Falling Whistles | David's Blog

March 23, 2009

Time Will Tell (Rwanda II)

by: David Lewis

By morning my head is cleared. The fever lifted. And though exhaustion remains, so does a mountain of expectation. I get right to work. Another day in Rwanda. Hopes of crossing the border. No promises.

Negotiations are clumsy when you do not know what language you are speaking. To me, kinyarwanda does not exist, at least for a few more hours. For the time being, I am thankful that interpretive dance transcends culture and creed. It is the universal language. I motion and twirl and roll my R’s. A price is set for my moto ride. We move. In Rwanda moto drivers are required to provide helmets for their passengers. Mine is glittery and purple.

An hour at the internet cafe proves fruitless. I send five short emails, purposely misspelling words on the French keyboard. Time up. A new moto awaits. His helmet has no glitter. It smells like a latrine.

We stop 5 times for directions. I aggressively signal and dance new instructions on each occasion. The driver is not impressed. We have no chemistry. Epic fail.

Finally, arriving at breakfast, there is news from the border. Our documentation has not arrived at the DGM office. We are denied another day. Though all of us are dissatisfied with the result, it provides us an opportunity to catch up on backlogged work.

Four of us post up in the hotel loft around a single power strip while Jon rushes to the market for a crash course in haggling. Ideas fly, flutter, soar and die. And brilliance rises from the ashes. Videos are coming to focus and our first writings are underway.

The commotion of creativity begets execution, but I can’t focus. My mind jumps. Not enough sleep last night. Digging through my bag, I unearth an iPod and wonder, is this a crime? to be away from the ball-and-chain of a cell phone and laptop, and to willingly strap on headphones to disconnect. Wait, isn’t this trip all about engaging? Eh, I will worry about that later.

I search through playlists, but don’t find anything exotic enough, passionate enough, real enough to match the landscape. Ahh..here it is.

I zone out, sink into stream of consciousness. the words flow.

But a taxi is honking viciously at the gate. I am startled. flustered, fluttering, fluttering..and my focus is gone. Pounding fists rattle the paint-scratched iron frame, and Jon steps into courtyard. He has the look of a man we will listen to.

“hurry guys. we need to go. now. everything in town is closed. and the army is marching across the border. we need to go.”

The honking cab has pulls in behind Jon. The honker is better dressed than I. He wears a collared shirt with stripes, and looks distinguished and starched. We scramble and stumble to mobilize. Sloppy, we are. Five of us slide into the back seat of the cab, an early 90s Camry. Red is ready to shoot. The camera he wields is massive. As if Thor became a journalist and began wearing vests with functional pockets. Functional and magical. From one such pocket Red unveiled our press passes. And now they now hang from lanyards around our necks as we fly down the dirt road to the shores of Lake Kivu. We descend upon a crowd of thousands that is gathering. I hope nobody notices my lanyard.

Near the border we disburse. Guards mingle with the masses. And a jeep of hardened soldiers recline coldly, smoking and staring. They are Congolese (FARDC). I try to blend in, but there is one problem. Everyone else is black. Maybe I will tan.

Suddenly the crowd before us erupts in song and dance. Hundreds of men with automatic weapons and RPGs march past. Some smiling, some silent, some burdened with an unsettled grimmace. I watch their faces, I watch their shoes. Meticulously kept and hardly reminiscent of the war zone, except that hundreds of them carry rockets with their bare hands. Or strapped in pouches that hang from chests.

I am still staring at shoes when I feel a tap from behind. A soldier wishes to pass. He carries a gun, 18 inches in length, that shoots tennis ball-sized death. It’s like playing Nerf, for keeps. The gun rests on his hip and I am directly in the line of fire. I move.

Now the lake is quaking behind us. To avoid trample I become one with the onrushing mob. Carefully though. It is this brand of mass mentality that easily becomes destructive. Boats of marines rumble across the soggy international border. This country is in love. I squint up the shoreline, half expecting somebody to begin ‘the wave’; instead, Red pops out from behind a bush. Vest in tact.

And where are the others? I see Jon and Dan ahead, rushing the border. With all the excitement of the moment, nobody reminds Jon not to cross. Guards soon congregate as the parade passes fully into Rwanda, its culmination marked by the musical styling of a military brass band. Jon bides his time. The band bobs up-and-down. There are many trombones. Jon is incognito. A chameleon in boots that click and clack as he walks. He slides through a hole in the border wall. Brilliant.

What a day! We follow the procession to a ceremony in the town park of Gisenyi. It is contained in a bowl of a valley that opens up just as winding roads fall into it from steep cliffs above. Such a beautiful scene. We are enamored. Somehow this all seems so glamorous. My suspicions arise. There were reports of as many as 4000 Rwandan soldiers occupying Congo for the last month, in a joint operation with the Congolese army. Their stated purpose was to root out members of a rebel group, the FDLR, that was formerly involved in the Rwandan genocide, fifteen years ago. Today, just over 1000 troops return to Rwanda. Most of them are immaculate. Marching. Dancing. Heroes.

Where is the dirt, the grime, the battle scars? Where are those soldiers. Locals tell us that all of the Rwandans will return home over a 3 day period. But with vast natural resources and national retribution at stake just across the border, I am not so sure.

Time will tell. But only if we listen.

*photography by Dan Johnson (http://www.danielnjohnson.com/)

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March 22, 2009

To the Night (Rwanda 1)

by: David Lewis

It was a dark fever of a night, the kind with tremendous dreams that wake only to shivering cold sweats and the 5 AM call to prayer. Consciousness unwillingly suspends itself for hours on end beneath one hundred degrees of self-revulsion, of seething blood and flesh and gall, of wickedness. I am buried. There is no memory. There is no time. Only a distant crescendo of some monotonous dirge. It wails as I teeter-totter on the cusp of reality. And some weight, ominous and unseen, is pressing down. I feel it on my chest. In my chest. I push back, but have no arms. And my running legs, they are made of sand and syrup and all things gelatinous and slow. I can’t recall how this all began, but the unwelcome urgency of the moment seems familiar. Subtle rotten nostalgia.

I am resurfacing now. And there is shouting in the room. Monochromatic bursts that steadily prove themselves as independent of the dirge. The recurring dream, the one I thought I had expelled in the third grade, is finally behind me. So recent and vivid, but fading. And I choose not to explore the final moments of it’s grip. It is better not to dwell here. To understand or decode their meaning. To delve is to compromise escape, so only broad themes and heavy breaths remain as I resume consciousness.

I feel my fingers. I feel toes. I am distracted by the shouting. I am tangled helplessly in my mosquito bed net. Yes, there is shouting and that shouting is loud. And I hate shouting. Sean is sleeping and snoring and shouting with spite. He lies immobile. Unwakeable. The tenacious slumber only he can muster. It is a blessing and a curse. I struggle for him to stop, but soon it becomes clear that I am the one who shouts, not he. I blabber and blunder. I am spinning. He does not speak. He lies immobile. Unwakeable. None of this is making any sense. I am not alone. My voice falls, robbing a dissonant harmonic from the mosque next door. Its dutiful melody encroaches on our bedroom. Covering me in my mosquito net tangle. Covering his still figure in the next bunk.

I calm and listen, in wonder, at the humble masses who share this message beyond our walls. Do they understand the call? I certainly do not. The vocalist has decided that mid-throat is an ideal position to hold his microphone. For the sake of mass communication this seems unreasonable. Syllables articulate themselves prematurely and are perfectly indistinguishable to the naked ear. They gargle and yelp in the way that is blandly monotone…I tremble between fever and chill and close eyes, giving myself back to the night.

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