The One Where I Move Mountains
On a Glimpse into a Life
Much of this summer has seen me riding in a car, bus, moto or safari van around the country to work, hike or commute. I’ve always been someone who has difficulty sleeping while traveling, so this meant that I spent a lot of my journeys to and from great adventures staring out the window. But looking out the window in Rwanda is not as bland as trying to count the cows or corn stalks when traveling in the Midwest. Staring out the window in Rwanda offered me a little insight into the daily life of a Rwandan, especially in the countryside.
I perhaps learned the most about this breathtaking country behind a car window. I saw children running after our car and playing games outside homes; villagers laying out a multitude of fresh fruits and vegetables to sell to their neighbors; friends and family members walking miles along the highway to the nearest bus stop; bikes weighed down by barrels of banana beer; and women precariously balancing water jugs atop their heads. I learned that many of the crops Rwanda is known for producing (bananas, for example) aren’t native to the country; that Rwandan drivers have a special language to communicate on the road using hand signals; and although some of Rwanda’s main exports are coffee and tea, Rwandans don’t typically drink either (instead, milk bars are very popular). There is so much to learn about this country, and each ride I took sparked different questions. Even just looking out the window in silence offered me a glimpse into a way of life that was previously unknown to me before I came here.
On Finishing Up Work
With less than two weeks until I finish my internship, I spent this week largely finishing up ongoing projects and outstanding assignments. One new project I was assigned was helping with a quarterly report on RBJ’s progress to the European Union. This was, by far, the biggest report I’ve helped with this summer. My job was to gather and disseminate data on two recent rights-awareness reports in prisons this past spring to add to the report. I gave statistics on the impact of these events on educating prisoners and the public and wrote a general summary on what happened at these events. Because I wasn’t there, I had to consolidate earlier summaries and notes of the events that my coworkers had put together. This was a bit difficult because I didn’t have first-hand experience to help fill out the descriptions of the events. I relied on my coworkers to offer insights into some of the information that was missing. One of my favorite things about working on this report was the data sets. I enjoyed crunching numbers into formulas and making graphs to show the EU just how important these events really were. Who knew a law student would like working with numbers!
This week, I also received final edits for the Burundi Wiki from the head of IBJ’s Burundi office. Although he liked the majority of the information I included in the updated page, he recommended that I exclude the information about Burundi’s contested constitutional reforms and their international disagreements (such as becoming the first country to withdraw from the International Court of Justice). This information is important, but it’s also important for IBJ and their district offices to keep a good working relationship with the government to gain access to the legal and prison systems. If a government perceived that IBJ was taking a side in these international disagreements, they may restrict access to the prison and legal system for the organization. This would make it very difficult to fulfill IBJ’s mission of offering legal representation to those in need.
At the end of the week, I attended a Human Rights Defenders meeting at the British High Commission to speak about the role of the media in Rwanda. The meeting information was confidential, but I can speak a bit about media freedom generally in the country. Media, especially radio, played a big role in the genocide in 1994. The government co-opted radio stations to urge people to kill their neighbors. Although Rwanda has come a long way since then, it still has problems with government-controlled media and press freedom today. Radio is the main form of media, with 34 stations across the country. However, official censorship by the government and self-censorship is very common. A number of foreign news websites are blocked by the government. According to Freedom House, journalists face arbitrary detention and arrest and intimidation from authorities.
On Climbing Mountains (Metaphorically and Physically)
For my last trip, my friend and I traveled to Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to climb Mt. 
Sabinyo this weekend. Mt. Sabinyo is just over the Rwanda-Uganda border. It consists of five total peaks and three climbable peaks. Uganda is the only country that established a safe route to climb the mountain even though it technically belongs to three countries (Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC). At the top of the third peak, you can stand in the three countries at once with spectacular views of the 
villages below and the mountainscape in the distance.
We began our journey by renting a driver and a car in Kigali to drive us to Kisoro, Uganda on Friday evening, a small town near the base of the mountain. We stayed the night at a quaint hotel and woke up before sunrise to wolf down breakfast and drive to the park office. We started with a gradually uphill hike through a bamboo forest before we started the real climb. This climb was not for the faint-hearted. In a series of 
switchbacks through the forest and climbing up and down 90-degree ladders, we reached each of the three peaks. At the third peak, sitting at over 12,000 feet, we gazed down at the villages and green vegetation below us and the astounding Rwandan mountains in front of us. At that 
high up, it’s easy to realize just how small you really are.
After a short lunch break straddling the three country border, we headed back down on the rickety ladders. I tried to not look over my shoulders because I felt like I was going to fall right off the cliff of the mountain into the pointy trees below. A total of 9 hours later, we were back at the park office, a little beat up but still alive. Suffice it to say, we didn’t get off our couch the whole day Sunday!