Rukoma

As this is my first blog entry here (which is cross-posted to my personal blog), I thought I’d give a bit of an introduction. I am in Rwanda, working with an organization called SEVOTA, to research gender and land issues. My work has me doing some legal research and interviews in Kigali, as well as interviews out in the countryside. I’m currently spending about 3 weeks in Rukoma, where SEVOTA has its most active office.

I’ve been settling into my temporary home in Rukoma, which is vastly different from Kigali. Of course, one always expects the country to be different from the city. And I am truly in the country. Out here, electricity and running water are precious, and for the most part, nonexistent. The hospital and some connected guest houses have electricity all day, it seems. The house in which I’m staying has a few hours of electricity each night, provided by a solar-powered generator. We don’t have running water, but it seems that at least some places connected to the hospital do. Cellular signal, however, is everywhere. Members of the community often visit our house or the hospital to charge their phones.

My cellphone has attained a level of importance that it never had before, as it is my only easily available connection to the rest of the world. I have no newspapers, television or internet access out there. Internet access comes on those few days when I am in Kigali or another city.

As with most of Rwanda, Rukoma is an agricultual community, and the land is used primarily for cultivation. The few with enough land to cultivate produce for commerce tend to grow bananas. Other plants I’ve seen are sweet potatos and something they tell me is used to make beer.

In addition to the need for more land, I’ve been hearing quite a bit from the people here that they would like to learn modern farming techniques. Much of the cultivation I’ve seen here is done manually, with scythe-like tools.

The people in Rukoma are getting used to me (it helps that there’s another American intern and a peace corps volunteer in the village), although they are a bit perplexed as to why I do things like visit farmland and take pictures of the Wednesday market.

One woman farmer did suggest that I use this time to act as an ambassador to the U.S., and let everyone at home know that Rwandan women work very hard, but are still very poor.