Early Days and First Impressions:
Hello from a gorgeous café nestled in one of Kigali’s many sloping hillsides, and what a first week it’s been! Each day here is nothing short of its own adventure, from wrestling my way onto the local cellphone network, to practicing my French while bartering with motorcycle taxi (moto) drivers, only to mispronounce my destination and end up completely lost. All in a day’s work, though. Also, apologies for the difficulties with my wordpress blog, but thank you to all who have followed along to this new page! Hopefully I can get things uploaded here more easily.
I’m pleased to say I have 6 awesome roommates, also doing CMTS placements at media outlets throughout Kigali, to share this adventure with. We were fortunate enough to find a big, beautiful house that could accommodate all of us in a neighbourhood called Kacyiru, also built into a rolling hillside and with a beautiful view of the downtown core across the valley. Like many of the properties in this area it’s built like a fortress, with an imposing brick wall around the perimeter and a sturdy iron gate across the driveway. There is also a young gentleman named Esa, who guards the property and lives full-time in a small room of the house. In our week here we haven’t seen him leave the property once, and it doesn’t seem as if there are other security personnel who share the duties with him. The property managers have also assisted us in hiring Mama-Eve, an incredibly sweet woman who makes us breakfast and dinner each week day. None of us are used to having these kinds of services in our daily residential life, but here it is much more common, and we are grateful for their help and how welcome they make us feel.
As for my placement at the Aegis Trust, I’ve had a very educational few days and developed a solid grasp on the work I’ll be doing over the next few weeks. Christian, my primary supervisor, is the manager of marketing and training programs at Aegis Social Enterprise, a division of the Trust which works to connect young genocide survivors with job training for reliable industries, such as tourism and customer service. Among the several social enterprises run by the Trust is the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where this café is located. My placement began here on Tuesday with a tour of the museum and burial site, where roughly 250,000 victims of the 1994 violence rest among a huge swath of palm trees, flowers and lively, crawling vines. As I walked among the tombs, an audio guide described the intricate symbolism of the geometric patterns in which the gardens were planted, the stonework of the pathways and the sculpted artwork arranged throughout the grounds. I can bring little justice to the arresting motifs of division, reunion, reverence and memory that unfolded during this stroll through a dark piece of history, but I can safely say it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.
When I returned to the café after walking the burial grounds, Christian was waiting for me to discuss the link between what I had just experienced and the communication strategies we would be working on. The organization is looking to develop a holistic and formalized approach for distributing their outreach materials, as well as for tracking the reach and impact of their messaging through various platforms, such as social media, email blasts, and traditional advertising with local media outlets. There is a major fundraising gala coming up in October, and the pressure is on to sell tickets and secure sponsorships, so I’m well-positioned to jump right in and do all I can to support the communications arm of this cause. So far I’m deep into the design of a new excel spreadsheet (where I always feel right at home) for the tracking component, and sifting through numerous photos and videos in order to provide my recommendations on the most effective content to use in future outreach. I can already see beyond a doubt how rewarding this is going to be.
Thanks so much for reading! Pictures and more stories on the way…
