Let me hear you say "YOUTH CONFERENCE!!!!!"

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The Youth Conference was, to say the least, awesome. Or at least I think it was…I wasn't there for very much of it.
As it turns out, Linda, the Conference Coordinator, needed me to drive her all over town not just for the Wednesday and Thursday in preparation for the conference, but also for Friday through Monday, making it a round six days of driving all day around town; buying stuff, picking up stuff, picking up people, transporting goods and running like madness to try to get everything done on time. My one consolation for having missed most of the conference was that Linda missed it too. Haha, take THAT, evil Linda! The time that I had at the conference, however, was great. There were youth from Rwanda, Uganda, the DRC (Congo), Burundi, Ethiopia and Eritrea, making it a truly international conference, and forcing everything to be done bilingually. Surprisingly, I was counted amongst the "bilingual translators"! And here I was, thinking that my French was terrible, and they have me translating! Interesting, to say the least.
The first thing to talk about, however, is the preparation. And the first thing to mention about that is the police. Police are everywhere in Rwanda. When you drive down the "highways" in-between the cities here you can see police every ten kilometers, ensuring that the laws are obeyed. Yeah, right. A simple system has been developed to help drivers avoid getting busted for speeding by the police, or for having too many people in a taxi-bus, or any other infraction. When driving, people will flash their headlights at a passing car. This is them asking; "Are there police?" The driver of the passing vehicle then either curls his hand in a "come hither" way, saying; "No, there aren't", or points at the ground with one finger, saying; "Yes, there are." The driver who asked the question then adjusts his speed accordingly, or whatever else might need to be done if there are police. If there aren't, things continue as normal. Good practice is to ask at least once every ten kilometers. Sounds excessively often, but when you are driving on a twisting, turning road, going up and down hills constantly and rarely going above 50km/h, its not too bad.
In the city it is different. In the city the police don't just stand by the roadside watching for infractions, they set up roadblocks and stop people just to check their license, insurance, make sure that their lights are working, etc. When they feel particularly mean, or when their superiors are watching, the police stop everyone. When its afternoon and its really hot, they stop almost no-one.
Just before Irene and I returned from Kampala the police set up a new roadblock where you turn off the paved road onto the dirt road to get to the Anderson's. This means that every time we go up and down the hill, going into or returning from town, we could get stopped by the police and have everything checked. When you are going up and down ten to fifteen times a day, carrying large amounts of goods in the back of your vehicle (which the police could ask to "inspect"), this could get annoying REALLY fast.
The first time we went up the hill the police did stop us (when I say us, I mean Linda and I. We were glued together at the hip from Wednesday to Monday). We were carrying a large cargo of chairs, blankets, pots, plates and cutlery for the conference. They checked all the normal stuff, but were kind enough not to ask to "inspect" the cargo. This would have been annoying as it took us ages to get it all into the truck in a way that it wouldn't fall out.
The next trip up, the back of the truck is stacked WAY too high with mattresses. The police wave us through the roadblock. Sweet! The next trip (food), we are waved through again. I could learn to like this! By the end of the first day the police knew us well enough that they didn't even bother to wave us through; we just went.
By the time the conference finished, Linda and I had carried thousands of pounds of stuff up and down that hill, and gotten away with tons of illegal stuff with the police (carrying too much, having people in the back, not having a spare tire, etc).
Moving on to other aspects of the preparations. The conference was held on the Baha'i land, next to the Anderson's property, where they are building a new National Baha'i Center. I say "building" because it still isn't done. The problem is, the conference is supposed to be IN the center, which has less than a third of the external walls up, no roof and no electricity. So what they did was quickly put up a temporary metal structure that looked like a roof, then tie large plastic tarps to the structure to make a solid cover for the building. Electrical wires were run from the Anderson's property (which has electricity because of the clinic) and lights were set up in the center and in a few key areas outside to make the property hospitable and navigable at night. There are also no showers and very few latrines, so a few wood structures were put up in private areas, and then covered with tarps to make shower stalls for the boys and the girls. Accommodations were tricky too. On the Baha'i Land there is a dormitory building that can hold twenty to thirty people. OK, we have 200 people coming (at most). So we had to look for other places. On the Anderson property there is an "office" building with a few bedrooms which are usually used by the youth group that comes here every summer, but couldn't come this summer (refer back to my first entry for details). OK, that can hold another 20 or so. On the Baha'i Land there is a storage building which was cleaned out to hold another 20. So that's 70 people bunked down, more like 85 when you count everyone who is sleeping on the floors. At the back of the clinic there is a large room, which was used to house all the girls. All the boys were split up between the other three buildings mentioned. Then there was me, with a house all to myself. Selfish? Yeah, a bit. But since its not my house I didn't think that I could just invite people to stay there without asking the Andersons and I didn't have anyway of contacting them before the conference started. Oh well, it worked. There were only 120 people attending the conference, so everyone got a bed (or at least a mattress), and they were (mostly) all happy.
The next question is food. On the first day on shopping we bought 100kg of rice, 40kg of sugar (Africans put LOTS of sugar in their tea…its cultural), more toilet paper than I could use in four years and more vegetables than and army could eat in two years. This all lasted about two and a half days. Come Saturday, we are buying more sugar and vegetables. Then there was the bread. Every morning bread and tea were served for breakfast, sometimes with a porridge made of sorghum. Needless to say, we bought a lot of bread. I would estimate over 100 bags of it, each bag containing a dozen buns. 1200 buns, lasting for four breakfasts. 300 buns every morning. Good food.
The final prep was transportation. We had 120 people showing up in an afternoon, and the only vehicle that we had was the truck, which can only carry the driver and two passengers (legally). 60 trips? Thank God, we found another solution. The Conference team hired a taxi-bus (mini-bus, legally carries 14 passengers, actually fits 18 or 19). What this means is that the bus carried people (many trips) and the truck carried luggage.
So everyone is finally here, the conference can begin. Thursday night and Friday go well, no problems, Linda and I running around the city like chickens with our heads cut off, a staff of five people running the kitchen to feed the youth…all is well and good. Saturday morning, the water runs out. No water for cooking, bathing, drinking…nothing. So what do we do now? Well, we have a truck. We also have a 1000-liter water tank (not attached to anything, thankfully) and twenty 20-liter jerry cans. OK, shove them all in the back of the truck and go find water in town. Luckily there is a man who lives in Kicukiro (not too far away, but all the way down the hill into town) who has a HUGE underground water tank which he fills up when there is water, and then sells to people when the water runs out. So we go to his house and start filling up the tank and the jerry cans. An hour and a half later, we return to the conference with 1400 liters of water. This (thankfully) lasts until the end of the conference, so we don't have to do that trip again. Trust me, driving up a hill with 1400kg of water in the back of the truck (which isn't really big) is NOT fun. By that time the police were used to us so they didn't even bat an eyelid when we came crawling up the hill at 5km/h, with the truck making an awful noise in 2nd gear.
Then on Sunday we (and this time I mean Linda) decide to take an article about the conference to a few local newspapers. OK, no problem with that. Linda is friendly with the editors of a few papers, shouldn't be a problem. So someone (I believe Niall, a young Baha'i helping out with the conference) wrote an article in French, then someone else translated it into Kinyarwanda, then we put both Word documents onto my USB drive and off we go to the newspapers, already a bit late. We arrive and go to put the files onto the newspaper's computer, but the computer can read the files. Huh??? Oh…right…the computer that was used to write the article runs on Windows Vista, and the computer that we are trying to download the files onto runs on Windows XP Pro. And Windows Vista, as any computer savvy person will tell you (or anybody who has ever used it, regardless of computer knowledge), is a piece of…ahem. It is terrible. And apparently Word documents written on it are not backwards compatible…older versions of Word can't read them. Just great. So we call Niall and tell him to copy the articles into a Notepad file and save it, and off we go to pick up the new copy (there is no internet at the Baha'i center, so he couldn't just email it, we had to actually go there to get it). But the editor of the newspaper was nice and didn't refuse to print the article when we finally got it to him, about four hours late.
And all that I have talked about are only side-notes to the conference. The conference itself was an awesome thing, full of presentations by cool, knowledgeable people on a wide range of topics (Baha'i topics like chastity, marriage, the role of youth in the world, role models for youth, and many others). There was music every night (as well as during every break-time, when random jam-sessions would start up with someone playing a guitar and other people joining with voice and drums). I was thankfully present at all meals and in the evenings (mostly) so I got to participate in the music and in a few sessions, and it was really fun. I received many compliments about my voice (as I sang a few solos and also in a group a few times), so take THAT, evil siblings who say I can't sing!
On the last night of the conference there was a massive party with singing and dancing and food and stories and many goodbyes. A group of Ugandan youth and I had made up a song (using the tune of "Let it Be" by the Beatles), which we sung to the great amusement of the masses.
This morning, around 5am, a hired bus came to the Baha'i Land to take the youth to the busses home (the Ugandans, specifically). I most certainly was NOT there, as I had been up rather late the night before partying and helping clean things up. The rest of today is being spent taking things back to where they belong (all the mattresses, pots, plates, tables, chairs, etc etc, most of which came from the Baha'i National Center in the city). Tomorrow I have the day off (i.e. Linda no longer needs me), which I will spend preparing for my trip to Muganza and Butare, which starts on Wednesday. There truly is no end to my busy-ness. Three weeks until I have to leave for home and counting.

Safe Journeys



P.S. Since I am the nicest guy ever, I will write for you the lyrics of the song that I sung with the Ugandans.

Let it Be
(as sung at the conference by Vasyl (a Persian-American living in Uganda), Joseph (a Ugandan), myself (a Chilean-Canadian living in Rwanda) and David (a Burundian))

All
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom,
Let it be!

Joseph
When you find yourself in times of trouble,
Just think about Kigali!
Kigali's the place to be!
Let it be!

CHORUS All
Let it be! Let it be! Let it be! Let it be!
Baha'i Youth in Kigali! Let it be!

Vasyl
When you can't understand the translation,
Just ask our friend Aime!
Baha'i youth in Kigali!
Let it be!

Kevin
When you find that the water's run out,
Just turn to Kevin and his truck!
Baha'i youth in Kigali!
Let it be!

CHORUS

David
Now that its time to go home
We're gonna miss each other!
All
Baha'i youth is Kigali!
Let it be!

CHORUS x2

All
Let it be! Let it be! Let it be! Let it be!
Jeunes Baha'is en Kigali!
Lais tombez!

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Photos

Desperate Housebuilders
A temporary structure goes up on the new National Center so that it resembles a building. Tarps were later tied to this structure to make a roof.

Go Burundi!
Some Burundian youth sing at the conference.

Jammin'
Burundians rock.

What do you mean, we have to walk???
The youth head to a nearby genocide memorial site.

May the Cosmos Smile Upon You
Cosmos, an awesome Ethiopian youth, who just got out of jail after being arrested while trying to enter the country roughly four months ago. Why he was arrested, I don't know.

The Memorial
This statue is in the Genocide Memorial in Nyanza (down the hill from the Anderson's). I don't know how long it has been like that, but judging by the decayed state of the tarps, I would say its been quite a while.

Dance!
A multinational group shakes it up at the conference