Butare- June 16th

Well, we made it to Butare! Butare is home to the National University of Rwanda and the town itself is really small and relaxing…definitely a big difference from the hustle of Kigali. We arrived on Friday afternoon and went for a quick tour of the campus. The University itself is beautiful and in the middle of a giant forest. It’s definitely small, but it has its own internet café, gyms, stadium, restaurant, and a couple of nice quads. In the middle of campus there is a memorial to those who were killed in 1994. During the genocide, over five hundred students died at NUR…many were killed by their classmates and professors.

On Saturday, we had class with Donna in the morning and in the afternoon went with a NUR professor to visit a coffee plantation near Butare. Rwandan coffee has consistently been ranked among the best quality coffee in the world and the Rwandan government is attempting to increase coffee exports. Most coffee plantations, including the one we visited, are part of larger cooperatives (which often include over 200 farmers) that own their own coffee washing stations as well. We also had the opportunity to visit the “cupping house” where the coffee is tested and rated. The cupping process is a long and really complicated process…luckily we got in on it! It’s actually pretty cool…you go through the different lots and smell the beans, the grinds, the coffee, and then you finally get to taste each lot…it really made me appreciate how coffee can vary so much based upon the growing conditions and washing process. After the coffee plantation tour, we all headed back into town and hit up Hotel Ibis to celebrate Menna’s 21st birthday, it was a lot of fun!

Sunday was our day off and, since we have our test on Tuesday, most of us spent the day studying in a little market in the middle of Butare…it was actually pretty relaxing. On Monday we had class with Donna in the morning again and in the afternoon met with a represent from an organization specializing in agriculture, the environment, and sustainable development. Over 90% of Rwandans engage in sustenance farming, so the environment and sustainability is obviously extreamly important in this country. The government is taking some necessary steps to educate farmers about sustainable and effect farming methods and is also in the process of surveying and titling all plots in Rwanda (the entire will take more than two years to complete). Sadly, the rest of Monday was spent studying.

The test on Tuesday wasn’t bad at all and everyone did really well…it was definitely nice to be done with it. That afternoon we had class with an NUR Economics professor who talked about trade and development in Rwanda and East Africa. While economics is definitely not my cup of tea, it was somewhat interesting to hear about Rwanda’s plans to join the East African Union (a regional trading network) and the ramifications that is has had on Rwanda’s taxation policies. Rwanda will officially join the EAU on July 1st and many Rwandans are optimistic that prices and taxes will drop dramatically as a result (Rwanda’s V.A.T is currently 17% and expected to drop down to at least 14%). Rwanda is such an interesting case study in development. Despite its bloody history and rather poor resources, the country has managed to grow and develop at an unprecedented rate in the last fifteen years. President Kagame, after studying the growth and development of many Asian countries, has worked to develop the service sector and hopes to make Rwanda the dominant economic force in East Africa. Politically and economically, Rwanda is slowly becoming a bastion of stability in an otherwise remarkably unstable region.

So, tomorrow is our last day in Butare and then we are off to Lake Kivu for our last day in Rwanda. I really can’t believe my time in Rwanda is winding down…it seems like we got here yesterday.

Hope everyone is doing well,
Luke