Tag Archives: Africa

February 15, 2014 · 3:59 pm

“Positive Women” by Sam Kambali

Last week in Kigali, Rwanda, I was one of the TechWomen delegates who bought a painting at the Inema Art Center gallery. Since my mother, Eleanor Dickinson, and son, Paul D. Goodman, are both artists, I have very little free wallspace. However, I very much liked “Positive Women” by Sam Kambali. The painting is a collage of carefully-selected strips of African cloth forming the bodies of women, many of whom are raising their arms in salute. “Positive Women” seemed appropriate to the subject of our delegation (encouraging women and girls to pursue careers in STEM fields) and to the energy, enthusiasm, and remarkable professional success of the delegation members themselves. Part of its charm is that this painting incorporates the delightful variety and color of cloth we saw everywhere we went in Rwanda.

I had the gallery take the painting off its stretcher bars so I could transport it rolled up. Today, I brought “Positive Women” home from being re-mounted: my new painting is now hanging in WP668 (my office in our backyard caboose in San Jose, California). Here I am in Kigali with Sam Kambali, the artist:

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Tagged as Africa, Eleanor, Paul, Rwanda, San Jose, technical women, TechWomen, WP668

February 14, 2014 · 2:11 pm

Swords to ploughshares, Rwanda

Machete caked with garden dirt, in Kigali, Rwanda

Swords into ploughshares is from the Book of Isaiah:

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. — Isaiah 2:3–4

I thought about Bible verse many times while in Rwanda last week, particularly when watching machetes being used for gardening. I have many garden tools and, despite living on the Guadalupe River and regularly clearing brush as part of my work on the bank, I have never needed a machete. In Rwanda, I several times watched a machete being used as a hoe or to clear an overgrown path, and reflected that it is a good general-purpose implement if other tools are lacking. However, I also remembered Immaculée Ilibagiza writing of her 1994 experience during the Rwanda genocide:

There were many voices, many killers. I could see them in my mind: my former friends and neighbors, who had always greeted me with love and kindness, moving through the house carrying spears and machetes and calling my name. “I have killed 399 cockroaches,” said one of the killers. “Immaculée will make 400. It’s a good number to kill.” (from Left to Tell, 2006)

Rwanda is essentially twenty years old – its remarkable success since 1994 being all the more impressive because of the depths from which the country has risen. Last week, the TechWomen delegation visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre (in which a machete is prominently displayed as the signature weapon) and saw graveyard/memorials along the road into the mountains. There must be few parts of Rwanda entirely free of the memories and events of 1994’s savagery. Yet, Rwanda has indeed turned swords into ploughshares (or, machetes into hoes in their case) and gotten on with the necessary business of making things better.

Some of my garden tools, in San Jose, California, USA

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Tagged as Africa, garden, Rwanda, San Jose, TechWomen

February 14, 2014 · 12:56 pm

Crafts in Rwanda

One of the pleasures of the Rwanda TechWomen delegation was shopping for crafts to bring home as presents to family and friends. In between official events, we went to group venues like Caplaki Cooperative des Artistes Plasticiens de Kigali but we also purchased from roadside vendors. It seemed to me that many of the items in the craft centers came from Tanzania (for example, anything made of ebony), and Kenya – I have seen the same stuff for sale from Kenyan vendors here in the US.

For my gifts, I tried to select items actually made in Rwanda, and when possible, from the actual craft worker. Basket making is a high-level craft in Rwanda, with the pointed “peace basket” being the famous example. We often saw women on the road carrying peace baskets, so this is not just a tourist thing. Weaving is also used to make lovely and functional jewelry – the tiny earring baskets being particularly fine. I bought several carvings of red jacaranda wood and figures woven from banana leaves. There were many items made locally from lovely bright cloth imported from Congo (DRC). Of course, we avoided anything antique or that might be made of real ivory. Our group of mentors enjoyed bargaining and talking with the craft workers as part of our shopping experience.

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Tagged as Africa, Rwanda, technical women, TechWomen

February 13, 2014 · 2:46 pm

Not the Same in Rwanda

Having just spent ten days with the TechWomen delegation in the lovely if tiny country of Rwanda, I am still thinking through all that I have seen. As a gardener, Rwanda was disorienting. Many plants are almost same as in my home in the South San Francisco Bay Area in California but I kept seeing flowers that looked like those I knew but the plant leaves were wrong, or the color was wrong but the shape was right, or the plant was much bigger than I have seen before. The animals were also different: I am used to watching the Western Lowland Gorilla family of the San Francisco Zoo, different from the Mountain Gorillas we saw in Rwanda.

For example, the common thistle is purple here in California but orange in Rwanda:

California Thistle	.	Rwanda Thistle
	.

Rwanda boasts the largest poinsettias I have ever seen – at home these plants come in small pots as Christmas table decorations:

Fuchsias in California are delicate garden focal points – but in Rwanda, they are used as hedges:

Of course, many flora and fauna were exactly what we have at home (eucalyptus trees, bougainvillea vines, nettles, roses, cats, dogs, chickens, goats, etc.). And then there are plants in Rwanda that are so different, I am not even sure what they are:

Golden Monkey Trek, Crowned Cranes in Rwanda

Terra Incognita Ecotours helped some of us TechWomen mentors visit the Mountain Gorillas and Golden Monkeys after last week’s delegation to meet the girls and women working in STEM in Rwanda. We stayed at the Mountain Gorilla View Lodge. While there, we also saw Grey Crowned Cranes, really big worms, and other interesting creatures. As soon as we returned from the monkey trek, we scraped off the mud, showered, ate lunch, and drove to the airport to start our 30 hour travel home to the Silicon Valley.

Mountain Gorillas Trek in Rwanda

Many of the TechWomen mentors signed on with Terra Incognita Ecotours for a Mountain Gorilla and Golden Monkey trek after the delegation work week, staying at the Mountain Gorilla View Lodge. We eleven were the first to arrive at the lodge. Early the next morning, we were split into two groups – since only eight tourists can visit any gorilla family in Volcanoes National Park for one hour each day. Our trek group took the easier route through the bamboo forest (1-1/2 hours hiking in, 1 hour with the gorillas, 1-1/2 hours back). The other group walked for twice as long up a much steeper volcano. We all hired porters to help us up the muddy trail – and to contribute to the local economy. My porter was called Uwemama in Kinyarwanda (Clementine was her English name). I was grateful for her helping hand. Our capable trackers were Eugene and Emanuel. The Sabyinyo group of gorillas we saw were a fascinating combination of near-human intelligence and inhumanly structured quiet calm in their relationships.

The night after our trek, at the lodge we enjoyed a fascinating presentation by Dr. Jan Ramer of Gorilla Doctors about their work caring for the medical needs of the Mountain Gorillas. She said that the endangered global-population of over 800 was growing at about four percent a year, partly because of veterinary interventions in cases of poacher snares and respiratory infections brought in by tourists.

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Tagged as Africa, Mentoring, Rwanda, technical women, TechWomen

February 12, 2014 · 7:55 pm

HeHeMobile, The Office, art shopping in Kigali, Rwanda

I am back in the Silicon Valley (land of great Internet access), catching up on blog posts from last week in Rwanda…

On Friday, 7 February, the TechWomen delegation visited CEO Clarisse Iribagiza and her startup team at HeHe (creators of SuperCow games), and Jon Stever of The Office, a co-working space in Kigali, Rwanda. After this last morning with our delegation, five of us visited the Inema Art Center and Ivuka Arts Kigali to enjoy a better class of local painting.

Then, eleven TechWomen mentors headed out to the mountains with Terra Incognita Ecotours on our way to visit the Mountain Gorillas and Golden Monkeys. Along the road to the Mountain Gorilla View Lodge, we saw two genocide memorials that our driver Charles said were graves of thousands slaughtered at checkpoints during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Charles was part of the Rwandan army that stopped the genocide. We also saw delights such as a young biker hitching a truck ride up the mountain, and rolled up bee hives in the eucalyptus trees that line the road.