New Blog

I will no longer be posting here. My new blog is timsinafrica.blogspot.com. Follow me there- I'll be posting about my new travels and adventures in Rwanda and East Africa. See you there!

Rwanda, Round 2

As of October 1st, I will be a bona-fide employee of World Vision. I'll be returning to Rwanda sometime in the next couple weeks, where I will spend 11 months doing pretty much the same things that I did this summer. My responsibilities will include working on the Micro program and various donor projects, such as hosting donors and groups that may visit.

I'll be sure to keep you all updated, via this blog or perhaps a new one with a simpler url.

Cowboy Obama

The upcoming constitutional referendum in Kenya is commanding a lot of attention, thanks to all the various groups who have a stake. The 'Yes' side is made up of a lot of the government, the Muslim groups, and the 'No's' are mainly the country's Christian population (+80% of the populace). This is because the proposed constitution allows for Sharia courts to govern the Muslims, and allows for them to set up mosques all over the country, not just in their historic coastal areas. It also allows for abortion in some cases, in a vaguely worded clause that the Christians worry will become a slippery slope towards abortion on demand.

It also contains provisions to counter Kenya's rampant corruption, so the 'Nos' are branded as obstructionists who are opposed to all reform, despite the issues they have brought up.

So the Obama administration, via his ambassador here and Joe Biden, has been interfering in a sovereign country's internal politics- in favor of the new constitution. Of course, getting involved all over the world is a proud American tradition going back many years, so I can't fault him too strongly for that. However, given the Obama administration's support for promoting abortion all over the world, and attempts to make Muslims like us more, this interference strikes me less as 'supporting the process,' and more using US taxpayer money to influence the outcome of the referendum.

Interestingly enough, this all came out when Patrick Kennedy (w/ Keith Ellison) began to request hearings into right-wing Christian support for the 'No' campaign. Of course, this money came from churches and NGOs; all of the taxpayer money involved has gone to the 'Yes' campaign. Kenyan 'No' supporters have called for Ambassador Ranneberger to be recalled, and many are angry at the way Obama is meddling in their internal affairs.

For much of the last eight years, we've heard how Bush was a COWBOY, swaggering around the world with a gun on his hip, offending our allies and alienating the rest. But now it seems that in Kenya, the land of his ancestors, his hope and change has come to another group of people who are no longer captivated by him. If the new constitution is confirmed, it may be partly because Biden hinted that Obama would visit if it passes, or because Obama himself says:

"…this is a singular opportunity to put Kenyan governance on a more solid footing that can move beyond ethnic violence; can move beyond corruption; can move the country towards a path of economic prosperity. And so, I hope that everybody participates, everybody takes advantage of this moment, and those who would try to undermine this process, I think, are making a big mistake."

But if it fails, Nairobi can be mentioned alongside Copenhagen and Washington as places where Obama's bloom is off the rose.


BACK TO THE BLOG:
-My camera was stolen out of my hotel room, so no pictures of Kenya. The hotel's security officer is on the case, so I may yet get it back before the weekend. I'm not holding my breath. My knife is also gone, but that fell out of my pocket in a cab after two weeks in Kigali.
-I've learned more about Kenyan politics in three days than I learned about Rwandan politics in three months.
-Talking to one of my colleagues about Obama's tendency to take on huge, ambitious, unpopular projects, she described him as 'Lone Ranger' and explained, "He's a lowlander."
-Work has been going great. Everyone is very professional, and I've had no problems getting time to meet with people or in conveying the purpose of the Micro journals.
-I need ideas for what to do this weekend. Basically anything cheap and not too far from Nairobi. I don't have to be at the airport until 8:00 Sunday night, so I'll need to occupy myself in between the hotel and the airport.
-Looking forward to being home. Some of the parks here have terrain that would be perfect for frisbee golfing, so I'm looking forward to that. Also, pizza and Chipotle.

Nairobi

As I told someone today, Kigali is to Nairobi as Colorado Springs is to Chicago. Kigali is hilly, dusty, and comparatively quiet; Nairobi is flat, sprawling, and has terrible roads.

I arrived Sunday afternoon, and checked into the Red Court hotel. Tried to change money, but francs might as well be denarii here. I'll have to hold on to it until I can make my way back to Rwanda, or settle for a terrible exchange rate when I get to an international airport. Which sucks, since I have about $150 tied up in Rwandan currency. Yes, I should have changed it in Kigali, but the last couple days there were pretty hectic.

I think everything at VFC is as good as it's going to be; not as much changed during my stay as I hoped, but I think they have all the right processes and training in place now. They just need to apply the proper resources to it- time will tell if anything changes.

The MFI in Nairobi, however, is quite a bit more advanced than VFC, and they have none of the problems with connectivity and translation (everything's in English!) that Rwanda has. So the week here will be more than sufficient, thanks to the three month training boot camp I went through in Kigali and the fact that we're working through things at the beginning, not five months after implementation.

So I'm expecting this week to be a good wind-down to end my time in Africa before returning home next Sunday. Maybe I'll get to go to a safari park over the weekend, and make sure that I don't return home without pictures of elephants.

Akagera National Park

Sunday we went to Akagera National Park, which rests on Rwanda's Eastern border with Tanzania. The elevation is lower, being part of the Great Rift Valley, and is filled with swamps and lakes that attract the wildlife.

It was once quite a bit bigger (it's a third of its original size) and had a higher population of elephants and lions, but in the chaos following the genocide in 1994, there was no protection for the animals. As a result, farmers with cows like these:
would poison the carcasses of cows killed by lions, greatly reducing the lion population here. (Our guide, Samuel, has worked at Akagera since 1997, and has only encountered lions three times.) Other game was driven out by poachers and settlers. After the genocide, the government gave the Western portion of the park to refugees to return to and settle. So this is a park that is struggling, but could potentially be among the great game reserves of Africa; it contains a wide variety of terrains that allows animals to stay year-round, instead of migrating to distant water sources. It's relatively unknown; we only saw a couple other cars the whole time we were there. And it's home to several varieties of antelope- we saw impalas, waterbuck, Cape buffaloes, topi, and giant eland.

Topi (can run 55 mph)

Cape Buffalo- by himself. He had a broken leg.

Baboon family

L-R- Antonina, her husband Dmitri, guide Samuel, driver Gervais

Giraffe, obviously

We also saw zebras, hippos, warthogs, baboons, various birds, and (my favorite encounter) a 4-5 ft cobra that slithered across the road in front of us. (UPDATE: based on my extensive Googling, I think it was likely some variety of spitting cobra. The black-necked spitting cobra [naja nigricollis] is most common, so it was probably that. They can 'spit' venom accurately up to 10 feet or 3 m.) It was a pretty cool trip, I'll have to return some day during the rainy season when more animals are around.

2nd Trip to Gikongoro

Last week, I went south again to meet with the Loan Officers at the Gikongoro branch for a brief meeting. We were implementing some new processes and going over some questions they had, but that only took about an hour. The rest of the time, I took advantage of my translator/co-worker/Micro counter-part Gilbert who went to National University of Rwandain this part of the country. He showed me around the National Museum (pretty small, no pictures allowed) and the Royal Palace (the dwelling place of the monarchs until the 1950s. They charged to take pictures, so no pictures). We also visited Gilbert's old campus:

which was very beautiful, and also had MONKEYS:
which were exciting to see. Fortunately , they completely ignored us, so I have no stories of poop-flinging or attack. The photo at the top was taken on the NUR campus, near where the monkey troop (herd? school?) lived.

We also visited the Murambi Genocide Memorial near Butare, which is one of the largest and most famous of the memorials in Rwanda. It is built on the campus of what was originally a technical school. During the genocide, about 50,000 Tutsis fled there, and their Hutu attackers cut off the water supply to the compound and killed them all a few days later. They buried the bodies in several mass graves, which were later exhumed (in 1995). They found that a lot of the bodies had been deprived of oxygen in the grave and hadn't decomposed, so they preserved over 800 of these bodies and keep them in rooms for visitors to view. It's shocking, and sobering, especially when entering the rooms that contain the remains of children who were slaughtered. They keep these bodies uncovered so that no one in future years can deny that the genocide occured.

There are also plaques around that mark where mass graves were found, and where the French flag flew during 'Operation Turquoise,' where French soldiers moved in towards the last days of the genocide to protect Hutu genocidaires from the avenging RPF. Rwandans are still waiting for an official apology from the French- for this, and for supplying the Hutu militias with arms in hopes of supporting the existing power structure, and defending the Hutu refugees as they continued to attack from the DRC. The decision to switch from French to English has deep-rooted social/political causes behind the peripheral business causes.

P.S.- We also visited a craft co-op in Butare where I got some sweet souvenirs and gifts. If anybody wants anything specific, let me know and I can get it for you (wood carvings? baskets? jewelry? knives? toys?) when I go back down in a couple weeks.

Pics

Genocide Memorial near Butare

Street food vendor near Ruhengeri

School children in Kigali

Update

To fill everyone in on what I've been up to:

-Last Weekend: Rwanda-Tanzania Soccer Match at Amhoro ('Peace') Stadium in Kigali. Rwanda won 1-0. Those infernal plastic trumpets that you can hear at all the World Cup matches? Yes, they blew them for the entire 90+ minutes, including halftime.

-This week: trying to get in contact with KADET, the MFI in Nairobi who I will be visiting eventually. Finally heard from them on Friday, and as I assumed, they are too busy/not ready for training yet. They would like me to come in mid-July, more about that later.

-This weekend: WORLD CUP! I'm trying to get excited since I'm away from America and have moved to the 94% of the world that actually gives a crap about soccer. So I actually watched both games yesterday, and felt robbed when both of them ended up as ties. But I'm excited for tonight's USA-England match. It's easier to care when you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night to watch.

So future plans? I'm going to continue to supervise the Micro journals at VFC, but my workload is diminishing as I transfer my responsibilities. I will be traveling at least a couple more times to the field branches, as they do some more hiring and will need additional training. So I'm hoping I'll have time to do some 'vacationing,' like spending a few days up in Uganda. There's a lake close to the border that has a campsite on an island that's really cheap and you can canoe around, so that sounds amazing. I'll wait to see what's going to happen this July. If I'm extended for a month, I'll mostly be helping at KADET in Nairobi. I want to take the bus at least one way (at least 24 hour trip, unreliable, dangerous, classic African experience) but I'm not sure I'll be up to taking it both ways. We'll see.

Antonina's husband will be visiting in a couple weeks, and we're all planning on going to Akagera National Park out East, where there's giraffes, gazelles, and elephants (lions if we're lucky).

Please continue to pray for me, especially as I look toward the future after this internship is over.

House-mates

NAME: Yacob
NATIONALITY: Ethiopian
MOTHER TONGUE: Ankaran
FAMILY: six children, 1 of 9 siblings, thousands in extended family
ROLE AT VFC: Consultant, helping them lower their PAR, training


NAME: Antonina
NATIONALITY: Russian/Belgian
MOTHER TONGUE: Russian
FAMILY: Married
ROLE AT VFC: Mobile Banking

Our current living situation sounds like a sitcom pilot, a classic fish-out-of-water story with lots of crazy stereotypes and personalities to exploit. Aside from Yacob's crazy stories about 30 m pythons eating buffalo (seriously. He grew up in the bush, his father was a missionary) and Antonina's love of beets and vodka (just kidding), they're fairly normal people. There's also the very interesting political discussions that we're able to have. Both of them are very well informed on global and American politics and issues, so we've had some lively talks.

All in all, they're lovely people, and I've been blessed to get to know them so far. Yacob has just gone home to Ethiopia, but will return to VFC shortly after I leave.

Rwandan History Part 1- Colonialism

I've been reading the excellent "The Fate of Africa" by Martin Meredith, and it's been very interesting to learn about Africa's transition from colonialism, and how its effects combined with the leaders of the time to bring about the Africa we know today.

Africa was dealt like so many cards among the great Western powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884. Rwanda and Burundi went to Germany for a few years, but after World War I they were transferred to Belgium. It was this relationship that had the biggest impact.

The Hutus and Tutsis in the kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi had lived together for hundreds of years. The Tutsis were taller and thinner, with features that were considered to be more European (such as a slender nose). They dealt with cattle and livestock, while the Hutus tended to be farmers. As a result, Tutsis were wealthier and acted as a feudal ruling class, discriminating against the poorer Hutus. But these lines were not solid because of generations of intermarriage and migration, and there were some wealthy Hutus, and there were some Tutsis who were servants. Status was more important than ethnicity, when talking about relationships and roles. Tutsis were about 15% of the population, and Hutus about 85%. The king of Rwanda was a Tutsi.

The Germans and Belgians used the existing power structure, relying on the Tutsi ruling class to extend their control over the Hutus. The Belgians took it another step, issuing ID cards to further separate the two groups. Since it was difficult to determine in many cases whether a person was a member of one group or the other, those of unsure heritage with ten cows or more were declared to be Tutsi, and those with less than ten were Hutus. This erased any hope for upward mobility for the Hutus, solidifying their secondary status in Rwandan culture.

This gap grew wider, since only Tutsis had government positions, they had the best education opportunities and became taskmasters over Hutu laborers in the Belgian forced labor system. The Belgians had taken the united Kingom of Rwanda, and erased all sense of national identity, replacing it with a solely ethnic one.

Hutu intellectuals challenged this system in 1957 by writing a political manifesto which decried the political monopoly that the Tutsis held. Church leaders, including Tutsis, also called for reform. The Belgians suggested removing ethnic identification from the ID cards, but this would mean that the Hutus would give up their 80% majority, and they refused. Ethnic identity manifested in political parties, and violence broke out on both sides. In 1959, Hutu gangs attacked Tutsis, destroying homes and property and killing hundreds. The Belgians caught scent of the winds of change, and took the Hutus' side. Over 100,000 Tutsis fled to surrounding countries as violence continued, and elections in 1960 gave Hutus complete control of government. They abolished the monarchy and declared a republic, replacing one racially-based dictatorship with another.

Next: 1960-1994

Nothing New

If you can't see the picture, this is what my internet does on a not-so-rare basis- spend five or ten minutes down at zero Kbps, and then suddenly jump to 60 (which is almost fast enough to go on youtube!) It's pretty annoying. And this is the good internet, which World Vision is paying about $80 a month for.


I thought I'd update, even though not much has been happening. Work continues to go slowly, as the branches are getting the update forms in at a glacial pace.

In other news, I'm almost halfway finished with my stay here. It's gone by very quickly, and there's a lot I plan on doing before I leave:

-Visit Uganda and Kenya. A co-worker of my dad has family in Kampala, so I'll contact them and see about crashing with them for a night or two. In Kenya, I'll make it a work/pleasure trip (so that hopefully VFI will pay for some of my travel) to visit the MFI in Nairobi and help them get their Micro program running. I might stay for a few days to a week, depending on how much I can actually help them with. Probably in two weeks, or when I know that VFC is going to be on track with the journals in my absence.

-Go on a safari. The multi-day ones are too expensive, so I'll try to do a day trip (Akagera park here in Rwanda is reasonable, and has all the giraffes/elephants/lions that you would expect to find) I'll investigate trips in Kenya as well.

-Go to the genocide memorials

-Write some blog posts about Rwanda and African politics. This weekend I'll try to do a couple. I think it'll be a series of four or five posts, talking about colonialism, the genocide, and current politics.

Gikongoro

I'm spending two nights at the Golden Monkey Hotel in Gikongoro, in the Southern part of Rwanda. Today I went over the new journal forms with the credit officers here, also touching on good vs bad client photos and the new processes we're implementing. It's all happening very slowly, partly because I haven't anticipated a lot of problems we've encountered, and because communication is painfully slow. So we're gonna have the branches hire another person, buy another computer (there's only one in the entire branch so far- owned by the branch manager) and buy a modem so they can have internet. They'll send the information into the head office by email (novel, I know) instead of by courier.

After this, we went out even further into the boonies to visit some clients and a field field office. This part of Rwanda is very poor, and World Vision has a large (sponsorship) presence. On the way back, we drove through part of Nyungwe Forest, but I unfortunately only saw one monkey and didn't get a picture.

This is Rwanda's tea country. They grow black tea here, which is one of the greenest and most beautiful plants I've seen so far:

Then we stopped at the Kitabi Tea Factory:
Where one of Jean Marie's friends took us on a tour. Now, if you're gonna take a tour of a factory, take it in a developing country where they aren't twisted in knots worried about lawsuits and cleanliness. (I'm comparing this in my mind to the Celestial Seasonings tour, which is way less interesting, and more about packaging than actual tea.) We walked right up to the machines, with their whirring blades and grinders, dodged hooks hanging from conveyor belts, and had a great time. Here's what I'm talking about:


This grinds the leaves into tiny little bits, and has a cover (r) that keeps people from falling in when it's shut. I'll post the rest of the pictures on facebook. Now here's some Rwandan kids:

Mt Kigali part 2

This chap was one of probably hundreds of children I encountered who yelled "Muzungu!" as I passed, calling their friends to come get a look. The first 3/4 of our journey up Mt Kigali was through a couple small settlements, sort of the suburbs of Kigali. Children were out everywhere playing with makeshift toys or helping carry water for their families, and all were interested in seeing a white guy. It's my only experience with any form of celebrity, so I enjoyed it; many came up to shake my hand and say 'Good morning' (A few years ago, they would have said 'Bonjour' - some small evidence of Rwanda's transition to Anglophone Africa). A few walked with us for half an hour or so. Some of the toys they've made for themselves are pretty cool, such as this one with stilts:


After the hike, we lunched at Claude's house. He is a student, but he has his own property and has three other young men renting from him. We had lunch of cooked bananas with a tomato sauce, sweet potatoes (the white kind, not the orange kind), beans, and some kind of cooked greens. Very filling fare, all washed down with banana beer. They bought me a bottle of the brew, more for entertainment than anything else; none of them were interested in sharing it. It's not too bad, not very banana-y at all, more like a wine than a beer, but sweet like rum. It's dark brown and pretty strong (13% abv), so I added some water to make it more palatable. While we were eating, Claude's 81 year old grandmother visited from her home up on the mountain, interested in meeting me as well. She vigorously sipped her bottle of banana wine while wondering why I diluted the "medicine" by adding water.

Lunch in Claude's living room:
Claude, Freddy, and Gilbert in front of a traditional mud house somewhere on Mt Kigali:

Mt Kigali - Part 1

I took a moto from home to the center of town, met Claude and walked west through Kigali through markets and south through the pictured shortcut, one of the slum areas of Kigali. We walked nonchalantly through, dodging chickens, drainage ditches, and many children who announced our approach with 'umuzungu!' (white guy). As far as slums go, this isn't that bad; if you look closely at the picture, you'll see mostly concrete houses with steel roofs, and walls that separate compounds. They are still very poor, but they are sort of the 'middle class' when compared with the people who live in the more rural areas.

This being the 'land of 1000 hills,' I got a lot of exercise. The first few miles were entirely downhill, and then sharply uphill to Gilbert's house where we had breakfast. He is 30, single, and lives with his sister on a compound in west Kigali. Their home was modest, with few of the comforts we're used to (TV, stove, refrigerator, flush toilet) but consisted of three buildings on a walled-in lot that was probably close to a half acre. They had a garden where they were growing tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cabbages, and bananas. We ate toast and milk tea for breakfast.

Gilbert preparing breakfast

Green Earth

Sunset a Couple Weeks Ago

click to enlarge

A Day in the Life

6:00 a.m.: Wake up. I don't set an alarm, this is when the surprisingly loud birds outside wake me up. Sometime in the next hour I'll shower, get dressed, do devos, etc.

7:05 a.m.: Breakfast. See my previous post.

7:40 a.m.: Driver picks us up for work, it takes 10-15 minutes depending on traffic.

8:00-8:30 a.m.: VFC devotionals. I follow along in the Kinyarwanda song book as best I can- occasionally it's a tune I know. Gilbert or Claude translate the brief message for me.

8:30-10:45 a.m.: Whatever work there is to do. I'm at the mercy of the branches; if they've sent in the journals for us to enter, we'll be hard at work on that. If they haven't, I'll surf the web and write emails. This morning, we had a pile of journals to do, and we knocked out all 30+ in two hours.

10:45 - 11:00 a.m. (approx): Tea break. It's tea with milk, with a lot of sugar and occasionally instant coffee mixed in. Very sweet, still makes me feel sick, but I'm getting used to it. Talk with co-workers about various things, they grill me on how they can get jobs in America. Today, they mentioned that the workers digging the new fiber-optic line outside earned about 1000 RWF a day, or less than $2 U.S. I realized that a worker in America doing the same job would make 30 times as much, assuming minimum wage. I'm reminded every day of how great America really is- every day people talk to me about their desire to move there.

11:00 a.m. - 1:oo p.m.- Work some more. Occasionally interrupted by Claude, who is working on his English and would like me to explain something or pronounce something.

1:00 - 2:30- Lunch back at the house. A full meal is usually waiting for us, prepared by our housekeeper Olive. We'll watch CNN after lunch until the driver picks us up.

2:30 - 6:00- Work some more. Today, having finished everything, I'm writing this blog post. At 4:00 someone is supposed to arrive from the northern and southern branches, carrying more updates for us to post.

6:00 - 8:00 - Go home, watch TV with Yacob, my Ethiopian housemate. Usually news, sometimes BBC Entertainment which has old 'Whose Line is it Anyway' reruns. Yacob laughs throughout, but I'm skeptical of how much he actually understands.

8:00- dinner. I'm starving by this time, not really sure why we eat so late. I asked Olive to move it up a little bit please, but I don't think she understood. Oh well.

10:00- I'm in bed, window open, mosquito net down. I've adjusted surprisingly well to the humidity and heat, don't really sweat so much at night anymore.

So, pretty boring. I have plans to see some of Kigali this weekend, and I'm traveling down south with Jean Marie Wednesday and Thursday next week. There I'll (re)train the branch staff on how to take good stories and pictures, and see some more of the countryside. I'll try to take lots of pictures.

VFC Staff

Here's a few pictures of the people I work with.

Jean-Marie:
Jean-Marie is the Credit Management Officer, kind of my point-man for getting things done. He greeted me at the airport upon arrival with a big hug, and also led Sue and I on a trip to Gisenyi, on the border of the DRC on lake Kivu.

Gilbert:
Gilbert, 30, was hired to help me translate the journals from Kinyarwanda to English. He was previously an English teacher at a secondary school in Kigali.

Freddy and Claude (L-R)
These are the two who work on Kiva loans. Freddy is married with a young son, and Claude is in the midst of a long engagement. His fiancee is has a degree in physical therapy from a med school in Kigali, and is currently training at a hospital in Colorado somewhere, but Claude doesn't know specifics. He was the one to help me translate the journals before Gilbert was hired. He also makes sure that I don't work through the tea break.

Breakfast

Thought I'd take some pictures of a typical breakfast here. Our housekeeper Olive cooks for us, and breakfast is simply toast and fruit every morning. Usually just margarine on the bread, or peanut butter and jelly if we feel rich. Then bananas and coffee or tea.





Today, instead of bananas, passion fruits (maracuja) and tamarillos (tree tomatoes). Passion fruits are filled with little seeds surrounded by juicy pods, which you just slurp down whole. Tamarillos are very sweet, they sort of taste like blackberries/kiwis/tomatoes mixed together.

What I've Been Doing Exactly

I wasn't 100% clear on my assignment before I got here, so it's a good bet you aren't either. Basically, World Vision is starting to implement a brand-new program called World Vision Micro. They've been involved with micro-finance with Vision Fund International (VFI) for a while now, buying MFIs (Micro-finance institutions) all over the world and giving loans through these local banks. The new Micro program sort of combines WV's traditional sponsorship program with micro-finance, allowing donors to select a specific business to fund.

In Rwanda, most of these loans go to people who run small shops for food and drink in their communities. The various branches of VFC (Vision Finance Company- the MFI in Kigali that I'm working with) are responsible for finding good clients, disbursing the loans, and collecting payments. With both Kiva and Micro providing their funding, they are also responsible for filling out three forms per client:

1. An introduction to the client's business and family and expected use/impact of the loan
2. A shorter form halfway through the disbursement period that shows what they've used the money for and their progress on repayment
3. A final form that's basically the same as the 2nd form.

These forms are very important for the donors, so they can see what is being done with the money they have donated. Unfortunately, VFC has not been prioritizing these 'journals' and by the time I got here, about 210 loans were missing one or both of these updates. Many were due over four months ago. Since arrival, I have posted 135 midterm updates and 45 new loans, but upon reaching the end of the stack of papers waiting for me, I found that there are still over 160 loans waiting for an update. It seems that the branches haven't been collecting these updates for some time, even though the loans have been paid back entirely.

I'm told that business in Africa can be like this, hearing promises (We'll get them by this Friday...by next Tuesday...by the weekend...) but not seeing many results. But I can only comment on VFC in this regard, and it's clear that my work is cut out for me- not just in posting all the late material, but in motivating the head office management and the branch managers to prioritize the journals.

Hypochondria

I am not a hypochondriac by any stretch of the imagination, but if I were to become one, this would be the place. A trip such as this begins at least a month beforehand, as you go to the travel clinic for the first round of shots. You are given a packet that lists all the potential side effects, especially for live vaccines such as the Yellow Fever vaccine which apparently has killed more travelers than the disease itself in the last couple decades. So the couple weeks following the vaccines are spent wondering if the mild fever or upset stomach is the first sign of a serious side effect. At the travel clinic, you are also given a prescription for an apparently ineffective anti-malarial drug, which is accompanied by the warning 'don't get bit.'

So now you're in the foreign country! Start out your stay with a weakened immune system from 36 hrs of sleepless travel with a poor diet. Also, the new malaria drug causes nausea, so you don't know if your nausea is an actual sickness or a real disease. Realize you don't know how to use your mosquito net properly, and wake up with five new bite marks on your first morning.

About a week in, read the label on your anti-malarial which reads "Take on an empty stomach with plenty of water." Fine, you've been doing that. "Don't lie down for 10 minutes after taking." Shoot, you've been taking it before bed to avoid the nausea. Then see the sticker that says:
"CAUTION: TAKE THIS MEDICATION AT LEAST 2 HOURS BEFORE OR 2 HOURS AFTER MAGNESIUM OR ALUMINUM CONTAINING ANTACIDS, OR OTHER PRODUCTS CONTAINING CALCIUM, IRON, OR ZINC."

And realize that every. single. bottle. of water in Rwanda is top-quality mineral water, which has been helpfully fortified with calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium. You decide to read all your labels a little more closely, where you are instructed to call the doctor if you have mucus or blood in your stool. This is one of the less-serious side effects; call your doctor immediately if you have more urine than usual.

So you open the travel packet again, which has several pages to warn you of the dangers of eating or drinking anything in a foreign country. You are permitted only to eat lumps of charcoal, provided you boil them for at least ten minutes. If you dare to eat unpeeled fruit or shower in the tap water, you're asking for trouble.

All this to say that I was forced to make the decision to not care if I get sick. The alternative is much more stressful- and I think most parts of America have more mosquitoes than we do here in Rwanda.

Transportation

One of the easiest ways to get around Kigali is via moto(rcycle) taxis (or boda-bodas), which are basically Rwandans on dirt bikes. They have green vests and green helmets, and are easily found as there are approximately 15 taxis for every resident of Kigali, and since I’m a white person, there is never a problem finding one. Noob foreigners such as myself are used to prices in the Western world, and will gladly pay 1500 RWF (less then $3 US) for a five mile trip into the city, thinking we’re getting a great deal. (I did this twice.) I was told as I headed off for my third ride that 500 RWF- less than a dollar- is still fairly generous. So I called my next driver with a head nod and offered him 500 RWF to take me to the Union Trade Center (UTC), the downtown shopping area with a Forex and Internet café. His excitement at picking up an Umuzungu faded, but he agreed as a man across the street yelled, “That’s a good price!”

So I put on the helmet he offered me (and didn’t think about when it had been washed last) and jumped on behind him. We weaved in and out of traffic up the hills to the city centre, and I paid him in coins.

Originally posted on Friday April 9, 2010:

My hands shake as I write this, having been goaded into putting something approaching the typical Rwandan amount of sugar in my tea this morning (I actually only put in 3 of the recommended 5 spoonfuls). I was already jittery from my coffee w/ breakfast, which was probably some of the best coffee I've ever had.

Trip over was very long, still fighting off jet lag. Very warm and humid here, so between that and the jet lag didn't get much sleep last night. Feeling fine now (see above.)

The internet is still a disaster, so I'll hopefully post some pics later. I don't have administrative privileges on my computer, so I'm still waiting to be able to access in the office. As a result, haven't done any real work yet, and am still trying to get set up and figure out who I will be working with.

Kigali is very beautiful, with tropical vegetation and very hilly. Will post more later.