Getting to and Being in Rwanda

I stopped in Kigali en route to Eastern Congo partly because I wanted to see Rwanda, the Mille Collines (Thousand Hills), and partly because it's one of the only ways to get from one part of Congo to the other without flying a blacklisted airline. Congolese airlines are known for their old, rundown planes, questionable pilots and banishment from European airspace. Goma in particular is known for its frighteningly short landing strip. After a UN plane crashed in Kinshasa last month, killing 32 out of 33 passengers and crew, I was all the more confident in my decision to take the "scenic route" (Kinshasa to Nairobi to Bujumbura to Kigala and back into Congo overland) and a normal airline, figuring my life is worth the extra money and layovers.

Hilariously (or something) enough while our Kenya Airways flight was descending, we encountered massive fog (it happens in Rwanda). Clearly not trained in tactful announcements, the pilot said something to the effect of, "We have no visibility but we are going to attempt to land anyway." With images of the blown apart UN plane ingrained in recent memory my traveling partner contemplated the brace position while I considered removing my seatbelt so as to be ejected in the event of the plane splitting open (unintentional strategy of the one UN survivor). After a few moments of silent panic the pilot came on and said something about as articulate as "never mind." And so we made a u-ie in the sky and went back to Bujumbura to wait for the fog to lift. Only that never happened. So we went all the way back to Nairobi, got on a different plane and flew to Kigali directly. It's 1000 miles from Kinshasa to Kigali and it took about 24 hours. 

Kigali is a lovely city. Granted I stayed and wandered in the nicer areas but they were better paved, greener and cleaner than any of the 14 other African countries I've been to, except maybe, just maybe South Africa. I didn't get harassed, got lost in a lovely bilingual bookstore and drank mutzig on draft. And it really does have a thousand hills or maybe a gazillion. My walks were beautiful and runs even better. 

It was so beautiful and peaceful that it was difficult to imagine that less than 20 years ago this spring hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered here. But they were. So I spent one morning at the genocide memorial center in the city. 

Outside were a string of beautiful gardens planted around the mass graves where remains continue to be buried. Each garden represents a facet in the causes and aftermath of the genocide. My favorite was called something like "Garden of the International Community Who Stood by and Did Nothing" (but more succinct). See garden statue below: monkey on a cell phone.

The museum itself was painful to go through especially in the last exhibit, where murdered children were profiled ("favorite food: mother's milk," "cause of death: smashed against a wall"). 

It was a short and kind of heavy time in Rwanda and the last thing I did there was try to control my car sickness enough to be able to look out of the window and enjoy the landscape on the way to the border. Even the smaller border town of Gisenyi was paved and clean and I got my exit stamp in a bright, modern building. Then the paved road abruptly ended, the smell of raw sewage just as abruptly began, and in a tin roof shack smaller than the pile of garbage beside it, I got my entry stamp back into Congo. Welcome Home. 

Hell and High Water

Kinshasa is ridiculous in a lot of ways, but at the top of the list is traffic. Road works (increasing as the elections approach), narrow, unpaved or poorly paved roads, vehicles held together by tape breaking down in the middle of the road or incapable of absorbing any shock sustained at a speed quicker than a crawl, excessive motorcades, ineffective traffic police, the lack of street lights, traffic lights and any sort of rules and spontaneously road blocks in a city of six million do nothing to help cars move to their destination. I have gotten used to driving a half hour to the grocery story on a good day and grown to be unendingly thankful that I live and work within the same walls, but what happened to me on what I can safely say was my worst night in Kinshasa was more than I had ever anticipated.

In normal countries, rain causes people to drive more slowly. Things get a little backed up. The world makes sense. In Kinshasa, rain causes absolute bedlam. I should have stayed in on that stormy Wednesday, but the rain was letting up and it was my last chance to borrow my friend's warm weather gear for the hike I planned to take over the Easter holiday. Coming from my part of town, Kintambo Circle can make your night or crush your soul. This night things were pretty clogged up. As I had expected, my normal route was closed for construction so I inched my way toward the back route that would take me winding around schools and compounds and Lebanese restaurants before spitting me back out onto the main road. But as I got closer I saw that the police closed off all cars going that way and I could see why; what lay before me looked like a dysfunctional parking lot. In what are normally four 2 lane roads converging on a roundabout were dozens of cars in countless invented lanes facing all different directions. Not moving. I was directed down a shady side street going both away from where I came from and where I wanted to go. Seeing my desperation to get through, an officer motioned for me to roll down my window. Since it is unwise to do such a thing I turned down the only available road and hoped that I could turn around eventually and go home.

But this was not to be. It had taken me an hour to move 2 kilometers and it would be another hour of not moving before the road cleared up enough to make anything close to a U turn. At that point my friend who I was supposed to meet and had driven out to find me, abandoned his car in the cluster f*ck on the other side of the circle and was jogging in my direction. I waited until he reached me and together we meandered back to find his car. I eventually got to his house about 3 hours late where our other friends were still waiting with wine, cold dinner and hats, gloves and synthetic layer after synthetic layer of tops and bottoms.

Up on the top of Nyirogongo a week later I was by far the warmest most waterproofed among my hiking group. And I should have been. I went through hell and high water to get that fleece that hung to my knees and the rain pants that went up to my armpits. Hell and high water.

Sparkle and Lula

My apologies that I didn't send out the birth announcement sooner. Being a new hen, final exams for my master's course and a week in the bush made it all quite difficult to get back to you. 

The Birth.

Sadly we didn't get any incubator siblings. Due to all our power difficulties and the requisite failures of trying to do, well, most things in the Congo, we we lucky to get one. Presenting...Sparkle, The Miracle Chick!

We converted our water table into a brooder.

Being an only chick, Sparkle had the unfortunate habit  of peep-screaming at the top of his/hers (still unclear) lungs for days, crying of loneliness. I asked Papa Michel, one of the atelier at the school if he could find Sparkle a friend and the next day a tiny black and yellow chick was delivered to my door in a lightbulb box. Lula (named by the same flamboyant kindergarteners as Sparkle) and Sparkle became the best of friends. They grew up together. Fast. Too fast. 

I had to move them from my classroom where they became free range kindergarteners to my house. My once sweet abode may have smelled like a barn, but better they shit on my tile than on the class reading rug, no? They soon learned to follow me. They crept as close to the running shower as they dared, skittered underfoot while I baked bread in the kitchen and sat on my desk chair beside me (Sparkle) and shoulder (Lula) while I typed. 

We enjoyed our brief cohabitation together but all good things must end. Some carpenters built them a coop. They are honing their scratching skills and I am keeping my eyes out for hawks and genet cats.

And we all lived happily ever after. The Beginning.

Big Silver Generator of Death

Congo finally got the best of me and my incubating chick eggs. After the power went out and the backup generator malfunctioned, the incubator turned off for a few hours and chilled to uninhabitable temperatures. By the time I discovered this it may very well have been too late. Nonetheless, between bothering my boss, the head of maintenance and the napping electrician on a Saturday afternoon, we managed to stage a dramatic rescue of moving the eggs and incubator to my house. If the power outage didn't kill or deform them, my hasty attempts to make up for the low temperatures probably cooked whatever was left of the chicks. Late last night the generator was restored and today the power is back on, so I moved everything back to my classroom which may now be a science museum of dead, dying or deformed embryos. Hatching day is scheduled for Tuesday-Wednesday, so now we wait. The chicks eggs should start rocking, vibrating and peeping soon, but no signs of life so far.

Crossing all appendages for the chicks, the kinderfolk and me.

Child's First Dissection

Today was the day of truth for our eggs. Ringed, spotted or otherwise undeveloping eggs were getting tossed. We candled each egg noting air sacs, embryos (the eyes anyway) and webs of blood vessels. We even saw some embryos moving around. But egg 7 has stubbornly sported a blood ring since the weekend, a sign that the embryo died causing the blood to draw away from it and form a ring inside the shell.

The children unanimously agreed that we should throw the egg away so it doesn't start to smell bad, spread germs to the others, or even EXPLODE. Me being an impulsive and messy kind of teacher asked if they would like to see inside before we tossed it.

I roped the high school biology teacher to come down to the elementary school with her dissecting pan, pins and scalpel and had her chip, chip, chip away at the shell. They recognized the yolk and remnants of blood vessels right away and as our resident biologist got down to the embryo I ran to get the camera.

When I returned breathless from the library, camera in hand, she whispered through her teeth, "It's moving." I thought I was going to pass out but managed to hold my eyes steady long enough to take a look. It was actually just floating in the amniotic sac which was still in tact, but was not moving on its own volition. The blood ring marking a dead embryo was even clearer with the shell removed. The children peered at the small embryo nestled against the yolk and identified the various parts after it was scooped out and laid on the dissecting pan.

They approached their first dissection respectfully, inquisitively and fearlessly. I'm going to be the one that has nightmares.

I would do it again, but next time I would risk exploding, reeking eggs and do it after hatching day. It will be a long time before I get over the thought of accidentally dissecting a living animal.

Why Kindergarteners Should Know the Word Sperm, Or, The Relationship Between Vocabulary and Concepts

My kindergarteners know the word sperm. And when we shone the light of a projector through the egg shells to look for signs of development, a process known as candling, they logically hypothesized that the egg that we affectionately call "Number 1" is lacking blood vessels and other signs of life because it did not receive a sperm.

How did it come up in the first place? Well, children wanted to know why eggs in the store did not contain chicks. It's not just because a hen doesn't sit on them, it is also because the hens that lay eggs for consumption are often isolated from roosters so that fertilization cannot occur. Yup, we eat the eggs of lonely hens. Unless you happen to crack open an egg with a spot of blood on the yolk. That would be the remnants of an embryo that died after being removed from hen or incubator. So I told the kinderfolk that although the hen makes and lays the egg, the rooster must add something in order for the egg to become a chick. The child I have renamed Precocious, ever astute and always on to something, raised her hand and announced, "I already have all the eggs I'm ever going to have and if a man gives it something when I'm big, it will make a baby." It was time to name "something." 

It's no big deal to kids to know the word "sperm," only to my colleagues who raised their eyebrows, or cheered or laughed wickedly while rubbing their hands together. It's science and it's truth and if children are asking the questions, they are developmentally ready to know the answers. How the sperm gets into the hen did not cause too much excitement (or analogy) on the children's part, and the fact that chickens mate without penetration made the explanation all the more easy on my part. They actually line up their vents (openings beneath their tails) and the sperm goes from the rooster's vent to the hen's where it eventually finds the egg.

All this because they wanted to know why eggs in the refrigerated section of City Market don't have chicks inside. 

And yeah, we could have skipped the word "sperm" and stuck with the word "something," but besides being pointless, children need vocabulary to develop concepts about the world. One word stands for more words. Lay stands for producing and depositing eggs. Hatch stands for an animal coming out of a shell. Those are some pretty wacky ideas if you think about it, as are most things young children come into contact with for the first time. The world is weird and rather than having to remember something so crazy as a chicken growing an egg inside its body and squeezing it out, when "lay" becomes part of a child's vocabulary, when they hear, read or use it, they access it's meaning in their fascinating brains. (We all do). As children come to use vocabulary to express a concept, they gain a deeper and more complex understanding of that concept. 

My students' vocabularies have expanded wildly since we began incubating eggs. Even my English language learners who have trouble remembering the words for geometric shapes are using vocabulary from the Wall of Special Chick Words:

develop

candle (verb not noun)

hatch

lay

pipping

male

female

egg tooth

blood vessel

air sac

embryo 

prediction

observation

thermometer

temperature

incubator

rotate

The new favorite game in kindergarten is to get in groups of three or four people, be handed a card with one of the above words, figure out how to act it out, and perform their word for the class. Precocious, Sparkles and the Cowboy showed their understanding of the word "develop" by crouching down, then steadily stretching their bodies taller while making muscles and chanting, "smarter, smarter, smarter." To show the words "blood vessel" Neighbor and Fidget lied down with their feet and hands touching to create an egg shape. Annika lied in between them and squiggled her arm like a blood vessel to Pear Blossom, curled up tight as the embryo. Pear Blossom quietly sipped from the blood vessel formerly known as Annika's arm. The applause was deafening.

What's Next?: Teaching them that the embryo gets nutrients from the blood vessels through the abdomen, not the mouth! 

Why You Shouldn't Try to Hatch Chicks in Congo

One needs only two things to hatch in chicks a classroom: fertilized, fresh eggs and an incubator kept at 99.5 degrees F. But even the most simple of things can be made impossible in Kinshasa. Why?

1. American incubators run on different voltage than what we have in Congo.

2. Even after you rig up transformers like you know what you're doing, you'll realize that the Congolese light bulbs don't fit into the American incubator.

3. Getting light bulbs transported from American to Congo without getting smashed is a very tall order.

4. My French cannot handle the complexities of requesting eggs that come from a hen who has been shacking up with a rooster, eggs that have only exited hen within the last week and which are not speckled with fecal matter, but if they are, sand it off please and for goodness sakes, don't wash the eggs in water!

5. Someone will have thought it a brilliant idea to pack the eggs in a metal can and careen through gargantuan potholes to deliver them to my classroom, leaving us with 8 eggs minus the two smashed ones, minus a third with a hairline crack that we are incubating anyway but will probably dispose of after two weeks lest it explodes (it happens).

6. Bumpy delivery notwithstanding, the eggshells in Congo are incredibly thin and porous. I only hope this does not mirror the bone density of the Congolese.

7. The power is frequently cut, sending the temperature of an incubator plummeting to something way colder than the underside of a hen.

8. When the generator kicks on, electricity buzzes through our outlets with more power than ever. The temperature shoots up causing an impressive array of chick deformities.

9. We are not in America so there is no friendly farm up state but not too far up who will take the chicks back upon hatching. IF they hatch that is.

Battling items 6-8 at the moment on Day #2 of Incubation 2011.