Assorted Photos

Normally I don't publish photos on my blog bc our camera is broken, and even when we do have pictures from friends, the internet is maddeningly slow and the upload is enough to turn your hair gray. But, by popular demand, here are a few shots of our house (decoration still in progress, but check the local art), scenes of Kigali/Rwanda, and gorillas.

Stick with it

Some of you may know that I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but prefer a guiding motto for the year. For 2008 I've chosen...Stick with it. For many reasons...I am training for the hilly and high-altitude Kigali half-marathon, the CFA exam...but it applies equally to my blog. Since I last posted, I've:

had 3 friends visit for Christmas. A tour of the country was in order, with new sights such as the monkeys in Nyungwe national forest being really fun - but a tough hike.

less of a hike but with much more than just a monkey was Volcanoes National Park...home of the Mountain Gorillas made famous by Dian Fossey and Gorillas in the Mist. AMAZING. You get up at 7am, go to the office at the base of the volcanoes, get assigned into groups of 8 tourists and then are sent over terrrrrible roads in a 4x4 to the base of your volcano. My tribe was Umubano (friendship), consisting of ten gorillas, one being the male silverback - the leader. huge! and scary. but cool. the best part was the babies playing...just like little kids, poking each other, running around, getting scolded by the mom. The hike was beautiful, and the experience amazing. Pictures soon.

New Year's in Zanzibar - Zanzibar...one of those places like Timbuktu or Kathmandu - such a cool name you don't even know its a real place. Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Tanzania, but was ruled for a long time by Oman, so is a real mix of Arab and African culture. Its known as the spice island because there are many plantations, and it was the center of the Indian Ocean spice trade for quite awhile. Meaning great food...not to mention great beaches, and great sunsets. Not to mention a great painting I got to add to my African art collection.

and finally...more friends! Two more visitors in January meant another circuit of the country, but the most memorable experience had to be the Saturday night in Cadillac...one of Kigali's (hottest, funniest, craziest, most surreal, you pick the adjective) clubs. In the words of a teenage boy who was quite enamored of the muzungus...Did you had fun?!?!

And in the coming weeks I will be traveling to Ghana for fun, and Burkina Faso and Uganda for work, so stick with my blog and I hope to write more in-depth posts about these adventures...

p.s. Special thanks to Chris, Heike, Arwen, Andrea and Meredith for visiting us here - it was fantastic to see/host/hang out with you all, and spread the word to everyone else that they too must come!

Lightning Round Part 2

My posting has dropped to all-time lows, mainly because I have been swamped at work. In a few more days it should be smooth sailing til the end of the year. However, while I've been busy, I still have found time to:

1) Have Thanksgiving dinner at the American club. About 200 people attended, and they did a good job of importing all the favorites (though nothing beats our family's stuffing). Although we sat with friends and had a good time, I vastly preferred hosting our own Thanksgiving for ~15 people in Belgium last year, so I've resolved to try to repeat that here next year. That will mean finding a local poultry farmer, paying him to kill the turkey, and then plucking it ourselves, but I think its worth a shot!

2) Attend the Mille Collines Road Rally. There were 17 entrants, and we are friends with two of the co-pilots. The race went from Kigali to the NW part of Rwanda (volcano/gorilla region). The cars were fast and loud (except for the two Belgian entrants driving Peugeots!) and the track was scary! Cliffs on one side, freefall to a river on the other. Local kids turned out in droves to watch the cars zoom by, and were really into it. The best part was going to the pit stop and seeing the drivers make tons of repairs in the 15 min of allotted time, while being surrounded by throngs of children. We took a break to drive up to the Virunga Lodge - a chichi eco-lodge that costs 800 dollars a night (and really isn't worth that much!) but does have the most stunning views I've seen in Rwanda: a 360 degree panorama of volcanoes and lakes.

3) Start decorating the house. I commissioned a huge painting (6 feet by 3 feet) from a local artist, and it should be ready next week- really hoping it turns out nice. We have bought some local cow dung art for the walls, started painting the rooms, etc, had a carpented build some furniture...all to be shown off to the 3 guests we have coming for Christmas, where we'll do the full tour of the country - cannot wait!

It's a bit strange to be in the holiday season in such warm weather - first time I've been sunburned in December! Hope you are all well

What's in a Name

I am just back from a week in the U.S. for work, happy to have seen family and friends, and to have stocked up on hard to find goods. I'd be even happier if both my bags hadn't been lost, meaning my marathon session at CVS was essentially a waste of time. But ahhhh, the luxury of choice in shopping...

Combine that trip with a week in Burundi for work, and there isn't a lot of Rwanda-related news at the moment.

But as I've lived here almost three months now, a I learn a lot of small, interesting things about life here.

Something that can be endlessly confusing (because its very difficult to know if/how people are related), but is cool, is how people are named. There is no such concept as a last name (or nom de famille). Most people have two names, often an English or French first name and a Kinyarwanda last name.

So, for example, Joseph Ishimwe.

But in this fictitious example, Joseph's son wouldn't have the last name Ishimwe, nor would his father. Ishimwe is just a name that his parents liked. And this is what he is probably called by his family, when speaking the local language. My guess is that people used to just have one name, and with colonialism and the European custom of two names, just started adding a European name as a first name.

Now, Ishimwe has a meaning - joy. And because so many people have names that mean something, quite often the name that is chosen in English or French has a more literal meaning than the names we are used to in English. You meet your Marys and Josephs here, but I also have meet people called, Blessing, Patience, Prudence, Innocent, Aime (Loved), Dieudonne (God-given), Beau (Handsome), etc

Adventures in Driving

After a great 4 days in Burundi for work (which justifies a separate entry), I spent the weekend in Kibuye, a small town on Lake Kivu - the same lake that I went to last weekend, but several hours south. The lake takes up most of the border of Congo/Rwanda. The weekend was with about 14 people at a new hotel there to celebrate a friend's birthday. 6 of the people there were Scorpios, so there was lots of celebrating. One of the guys had a boat, and there were boat trips and waterskiing and general lake fun. Despite the coldest weather we've had yet in Rwanda (60 degrees?), and a lot of rain, the temperature of the lake was like bathwater - very nice.

The scenery is idyllic - green, mountainous, misty, practically untouched by humans - almost as you'd imagine Eden.

But I've blogged about the lake. What made a bigger impression over the last few days has been the driving. On Saturday we rode with two friends, iPod blaring, enjoying the hilly views on the road from Kigali. We had a small incident we laughed over - involving a stray goat darting across the road, and us nearly turning him into a kebab/brochette dinner accidentally.

That was just a hint of things to come. On Sunday, we were heading back to Kigali. The roads are pretty deserted in the rural areas. Let me clarify - deserted of cars. No matter where you are, there are always people walking along the side of the road - some carrying bags/baskets on their heads, some just walking to the local village or down to their huts, but regardless of time, there's always a buzz of human activity. However, most of the road traffic is the local taxi- minivans that carry about 18 people. On the hilly terrain, they have a hard time on the uphills and go quite slowly. So at one point at the beginning of a hill we were behind a taxi and a police truck. The police pulled out and tried to pass the taxi, but apparently they'd been eating too much or their motor was too weak, and they couldn't build up any speed. Luckily we were in a circa 1993 Toyota that could whip right past those two suckers!

Unfortunately the cops didn't like us showing them up, and radioed ahead. At the next checkpoint - BUSTED! We were pulled over and given the usual spiel - need to see license and registration. Unfortunately, the friend driving us had forgotten his license, and the routine stop became a bit of a nightmare. After quite a long time of fruitless negotiating, I slipped my license to the driver's wife, which she "found" in her purse. Luckily all muzungus (foreigners) look alike, so we were off! Though I did effectively get a ticket (for 50 dollars! prohibitive for the average Rwandan) for only sitting in the back seat! And my license seized until I go pay the fine.

Which brings me to today: had a meeting in Gisenyi at 8am, started out with a colleague at 4:45. Took my car but with him at the wheel since I was so recently sans license. About an hour into the drive, out in the endless hills, light just breaking, mist obscuring the valleys. Coming off a long uphill, just starting down a big incline. Go into a turn...and we just kept turning. Was it the wet roads, too much speed, brakes locking too quickly, bad tires? Who knows. We were spinning and spinning for what seemed like an hour but must have been 10-15 seconds. My clearest memory is spinning and getting a view of the left side of the road and thinking, I don't want to hit that wall of rock. Then 180 degrees later seeing the right side of the road and thinking, I REALLY don't want to plummet hundreds of feet down this mountain to certain death, then closing my eyes tight.

Since I'm writing this I guess its clear we didn't plummet. Bounced into the rock, came to a stop, limped to the side of the road, about 8 kids came running down the road to see what was going on - we hammered the wheel well a bit so the tire had room to rotate, cut off part of the bumper that was hanging to the ground, tied the brake lights that were hanging down into a stationary position with rope fashioned from a nearby tree, and crawled back to Kigali.

I think I will start walking to work!

Congo Congo Congo!

On Friday I had to give a presentation in Gisenyi, a resort town on the Congo-Rwanda border which overlooks Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu is one of the largest interior lakes of Africa and is the highest (elevation almost 1500 m), and is nestled in between the 8 volcanos that straddle the Rwanda-DR Congo and Uganda borders - home of the gorillas.

The lake has very few fish due to elevated methane gas levels that are the results of volcanic gases that bubble up from the bottom occasionally - some areas of the lake are not safe to swim because these gases rise to the surface and will asphyxiate you! However, most areas are safe to swim in, and a side benefit of all the gases is that many of the nasty diseases you can catch from freshwater swimming in this area of the world aren't present.

It really is a beautiful setting - sandy beaches, an immense lake, with volcanos in the background. The highlight on Saturday was lunch - we went to a local restaurant with tables that were individual huts on the beachfront. We were told we had to pay a cover charge of ~1.40 USD, which included a free beer and music. Well, this music turned out to be a 3 hour concert on the lakeshore of traditional Rwandan dancing (with a couple of hiphop tunes thrown in) - about 30 musicians with drums, traditional instruments and a microphone they passed around. There were about 12 dancers, wearing traditional outfits - a combination of kilts and overalls, with tambourine-like bells strapped to the ankles. It was all highly choreographed, and a huge spectacle for an audience of less than 20.

On Sunday we crossed the border to enter the DR Congo, specifically their version of the Lake Kivu resort town, Goma. In 2002 the Nyiragongo volcano erupted, and within 2 hours the lava had reached Goma, running all the way down to the lake. The city was covered in 6 feet+ of lava, and today the evidence is still everywhere. Buildings buried so that just the roof is sticking out, a parking lot with 10 cars half covered - and now of course the lava has turned to gray rock, so those cars are stuck - rusted through but really immovable. People have taken the hardened lava and made fences out of it and used it as building material, and in general people have rebuilt right on top of all the lava.

There weren't really too many sights to see in Goma except for all the volcano damage, but its amazing the contrast that is immediately obvious on crossing the border that you're not in Rwanda anymore - the quality of the roads is atrocious (granted, the lava might have had an effect there!), there is trash everywhere on the sides of the roads, and things just seem more...dilapidated. To be fair, this region of Congo is currently at war (don't worry, we were safe - although fighting was going on 15km north and 20km south, Goma is the base of the UN operations, so is relatively secure...at least for an afternoon). It was also interesting to see how many mansions there were - our guide said they were vacation homes of those who'd gotten wealthy via diamonds.

The volcano isn't stable enough to be monitored, but experts are relatively sure it will blow again, and probably soon. There was smoke coming out the entire time we were there, and its possible to spend a day hiking the volcano, camp out at top, and peer into the crater and see lava bubbling below. Maybe next time!

Thirty

So, on this blog I try to talk less about myself and more about Rwanda, finding anecdotes that are interesting to people who've never been here and are curious what its like. But let's be honest, these "people" are basically my family and friends, this isn't exactly reaching millions of readers, and pretty much everyone who sees this knows that, today, I turned 30.

Yesterday I had my little crisis and am over it. My sister sent an email saying, "Hope they have cake there", and I am happy to report that indeed there is a fantastic bakery. My coworkers + Hannah threw a little surprise party this morning; I totally fell for the "we have an urgent team meeting in the conference room now," walked right in to all 12 or so of them singing and then we had chocolate and carrot cakes, both of which were delicious.

Tonight these coworkers, their spouses, and some of my (few, but I'm working on it) friends in Kigali are going to dinner at the Indian restaurant, which honestly is the best Indian food I've ever had. So, I'm living high on the hog as we say at home. Here that'd translate better as, high on the cow.

To bring this back to Rwanda, I'll talk about what a cow culture exists here. When the Belgian colonial administration initially divided the population into Tutsi and Hutu for identity card purposes, the criteria was cows: Own more than ten cows, you're a Tutsi, less, and you're a Hutu. Here cows are still given as wedding dowries and presents, and beef is much much more present than chicken in grocery stores.

So, while I haven't received a cow of my very own yet, it has been a great first birthday in Africa!