of Liesbeth resuming so many memories and the pièce-de- résistance… Pato’s painting! And every evening before sleeping my eyes fall on the etching of the Old Church I got from Angelica and Benno, so I can’t forget about Delft.

I feel good, relaxed and freed from an obligatory organized existence. Every morning I know my program but I realize it in a different context. Around me I see human beings working towards a better future, real people, never complaining even if they work sometimes from seven am till six pm and sometimes later. I tell you, it is contagious and it’s a virus you gradually breathe.

Today I got the official request letter of the WDA to the Immigration for a more permanent visa and work permit. I think that when you have read my report to the Ministries of Education and Sports and Culture you will understand why they made this step.

There still has to happen a lot before we will see a green light for my proposals but we have sufficient material now to start an in depth discussion with the whole field of dance and education specialists.

I've already rolled up my imaginary (seen the daily temperature) sleeves for the battle to come.  

Read all about in my coming postings.

For those to whom I didn’t make it clear enough… I miss you all, your laughs, your smiles, your voices, but remembering them is like a glowing fire in a long cold night.

Yours always.

PS. I know how terrible Paris is/was… and Beirut a few days before and... And…And… but please follow the news about Burundi and if you see and hear, together with us here in Rwanda, signs that a new genocide is really in the picture require your governments to dare to pronounce the G-word this time and tell them not to make the same mistake as in 1994!

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‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

In a few days, exactly on October 15 I will be disconnected from my UNESCO-IHE email and all facilities who were accessible to me since I started to work at the Institute thirteen years and eight months ago. For twelve years I didn’t miss one ‘New participants arrival’ except the 2007 one because of my hernia surgery and this year’s one on the edge of my career switch. It is a strange feeling that on the day the new academic year starts I will not be part of the club anymore but as a friend of mine always says… ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

I send a big salute to all those I have worked with during all those years, to the ones I was close with and also to the few lost souls with whom I had a complicated relationship.

For sure my thoughts are going to the most prominent in rank, The Participants {8,9 on my magnitude scale [Richter’s largest recorded] Logarithm (Base 10) of maximum amplitude measured in microns}, as they were in all the aspects of my job and activities, always the center of my attention. I have gained a lot of friends from those few thousands coming from the four corners of our planet and this is something which I am very grateful for. 

If today I’m in Rwanda trying to realize  an old dream then you can probably imagine this is also related to the Institute and as said before: ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

In October 2005, exactly ten years ago, a first group of Rwandan participants arrived in Delft and for one reason or another we quickly became close. The French language? Maybe, but probably more the immediate sense I felt, that eleven years after the Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda we were welcoming some people who have survived a massacre, people who came to the Netherlands to help to rebuild a nation. While I reached my forty years of age in 1994 in the mid of the killings I remembered the refusal of all spokes-men and women of the different US departments to pronounce the G Word. 

After this first bunch went back to Rwanda I immediately visited the country in July 2007 to meet them over there. This was the beginning of a long ‘love’ story that continues nowadays.

* I will also not forget the warm welcoming in Ethiopia that same year 2007 and in Colombia in 2013. *

When I met (now H.E.) J. P. Karabaranga in 2010 at one of my yearly visits to Rwanda, during a memorable ‘sports day’ with a group of friends I couldn’t imagine then, that a few years later that same gentleman would become the Rwandan Ambassador to the Netherlands and also not that he would incite and encourage me to write a paper about vocational dance education and professionalization of dance in Rwanda… ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

That was only five years ago… Also then, at the start of my first dance workshops with the Abatarutwa Troupe in Kanombe. This I did because the regretted Prof. Kanimba Misago Célestin, at that time the Director of the Institute of National Museums of Rwanda and father of one of our 2005 Rwandan participants, asked me. ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

And now, on this rainy Sunday in October, the first day of what is maybe the belated start of the short rainy season, I’m writing this few sentences in my apartment in Kigali, to finalize an era and embark on a new one. On the same day that new participants arrive in Delft,  I’m saying goodbye to all of you with a smile and some tears. 

The best of luck UNESCO-IHE!

P.S. 

Last week H.E P. Kagame, the President of Rwanda was in The Netherlands for a very successful Rwanda Day and for tightening the bounds between Rwanda and the Netherlands. Some people have suggested that I should have gone to NL so they could introduce me to The Man. I replied that if they want they can do it here as I’m living less than three hundred meters from my distinguished neighbor. 

I told you, ‘Coincidences do not exist’ …

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Lazy Sunday Afternoon

I guess that this is what today should look like. It’s all in a lazy Sunday afternoon. A nap after a lunch aroused by a good Italian wine, the remnant of my first locally organized dinner for the friends, (for the insiders… ‘At Druy’s in Kigali’), some laptop fixing - this is what happens after ‘numériques’ donations - , a coffee with cookies… that you always accept … on my terrace with a view. Writing mails, sending messages, some Skype talking and more of this and that, all that will make me very tired at the end of the day.

I’m here less than three weeks now but it seems longer. It’s more routine than adventure but this is what I wanted. Rwanda was not unknown to me and I would even wish that things are going faster but I try to stay calm and one of the most important aspects is to get into the Rwandan way of thinking and acting, with composure and thoughtful. With some good guidance from the friends I get used to a polite way of interaction, something I missed the last twenty years. On the risk of being accused again of anti-Dutch feelings, I apologize to my Dutch- friends and (ex)-colleagues but I have to cure from the direct language use I have learned during all those years and you know what happens when the pupil gets more expertized than the master.

Last Friday I got shocking news about the health of my best friends’ daughter. It has been there as a shadow over the weekend and this is what a lot of people feel when relatives are sick or in danger in a faraway country, help- and powerlessness.

On Mondays and Thursdays I’m working with the dancers in Kanombe. Three hours with the two dancers who went to l’Ecole des Sables in Senegal. We are fine-tuning their solos and I think that in a few weeks they will be able to show something at least interesting. At the end of the afternoon we start to work with the other dancers from the Abatarutwa troupe and also there an interesting process is going on. Both ladies have added the typical Rwandan arm moves and head roles, even without gender distinction, in the warming ups they learned in Senegal …

It’s strange, in the background I hear increasing sounds as if the city is preparing for a new week. It was less hot today and no thunder or rain. We still wait for the short rainy season but as I told you before, climate change is also commonplace here.    

I will go for an evening walk. While I still feel the altitude difference I am less dying then the first days after arrival. But climbing the city center hill under a burning sun in the middle of the day is pure suicide.

Have a nice week.

Yours faithfully.

Guy l'Africain (*)

Muraho!

In a week during which tens of thousands are fleeing the Syrian war zones and the masters of the European fortress are showing their inaptitude to manage this refugee crisis I was leaving the citadel to head for a continent and a country where crisis management is daily business and more and more successful.

Now it is waiting for the moment when the enlightened European leaders will raise the little finger again towards Africa… next time, if they still dare, it should be with a confounded blush on their faces!

So, here I am, in my new country, in my new house surrounded with pictures, knick knacks and memories brought from good old Belgium and the Netherlands. Sunny days, stormy evenings and nights as a welcome concert. Rwanda has a beneficent sense on me, always.

The welcoming ceremonies were healing after the SAD and less sad goodbyes of those last weeks. I never leave friends behind me; I always take them with me in my mind and in my heart and at arrival I only have to unpack and dusting.

A warm welcome at the airport after my carefully sealed 128 kg of luggage was ripped of its wrapping by diligent officials… No plastic (bags) in Rwanda sir! I guess the wrapping was bio degradable but the premature stripping had the advantage I didn’t had to do it myself later, with my friends impatient to see what all those cases would content.

After a weekend that started at the 2 Shots Bar, with friends and ending on the coach watching a movie on Sunday I can announce you, this is my first working day!

For those who wanna meet me outside the office hours for a drink, 2 Shots Bar is perfect for its beer, wine, brochettes and ambiance. There is always someone to meet at 2 Shots!

Sunday I could re-smell the atmosphere of the old catholic school/boarding school, visiting some friend’s kids at the monthly visiting hours. Gives me cold shivers but catholic Flanders also looked that way thirty years ago. I’m always fearfully impressed by the influence the catholic church still has in this country after its role in the genocide.

What is really incredible… How fast you can have a subscription for internet etc. In 30’ you have a telephone number with a 4G internet connection on it + a modem for 10 access points 4G for home use. A visit to the Canal+ desk in the local store results in … you walking with the technician with a Satellite Dish, a modem and some materials and having + 200 channels within an hour on your tv screen. What is the average waiting time for something similar in Europe?

Late or early working, don’t worry supermarkets are open 24/24. I can tell you why economies are booming in Africa and here in particular.

I apprehend the coming sports Saturday with the friends… not the relaxing moments at the lake afterward (lol) but the hills walking up –down towards it… When I climb my street I’m dying. Oh yes I forgot we are + 1500 m. here….

For those who wonder… my dancers are doing wonderful… was working with the two who went to Senegal last spring… they are working together now every day for four hours and they are teaching the company two days a week what they have learned over there.  At least now they have a decent sound system. From tomorrow I go to Kanombe to teach twice a week.

And now it’s time for work! Office hours at home today and my first meeting to discuss the future dance school.

A Biboneye & Umunsi!

(Means have a nice day… but probably the whole of Rwanda will fall over me now and come with at least five other possibilities….

Joy… someone took my book for the weekend :-(

(*) After inshuti my distinguished friend Guillaume - you know the one who only drinks water and milk but suddenly also sips on wine - gave me this new title Guy l'Africain!

Pictures of the house here!

The final countdown with or without mixed feelings?

Mixed feelings… I’ve heard that sentence a lot of times the past weeks. I have avoid pronouncing it too much myself as for me this new step, maybe the biggest I made and probably ever will make is not assembled by mixed feelings but rather based on a deep conviction, something I had to do, now while I still have the energy. It has not so much to do with the past but more with the future, my own and also an outstretched hand towards a country that I started to love some years ago and to which I would like to make a small contribution in its development process.

Long months, even years, of reflection preceded the decision to engage myself in a process whereof I cannot predict the end result. The most important is to believe in it and at least have the feeling that others are as convinced as yourself. Now I’m in a faze where some are even more believing in it than myself but I guess that doubting is normal while you are wiping out of your mind and your walls the remainings of thirteen exciting years in an international environment surrounded by the most fantastic friends who kept me young and active and with the unconditional support of those who are still there since, what you can describe as, an eternity, at least at my age.

I have seen hundreds of “close to my hearts” leaving in all those years and now I’m going also… to a place that became more and more a second home those last years and now will be upgraded to the most important place of the world.

I have those mixed feelings (ha, I have said it!) about the Netherlands, where I was living for the last twenty years, mostly surrounded by non-Dutch; the count of my fingers is largely enough to designate the number of Dutch friends I have, but the best is the attitude of the Netherlands towards my new country, Rwanda. The recent statements by the outgoing Dutch ambassador to Rwanda about the self determination of the Rwandan people in the choice of their president, e.g. the third term of the actual president, has reconciled me a bit with the Netherlands from which I alienated since a certain number of years.

I suppose I will have to stand a lot on the barricade the next couple of years to defend the right of Rwandans to make their own choices; I will continue to do so with gusto as in the past, as I believe this is the only right concept of autonomic democracy.

For those who want to know what I’m going to do there in the smallest but incredibly vivid country in the heart of Africa you can read the two documents under the heading THE MISSION – THE CHALLENGE.

For now I will continue packing my goods but also wrapping my memories, carefully, as they are the most valuable and at the same time the most fragile; those you can’t afford to forget or to lose on a new journey.

The ‘final’ countdown? Not yet, but countdown it is, with a bit of mixed feelings, I confess!

Yours,

Delft 23-08-2015.