More catching up. At some point, you’ll notice that the things I did on individual days become a little less interesting, because I started getting actually busy with research. I like to divide up the days for my own purposes, though: in addition to the various other objectives of a travel blog—sharing my experiences, keeping friends and family abreast of what I do, telling anyone who is interested about life as a foreign student in Kigali—this serves as a record for me. I would like to be able to, in the future, refer to what I have written here to remember the things I did, whether interesting or comparatively mundane.
Saturday, 12 July 2014
The dissertations I had been lent the day before totaled 893 pages in length, which was clearly too much to read thoroughly in the time I had left. In thinking what the best strategy would be, I decided my first priority should be to make digital copies of all of these, so that I would still be able to refer to them at home. So I started photographing every page (and I have an iPad app that will turn pictures of pages into something resembling a black-and-white PDF file).
There is an additional motive here, that perhaps I could find a way to get these PDFs on the Internet, or into some American libraries, at some point. The goal of scholarship is to build on past work—to “stand on the shoulders of giants”—but this is not generally possible, especially for foreigners but even for a lot of Rwandans, because the sources they would need to find are so often unpublished dissertations! I want to talk to someone about this, and figure out how it would be possible/feasible, both technically and copyright-wise.
In the evening, I went to have brochettes with a friend (whose brother’s wedding I attended a year ago). It was fun. I think it’s interesting how brochettes—pieces of meat on a skewer with a flavorful seasoning—are just about the universal food that people eat here when they go out for drinks after work, have parties or want to have a nicer-than-average meal. I really can’t fault them, as brochettes are really good when done right, and I think a contributing factor is the relative scarcity of meat in the average person’s diet. It’s just funny that the food is such a strong indicator of a kind of social event.
Sunday, 13 July 2014
I went to church this day; the guy giving the discourse (the self-prepared monologue on a specific topic) really didn’t enunciate, as I confirmed later, to my great relief. (I barely understood a word he said.) The topic of discussion for the week was actually quite awkward: how to reason with potential converts on points of religious contention, and sympathize with their point of view in order to more effectively persuade them.
As the only non-Witness in attendance, I was a little bit concerned. On the way back, A. did ask me about whether I believed in eternal hellfire; luckily, neither I nor the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania acknowledge such a thing. But she didn’t go any further, and I was impressed that the congregation broadly recognized and respected that I was a guest: interested in a new experience but not a new religion.
In any case, interestingly, most of the proposed arguments presupposed that the target would accept proof from the Bible in order to change his religious views (for instance, citing Philippians 2:9 to prove that God and Jesus are separate entities). Many of the people they try to convert may not already be Christian, though, right? Or, especially in the West, they may be agnostics, atheists or lapsed Christians. I have no doubt that they deal with such cases elsewhere, though!
My own objections to the Witnesses’ faith in particular would be about biblical literalism (and resulting social conservatism) and the missionary culture, which the study session did not address. You may read the article that served as the basis for the discussion here.
With the rest of my day, I did some more research work.
Monday, 14 July 2014
In addition to photographing the books I have been lent, I have been trying to think of how putting them online might work. In its ideal form, there would be a website that served as a source for Rwandan scholarship of all kinds, that would include original PDFs of the documents as well as text versions in the original language, and translated to English where relevant.
This is a pie-in-the-sky hope. I mean, maybe it will happen, but it is way beyond the scope of what I would be able to accomplish. Thinking more conservatively (though still fairly ambitiously), I would upload PDFs of the files I have now, and then not convert them to text but provide English-language summaries so that people could access the important information from a search-engine.
The tentative model would be to reproduce in full the table of contents and bibliography of the work, as well as any tables, images, examples and citations. There would then be summaries of each section (and subsection, etc.) that included relevant information in addition to the above, and all would reference pages of the original document (accessible as a PDF, remember).
So I started (and would continue over the next few days) to test this out with one of the documents, by Mudeénge on Kiréera. It naturally took longer than I expected, but in addition to making a useful result it ensures that I understand the material I am reading, which is a pretty good thing.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Tuesday morning was actually my third trip to the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), though I did not blog about the first two because I wanted the whole story to appear together.
First, RURA is a pretty cool organization: it takes responsibility for regulating Rwanda’s telecommunications, transportation, electricity and other utilities; it does a lot in this capacity, I am sure, but as far as I am concerned one of the most useful things it does is compile statistics about each of these sectors. For instance, it publishes reports about mobile phone usage in Rwanda, comparing subscriptions, costs and other measures between the different service providers, several times a year. (I have been meaning to do a post comparing the three providers, using that as a source.)
What I am curious about, though, is the data that I know RURA collects about the Kigali public transit system. (“Public transit” is a bit of a misnomer, as the minibuses and buses that carry people around this city are privately owned, albeit heavily regulated.) I have mentioned that I am trying to make a map of it, as no map exists and the only way to figure out where you are going is to ask around until you find the right bus.
I got a nice draft of a map done, but was not able to finish it because there is no publicly available list of bus stops in the city. My reference was a list of routes specified by certain landmarks they would pass, but between those points I did not know either what the stops were called or how many there were.
Before going on, I should mention that the reference I used—posted at many of the city’s bus stops—exists because of a complete reorganization of mass transit (a better characterization than “public transit”) that took place shortly after I left Rwanda last year. At that time, minibus taxis were run by a variety of operators, some larger organizations and a number of individuals. They operated on a generally accepted set of routes, but those routes and the prices of traveling on them were regulated solely by the invisible hand of capitalism.
The transit reform that, thanks to RURA and the municipal government, went into effect on 31 August 2013 split the city into five zones: each of four companies (which won some kind of bidding or application process) would be responsible for serving one of the first four zones, and connecting it with the fifth zone (the city center, a common space). They would operate on routes that were similar to those that existed before, but were now fixed (and numbered) and charged fixed prices.
The experience for the commuter is only subtly different: you now (usually) get a small, paper ticket when you get onto the bus, which does not seem to serve much purpose except to tell you the price of your ride. (Maybe they try to track ridership by the number of tickets they distribute.) There is also the element of knowing which bus is going where and how much it will cost you, which I think should not be undervalued.
Before these reforms, making a map of bus routes in Kigali would have been all but impossible; now it is possible, though it still has not been done. This is where I hope I can help, because I like this city and would love to give something back for all it has given me—and also because I think the theory behind mapping public transit is just really cool (see this fantastic TED Talk about remapping the Dublin bus system).
So I went to RURA on Friday, hoping to ask them straight up for a list of bus stops in Kigali. They were closed, and a security guard explained they had all left, I think because of some office soccer game or something. I came back on Monday, and reception redirected me to the Transport Department, which informed me that I could write a formal letter to the Director General of RURA asking for the information I wanted. If he gave the go-ahead, I could have it, no problem. (Bureaucracy, remember?)
Luckily, I had a template for a formal letter from a few days earlier. I wrote it out in English and Kinyarwanda, and printed both copies along with a draft of the map on big A3 paper. (The guys at the print shop were very interested!) I then put them in a nice formal envelope, which I addressed to the director general.
The receptionist, when I presented this to her, promptly opened the sealed envelope and examined the contents. She read both letters, then stapled the Kinyarwanda version to the map to give to the director-general. She then stamped the English version of the letter “for reception”—another interesting, unfamiliar formality—and gave it back to me. Apparently this is standard and expected practice, which made me really glad I had for completely unrelated reasons brought two letters!
So that was exciting. (On the day of writing, I have a meeting scheduled tomorrow morning to talk to someone about this, which I will be sure to tell you all about!)
